Wellies

Wellies are awesome. That is all.

 

Rhubarb

Rhubarb is pretty much the easiest plant ever. It doesn't require any maintenance. Like, zero. We planted it once, and it's good to go. Already its shooting up in all directions.

4 weeks ago

2 weeks ago

Yesterday

Just a few more weeks and we can start making rhubarb pie again. And rhubarb desert, and rhubarb cocktail and rhubarb everything.

A good day for onions

The weather on sunday was real nice. A good day to plant some onions. We had some bio-onion bulbs ready for planting. Leonie organized everything into nice, neat rows. We've got about 200 or so in this little patch.

Our onions last year were alright, but the weather was so chaotic that not all of them turned out full-grown. We had pretty heavy storms in July which knocked over all the onion stalks and stunted their further growth. In the end we pulled all of the bulbs up at the same time and stored them in a kitchen cabinet, even though they were mostly little half-grown onions. Oh well, can't control the weather.

Better luck this year, eh? And in terms of vegephobia, I'm now a total fan of my most hated vegetable. My father still can't believe the change, since all he remembers is me as a kid removing all onions from any meal put in front of me. These days onions go into just about everything. You should see Leonie with her pizzas. Its pretty much just onion-ring bread with some cheese on top.

Comments enabled

For some reason comments weren't working on this blog. Took me a bit of time to figure out the problem, but after a little HTML manipulation things seem to be in order. So feel free to comment! Comments are fun.

Fresh Spring Soil

Fresh soil. Nothing better than coming back in spring to find nice, soft soil, ready for the new season. Shovel in hand, digging slowly into the thick clay to find that it falls easily past the blade, aerated and well broken up. All that hard work in autumn paying off.

In Fall at the end of the season, we turn over the whole plot. Well, I turn over the whole plot and Leonie watches and gives advice. It's good though. It's can be a very meditative experience. A few hours of hard physical labour, focused on the task at hand, at one with the earth. Something like that, anyway. But seriously, it can be pretty mentally relaxing to do manual labour. No bullshit, just working on one specific action.

The winter frost will break up all the large clay blocks (our garden is all heavy clay) and turn it into well developed soil. This year it turned out very well. In Fall of '09 I didn't have enough time to do it properly, and only did half the plot. The difference between those two halves last spring was ridiculously obvious. One half was like concrete, and the other was much more malleable.

This past November I also emptied our whole compost bin into the garden before I turned it over, as well as some other amendments like the dead stalks from our corn plants and dried leaves. The soil this year is the best yet. All I had to do last week was rake the top layer to even everything out, and we're ready to go. Next week (when we're back from vacation) we'll add some organic fertilizer and a bit more compost and let it sit for a week to get ready for this year's plants.

I'm hoping the improvement in soil quality will yield a good increase in production quality this year. Especially for the pumpkins, which didn't do very well last year.

I think soil quality gets under-appreciated in our daily lives. I know I never worried about it until I started gardening. Think about how much of the things we eat come from the earth. It's important to protect the quality of our land. Not in a "earth-mother" hippie kind of way, but more in a chemical/fertilizer/soil structure kind of way. What ever is in the ground will end up in your produce and you'll be eating it. Do you know where your broccoli has been?

Renovation

Did a bit of blog renovation. I wasn't happy with the old template and was having trouble with layout and font. Further changes may follow, but for right now this is good. 

Advertisement says: "This week only, Healthy!"

I saw a sign in a cafe today advertising "healthy week." This week, and this week only, they will be focusing on delivering healthy and responsible produce. So I guess next week they will deliberately go back to unhealthy products. Why not just try to have "healthy week" every damn week? Or is that just a crazy idea...

Anyway. The weather in Holland is getting better everyday. Sunlight, glorious sunlight....!

Grow baby grow

And a few days later....
we have cucumber and tomato seedlings.

