Food is coming out of dirt in my yard.

[xiphias]

At the end of last week, I made chicken and spinach with spinach that I grew in my raised bed garden. I didn't know that you can just cut off the leaves, and so I uprooted the plants. Had I not done that, I might have been able to get a second crop of spinach this year. Still, it was quite tasty.

Yesterday, I made a Caesar-like salad with lettuce from the garden. With luck, I might get a second crop out of that.

Earlier last week, I was thinning out the kohlrabi plants (you plant them thickly and then thin them out to four plants per square foot), and realized that the sprouts tasted pretty good, and like kohlrabi, so I diced some tuna steaks, and sauteed the sprouts, tuna, and some daikon radish, and marinated them in soy sauce, sesame oil, and ginger.

So, so far, I've cooked three meals with stuff from our garden.

The early-blooming lilacs have finished blooming, but one of the mid-bloomers is about to bloom. I have a plum tree that I planted at the side of the house. The strawberry plants seem to be doing well, and are putting up flowers. The raspberry bushes are getting the little buds that will eventually become raspberries. The honeysuckle I put in hasn't died yet; the catnip has. The hops vines are sprouting and seem to be doing well.

I bought a fig tree, which I'm growing in a pot, so I can take it inside over the winter.

The yard is coming together.

Comments

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

Wow that sounds tasty! And it looks like you've got quite the green thumb there.

Hey, if you've got enough hops to spare, could we come get some rhyzomes from you? Ours died over the winter from the look of it so we want to start again and give it time to really get entrenched before winter this time round. If you've got a composter, we can trade by bringing you some of the most nutrient rich compost material you'll ever find...

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I don't really have a green thumb: rather, I am cheating. I bought a lot of this stuff as seedlings, rather than growing from seed. And I think the kohlrabi and rutabegas may yet be choked out -- I WAY overplanted them, and I'm not sure I've thinned them enough.

Once the hops gets established, sure. But we just got the rhyzomes this season -- we've got little hops sprouts poking out of the ground.

Honestly, I wanted to grow from seed, but nobody sells hops seeds -- I could only find rhyzomes. That worries me, a little, because it creates a monoculture, which is one of the reasons why there was a hops shortage last year.

. . . the phrase "nutrient rich compost material" worries me. Does this involve Hootie?

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

No, the nutrient rich compost doesn't involve Hootie, it involves our long eared, 4 footed friends. Turns out herbivore poop is one of the best fertilizers you can get and it's also one of the fastest to compost.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Isn't that crazy? FOOD GROWS ON TREES!

[tylik.livejournal.com]

I was thinking: "I really miss having a fig tree..." and wondering if I could make room for one near our western window...

...and then I thought "bonsai fig!"

And it turns out that this is not only possible, it's fairly easy as such things go. Hmm...

[403.livejournal.com]

Excellent!

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

1. Awesome post title.

2. Growing from seedlings is not cheating. Lots and lots of gardeners do that because germinating seeds is a whole nother ball of wax and for some species can be a real nuisance.

3. You might try restarting catnip in a big pot and putting it in different locations to see if it's happier, because it should be hard to kill catnip--it is, after all, a mint, which takes over the world if given half a chance.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

Yum.

[mswae.livejournal.com]

How do you already have a crop? I just put my plants out Tuesday! We just had our (hopefully) last freeze on Sunday ... I thought Boston was the same zone as us ..

Envy :)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I still have to plant a bunch of things that go in now. But I had a few early things, too.

[403.livejournal.com]

If you're careful about it, spinach and kale will overwinter and accumulate sugars as antifreeze.

Fig Tree

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

While you do have it a pot just now... you be REALLY careful with that Fig Tree of yours. As a member of the Ficus family, it will go after ANY source of water, including right through concrete-pipe fittings. This can most decisively and quickly destroy a sewage system. That said, I have an amazing fig-tree up against my bedroom window. The smell is divine.

Re: Fig Tree

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I have no intention of ever letting it OUT of the pot. Where I live, it gets cold enough to kill the fig tree, so I'm going to have to let it winter over inside. That oughta keep the little bugger under control.