Busy Busy!

The past few weeks have been very busy here at BLT. I've been processing lots of Easter orders and taking care of 100+ baby plants. So I haven't had much free time to update the blog.

Rainbow eggs have been very popular this year

In my last post, my tomatoes were just coming up. I've since had to rethink my garden plan for this year because some tomatoes didn't do what I thought they would.

(The Giant Sauce, for example. Slow, poor germination and weak plants. I wanted 4 for the garden, but am probably only going to wind up with 2. The spoon tomatoes had some leaf curl, so I lost all but 1 of them. The surviving plant is looking great, though!)

Spoon tomato 

In the last 4 weeks, the plants have seriously shot up, though some varieties more than others. The sweet million is getting a little big for its britches, so it is going to lose those branches when I plant it in the garden. The whole stem will get buried with just the top bit sticking out of the soil. Tomatoes grow roots along their entire stem, so the stem can be buried when you plant.

Sweet Million (Cherry)

  

Spoon tomato

Peppers and tomatoes

Swiss chard

A lot of the tomatoes are already producing suckers, too!

The peas are coming up really well in the garden (I'd have pics, but it's raining). I also planted beets, radishes and arugula (again, pics are forthcoming in drier weather).

I'm also working on something new for the shop! Become a fan on Facebook for a sneak peek!

A Stroll Through the Garden

And by garden, I mean "my dining room".

3 short days ago, I sowed my most exciting crop yet - the crop I've been waiting months for. TOMATOES!

I sowed about 14 or so different varieties  along with some purple basil, mammoth basil, rainbow swiss chard, and a few different kinds of flowers. They were started on a heat mat set at 80* and under lights.

3 days later I saw this:

That was in the morning. I went about my daily routine, and by lunch time, saw this:

They've been coming up like gangbusters ever since, which is incredibly exciting. As soon as they have their first set of true leaves, they'll get their own comfy digs and some food.

I've planted a couple varieties for size that I'm especially excited about - the spoon tomato and the super sauce tomato.

Spoon tomatoes are exactly what they sound like - teeny tiny tomatoes that fit on a spoon.

Spoon tomatoes

Super sauce tomatoes are a new release by Burpee, and are supposed to be enormous. (5" x 6" high)

Super sauce tomato

The super sauce seeds haven't sprouted yet, but the spoon tomatoes have. The seeds were incredibly tiny, and the resulting seedlings are tiny, too.

The peppers are starting to get their 3rd set of true leaves.

And the broccoli has been hardening off for 4 days now. I'm hoping to get it in the ground in the next week or so. Granted, it would have to stop raining / snowing for longer than 20 minutes for that to happen.

What do you have started in your garden?

Making My Own Rainbow

My favorite movie of all time is "Steel Magnolias". My favorite scene in the movie is when Shelby is talking about her wedding colors while Dolly Parton's character is styling her hair.

Shelby: "My colors are blush and bashful".
M'Lynn: "Her colors are pink and pink."

That is pretty much how I feel about today, except that instead of pink, it is grey and grey outside. We badly need the rain (the cold I could do without). So I decided to make my own rainbow.

I really enjoy mixing my own Procion colors. I don't exactly play by the rules, though. I don't write measurements down. I dump some dye into some water and go from there. I like not knowing what the end result will be. I love the surprise of opening the dryer and pulling out the finished piece. (Never judge a wet piece of fabric. 9 times out of 10, it will look completely different when it is dry.)

Enjoy the rainbow!

Peppers!

Peppers 8 days post sowing

The Songs Have Started

There is a boggy area in my backyard right next to my garden. Every year, winter snow and rain fills the bog. In the spring, toads frolic to my backyard to make lots of wee toad babies. (Did you know that about 80% of male toads return to the place where they were spawned during mating season?) Their croaking starts gently, and by the time spring is in full swing, it's incredibly loud. 

Toad hanging out in my garden.

Bog

When the songs start, I know spring is coming. I took said songs as a sign to build a row cover / small hoop house. It's covered in 6 mil plastic for now, and when it heats up outside the plastic will be replaced with tulle.

I bought an outdoor thermometer to monitor the temperature, and it was 80*F under the cover. Our 10 day forecast is pretty mild, so I decided to take a chance and planted my swiss chard today. It has been hardening off for a little over 2 weeks.

5.5 week old swiss chard ready for the garden

The row cover - PVC frame covered in 6 mil plastic sheeting

One of the really cool things about chard is that the roots are the same color as the leaves.

Yellow swiss chard

My goal this year is to grow 500 pounds of food for my family. So far, I'm at 4 ounces (I harvested my basil plants for a lasagna). I have 16 chard plants under the row cover, and sowed spinach, arugula, and radishes.

Swiss chard planted

Do you like swiss chard? Is the weather hospitable enough for you to get gardening?

                                     

Thanks, Phil!

Phil the Groundhog did not see his shadow this morning, which supposedly means that spring is going to be early this year. I'm going to ignore the fact that Phil has been wrong 61% of the time. I'm beyond ready for spring to get here. I'm longing to get my hands dirty and to eat my first tomato of the season.

Today also happens to be Imbolc, which is the midway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. So to celebrate, I started sweet potato slips.

This is the first year I'm trying sweet potatoes. I discovered a fantastic tutorial on starting them (as well as an overall awesome blog) called Outlaw Garden. We're practically neighbors, though she is in zone 7a and I'm in zone 7b. I feel the same way about my HOA that she does about hers. One of the covenants out here says you can't plant more than 10% of your property with edible food. I'll plant what I darn well please, thankyouverymuch. I'm a firm believer that our lives (as a whole) would be much better if we went back to the days of the Victory Garden. 

