Nelson County Rocks

 

Garlic is usually pulled at the end of June or in July around here, but the mild winter and spring seem to have brought the plants to harvesting time early this year.  When I planted the cloves (mostly from last year’s harvest) in early October, there were some hardneck cloves that showed slight signs of browning, and as I somewhat suspected, they did not produce new bulbs.  But the rest did, for a total of 109 bulbs.  In the hardneck category: 14 Appalachian Red, 22 Brown Tempest, 14 Metechi, 33 Music, and 14 Romanian Red (my favorite hardneck last year, both for its spicy taste and its storage qualities, since by and large hardnecks last less long than softnecks).  In the softneck category: 19  Inchellium Red (most very large, the product of planting the largest cloves over several years now), and 14 S&H Silverskin.  After a day in the sun, they will be curing for several weeks on screens in our cottage in the back.  Our hope is that they will get us through to harvesting day next year!

Well, just two days after my recent post about how well our vegetable garden was going, we were hit by a series of storms with high winds, torrential rain, and marble-sized hailstones.  The Norway Maples on the side of the house lost a number of large branches, and the vegetable garden was pounded.  The pea plants were torn off the trellis into a tangled heap, potato plants were leveled and some broken up, and squash, tomato, and cucumber plants broken into parts. Everything lost at least leaves and limbs.  Fortunately, most will probably survive, even if flowering and fruiting are delayed.  But one thing is clear: it’s not a picture-perfect garden any more!  Today was almost surreally nice, as in the views below from the back of our property.

 

   

 

With over sixty trellis feet of snap and snow peas planted in early March, we’re now reaping an overflowing harvest, along with the other spring vegetables we planted.  The sugar snap peas are over six feet high!  The lower right picture shows our harvest on May 28th, which included baskets of snap and snow peas, kohlrabi, turnips, swiss chard, multiple varieties of lettuce, basil, and garlic scapes.   We spent a good chunk of the day parboiling and freezing the peas.   So far (knock on me) this is the best vegetable garden I’ve ever had, and we even have tomatoes coming along on many of the plants.  Potato plants are in bloom and taller than I’ve ever seen.  Here’s hoping the rains keep coming…

After three and one-half weeks without a drop of rain from late March to mid-April, spring rains finally came, much to everyone’s relief.  (While not all Nelson County folks are directly engaged in agriculture, all understand the importance of rain.)  The following weekend we had a delightful visit from my cousin Fred Brack, whom I hadn’t seen in 30 or so years, his wife Kathy, and Kathy’s seeing-eye dog, Wilda.  Our next get-together will happen sooner.  Below: Fred, Kathy and Wilda at Crabtree Falls, and with Monika at a local winery.

  

Due to the mild winter and warm spring, flowers continue to bloom several weeks earlier than normal.  Especially striking this spring have been the roses Monika planted two years ago in front and back of our house, and the three different clematis which were already in the front when we bought the place.  Monika’s inspiration also led us to reconfigure the pond area in the back with two little “zen” rock gardens.

  

Despite the dry spell which slowed things down for a while, we’re reaping the benefits of early spring plantings: lettuce, chard, spinach and turnips are ready to eat, and snap peas are now a good three feet up their trellis and blooming.  And we have plenty of basil, chives, cilantro, parsley, rosemary, and thyme.  Potato plants are ready for hilling.  I put out a dozen varieties of heirloom tomatoes, which I’d started under grow lights in March, in the last week of April.  Still planting various types of beans, squash and, for the first time: peanuts! (a mild addiction of mine)

   

click here for more flower and veggie garden pictures

Our various projects have kept us pretty busy around our home, but I did bike the rails-to-trails route along the Piney and Tye Rivers, which has recently been extended, making for a 14 mile round trip.  A lovely path, with lots of spring wildflowers in bloom.

  

  

 

 

It’s impressive and heartening how many Nelson County residents have vegetable gardens, although it is striking to me how few plant spring vegetables.  Apart from summer tomatoes, snap and snow peas are probably my favorite veggie to grow and eat; I planted several trellis’ worth in the first week of March, and we should be munching on them by mid-May.  Lettuce, swiss chard, spinach, and turnips, also planted from seed, are all coming along, as well as cilantro, parsley, collards, and kohlrabi, which I started under grow lights in February and transplanted into the garden a week ago.  The biggest job was planting 20 pounds of seed potatoes (we just ate our last potato from last year’s harvest this past week).  This year’s varieties are: Satina, Carola, Yukon Gold, and Kennebec.

After our mild winter, we’ve had an unusually warm early spring.  Daffodils started blooming in the first week in February, and many trees and shrubs have begun flowering several weeks earlier than normal.  This is always a beautiful time of year, with our forsythia, weeping cherry, crabapple, serviceberries, and dogwoods bursting with color.  And our apple trees (a retirement gift from my department at Rutgers) have apple blossoms for the first time.

Our chickens continue to keep us well-stocked with eggs, and three frogs have taken up residence in our little backyard pond.  Five-lined skinks are all around, and bluebirds and chickadees appear to be setting up shop in our bird houses.  Our local pileated woodpeckers continue to make periodic appearances. Monika and I have been undertaking several major projects in the back, most notably so far a rock and pebble path out to the kennel and chicken coop.

Long-time friends from Vermont, Jan and Harris, visited us in the third week of March, followed by a delightful family gathering with Eleanor, Justin, Katherine, Nic, and Alison.  With beautiful weather almost every day, our early spring has been lovely, although most everyone around here is concerned about the relative lack of rainfall.

See more pictures here

Seed catalogs used to arrive in January; then it became December.  And this year they started arriving around Thanksgiving!  But since I’m a sucker for these things, it would be silly to complain.

