Search Results for: asparagus

Spring in the Asparagus Patch

March 20, 2014 by Kendra 10 Comments

For the first day of Spring, I thought it only appropriate that I show you pictures of asparagus. It has been coming up for a few weeks and the wee one and I go check on it every couple of days. For the record, this is not how you should be keeping your asparagus patch. I know that. Though the asparagus spears may look pretty emerging out of weeds and we may feel like wild foragers searching for it, asparagus likes a nice weed free, well composted and mulched growing bed. Do as we say, not as we do, friends. This winter we got too caught up in tasks that weren’t related to asparagus patch weeding. Sorry asparagus, next year we’ll do better for you.

The kids aren’t so hot on eating asparagus, which is surprising, because they aren’t picky. You can sneak a lot over on my kids, though, by pickling whatever their vegetable foe is. So I did a quick pickle by heating up 1/3c. water + 1/3c. white vinegar and a dash of salt. Into the half pint jar I put asparagus tips, one peeled clove of garlic, some fresh tarragon, and a few red pepper flakes. I poured the hot vinegar mixture over it and when it cooled I put it in the fridge. In previous years I’ve canned them in a hot water bath, but since we only had enough for one jar that day, we’re keeping it for immediate eating. Yum.

Happy Spring!

What We’re Doing in the Garden this Month

February 6, 2015 by Kendra 13 Comments

February in the garden! Today I can report in my garden bullet journal that there is indeed rain today! Hallelujia. Those who live around here know already that we didn’t get much of any rain in January, I think maybe one day we received a slight drizzle. Folks I ran into this morning seemed happy to be wearing their rain jackets once more.

For the month of February I will be finishing the pruning that didn’t get done last month. In January I finished all the roses in back and this month I must tackle the roses in front along with a creeping, crawling vine that will indeed swallow the front of our house if I don’t prune it this year. (I still don’t know the name of it, this year when it leafs out I will post a picture and see if any of you know what it is.)

My raspberries must also be reclaimed. They are growing in a mess of weeds without support and I intend to do something about that. Scott finished pruning back the blackberries. Not a fun job! You may be able to see them in that last photo, behind the raised beds. We are leaving quite a hedge of dead brambles because the quail as well as other birds call it home during the summer. Having them as summer tenants has their pluses and minuses. The benefit being that we enjoy watching them, however they think the adjacent garden is their own personal farmers market. Hence the hoops over the beds to net them out.

The asparagus patch has mostly been weeded, but I’d like to finish that and add a layer of compost over the top before they make their spring appearance.

We planted six new apple trees over the course of fall, with the last two going in last weekend. We learned the hard way that gophers love fresh fruit tree roots a few years ago, so this year we built big cages out of gopher wire and planted the trees in those to keep the pesky varmints out.

I need to take a morning and watch over our chickens because I think we may have an egg eater. Or two or three. Hmm…

We also worked hard over the course of January to polish up a corner of our garage to make it feel more like a laundry room. Previously it was just a washer and dryer in a dirty, dusty, spider filled garage. Now with the addition of finished drywall, a coat of bright white paint, a scrubbed out sink, and a few pretty things it feels like a nicer place to wash our clothes.

What’s on your February To-Do List?

January in this Sonoma Garden + fun links

January 15, 2015 by Kendra 5 Comments

The bad news is that we haven’t had any rain since our early December deluge which has folks all over worrying that that was it for our rainy season. The good news is that there have been plenty of lovely days to get outside and prune. Each and every day I get out and I do prune. At least as long as I get that flower pot (that you can see above) filled up a few times with twigs. As I listed out in my garden bullet journal, I’ve tackled all the back roses. Now it’s onto the lilacs. Lilacs aren’t supposed to be pruned until after they have bloomed in spring. They flower on last season’s growth, so pruning now will severely limit my blooms come spring. However, this ‘wall’ of lilacs is so thick and forest like, that it’s virtually impossible to get in there once it’s fully leafed out. This year I might miss out on a few blooms, but next year will be glorious…hopefully. It’s a lot of work. I mean, where do you even start?

I should have put some sort of object in this photo for size reference, but this unknown variety of bok choy grew much bigger than any of our heads!

Radishes, kale and spinach, all planted on Veteran’s Day are making their way into our dinners lately.

