Garden Update: Everything In Full Swing

Just an update on all the growth going on.  It is happening so fast at this point.

Roma Tomato:  Over 30 tomatoes on it

Nectarines growing great.

Blackberry's from flower to fruit.

Some Betsy Tomatoes starting to turn red

Succession garden growing great

Collard greens and a radish for a salad.  Look at the size of that radish!  And look how beautiful those greens look.

Cucumbers all over the place.

Three sisters garden is like a jungle.  How compact I planted the corn may have stunted some of the stalks.

Squash are emerging every where now.

Grape flowers have turned to fruit.

So lots of changes in very little time.  This week we canned 9 pints of meat sauce, though I didn't take any pictures.  Lazy!  We also made chicken stock and canned 4 quarts.  Again, Lazy and didn't take any pictures.

Solar Chuck Roast: Cooking with the All American Solar Oven

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Thought it would be great to detail using a solar oven for cooking and what I am learning from it.  I've already cooked bread, chili, and a whole chicken.  Great flavor and exceeded my expectations.  If anybody wants me to experiment cooking something and posting about it, just let me know.

I bought this one from Honeyville Grains during their 20% sale.  Love this place, ships to your door for $4.99 regardless of weight.  Check it out, you won't be disappointed.  This model is an upgrade to the global sun oven with a bigger chamber, aim sights, 2 granite pots, 2 bread pans, 3 dehydrating racks and a water pasteurization indicator.

Today, I decided to do a chuck roast with vegtables.  A two pound chuck, mixed veggies, some spices, and cornstarch.



2 pound chuck roast in a granite pot



Mix of veggies, spices, and cornstarch

I rough cut the veggies and put them around the roast.  Spread the mix of spices and cornstarch on top, added about 1/4 cup of white wine (normally would be red, but the white was open), and 1/4 cup of water.  It doesn't take alot of liquid cooking solar.  Use alot less than you think you need.



Let the oven pre-heat.  I put it out this morning and anticipated the sun's path and we went to the store.  When we got home, the oven was at 340 degrees.

I placed the roast in the oven, sealed the doors, and check it every 30 minutes to adjust the aim to maximize the design.  You can see the concept for aiming in the second picture below.

The roast sits on a rack that rotates depending upon the angle you set it at to keep whatever you are cooking level and also to allow the heat to circulate the dish like a convection oven.

I kept this in for 3 hours of direct sunlight and then allowed it to cool to warming until we were ready for dinner.

There are multiple advantages to cooking this way living in a very warm region.  First, you are consuming no electricity or gas.  Second, you don't raise the temp in your home which in turn doesn't force your AC to run.  The trickle down effect to saving you some money is fantastic.

Ok, time to eat!  Hope you all enjoy.

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Been a while Garden Update

Sorry it's been a while.....life happens.

 

Big update on progress.  It's all cool though!

 

Here's an overview picture of the garden.  You can see the three sisters garden, grape vine, succession garden, grow bags, and the window sill planter

 

 

Here's a shot of some of the first beefsteak tomato's.

 

Here's the three sisters garden with a close up shot so you can see the squash and beans.  Not yet worried about overcrowding but I really pushed the envelope on this design.  If I need to thin it I will and learn for next year.

 

Always nice to see the grapes starting out.  After pruning so heavy this year I wasn't hopeful about a decent crop but it looks as if it's not going to be bad, and I'll get the shape of the vine I want.  BTW, no leaves yet on the 42 potted cuttings but it can take some time.

 

 

 Here's a nice shot of some of the Roma tomato's.

 

 

 

 

The secession garden is doing really well. The cucumbers were thinned and are vining out well. The peas are growing well in the back right. Some Cherokee beans in the back left. Lettuce, collards, and beets succession nicely as well as the radishes in the bottom left.

 

 

 

Here are the parsnips and the carrots. The parsnips in the closer half of the picture.

 

Didn't expect any blueberries this year so this is great.  I have 4 blueberry bushes. 

 

This garden has everything!  Strawberries, garlic, onion, sage, blackberry, oregano, thyme, dill, mint, and onion.

 

 

The fruit tree has a ton of nectarines starting to grow.

 And lastly, the hummingbirds.  They make my day.

Garden Update....So far so good.

It's been a little while but I've been a bit busy lately!  The garden is doing well and I have a lot to update.

Some new developments:  I have two blueberry bushes to go in near a fence and some strawberry's to replenish my strawberry patch.

EDIT:  Just to note about the corn, I have two stalks coming up already.  Normal germination is 4-12 days.  I soaked the seeds for a day and a 1/2 and planted 7 days ago.

First, all the corn was planted on Feb 24.  Should be in good shape, no frost or overly good weather in the future.  Do have an 80+ predicted for tomorrow though.  The corn all went into the three sisters 5x5 garden.  Had some seeds left over and didn't want to waste them so I planted about 25 in each of the grow bags behind the bed.

To the right of the corn, you can see the Topsy turvey I mentioned in an earlier post.  I ended up planting 10 jalapeno seedlings into it.  Again, it shouldn't be too cold for them.

The potato's are growing well.  It is interesting that some are growing so much better than the others and the red potato's are growing the best.  I did have a little cold weather damage but the plants have pushed through and created new leaves.

The tomato's are doing pretty well.  I have lost a few, but those were the hot weather variety that I probably should have waited to put in.  The okra, on the bottom right, could have probably waited as well.  It's pretty sickly looking compared the the okra directly to the left that I just transplanted today.

The buds on all the cuttings look like they are going to produce leaves so I'm excited about the 42 that I planted in the quart containers.  There are buds on the vine that look about ready to say hi as well.  It was about this time last year the first growth appeared.

On the bottom left of the picture I planted four horseradish roots.  They were pretty well developed so they should do well.