For sheer size, coffee-table-style lavishness, diversity and excitement, Baker Creek Heirloom Seed catalog earns my first place, as it has for several years.  Reflecting the vision, diligence, and quite astounding success of Jere Gettle, it invites the reader (yes, not just the shopper) to return to it again and again.  The full-page pictures are stunning and constitute an education in themselves.  This year’s catalog coincides with the publication of Jere’s first book (with his wife Emilee), The Heirloom Life Gardener: The Baker Creek Way of Growing Your Own Food Easily and Naturally.  The book provides a refreshingly non-intimidating introduction both to contemporary food production issues and to basic techniques of vegetable gardening, with an excellent A-Z glossary on growing, harvesting, eating, and seed-saving individual veggies.  I recommend it highly, especially for those recently bitten by the gardening bug.

My other three favorites have been the same for several years, and each has its special virtues: Seed Savers Exchange (nicely-illustrated and informed by this non-profit membership organization’s pioneering commitment to the preservation and distribution of heirloom seeds; Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, based in Virginia with a strong regional focus; and Johnny’s Selected Seeds, an employee-owned company that successfully markets to both professional growers and amateur gardeners and is a good source of gardening supplies as well as seeds.  Catalogs for each may be ordered by clicking on the respective images.

 

click here for a photo overview of  our 2011 veggie garden

Here in Virginia, it’s possible to have three consecutive but overlapping gardens:  Spring (March-June), Summer (July-September), and Fall (October-December).  The spring garden began with seeds under indoor grow lights in February, with outdoor transplanting and direct seeding in early March.  Harvesting of lettuce and  spinach began in mid-April and of snap, snow and garden peas, turnips, kohlrabi, swiss chard, collards and cool-weather herbs such as cilantro between mid-May and June.  Twenty-five pounds of seed potatoes were planted in the third week of  March for harvesting in mid-summer.  The spring garden iltself ends around the time of the harvesting of the garlic crop (planted the previous fall) in late June .

With the major exceptions of tomatoes and peppers, our summer garden is mostly planted from seed  in May.   Several varieties of squash, along with  cucumbers, herbs (particularly basil), edamame, Malabar Spinach, parsnips, bulb fennel, radishes, and bush beans are planted first, followed by pole beans once the pea harvest is over and trellis space is freed up.  Tomato seedlings were transplanted in mid-May and pepper seedlings shortly afterward. Garden space freed up by the garlic harvest made way for winter squash seeds in late June.

As summer plants died back in August, freed-up space was planted with a mix of seeds for the fall garden (turnips, kohlrabi, and for the first time, rutabega) and purchased seedlings (lettuce, chard, kale, collards), mostly harvested between October and early December.

What’s missing in the account above are the ways things didn’t always go as planned: rabbits eating all the edamame down to the ground, fungal diseases on most tomato plants which limited their productivity and eventually killed off many, problems with proper storage for the garlic crop, etc.  Taking these sorts of things into account, I’d grade my garden success with about a B for 2011–most things went well, but there were some notable problems.

For details that probably are mainly of interest to me as a record, you can click on the “more” tag below.

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We were spared the recent nasty nor’easter that blanketed much of the northeast with snow and (thanks to our country’s antiquated infrastructure) knocked out power for almost three million people.  But a light snow did fall on the Blue Ridge around us, even though we’ve yet to get any where we live.  We’ve had a few light frosts, but no real killing frost yet.  We’re still getting collards, kale, chard, turnips, parsnips, kohlrabi and hardy herbs from our vegetable garden, with rutabega (a new crop for us) coming along.  When our pepper plants died back, our chickens were happy to gobble up the several dozen large but immature peppers still on them.

If I suddenly seem food and recipe obsessed, it’s because once all those garden vegetables start pouring into the kitchen, one has to do something with them!  Some are being frozen or canned, but the best eating is fresh and here and now.  Right now, we’re getting lots of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and squash, which along with onions and garlic harvested a month ago, constitute the key ingredients for gazpacho!

Until two years ago, I never could understand why gazpacho recipes always seems to call for commercial tomato juice, and so it was a liberation to come across a discussion and recipe at the Farmgirl Fare blog that pointed out that tomato juice–apart from that in the tomatoes–was actually completely unncessary.  Ever since, I’ve followed the following gazpacho recipe, altering it occasionally to include tender squash and fresh basil and other herbs.  It’s great!

click here for Susan’s Quick and Easy Gazpach0 at Farmgirl Fare

It’s that time of year when, as country folklore goes, you’re likely to find your front seat filled with zucchini if you leave your car unlocked.  If you grow your own, you’re likely to be somewhat desperate about what to do with all the stuff.

This year I grew two types of standard green zucchini (Ambassador and Dark Green), two kinds of yellow squash (golden zucchini and lemon squash), and a quite amazing zucchini that was new for me: Zucchini Rampicante (also known as Tromboncino).  Zucchni Rampicante is the best-tasting, fastest growing and most prolific squash I’ve ever seen.  It curls around in all sorts of ways, but often looks like a swan to us.  It’s hard to find in markets, but it’s amazingly easy to grow–just be prepared for it to spread………..

Sautéing squash with garlic, onion, and other vegetables is always a good option, as is of course zucchini bread, which freezes well.    Below, however, I’m providing two  less-familiar ways to use up excess squash and at the same time eat very well:

Yellow Squash Pancakes are quick and easy to make and are nutritious and tasty.  They also freeze very well.

Zucchini Timbale can be a main dish or a vegetable side dish and always gets rave reviews.  It is excellent leftover cold as well.

click below for the recipes

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