The World's Smallest Salad

Good News! I went out to check on my second lettuce planting and the seeds are sprouting! I must have forgotten how small the fake leaves were on lettuce seedlings because they seem sooooo tiny! Wow that is three sentences in a row with exclamation points. I should calm down. Also, and I should probably post a picture of this, some bulbs managed to grow up through the layer of compost. Before we planted the garden there had been some pretty wimpy bulbs growing in one spot. Since all but one had died the year before, and by early April there were no signs of the remaining one, I decided to just bury it. Turns out it was a bit tougher than I thought and grew all the way through the one foot thick layer of compost that fills my raised bed. I was more than a bit surprised, and also happy. The problem is it grew up at the back of one of the tomato cages. Hopefully for it it will grow big enough to get strong before the tomato plant that will also be there overshadows it. If not, well, I'll just have to wish it goodbye one more time. For some reason, my debilitating plant empathy doesn't apply to these bulbs. And when I say debilitating I mean it. Pulling out anything that might make food or killing any plants makes me really sad inside. This is why I am so bad at thinning plants. Take my tomato seedlings for example, I am afraid to kill one of them so that I only have one of each type for fear that the remaining one will die and I'll be out a tomato plant for the year. Thus, I have two of each kind I started from seed and I'm probably going to end up planting all four plants. The bright side is that two of them are determinate so they won't grow up to be monsters anyway, and the other is a cherry tomato so maybe it won't get as big.

Other exciting news from the farm is that I have eaten my very first salad. As you undoubtedly inferred from the title, it was rather small. As all of the regulars out there already know, I have been itching to thin out the seedlings, and today was the day. In this next batch of seedlings I won't have to thin quite so early, but as that was my first time planting lettuce I planted two seeds per hole not realizing the impressive germination rate. I ended up with four plants in a 2-3 inch wide area because I had 2 sets of on-top-of-each-other seedlings. I went out and picked the smaller of each of the pairs to give the remaining one a bit more room so it wouldn't have to fight for water and nutrients and all the good soily stuff. I brought in my 1/100th of an ounce of lettuce, took its picture, washed it, and ate it. I put about one drop of dressing to add some flavor. It was quite possibly the best salad of my life. I can't wait until I can have a big bowlful of the deliciousness. I think part of the excitement is that it is homegrown and thus naturally superior, but the fact that Forelenschuss is darn attractive probably helps too. I could eat like 5 entire heads of it before I got bored and stopped. Anyway, I'm a real pig so that's fine. Right now I'm thinking about my favorite salad recipe, which goes something like this and is absolutely delicious.

Lettuce- lots
Tomatoes- maybe 1/4th of a cup, diced
Peppers- about 1/4th of a cup, diced
Onions- .25-.75 cups. I looooove sauteed onions so I put in a ton.
Salsa- as much as you would put were it normal salad dressing
Ranch- just a small amount to taste
Cheddar Cheese- a healthy sprinkle

Directions:
Saute the peppers, onions, and tomatoes (you don't have to saute the tomatoes if you prefer raw, but raw tomatoes aren't my favorite so I like to give them a little heatin). While they saute tear up a liberal amount of lettuce. Sprinkle the cheese on top and then pile on the sauteed vegetables. Add the salsa and dressing to taste. Eat, enjoy, and be happy (and healthy!).

Lettuce!

Goodbye, Paper.

I've spent the past two days slaving away over the computer working on my ten page research paper. I did on something about which I'm pretty passionate, and that is alternative energy, more specifically hydrogen power. I had been sort of procrastinating on it, as I do for most things, so I really just had to go to town on it and get it done. It is finally ten pages, with but three lines on the tenth page. The requirement was 2 lines on the tenth page, so I basically just barely made it. After the finish I had to move a few things around and for a few horrible minutes I thought I had to write more, but then I fixed it and life was good again.

I went in to work for one measly hour tonight because the scheduled night shift called in sick. It was good to get more money, but with a grand total of under $9, was it really worth the gas? Probably not. But still, my college account is going to enjoy the almost imperceptible boost I'm sure.

In the garden I'm still waiting for the carrots and lettuce to sprout. And the peas. I realize it is supposed to take about a week, but I wish the seeds would understand my desire for them to grow and just shoot up a bit faster. The potatoes are growing as fast as can be, which is pretty exciting. I'm sure having a bit of energy stored up really helps them grow fast, but no matter how it works I'm grateful that someone around here understands my impatience for green.

Despite the fact that the Solid Waste Agency warned against it, our 100% compost garden seems to be doing alright. None of the seedlings have keeled over yet so that's at least a plus. Speaking of seedlings, some of the lettuces seem to have grown an inch overnight. It is, of course, not fast enough for me. I want to try homegrown lettuce so bad! I think the day is quickly approaching in which I begin thinning and having a super-mini salad. Tomorrow after school and before work I'll go out and take a few pictures of it all, and I'll try extra hard to put up some of the pictures of our flowers that I got. We currently have snapdragons, violas, a really shnazzy gerbera daisy, and some purple shamrock thing. Oh and a coleus that I overwintered. It is super cool how you can just overwinter one of those. I live in Iowa so it sometimes gets to around -50 in the winter, but if you just pull of a stem with a few sets of leaves, pull of the bottom set of leaves, and stick it in a pot somewhere inside the thing will grow and become a brand new plant. I just reversed that process and stuck a new stem back outside, and it's looking pretty sad right now. I'm hoping it will be alright, but if not I'll try again and maybe let it adjust before sticking it in full sun. The very topmost leaves haven't wilted much though so I'm thinking maybe they'll weather it out and grow up nice and big.

Well I think that's all for now guys. I'll hopefully post up some pictures of everything tomorrow for y'all to admire.

