Garden 2021
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I plugged in the grow light for the first time since summer to move a flat of Ajuga plants indoors. We reclaimed them from the yard, where they spread and spread, all the way down to the drainage ditch. We transferred them from my father-in-law’s home before he died in the 1990s. At the nursery… Read more
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Ambient temperatures are forecast to reach the high sixties today. It’s time to plan fall gardening and get to work. The biggest task ahead is garlic planting. I cleared the plot where I had onions this year. The next work is to spade the soil, fertilize and till it. What’s left of the garlic harvest… Read more
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Large commercial farms in Iowa don’t grow apples the way they did. Iowa is mostly a corn, soybeans, oats and hay state when it comes to field crops. People don’t often grow apple trees at home either. Apples remain the most significant Iowa fruit crop and there are plenty around if you know where to… Read more
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Turning two five-gallon buckets of EarliBlaze apples into juice for apple cider vinegar took about three hours including set up and clean up. Three half gallon mason jars are fermenting in the pantry, and a quart and a half of juice is in the ice box. I drank some of the juice with tacos for… Read more
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Radicchio I successfully grew radicchio this season, yet haven’t figured out how it fits into the kitchen garden. I pickled some of the leaves, added it to soup and stir fries, and besides saying I have it, there’s not much value in the crop. I have seeds leftover and may plant half a dozen head… Read more
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I could eat fresh from the garden pasta dishes all summer and hopefully will. At the same time, summer is turning toward fall so we’d best enjoy them while we can. There have been crates and crates of garden tomatoes this season. I sorted a crate of yellow and orange, cut ripe ones into a… Read more
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The decision to buy sweetcorn and not grow it was easy. It takes a lot of garden space and my results haven’t been as consistent as one can buy at a farm stand. The farm stand where we’ve been buying sweet corn is closing after this season. This will be our last year of selling… Read more
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This year four tomatillo plants are producing an abundance of the fruit. Due to a paucity of recipes so many are not a good fit for our kitchen garden. Mainly I used tomatillos in salsa to provide texture and their green color. I also slice or dice them to add to stir fry. Because there… Read more
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The onion harvest is in, sorted, cured and stored. There will be plenty of onions through winter and beyond. The main lessons this year were to plant multiple varieties, keep them weeded and watered, and allow enough garden space to produce an abundance. The best results were from the starts purchased from Johnny’s Selected Seeds.… Read more
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It took about an hour to harvest tomatoes. While working in the vines I heard an apple drop from one of the EarliBlaze trees every couple of minutes. Each time I picked an apple and tasted it they weren’t quite ripe. When I cut them open to view the seeds, they were not the characteristic… Read more
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