Doing recon at the local farmers market
15.7 years ago corn, farmers market, garden planning, garlic bulbs
Your mission, should you decide to accept it is to infiltrate a local farmers market to gain intelligence to help aid your personal garden.
Sure, the farmers market is a great place to find some fresh food you can’t or didn’t have time/space to grow in your garden. It is also a great place to get seeds/starts for your garden. It is also a great resource to figure out how various fruits/vegetables grow in your area.
Even if you are growing everything you want/need in your own garden a quick stop at your farmers market can help you check out your competition and see for example in my case, “hey their garlic grew just as bad as mine this year.”
This is also a good time to try out new fruits and vegetables you are thinking of growing next year. There is nothing worse than growing a bed full of arugula and figure out at that point you hate the stuff. If you are lucky enough you might even get a meal and some seeds to plant with next year depending on you seed saving ability.
Now as always you don’t want to blow your cover while doing surveillance, so make sure you have a good cover store. In my case I used a few people known as “my wife and daughters” to appear less conspicuous. You can even use techniques of taking a picture of your “daughter” to get some recon picture of their products for further analysis.
In the end it looks like my little spy helpers had a good time and we even contributed a little to the local farmers economy and got the secret ingredient to CVG Black Bean and Corn Salsa Recipe (ok, it was corn).
This post will self destruct in 10 seconds (sorry had to say it)
Tags: cheap, garden seeds, garlic bulbs, outdoor plants, salsa garden, vegetables
Grow box during the summertime – UPDATE
15.8 years ago computer, indoor growbox
UPDATE: With weather climbing my grow box got up to 111.5 degrees today with the lights off. If I was using one of those fancy computers with temperature sensors it would have turned itself off by now. Turning off computer so I will have something working this winter…
[July 25, 2009] I was planning on growing my jalapeno peppers in my grow box this summer, but given the higher than average weather we have been having.
With the weather being in the 90’s 100’s and given the CFLs on average increase the temperature by around 10 degrees the grow box has not been great place to grow plants unless I was thinking of growing cacti. Looking at my historical data the highest temperature this summer was 107.6 111.5 degrees.
As you can see above I have been making some progress on the computerized grow box, which I will plan on writing it up soon…
Tags: cheap, grow lights, growbox, outdoor plants, pepper plants, vegetables
Black Bean and Corn Salsa Recipe
15.8 years ago corn, peppers, recipe, salsa
My jalapeños peppers have been growing like crazy and I have had to start harvest to prevent the plants from stop producing. Given my tomatoes are still green I have been itching to do something with them, I decided to make some corn salsa. Given I couldn’t find a recipe that matched the ingredients I had on hand I decided to make my own.
CVG Black Bean and Corn Salsa Recipe
- 2 ears of corn (1-1/2 cups frozen corn)
- 1 small onion (chopped)
- 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
- 1/4 cup sliced green onions
- 2-3 cloves of garlic (chopped)
- 1/4 cup white vinegar
- 3 T sugar
- 1 chopped seeded jalapeño
- 1 chopped unseeded jalapeño
- 1-1/2 cups black beans (canned)
Directions: Cook corn for 2 minutes in boiling water and submerge in ice cold ice water. This helps stop the corn from cooking any more and also make handling while cutting the kernels a little more pleasant. Cut off kernels and add to bowl. Chop/slice remaining ingredients and add to bowl, stir, and refrigerate and serve chilled.
If you like your salsa a little spicier leave both pepper seeded.
Tags: cilantro, garden seeds, garlic bulbs, led, outdoor plants, pepper plants, salsa garden, tomato plants
How to fertilize/side dress tomatoes/peppers in your garden
15.8 years ago alfalfa pellets, compost, fertilizer, peppers, tomato
When your fruiting plants are flowering and bearing fruit this is a good time to give them a little extra boost. Though you don’t want to throw any old fertilizer at them at this point. You want them to get the nutrients they need to produce high yields of produce, though you don’t want to shock them with an abundance of nitrogen to stimulate new vegetative growth when you would rather the plant expend its energy making you food.
