Got our seed starting busy on again today...

Well this morning I was up and ready to grab my seeds. HA! I know that's every morning, but today I was super ready after watching youtube gardening/homesteading/yard farming videos.

 

Okay today's math lesson was 1/3's! Savannah learned and can now tell you it takes 3 1/3's to = a whole! She can point to each section and tell you 1/3, 2/3, & 3/3's. Gardening is the BEST EDUCATIONAL tool! It's like anything else, you get what you put into it! ♥ A rubber maid tub, 3 varieties of garden seeds, and 2 washed up bamboo chopsticks left over from Jade Dragon (Japanese lunch) turned into a math lesson!

Onion Evergreen Bunching, Gladstone Onions, Bandit Leeks

I bet the husband wishes I had a greenhouse right now? That small open space of table in front of these pots is now the only space open on our dining room table. LOL I bet I'll get a greenhouse & a custom built potting stand really soon.
Italian Flat Leaf Parsley * Garlic Chives * Slow Bolt Cilantro

She loves it as much as I do, Praise the Lord! It's many life lessons being learned and fun times shared here!

The worst that can happen is it won't grow, but something WILL and you'll learn as you go! Just do grow it and include your children!

ijustwannagrow

The Febraury Itch

I know it's not just me, but for those of us who are still learning to grow all four seasons of vegetables Feb is about the time I go into "i want to plant every seed" I can get my hands on now, now, now! Well it's been one of those days that I HAD to stick my bare hands in soil kinda days!

Well my little portable greenhouse must be working? I'm seeing new chives popping up every where. I just LOVE seeing that fresh lively green emerging through all of the dead chives from last season.

 

Again in my little portable greenhouse I've got "brand new" Italian flat leaf parsley" begging to emerge from last years barely living remnants. Again just THRILLS me and tickles me PINK or well green! LOL I'll be trimming all of those dead leaves/stems away this weekend.

  

Well this propagated rosemary has now made it 2 weeks transplanted back into soil. I'm going to deem this successful! Also transplanted 3 more this evening. Those 3 transplants will be photo'd below.

Before I put in my little "until then" greenhouse this thyme was basically way past crash cart recovery until spring came. BUT the stems are no longer brittle and the fragrant smell of thyme is coming back. Stems are softer and bendable. Bright green color is starting to emerge! YAY! 

By the way this clear spray bottle with just water in it now stays in my greenhouse. It's handy dandy to spritz the seedlings as needed. Plus the water temp is going to be much closer to what the plant/soil temps are like this I believe? If not I like to think so, so shhhh no one tell me other wise ;)

We cut up 3 more clear milk jugs we've been saving up and rinsing out to use as hot caps when we need to do so in several weeks.

Don't toss the bottoms. They make good scoopers in the chicken feed, I've seen people use them taped back up to the top part as a green house. And many more uses out of them.

So today, we grabbed our box of seeds (mostly partial packages) that really need to be used soon and decided we were in the seed starting mood again. HA! Like that mood ever goes away? NOT! Sharpie, wooden chop stick (used to poke holes in the soil), vegetable marker labels, seeds (OF COURSE), and a clear lid to hold the seeds while we're planting (we don't have to chase seeds across table the lip of lid contains the seeds).

We've got our seed tray filled with ORGANIC potting mix. Got our water bottle. Got the BEST garden helper, hands DOWN. And we're ready to plant!

Look how "quick" she is on that water bottle. Not a dry seed in the house today, LOL!

Tah Dah! She helped hold the front flap open, so mommy could load the seed tray in her greenhouse!

We started:    
Kale- 4 Red Russian &  4 Winterbor
Broccoli- 4 Nutriblend 4
Lettuce- 4 Redina & 4 Bib blend
Pac Choy- 4
Swiss Chard- 4 Ruby
Lettuce- 4 Romaine
 

Loving my low tunnels! I've got chives waking up all down the right hand side in there! More mesclun mix is sprouting and so is more spinach.

Proud of myself, never grown pac choy. It's a pretty little baby plant! Hope to grow a BUNCH of it!