So, on to the 4x4 garden.  As they say, a plan is not a plan until you run out of time for changes!  The asparagus roots just didn't seem to make it through the winter.  Might have been too wet as the roots were decomposing.  Had to change the plan.  So now there's celery, peas, lettuce, greens, beets, and radishes.  I am succession planting here.

In the grow bag is the cucumber and below that two other tomato plants.  

Succession planting can be very powerful.  I can't count how many times we had garden food rot because everything matured at the same time.  Decided to get smart this year.

l-------l--------l---------l---------l

  4 Cel   4 Cel    16 Pea

l-------l--------l---------l---------l

  5 Let   5 Let  5 Let   5 Let

l-------l--------l---------l---------l

  5 Grn 5 Grn  5 Grn   5 Grn

l-------l--------l---------l---------l

      32 Radish     16 Beets

l-------l--------l---------l---------l

The back left half will be 8 celery, planted 2 at a time every 10 days.  

The right half of the back is 16 pea's which all went in at once.  

The next row 3 lettuce planted today, then alternating 2/3 every 10 days.

The next row of greens done identical to the lettuce.

The radish is planted 4 at a time every 10 days.

The beets planted 8 a time with 20 days between.

Thanks for visiting.  If you have any tips or advice or questions don't hesitate to post them.

Grape Vine and Garden Update

First, the grape vine.  Finished pruning back the vine to take the shape I wanted.  I have three main vines trailing up to about five feet and have run wire across the trellis for this years growth.

Here's how I have been replanting some of the pruning to try and root some more vines.

You can see below that I've trimmed the piece of vine into two sections with two to four solid buds on each one.  Also, at the planted end, I stripped it to the core before dipping it into the 'take root.'

I was pretty liberal with dipping the root end.

And here, the finished product.  Only about 38 more to go!!!!!!

For the Garden, first the potato's are coming in really well.  Every planter potato has bloomed.

I've prepped the 5 foot by 5 foot bed that the Three Sisters is going to be planted in.  I added 3 forty pound bags of composted cow manure and mixed into the top 4 inches.  Watered it well and am letting it settle.  Plan is to plant the corn the 24 of February.

The first casualty of the year is one tomato plant.  The two year old fell and butt planted on one of the Manaluce tomato's!  No worries, I've got four more.  The cucumbers have all started to appear and I moved the bag to take advantage of the trellis by the 4 by 4 bed (top right corner of the photo below).

Lastly, here's two heads of cabbage I started from seed in the garden in October.  The heads are about the size of baseballs so these should be ready in the next four weeks.

Seedling Update, Harvest of Onions

Seedlings are all doing well.  Trying an experiment, transplanted some tomato's and the okra into quart containers to see a difference in seedling growth from now until planting.  Since Phil is out and spring is early, thinking late February into the garden.

Pulled the onions today as I've got to prep the bed for the three sisters.

Post cleaning, 2 lbs 5.6 oz. in total.

Garden Update, Seedling Progress and Grow Bag Setup

17 Jan 2013

First, the seedlings. The peppers are now starting to come up, minus the Cayenne.  The okra is growing very well as are the tomato's.  Waiting on the celery also.  As you can see, I hooked up another light, I had some scrap wood, and light from our departed Chinese water dragon's cage.  So I pieced it together to give me more room the evening of the 14th.  This should allow a good transition to the quart containers and ensure enough light. 

I decided to reseed the cayenne and the celery the evening of the 16th and on the 17th I added another tray that has eggplant, onion, sage, oregano, and spinich that I can interplant or put in other areas of the garden.  I also replanted some Jalapeno's that hadden come up yet.

So I have the plan for this first grow season and I'll be doing a lot of growing in grow bags.  I just couldn't see building any more permanent beds taking over our back yard completely.  It will be interesting with the weather in south Texas as the grow bags are black and I wonder how much heat will be conducted to the roots as May and June approach.  Anybody have any experience, please share.

14 Jan 2013

I purchased these on Amazon as a way to drastically increase my growing potential while making it temporary. We have a very large flagstone patio that we had built so this seemed to be the most reasonable way to increase our growing potential without overtaking the yard.

This is what I'm going to plant:

1. 6 Manalucie Tomato's (interested to see how this hot weather tomato works)
2. 2 Roma Tomato's
3. 2 Rutger Tomato's
4. 2 Beefsteak Tomato's
5. 4 Okra
6. 8 Green Pepper
7. 14 hot pepper (Jalapeno and Cayenne) (Most in a topsy turvy bag)
8. 6 Celery
9. 24 Potato's

The potato's on the bottom of the pic, Okra and Cucumers on the left, then Tomato's, and lastly the Pepper's.  The Celery is going in the ground.  I have 8 other bags I haven't put out yet.

29 Oct 2012

This is the garden bed I'll be planting the three sisters in.  I have some onions, carrots, and lettuce that I'll have to pull by late Feb so I can prep the bed for a 10 March corn planting.  I've kept it growing by using plastic sheeting since I planted these late for the 2012 2nd growing season.  In will consist of 42 corn, 27 pole bean, and 16 squash.  Check the link out for more information but basically Native Americans would inter-plant these three as they were beneficial to each other.  The corn provides a pole for the beans, the beans return nitrogen to the soil for the next year, and the squash shields the ground from evaporation and to deter weeds.


This second garden was prepared in the fall and what you see are asparagus holes.  I already planted the two year old roots so hopefully we'll have a nice asparagus bed with some shoots this year, but much more in the years to come as it will take some time for the plants to mature to full production, probably 2-3 years.

13 Jan 2013

We'll be planting some carrots, parsnips, and herbs on the windowsill garden.  We got some Cilantro growing in it now.  I've got to finish some minor work on it.





20 Jan 2013