Our well hung carrot

Couldn't resist ...


And the very first apple we've eaten from our garden, a Gravenstein ...

The weather has been rather friendly for veggie growing. We have hot sunny days and then a day of rain in between. Seeds that were sown are all sprouting, including the slow germinating carrots. The friendly weather definitely helps. I also tried to sow the seeds on the day when it was about to rain; and I covered the seeded area with a light floating fabric. The fabric might help with trapping the moisture in the soil.

The leeks have grown taller also. Time to start filling the trench...and you know what, I think I didn't dig the trench deep enough. Another lesson learned.

There are holes on the cherry tomato plants. What causes that?

more seeds

It was a sunny hot Sunday yesterday. (max. 23C) We took our chili plants and seedling trays out for sun bathing. Today, it was a 360 degree change (max 16C)...cloudy in the morning and then followed by rain. The radio said this Victoria Day weekend will be the perfect time to do gardening due to the predicted change of weather. They are right. I planted the seeds in the morning, and let the nature takes care of the rest.

Today I've sown the following seeds:
carrots (by the shelling pea)
beets (by the shelling pea, 2008 seeds)
radishes (all over, 2008 seeds, the round type)
salad mix (by the end of the shelling peas, by the edge of the cherry tomato plant)

Also, the leeks seedlings were also down in the field (by the shelling pea/carrot seeds).

We pulled out a number of leeks (planted last year) and made leek and potato soup. There are still leeks remaining. We have been keeping a close watch on their growing as they seem to grow in height only instead of width (the white part). The flower stalk is coming out from the leek one after another. I guess it is time to finish them. In case you wonder, no, they don't taste old. They are still very fragrant and delicious.

Update of the previous sowing: the carrot seeds from the first round of sowing have sprouted, so as the Gai lan. The radishes are still not ready yet. Though the salad seeds have sprouted, they seem to stop growing. I'm glad that we still have constant supply of green salad from the kale that we planted last year(?), red lettuce and arugula. The kale flower is delicious.

Sowing

This week is supposed to be rainy and cloudy with chances of sun...sounds like a perfect timing for seed sowing:

Beets (seeds from last year):Early wonder tall top
Snow pea (Mr. Big from last year):
Veg Gin (Gai Lan): I didn't know that West Coast seeds carries this one. So I'm giving it a try!
Carrots: Bolero and Flyaway
Wild Arugula
Radishes: French Breakfast
Mesclun Blend (from last year)

We also got some tomato plants from Mark's mom.
She got the seeds from her UK's trip and started the seeds in her greenhouse. I've planted three of the six (cherry, blood, apero).
The rest are stayed in the coldframe on the patio for now.

The carrot seeds that were sown last month were sprouted for quite a while. Unfortunately, they didn't last long. As I was trying to see how the progress was, I couldn't find any of them at all. Guess they became the meal of the unwelcome insects. So frustrated. We'll have to set up something when the new sown seeds start to sprout.

An update from the potato front: the black fabric got pushed up by the strong potatoe plants. They do grow fast! Time to unveil the patch. The plants are beautiful. Meanwhile, some smaller potatoe plants are growing quietly in the potato bin. The potatoes must be self-seedlings themselves. I can't wait to see how many potatoes we get this year.

White Garden...continues

It is funny to read the last entry that I posted. I was just complaining about the warm December and then within half a month after the last post, the entire lower mainland was covered with snow. Big snow storm. We left the house for less than three days during x'mas and there were like more than 3 feet of snow on the ground.

We had a little break over the new year. We dug and pulled some carrots out from the snow and they look brilliant and the flavour was fantastic! The tarragon didn't make it but the thyme is still thriving. However, on the 3rd day of 2009, it snowed again. I was hoping to take some pictures but the snow never stopped.

It will be interesting to find out what survives when the snow/ice melts.

This pic was taken on Dec 22, 08. Then we got big snow storm on the 24th and 26th.

Planting garlic

This is the weekend after Thanksgiving, and the weather is very co-operative (max 10C, sunny), a perfect day to plant garlics.

This year, we decided to plant the garlic in the backyard. The area in which we plan to grow garlic still have some carrots in the ground, so we pull them out to clear the way. (yes, I have been making carrot cakes and having carrots in salad) Mark is responsible for laying the foundation! First is to dig deep into the soil to pull out as many morning glory roots as we can (we did it in the spring before planting but as we all know, you can't really get rid of them). Then we add our compost into the soil, and mix the soil with peat moss and blood meal.

Meanwhile, I select the big cloves from our garlic (I guess I've opened up dozens of garlic heads) and use them as seedlings. I guess I've planted about 150 cloves. Yes, that's A LOT of garlic. Do we need that many? No. But the process of growing is so enjoyable! And no store brought garlic can beat the flavor and quality of homegrown garlic.

Tonight dinner from the garden: salad with green (the fall sown arugula is coming out, plus baby swiss chard and lettuce from this summer), cucumber, sungold and red onion, pureed parship, stir fry carrots and corn (this is the only item from the farmer's market)

Oh, we also sowed a few bush bean seeds. Don't know what the name is...the seeds are from my in-law.

This is going to be our garlic patch. Carrots are all over the place.

These are the carrots that we pulled from the soon-to-be garlic patch. I've sown carrot seeds around the roma plants (carrots and tomatoes are good companion plants). These carrots are shaded by the tomato plants, so their size is very small)

Compost from our handsome homemade spinning compost bin

Opening up a garlic bulb to get big clove for planting

Planting in process

Dinner: Beet cucumber feta salad

So today we went to the Pride Parade. It was two o'clock before it was done and we were hungry, so we ate bar food ... it was very bad. I have nothing against bar food, but nowhere good was open, the place we ended up sucked badly. We felt so gross there was no way we were going to cook a nice full dinner.

Yesterday however, we roasted a nice pork rack over charcoal, and as is our habit, we roasted some roots at the same time. Both beets and potatos. The beets were ours, but the potatos were from the farmers market. So for dinner today we cut up the beets, half of one our cucumbers, one of our carrots and some chives. The dressing was a bog standard vinaigrette made from the beet juice, evoo, cider vinegar and white wine vinegar. To finish it, some local "Feta" cheese. Quoted since it's made from cows milk. I like it better than real feta actually. We've done this before with just the beets and cheese, and it's delicious. In the future I won't add carrot, it didn't suit the flavours or textures.

Cold frame

Yesterday, we built a cold-frame.

We have had two wood frame windows lieing around since we did some reno's a couple of years ago, and courtesy of the neighbour taking down their fence we had some free lumber. It's a little taller than the standard cold frame, but I envisioned starting some tomato plants in it too, plus our backyard is sloping southward so it should work out fine.


At some point we'll make a second one with the other window. We planted some radish seeds and left them in the house to germinate. After they do, I'll move them to the cold frame. Hopefully we'll have fresh radishes in a month or so.

We also picked some veggies for dinner. A leek (which broke when I tried to pull it out) will be slowly braised with some arborio rice and jarred artichoke hearts we bought in the summer from Donna. We also picked a radish and a carrot to eat with some our arugala salad.



The carrot is so short I think because of how we grew it. We used the little peat puck germinators, and then transplanted them. I didn't break apart the mesh well enough, and the carrot was never able to push through it during the fall. Live and learn.