I purchased a bag of organic sweet potatoes before Christmas for Christmas dinner. I didn't use all of them, and they've just been hanging out in my pantry. When I read on her blog that I didn't need anything fancy to start sweet potato slips, I decided to give it a try.

Per the instructions, I cut the healthiest looking one in half and put it in a glass dish, cut side down.

After a few weeks, these will supposedly start growing slips. In the meantime, I roasted a couple out of the bag for lunch. Topped with butter, salt and pepper = nom.

In other gardening news, the broccoli is doing really well. It's about 2 weeks old, and will be going into the garden in another couple weeks.

I have a gardening complex that removes any and all patience. So I poke my seeds a lot to see if they've germinated, and today (2 days post sowing) I noticed my giant marconi pepper seeds are starting to sprout. Because I'm aware that normal people don't poke their seeds a billion times, I've put a green arrow pointing at the beginning of the sprout. Then I tucked the seed back in.

I saved the sad news for last. My peas didn't make it. *cries* I put them in during a pretty warm spell, and then we got the coldest temperatures we've had over the past several years. Down into the very low teens, which they just didn't like. So note to self - don't plant peas in January. (I'm sure I'll forget all about that next year, and plant them anyway.) I'll drop some more seed in the next week or two.

Don't forget to stop by the shop - I'm having a 20% off sale for Easter! Use code EASTER13 for 20% off all orders.

The Flu Sucks

Title says it all. A couple of days ago my throat felt scratchy, and I decided that I was NOT about to get sick and willed it away. That didn't work so well. Baby girl and I spent the day on the couch yesterday, where I had the pleasure of watching the entire first season of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Good times.

I was jonesing for a pot of chicken noodle soup. My husband, God love him, is better at preparing breakfast foods and boxed items. (Me? I set boxed food on fire. I'll save that story for another time.) Short of calling my mom and begging her to come make me some soup (and she would have, but then she would have caught the flu, and it would have settled in her lungs and she'd have to go to the hospital and I would feel horrible). Thus, I knew I had to do it myself.

So I got up this morning at 0-dark-30 with the kids and started working on the soup. (Scroll to the bottom for the recipe. Sorry, no pics.)

Now I'm floating on a "I've eaten my body weight in chicken noodle soup and Naproxen" high. (Naproxen is a pain killer / fever reducer. These body aches are making me very sad.)

I did stop by and check on my seedlings. Watching them almost makes me forget I'm sick. Almost.

A few days ago, I started my broccoli seeds. 

I used a pencil eraser to poke holes in the dirt:

Broccoli seeds are very wee.

I put one seed in each hole, because thinning them makes me sad.

A day and a half later, I found this little guy peeking out at me. 

Then today, amid the sniffles and the sneezing, I found these! Hello, baby broccoli. Welcome to the world. I will eat you one day.

One of my basil plants just turned 3 weeks old. It's working on its 4th set of true leaves.

3 week old swiss chard. 

Without further ado, here's my personal recipe for chicken noodle soup:

Ingredients

1 whole chicken

1 onion

5 cloves of garlic

4-5 stalks celery

4-5 carrots (or two big handfuls baby carrots)

bunch of fresh parsley

fresh rosemary

olive oil

salt and pepper

red pepper flakes

chicken stock (either stuff you made, canned / boxed. You can also use water. I used 5 cans.)

1 box of noodles (I used spaghetti, because it's all I had.)

Method of Preparation

Get out a stock pot or soup pot or whatever good size pot you have. Take your olive oil and drizzle it in the bottom, going around 3 or so times. Turn the heat on around medium high.

While your pot is heating up, dice your onion into bite sized pieces. Mince your garlic. (Bonus points for putting the onion skins and garlic peels in a bucket for your compost pile.)

Toss the diced onion and minced garlic into the pot and saute it. While it's cooking, roughly chop your carrots and celery. Toss that in the pot too.

Cook all of it together until it smells awesome and has some color. You're not going for burnt here - you want it GBD - golden brown and delicious.

When it's done, time to deglaze your pot. Mmmm. Deglazing is just taking the cooked on bits at the bottom of the pot, and making them not stuck to the bottom anymore. Don't worry, they're delicious. To deglaze your pot, just pour your chicken broth / water in the pot. You can even use white wine. (Everything is better with wine, I say.) Like I said above, I used about 5 cans of chicken broth. Well no, I DID use 5 cans of chicken broth. Anyway.

Now it is time for the chicken. If you're like me, you pulled your chicken out of the freezer the night before you wanted to use it. Being the food safe person you are, you attempted to defrost it in the fridge. When you pulled it out of the fridge to make soup out of it, it was still as hard as a rock, and you couldn't get the heart and kidneys out of the middle. Oh well. At least get the plastic wrapper off of the chicken. Now toss (or gently place, so you don't wind up wearing your soup base) the chicken in the pot.

Add more chicken broth / stock / water if necessary, depending on the size of the bird. You want the chicken covered. Add a couple stalks of fresh rosemary and red pepper flakes. Cover it with a lid, turn it down to low, and wait a few hours.

When the chicken is cooked, it'll start falling apart in the pot. This is a good time to remove the chicken, very carefully. You'll need 2 forks and an arsenal of swear words. You will inevitably burn yourself. Consider yourself warned.

Add your noodles. I broke a bunch of spaghetti into 3rds and used that. 

Remove the skin, and bones. Basically, just go to town on that bad boy removing any and all meat, hacking it into somewhat bite sized pieces along the way. Add it back to the broth. Stir it all up and season to taste with salt and pepper. Add a handful of parsley. Pat yourself gently on the back, because you have body aches and doing it harder would hurt more.

Nom nom nom.