Friday Favorite: Edible Gardening
I was thinking about my edible gardening history last night, then I looked up my first edible garden. Sure, I always had pots of herbs on our apartment balconies, but my first ever real edible garden was started in 2008. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been that long, it seems like much longer.
I built four 4 foot x 10 foot raised beds behind our garage in Ohio. Two were filled with vegetable and two were filled with strawberries. I purchased most of the little seedlings from a local greenhouse.
Here I am, 9 years later with a HUGE area devoted to edibles and growing ornamental gardens as well. When I look back at what I accomplished in my Ohio garden in a few years, I’m amazed. I don’t have quite as much energy now that I’m a little older, but I have a better sense of what I like and what mistakes to avoid. Gardening is a growth process, we continually narrow down what we truly love, we broaden our gardening our skills, and we begin to enjoy some of the finer aspects of it.
How long have you been growing edibles?
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Onions, Onions, Onions
I love growing onions, of all colors, shapes, and sizes. I love starting my onions from seed. I love, love, love eating onions.
Each year I grow loads of onions, loads. Generally I harvest around 200 lbs of onions to eat throughout the year. That number doesn’t include green onions and leeks. We eat an AMAZING amount of onions. Many years ago, I decided to start growing them from seed myself, both because it saved me money and because you can find so many interesting varieties. In my experience, starting them from seeds makes them store longer. This past week I started 3 flats of onion seeds, I still have 3 more to get going this week. Onions are probably one of my most favorite crops to grow.
Do you grow onions? Have you started them from seed?
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Homegrown Goodness
Even though the garden is still sleeping, I’m harvesting greens for my salad. It’s not a huge amount, maybe 25% of the greens we currently eat, but it’s something. All these little leafs come from a few containers I have under grow lights and the thinnings from a few seedlings of greens.
It’s especially nice that the greens I’m adding to store bought lettuce are radicchio leaves, so the little bitterness they carry helps round out the sweeter leaves.
What is your typical first harvest from the garden?
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Seeding Poppies
Poppies need a bit of a cold spell to germinate, they can be planted in fall, or they can be spread in the spring when you will still have some cold weather. I’ve even read that some people recommend sprinkling the seed on top of the snow so that they get a good dose of cold. I can’t wait to see these beauties bloom!
Yesterday was a lovely day, sunny with a high of almost 50. I wanted to do a few garden chores, but the soil is still mostly frozen and where it is thawed it’s a sticky mess. So, I cleaned up a few things here and there and broadcast a few types of seeds that don’t mind a dose of cold or things that won’t suffer from it. Arugula, cilantro, beets, spinach, lettuce, etc. are all seeds that can be sown as soon as the top layer of soil is thawed. They won’t germinate right away, but they will germinate when the soil temperature is right for them. It’s a great task to do when the soil isn’t workable yet, but you want to get out and get something done.
What did you plant this weekend?
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Friday Favorite: Maple Tapping
AH, I think every year at this time I talk about how much I LOVE sugaring the maple trees. Yesterday I went out to tap one tree, I do this each year to monitor sap flow. When the sap starts flowing from that tap, I tap the remaining trees. The sap started flowing right away, so I tapped 8 more trees. I’ll probably add a few more taps today.
I really love sugaring because it gets me out in the garden during a time when I wouldn’t be out there. It makes me go outside and I get a ton of exercise, it really helps get me in shape for the upcoming gardening season. I also love that it’s such a simple process, really, you just gather sap and boil it down, it’s really that simple. When you drizzle homemade maple syrup on your pancakes in the morning there’s nothing quite like it, it somehow tastes sweeter.
Do you live in an area where they tap trees?