And the bread seed poppies and snapdragons that I started from seed back in August are just revved and ready for spring to shoot up and bloom. I can’t wait! I’ve been trying for years to grow bread seed poppies and the seedlings keep getting eaten. This year I think I found success! The only other time I grew them was about 11 years ago and they were so generous with their poppy seeds that we just recently used the last of them up in the kitchen.

This row of onions needs to be weeded along with the two rows of asparagus. They are long rows and take forever!! It’s easy to procrastinate. Oh and would you look, a little bit of broccoli is growing in the galvanized bins.

Tell me what is going on in your garden this month!

p.s. A few fun links:

Interesting article on 7 world wide cultural concepts that are perfect for winter
How to easily put on a duvet cover (totally changed the way I do it – thereby increasing how often I wash my covers)
A tiny jungle house built by a woman and her mom in Hawaii that has inspired Scott & I to make/build things more creatively
A song I can’t get enough of. Morning Time by locals Nicki Bluhm & The Brothers Comatose

Enjoy your day!

Trading & Bartering

April 15, 2014 by Kendra 7 Comments

We have a community within Sonoma, called Sonoma Hitch & Barter. It’s organized through Facebook and the premise behind it is that you post a picture of something you own, but don’t want anymore. You ask for some things you’d like to trade it for and people chime in with offers. It’s a pretty excellent little community. For instance a few weeks ago, we had to empty out our garage and we took a picture of a window air conditioner unit that we don’t need anymore. It was 10 years old and though it worked fine, it seemed like something that would never sell on craigslist. So we offered it up. I said we’d trade it for wine or beer. A couple chimed up, who had a very hot apartment in summer. They had a small wine collection, but really weren’t wine drinkers when it came down to it. So they brought us their wine and we gave them our air conditioner. We both parted ways very happy.

In the past I’ve traded various house decorating knick knacks for homemade muffins and cookies, a box of baby toys for 4 bottles of Pliny the Elder, and an old dresser for more wine.

The other weekend this arbor came up on the Facebook site and I jumped on it immediately. He wanted succulent clippings. Oh, I’ve got those in spades! So I gathered a big box full, plus a little mint and lemon balm and headed over to his house. He loaded this into my van and I gave him the plants and we both agreed it was an excellent trade. No money was exchanged. I had what he wanted, he had what I wanted.

For this trade, I had to bring all my kids along with me and there were lots of questions. Do you know this guy? Is he your friend? Why is he giving this to you? Why does he want those plants? It was a learning opportunity for sure about how money isn’t always the way you can obtain something. Later that night, my oldest commented on how he really liked the whole trading scheme. It’s a good system when everything works smoothly. And now I have this beautiful arbor that needs a few more plants around it, doesn’t it?

In other news, do you see that barn in the bottom corner with the heart shaped group of trees? Isn’t it pretty? We’re having a french door added to our house so we can look out on that view. Construction starts this week. I can’t wait!!!

After posting about the weedy asparagus patch, I went out just days later and weeded it. Nothing holds you more accountable than publicly posting about your downfalls! I also just planted our onions at the end of March. It seems late for this area, but we found a few years ago, as a fluke, that when we plant our onions late, they don’t bolt before they’re ready to harvest…a problem we’ve always had in years past. They were our most successful onion crop. With fingers crossed, we’ll have the same results this year.

Pardon our absence, we’ve been digging

May 22, 2012 by Kendra 11 Comments

Boy, putting in a garden is hard work! And I say that on behalf of Scott, who has been doing all of the digging this year. While I’m a willing digger, digging and chasing a toddler don’t go well together. So instead I chase and he digs. Next year he’ll get more help. Anyhoo, want to see what’s going on in these parts? Above is the front of the main garden. We cleared out the front bed to make way for things we’d like to pick quickly for dinner, carrots, lettuce, basil and the such. Beyond that are boysenberries.

Then we trellised a row of concord grapes. Last year we managed to get only a few jars canned of grape jelly and it was carefully savored. Can’t wait to have a whole cupboard full!

Volunteer onions! What a nice surprise!

Between the walls of asparagus….

…lies another few rows of seasonal goodies. This patch we planted all out with seedlings back in March and everything came up and was immediately eaten. It was so disappointing. There is some debate between whether the culprits were sparrows, snails or a combination. However the sparrows have migrated away and the snails got evicted by a troop of boys who were paid 5 cents a smooshed snail. Things are growing once more.

Like cilantro and beets and kale.

This section of garden is south of what I just showed you and has been the main source of the work lately. This was all grass before and was carefully dug out with foot and shovel. Amended with heaps of compost and smoothed out. We’re trying out a new irrigation technique we learned about last year. Where you put a grid of drip down over the entire bed.