Got another bed ready to plant this weekend! I've got it covered with chicken wire, so kitties can get into it and make me MAD! A whole other blog about kitties and gardening, but not today! Love my new light weight rake even though the handle snapped on me today. Still totally usable though! Being SO light weight it is PERFECT to rake across a raised bed, doesn't hurt your back at ALL! The dirt pile past this bed at the top of picture is where I'm erecting another 8x4x20 bed. Just gonna build them until I run out of room! 

Pulled 3 more thyme plants that I want to bring out of last years dormancy! So I've re-potted them into fresh ORGANIC potting soil. And also transplanted 3 of my successfully propagated rosemary plants into fresh ORGANIC soil. So my next round I'll be mailing to friends in other states to share my propagation. Just wanted to make sure that I had successfully propagated first! I think I DID for sure! I'm SO proud of myself!

You know exactly what I'm about to say if you follow my bog! Yep!

ijustwannagrow

2000 worms in my kitchen

Well the wormies have arrived! And since it was cold as "hello" today then Savannah and myself worked in the kitchen floor today building the worm farm! Well this reminds me I need to see if they are rehydrating nicely?

Yes, the wormies arrived today, yay!

As I'm holding the box I have a "girl" moment remembering I'm holding 2000 worms in this unopened box

It was too cold to work outside, so we made our worm farm in our kitchen!

 Supplies: Clear rubbermaid bin for demonstration purposes. You really need to use a dark one, red wigglers don't like light! And they do they're eating in an upwards direction. But I took the clear bin and put it into the dark blue bin after we put it together. We have cardboard, left over grocery paper bags, a bag of leaves that are in our leaf compost pile, the orange bucket has composted cow manure, a cocoa coir brick soaking in water, a bowl of kitchen compost scraps to feed the worms, and a picture of water to dampen the layers (NOT SOAK THEM). Oh and a big bag of shredded paper from my office shredder behind Savannah. I don't have newspaper so I'm using shredded paper from my office.

Placed the cardboard and brown grocery bags first. I WILL drill holes tomorrow for drainage, but today in the kitchen that would be TOO messy. The purpose of this is to keep the solids in the bin and the worm casting liquid (which you use to pour or spray on your vegetables as compost tea) will fall down past the holes for collection.

I took 1 cocoa coir brick that I ordered off of Amazon.com for $6 dollars and soaked it in water.

As you can see it starts to expand, no watch what happens in the next photo once this compressed brick is soaked in water.

Yep that's one brick. I just use my hands to fluff it up after it's water logged.

I layered a heap of shredded office paper because that's what I had. Which I had newspaper, but most people don't get them anymore, so I had to substitute. I made sure no staples, or plastic or anything.

We then took our hands and mixed the wet (not dripping wet) cocoa coir in with the shredded paper for the worm bedding. She LOVED this whole process!

Okay at this point I read the Worm Advisory that basically is telling you that the worms are pretty dehydrated from being packed in dry cocoa coir to keep them warm through their winter travels. It can take up to 48 hours until they're all re-saturated and squirming around. If not you call them and they ship you out another shipment for free as replacement. And to open this bag of worms... I used to scream the whole time, but this time I knew how to do it and not touch the worms! I'm such a girl sometimes, LOL

They're they are. Really skinny right now, but they'll plump up. I saw SOME wiggling, but they were pretty dried out. I added about 1/2 cup of water to help start saturating them. 

Here they are in the dead center. I placed their food over to one side which is what everyone says to do. They'll go to it, don't dump it on top of them and give them a chance to re-hydrated and get to moving around. Then on the right that's literately just a big piece of weeds with some sod that was in my compost pile from a few days ago. I just felt like it gave them more of a "real environment", plus the greens will die and they can eat that too! 

Okay, after the step prior I layered about 3 inches of composted cow manuer on top. I read something about it adds some microbial life to the process, so that's what I did! And you can see where we started a layer of brown leaves from the leaf compost pile.

I wet this layer down to (not drenched), but moistened. For now this is the top layer, but I will put another layer of manure for a green layer sometimes this weekend.

Here's what it looks like from the side. You can see the layers of greens & browns. Kinda like if it was outside in the soil under a tree where leaves had fallen. The wormies will eat all through this and I'll have SUPER veggies this year! Organically! 