Peace

Decorah

Going to Decorah was a blast! When we got there we picked up my sister and grove down to the Co-op there, Oneota Market. They had these awesome miniature heirloom tomatoes for sale and I wanted to buy them so badly and make some salsa, but in the end I decided not to. They were only about four bucks for a container of them though and they were oh so tempting. We spent a little bit of time looking around at all the stuff before ordering our food. Most of us got panini sandwiches. Mine was absolutely, incredibly, phenomenally delicious. It was called "Pesto Pantheon" and was sooooooooo good. The recipe, as far as I can remember, went something like this.

Pesto Pantheon Panini
2 slices sourdough bread
fresh mozzarella cheese
sliced tomatoes
pesto
thick-cut bacon

They just piled all the stuff on and grilled it, then served it with a pickle spear. It reminded me of Panera, but it was definitely much fresher and much healthier.

We then went to a place called Sugar Bowl, just a block away. If you are ever in Decorah I highly recommend it. It is of course not good for you, but it is absolutely delicious. After that we went to Seed Savers and I couldn't resist buying a few transplants. I ended up with rosemary, hollyhocks, coneflowers, and something called a cupplant. Oh, and some lupine. The last three plants are Iowa natives that should grow without much fuss, as well as help out some native bugs (hopefully). We'll see how that goes, fingers crossed that none of them die.

Well guys that's all for now.

Peace

Grow Grow Grow

I'm in the stage of my garden where I have so little work to do that I tend to just stare at my plants after they've been watered. And since the lettuce is the only thing growing in the garden so far that is all I look at. As I've said, I've never grown lettuce before so it is pretty intriguing to watch it grow. My seedlings are starting to shoot up their first real leaves. Though "shoot up" is a bit too exciting for what they are doing. More like painfully thrusting up into the cruel world. Doesn't that sound a little bit slower to you? It did to me too. Anyway.

I'm about to go plant my peas, which are currently taking a little bath to soften their seed coats. I don't know if that actually works but I read that it does somewhere so I'm going to try it just in case. I just hope they don't drown. And tomorrow I'm going to Decorah with my cousin and uncle! It's going to be a blast and we're going to pick up my sister who goes to college at Luther and then have lunch at the Co-op there. After lunch we will of course be taking a trip to Seed Savers to look around at what they have going and get some seeds and maybe some transplants. I don't really need anything else. But who isn't addicted to looking at all the cool heirloom vegetables. Let's be honest.

I'll take a picture of my baby lettuces (though baby is a little bit bigger than what I have, maybe I should say lettuce fetuses?) and my homemade pea trellises, which are sitting in my homemade raised bed. It is all rather exciting for me.

Catching Up

Since I decided to do this after we had already built the garden and gotten stuff ready I'm just going to write a summary of what's been done in our first year of a garden.

We (meaning mostly I, and some input from the family) decided to plant 5 types of tomatoes, 4 types of peppers, two types of basil, chives, peas, green beans, potatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, and strawberries. Me and my dad built the raised bed frame, which is about 30' x 3.5'. My friend and I used her truck to take a trip down to the solid waste agency and have it filled with (free!) compost three times. It took all day and was hard work, but it was a blast. We then went to Earl May and got straw for mulch, marigolds to do their magic thing that tomatoes apparently like, and strawberry plants. Unfortunately we only get six strawberry plants and our planter takes nine, so our six are just waiting to be planted. We then made some rows in the mulch to plant lettuce, for which I am VERY excited because I've never had anything but supermarket iceberg, with the occasional romaine thrown in. I chose Yugoslavian Red Butterhead and Forellenschuss as our lettuces because they both had some nice seed catalog prose. Also, a few weekends before my friend and I planted the basil, dill, moss rose flowers, and some tomatoes in a seed starting setup.

Most of the lettuce seeds have now sprouted and I'm am impatiently waiting for them to grow some leaves so I can thin them out while sampling my choices. I also planted the potatoes, but having so many different types of plants in a relatively small garden means that I only have a total of about 7 feet of potatoes, plus our two Potato Grow Bags from Gardener's Supply Co. That probably won't end up being very much potatoes but we also have our CSA, for which I am also VERY excited because we will have so many fresh local vegetables and I will be able to feel all good and happy about inside while I stuff my face.

As I write this I should really probably be working on my research paper that I haven't really started yet, or doing my calculus, but oh well.

Just in case any of you wanted to know what types of each plant I'm growing, I'll give you a list of all the fancy-sounding heirlooms because the other plants just have lame generic names anyway. If I end up having fantastic harvests of peas or something, you can just ask me where I got them later on down the road.
Tomatoes: Yellow Sausage, Isis Candy (sounds sooo good), Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, Gold Medal
Peppers: Fish, Tolli's Sweet Italian, Buran, and something else (we ordered plants from Seed Saver's so long ago)
Basil: Thai and Purple

Alright that paper is really calling... peace.

El Jardin

This blog is a way for me to chronicle my first year being what I consider a "real" gardener. Example: up until last year I didn't know what the mysterious disease that kept killing my tomato plants was called. I've never planted carrots, peas, potatoes, lettuce, or beans. And I never had a real garden. But the winds of change began to blow late last summer after reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. That book began to change the way I thought about food, animals, and my future. After that a whole host of small things happened. I learned what CSA's were and became jealous, probably for the first time, of my aunt's eating habits. I started religious reading and re-reading seed catalogs. I started getting Organic Gardening. I started giving evil looks to those paltry, fake tomatoes in the grocery stores. I went to a Farmer's Market.All of these may seem small, but together they started my dreams of one day eating (almost) completely local food. My dreams of growing my own food and raising my own chickens and eating their eggs.