Last year a few of you mentioned that you were interested in learning more about this new system we learned about, are you still interested? I can do a whole post (and it will take me at least one long post) to explain, if you’d like. In this bed live 12 tomatoes we grew from seed and maybe 20 peppers we acquired from different sources. Yes, 20!

We’re giving San Marzanos a try again this year. In our previous garden we had a terrible problem with blossom end rot with that variety, but we’re hoping they do well here.Grow little tomato, grow!

Weekend in the kitchen

March 10, 2012 by Kendra 10 Comments

Since we moved into this house we’ve used a small round patio table as our kitchen table. It’s a table meant for two, however we have a family of five, so it’s been a tight fit. I complained for months that I could never find the right table for that spot, and then on our way home from our wooly field trip I hit the brakes hard when I saw a colorful consignment store I hadn’t seen before and there was the perfect table!

Our kitchen has been an inspiring place for me to be in, I think because of the new table. Daffodils are drying for dying someday, the picnic ham got roasted, two loaves of bread are being made at once, some fermenting is going on, and asparagus is almost ever present these days.

Hope you are having a great weekend. I have a fun thing coming up next week just for you! Stay tuned.

Slow but steady progress

March 6, 2012 by Kendra 13 Comments

Spring is here in full force, whether the calendar agrees or not. Every time I look outside at the garden I feel like I’m in a marathon race with the ever growing weeds. The soil around here is clay, so there is a small window of opportunity to easily pull weeds after a rain shower. Our window was late last week and on Saturday. By Sunday our window was up. It feels overwhelming, this big vegetable garden full of weeks. Sometimes I feel defeated already, that the weeds have already won this marathon, but as Scott reminded me the other day, we just need to work at it little by little everyday and we’ll get rid of them.

Meanwhile, let’s turn our heads away from the weed filled veggie garden down to the weed filled narcissus and daffodils that popped up this late winter. There are about four rows at the front of the vegetable garden that popped up and many large clumps that appeared all over the yard. I wasn’t all that familiar with narcissus before now, but their smell is out of this world! So fragrant! Put them on your must plant list!

The asparagus is also shooting up, everyday we go out and pick a thick handful. This is only one of two large, long rows. We’re spoiled. We planted three meager asparagus plants at our last house, now I have learned that it’s best to plant more than you’ll think you’ll ever need. You can always share with friends, right?

Above is a sign of progress that makes me a very, very happy woman. Drip tubing! Installed in two flower beds with a thick layer of mulch over the top.

the Sonoma Aroma

September 28, 2011 by Kendra 8 Comments

Woowee! Dispatch from this Sonoma garden reports that this morning the Sonoma Aroma is alive and well. It actually made me cough, the smell was so strong when I loaded the kids into the car to go to school. A drive down the road did prove that today was manure spreading day on the fields.

(kent beauty oregano)
While we aren’t spreading liquid manure in this portion of land, we have been doing plenty of compost spreading (had another 5 yards delivered), gypsum sprinkling (helps break up clay soil), and planting. I had collected an entire picnic table full of new seedlings, nursery sale goodies, and transplants from the old garden. Now as I find a spare few minutes I’ve been slowing planting them out.

Many years ago I read a great book called The Well-Tended Perennial Garden, which I learned a lot from. I learned for instance that my favorite thing to do in gardening is to prune. Some people are in it for the watering, some for the digging, some for the careful nurturing, me, I’m in it for the pruning. The most important thing I took away from that book is that when you plant a new perennial (and fall is a good time to transplant or plant), you should cut the plant back by half so that the plant can concentrate on building a good root system rather than expend it’s energy keeping all that foliage alive.

(nicotiana)
I am completely replanting the front flower bed and once the plants are in, we’ll put in our new irrigation system, which I will share with you. But for now, here are a few pictures around the yard:

(amaranth between the asparagus and tomatoes)

(new life among the old artichokes)

(the chickens now can go in an out as the please)

(the melon bed nearing it’s end)

Our Jumbled Mess of a Garden

June 16, 2011 by Kendra 15 Comments

Welcome to our new vegetable garden! It looks like a jumbled, weedy mess right now doesn’t it? We’ll fix it as time allows. It is a big space and has the potential to get much bigger, but from this view we have boysenberries, then some sort of grapes, then rhubarb, then asparagus. Behind that tipsy fence of asparagus is a row of tomatoes and peppers we quickly planted, then another wall of asparagus then rows of flowering bulbs which I secretly shared with you a while back.