Don't forget to put a newspaper or paper bag layer on top that is really wet. I read it helps retain the moisture. I've got this under my kitchen light encouraging the worms to stay deep tonight where they're food is and tomorrow the lid will go on and out to the garage they'll go. And I'll just keep adding compost from the kitchen into the bin to keep them fed. In the next month or so I'll have some AWESOME worm castings & worm compost tea I'll start harvesting!

Hope this helps explain what I do to get my worms started. In the spring when it warms this bin will be tossed into a much larger worm farm and I'll start more worms in here and keep it close to the kitchen. I read that worms can reproduce in numbers quickly within a 90 day period. So consider that when deciding how many wormies you start off with. You can also buy need little worm bins right off of Amazon.com which is what I did the first time. But I just have too much kitchen compost to use one of the multiple tray systems. But they're handy dandy.

ijustwannagrow

Creasy Greens, love them! Can substitue for spinach.

Well after having healthy scrambled eggs this morning from our girls I had a pretty light food day, so I was starved at dinner. Poor planning on my part, I know! Breakfast sandwich was only 1 slice of whole wheat and only one egg scrambled. Normally I'd be at a two egg minimum, I mean seriously this is still American you know and I still have choices! LOL  For lunch from what I can remember I had roasted red bell pepper hummus/chips (not the healthy kind, my bad) and a cinnamon applesauce and sliced bananas. So I was starved by dinner. Anyway, I happened to pass a bag full of Creasy Greens at Cedar Lodge the other day and since they were the only bag left I couldn't resist. I've been eating Creasy greens since I was a really little girl. Shout out to Grandpa Hash for that one! But I think my mother's love of turnips is really what kicks creasy greens up a knotch for me! Here's how that party in a pan works out:

here's the bag of the lovlies..look at that vitamin rich GREEN

this is what the stem looks like which most are tender and you can eat them, but don't all the way down to the root (although you'll want to for sure)

a closer look at the green leaves

basically I fried up some bacon (just some as you can see) then peel your purple turnips and chop up...i pan fried the turnips in (some) the bacon drippings until tender with a pinch of kosher salt and cracked pepper

after I get all of the turnips cooked 'til tender I add the heaping (washed thoroughly) pile of creasy greens on top of the roasted turnips

toss it all together and put a lid on it to steam the greens down, but not too long I want the greens to still have the green/nutrition left in them

but right before that lid goes on, grab that bacon and crumbled it up and toss it back in with the turnips and creasy greens

turn down the burner because really you're only wilting the greens/tender stems

Well WHOOPS I'm missing a finished picture, mainly because they barely get to the table before this dish is gobbled up! Really they're that good! I did not know until today after looking creasy greens up that they had that much nutritional value in them. I also didn't know that you could eat them raw and are great in a salad. These greens are tender and are sweeter to me than some of the other winter greens. I also didn't know they are a winter green and grow through sub zero temps with little or no trouble even without protection. Creasy greens can be used in place of spinach. I can totally see this knowing how sweet the greens are to me. And definitely didn't know that it's available 3 seasons of the year and has 3 times the amount of vitamin C as oranges and twice as much vitamin A as broccoli according to www.localharvest.org 's product description

http://www.localharvest.org/upland-cress-creasy-greens-seed-C9734

(Barbarea verna BRASSICACEAE)

"Creasy greens" are an old favorite which are as easy to grow as spinach indoors or out, but is more cold tolerant than spinach. Produces rosettes of glossy, green leaves. These slow-bolting greens are popular in the South, and unprotected plants last all winter even in sub-freezing temperatures. Very easy to grow, even on clay soils. A highly nutritious green available 3 seasons of the year. Has 3 times the amount of vitamin C as oranges, and twice the amount of vitamin A as broccoli. Makes a nice topping for salads and can be used in quiche. 

 I copied and pasted for your convenience, but also pasted the link that goes directly to the seeds for purchase and their product description.

I had no idea all this time that they were this good for you! Grandpa Hash gets another brownie point for best Grandpa ever! Try and think about what vegetables that your Grandpa ate and served you as a kid and then look it up. You may be shocked as to how healthy some of those vegetables where?

ijustwannagrow

First spinach harvest for our turkey sandwiches!