Cucumber death followup

This is a followup post about last year's cucumber plant. I said in the previous post that I didn't know what caused the symptoms I was seeing. I suspected CMV, but after some research I'm fairly confident to say that the real reason is spider mites. These little insects are known to enjoy feeding on a variety of greenhouse veggies, and cucumbers fall into this category. Obviously all those little bugs on the leaves were the mites. In Dutch they're known as Spint.

Here's that photo again

We were on vacation when they hit, so there was already a ful-on infestation happening. Early treatment of any plants bearing mite signs is crucial in combating these little guys. This is the main reason our plant didn't recover. Also, not knowing the exact cause at the time, I didn't really apply the right strategies. I was worried about spreading any diseases to other plants, and decided to sacrifice this one for the sake of the other.

But hopefully this year we won't have the same problem. At least I'll try to keep any infestations in check. Maybe implement some biological control methods.

So, my new theory: not CMV, but spider mites.

Go

The seedlings are making a move.

This is from a couple days ago. The rest are now also going strong. A bit too quick maybe.

Growing garlic (2): Update

Well, the sun was out for a few moments this weekend, so stopped by to see how things are going. The garlic seems to have survived. A few chew marks from the rabbits, but all the cloves I planted in October are still going. Can't wait to see how they turn out.

The leeks however seem to have been the main course for the rabbits. A few bits are still sticking out, but most have completely disappeared. From the 25 I planted, only 7 remain.

Oh well. I replanted the survivors next to the garlic plot and put up some netting to try and discourage further foraging. Don't know if it will work, but better than nothing. Last time they tried tunneled under it. Not quite a rabbit proof fence.

Garlic and leeks

Hmm. Safe? We'll have to wait and see.

Seeds

Alright. Seeds are in the soil. The season is starting. I actually saw some sun this week. Tired of the cold wind and dark clouds. I’m hungry for summer. Lets get some food in the ground.

Most of the seeds we ordered have arrived. We're now starting with the aubergines (eggplants), because they take forever to germinate, I’ve got a few starting out in the windowsill greenhouse. This year we’re doing Snowy Aubergines as well as the regular purple ones. Also have cucumbers and tomatoes going.

This year we’re looking forward to trying some different heirloom tomato varieties. The last 2 years we just had 2 beefsteak plants, and while that was fun, I’m interested to see what all those other crazy tomatoes taste like. Right now, we’re doing tigerella, green zebra, black krim, black cherry, brandywine red, brandywine yellow, principe borghese and san marzano, plus some regular tiny tims.

Hopefully this year, it will be a bit more organized. We’ve got even more stuff than last year, and that filled half our apartment for a month with seedlings. Hell, the next time we move, it’s gonna be somewhere with a garden attached so we can do all of this outside instead of in the living room.

Back in the day

Photos from last year.
Just to get some garden stuff going.

On to bigger, better and a greater variety of things this year.

Rammenas with mandarins and walnuts

Rammenas is another vegetable that I hadn't tried before. But it’s good. It’s surprising to discover all this stuff out there full of good flavours. Undiscovered territory. People, go and buy forgotten veg! Live it up. There’s some good stuff out there.

Yes, I know. I didn’t grow this. Its from the market. But forgive me. This blog is new (and I’m new to blogging). My subject matter (the garden) isn’t up and running yet because its March. I just got the first seeds going in their  mini greenhouse a couple days ago.

But we got some rammenas from the market. It has a dark outer husk and a bright white inside.  I read  elsewhere that it tastes similar to a radish, but I don’t really think so. Its quite bland, but works as a nice filler. It does get a bit dry after a day or two. This one was in the fridge for a few days before we ate it.

This is just grated rammenas with about 200 ml of plain yogurt. Add some sections of mandarin oranges and walnuts. You’re good to go. Makes a decent starter, or a simple side dish. So far I haven’t tried anything else with this vegetable. I should take my own advice and buy it more often. Just like with the schorseneren (which I’m going to try to grow this year), I was impressed.