Well, before I officially declare that there is a row of rhubarb, I wanted to ask you, this is rhubarb, right? It looks just like it, however it’s so miniature, each plant is only about 18″ tall at most and the stalks are as thin as pencils. We are used to the big, giant rhubarb.

Because we had grown our tomatoes from seed and bought our peppers at a plant sale long ago, we quickly got them into the ground. As Scott was digging this stretch he felt a little resistance with his shovel at one point. Thinking he had hit a root or a rock or something he just jabbed the shovel a little harder with his foot, however when he brought the shovel up, there was the back half of a gopher snake in his shovel! Oh no! It took him a while to find the front half and when he did it still had enough life left to strike at him! This is a new kind of gardening folks! If we didn’t realize it before that was a wake up call that we’re out in the country now. We move forward hoping that no more snakes will be harmed in our gardening efforts.

I took all these photos on an evening stroll with a babe on my hip, so I’m not thrilled with the quality, but I promise more photos in the future.

This is the onion/grape/berry row. A tangled mess we’ve got on our hands, I tell ya!

Look at these fuzzy things! I’ve never seen grasses like these but don’t you want to touch them? Me too, I do it every time I walk outside. They are only growing in one spot, well actually two specific spots in the garden so I’m wondering if they were planted intentionally. Do you know what they are?

As I was strolling and taking pictures and having the left half of my hair ripped out of it’s ponytail by the wee one, Scott was high weed mowing a bit. He had gotten to about this point when we heard a yell across the yard from a neighbor, ‘quit what you’re doing, we’ll come over with the tractor tomorrow and mow for you.’ And they did, it’s all beautifully mowed now. These neighbors are something else! Those grapes that he is mowing by are a mix of Concord and Thompson Seedless. We’re anxious to taste them!

More to come!

The Good News and the Bad News

April 4, 2011 by Kendra 14 Comments

As I mentioned last week we came home to full spring in our yard. The forget-me-nots are in full bloom under the white peach tree. The yarrow is full and green and the leaves are emerging on the roses. We spotted our first soldier beetle yesterday, ready to eat those pesky aphids off the roses. Every year I am surprised by how much I like spring. Autumn is a given in my book. I adore autumn and our relatively mild winters are always welcome. But spring gives way to summer, which to tell the truth is my least favorite season only because of how hot it get here. My energy really does melt in our Sonoma heat. So at all other times of the year I see spring as only a doorway to my dreaded summer. And then spring comes and just amazes me, all the flowers and green, green hills. It is so incredibly gorgeous in here in spring.

We’ve had our fair share of both successes so far and disappointments already in this growing season. Take for instance our rhubarb. It is growing like crazy this year. I haven’t made much with rhubarb besides pie, what do you like to do with it?

We have our first sizable asparagus coming up. Just a few stalks, but I can’t wait to eat them!

The potatoes are coming in fast and we are starting to mound up around the plants. In the off chance you didn’t already know this, as potato plants grow, you mound up dirt around the plant so that more potatoes will grow off the part you cover up. You can do this for quite a few feet in fact. Some people chose to plant them at ground level and then build structures around them to stack and hold in more dirt. We tend to dig a deep hole and gradually add dirt to the hole as they grow. This year we are growing Yukon Golds and a purple potato which I have forgotten the name of already. We buy seed potatoes from The Potato Garden.

The blueberries we recently bought are growing in the back of our garden, a part that receives some mid day shade in summer. We hope that will be welcome by these berries.

The disappointments? Well, a small one is that my new rudbeckia was eaten by snails. As you can see as a last minute save I tried surrounding it by sand from the boys sandbox, but to no avail. They still ate it to the ground. After reviewing an old post of mine on how to keep slugs and snails away, I will have to pick up some copper on my next trip to the hardware store.

And our greatest disappointment, it looks like we will be getting little to no Santa Rosa plums or nectarines. We had a bought of warm weather which made those two trees burst out in full bloom only to receive a good few nights of frost after wards which killed all the blooms. We are so sad not to be overwhelmed in plums and nectarines this year.

At least we have plenty of onions, garlic and shallots.

And tulips and for-get-me-nots.

And we can always be thankful for almost completely local meal like this one. (Beltane Ranch kabobs, Lundberg rice, and our own celery leaf salad, chard and roasted turnips.)