Whelp! Today was the "big" day! We harvested fresh organically grown Spinach today! And nothing makes me more proud then watching my daughter grab a handful (her sized hand) of fresh vegetables especially spinach and puts it on her own sandwich. I mean the kid is just 3.5 and she won't eat a chicken nugget! On the rare occasion she's been given a fastfood cheeseburger out of necessity she will only eat the bun with ketchup. And she doesn't eat well out to eat unless it's breakfast food, so I guess the parents are doing alright after all. She's asked us in a parking lot if we could go home and eat in mommy's kitchen. No joke, the hubs will vouch. Just about made me cry walking on into the restaurant!

Harvesting the first spinach that we've ever successfully grown. Just about 15 steps from the kitchen door.

She put her own spinach on her own sandwich. And ate every piece of spinach!

Yep we grew all that dark green healthy stuff! And with NO chemicals! 

 

 

 

 

 

So proud of our little family, just trying to learn more and do better! I love you Savannah, my little garden buddy <3


ijustwannagrow

Low Tunnel project completed! Tah Dah!

This is part 2 to yesterday's blog: "On the grow again..I just can't wait to grow again". So this morning I went out side and grabbed some loose plastic that I had over my spinach/mesclun mix and brought it into the living room where I finished my low tunnel I started last night. One of 3 are completed. I have to go buy more plastic today for the other two. But so far I've not had to buy anything other than a pack of staples. I recycled everything else I had here. So look around your house/yard before you run out and buy anything.

Other than your choice of bendable fencing and the mil. plastic you desire. I used 4 mil because I'm in Zone 7 and it's mid winter at this point, but use what you have or need for your zone.

The wire snips on the top helped cute the fencing and the pliers on the bottom helped grab the wire to bed the edges or twist sharp pieces around other pieces of fencing, so I didn't cut myself or poke through my plastic.

Here I am sitting in the floor just watching some news and covering my low tunnel. It seemed easier to work with it upside down. Much easier. I did it all myself, just awkward at first because it was so easy. Maybe took 35 minutes.

TAH DAH, then you just weight down the ends or open them to vent! How simple is that? I take no credit for the design as I watched a video from Mother Earth News I posted in the prior blog I noted above.

I'm just so freaking excited these are this cheap and this easy. I won't need a greenhouse at all after I built my custom cold frame. But that's another project and another blog!

Here's the view the growing vegetables will have from below the low tunnel. Don't laugh you know you were as curious as I was!  LOL

 And now for an update on what's growing outside. I'm telling you there is nothing like going out of your front or back door and in just a few steps you find food growing!!!!

I only grew a few Mesclun seeds this time, because I have failed every time I've tried to grow. Well I never read the back of the package. Most lettuce seeds that I have including this one needs light to germinate. Well I've always covered with soil and even just a dusting at that; however, for Mesclun any soil delays germaination for me. I don't know why, but I just left them uncovered and they actually germinated, so I've ordered 2oz from High Mowing Seeds this morning and I'm going to try and fill a bed with Mesclun mix now that I know I CAN grow it! Growing your own is faster than a drive thru window folks!

Um, someone please tell my chives it's still middle of winter? These are completely uncovered and growing with new growth even in 20 degree temps at night? 

I've never grown spinach before either. Again never really bothered reading the package. And the great thing now is you can find a bazillion FREE youtube videos learning how to do ALL of this, so don't be afraid to try and fail a few times. Something WILL grow, you just have to try!

The surprise of the century is this little momma! This is an Egyptian walking onion. I planted about 25. I had ordered 50 and shared with a  sweet gardening friend back in the Fall. The directions CLEARLY state don't wait long to plant, well I just didn't get around to it until about 2 weeks ago and it came up! Those things were so dry and crumbly that they basically fell apart in my hand. I had very LITTLE hope that any sign of life would emerge, but I planted them and just left it to God! HE is SO amazing! It's really a great lesson! If I let MORE to GOD the same thing would happen and I wouldn't have worried a bit! He's always in control, but I just get in the way!

I learned about Egyptian Walking onions on You Tube one day. Well no take that back my mothernlaw told me that Grandaddy and Grandmother used to grow these onions that would multiply themselves, but couldn't remember what they where called. I looked and searched until I found what they were. I saw them on a you tube video and finally found where to order them.

www.egyptianwalkingonions.com

Word to the wise you can only order these in the fall I believe and for a limited time. You can learn all about them at that website.

ijustwannagrow