The solution to this problem is to provide your plants with a low dose of balanced fertilizer. I couple of my favorites are compost and alfalfa pellets applied every couple weeks while the plants are blooming/fruiting. This ensures the plants have all the nutrients they be lacking without throwing the plant into a growth spurt.
If you have a little extra time take the compost and add some water and let it sit in the sun for several hours and water or spray onto the foliage for a great dose of compost tea.
If you forgot to apply a little bone meal when you planted your peppers/tomatoes this is also a good time to sprinkle a handful under your plants and work into the couple inches of soil to provide your plants with a boost of phosphorous and also a little calcium to help prevent blossom end rot.
Hopefully with these tips you can help your green tomatoes turn into bright delicious red tomatoes.
If you want to learn more about the chemistry of organic fertilizers I have a whole post on that subject
Tags: alfalfa pellets, cheap, compost, organic vegetables, outdoor plants, pepper plants, tomato plants, vegetables
How to save pea seeds from your garden
15.8 years ago harvest, peas, seed saving, seed storing, seeds
Most of the seeds I purchase, I am able to keep for at least a few seasons before running out. The one exception to this rule is peas, which I always have to buy each season. To save myself a couple dollars next year after I had my fill of peas from my garden I let quite a few mature which I will reuse for seeds this fall and next spring.
Out of all the seeds I have collected peas definitely are the easiest by far. If you want to go with the ultra lazy easy approach just let them dry on the vine until the pod no longer has any moisture and the peas are loose in the pod. You even can store them in the pod and crack them open for planting. One disadvantage to this technique is the peas could end up getting enough airflow and could result in some moldy peas.
To be on the safer side here is a more conservative approach:
- Pick pods when fine is yellow. The basic idea at this point the plant is not really providing anything to the pods so you might as well take on the responsibility
- If the pod still feels a little moist store it in a dry location. If the pod feels dry using a small knife carefully cut a small slit lengthwise into the pod being careful to not to injure the peas.
- Once the peas get all shrived up and look like what you planted to begin with store in a cold dry location (jar in the refrigerator)
Now you have seeds ready for fall planting (or spring planting next year) If you go a little crazy with your dried peas you can also add them to soups or stews during the winter time.
Tags: garden seeds, outdoor plants
How to save spinach seeds from your garden
15.8 years ago harvest, seed saving, spinach
Growing up in rural Washington state, the job market was a somewhat lacking for those under the age of 16. Given this at the age of 14-15 I was sucked into the attractive and lucrative career of spinach rouging, also known as “The Worst Summer Camp Ever” The basic premise of the job was to walk down endless “female rows” in the hot sun and destroying any male spinach plants. For every 12 “female rows” there were 4 “male rows” of higher quality spinach plants which were desired for pollination. So in other words I was facilitating the hybridization of spinach plants.
Hoping to keep these memories behind me when I decided to grow spinach seeds this year, I realized I actually learned something which I thought I would share. In my case I am open pollinating so no rouging required though it is good to still know how to identify the boys and the girls since no matter how hard you try those boys will not be creating any seeds.
The plant on the left is a male plant, you can identify it by the little yellow balls under the leaves. As you may have guessed the one on the right is a female plant which only have green balls under the leaves. Not to over complicate things there is also monacious plants which are basically both male and female which I would normally just pull up since it will make things easier during harvest time.
Spinach seeds for the most part will wind pollinate on their own but if you garden is somewhat protected from winds it may be helpful to flick the male plants every week or so to help out the process.
Once the plants turn yellow go ahead and pull them up. If they are males throw them in the compost. If they are females hang them in a dark dry place. I chose to hang mine off my mountain bike’s brake cable.
After a few weeks of drying you should see the seeds brown and dry just like they came out of the package you planted them with. Store the seeds in a dry cool place (jar in refrigerator) and you should have a great stock of seeds for the next year.
Tags: compost, garden seeds, outdoor plants
