Mesclun Mix Up

Greens are great.  Spicy, sweet, bitter -  I love them all.  I grow radishes and beets as much for their greens as for their fruity bits.  A good mesclun mix can be a real treat, but it’s getting harder to know what’s in the mix. 

Most seed companies seem to provide the mesclun mixes pre-mixed in a packet.  That’s good.  But what can be bad about that is that it makes you dependent upon their definition of mesclun.  These days you can grab a mesclun mix (or “spring” mix as it’s often called since nobody knows what mesclun means and it sounds vaguely narcotic) just about anywhere and in all kinds of pre-packaged conditions in the supermarket.  By most classic definitions of mesclun, what we get pre-mixed and packaged (in seed or bag form), is not often all that mesclunish.

Mesclun is a French and Italian thing.  The goal is to mix key flavors of baby greens together.  Bitter (perhaps from an endive or radicchio), mild (from some leafy type like oak leaf, red sails or ruby), piquant (spicy and pungent like mustard greens) and peppery (like arugula).  That’s right.. piquant AND peppery.

These days, in most bags of salad, you’ll find it’s high on the leafy and therefore low on the likey.  Are the seeds following suit?  This year I got two mesclun seed mixes from two different places.  Seeds From Italy, not surprisingly, seems to hit closer to the good ol’ european definition and I’m seeing some spice in my sprouts.  My other selection (can’t remember where I got it!) looks decidedly Dole – lots of red sails and not much oomph.

Caveat emptor.  Next year it’s time to be more discerning.  I want greens that clear my sinuses not ones that disappear completely on the tongue.

Filed under: greens, vegetable garden, vegetables , mesclun

State Of The Stuff: What’s Growing

It’s May 18 and just about everything is in my garden.  I’m holding off on tomatoes and peppers for another week because it’s supposed to be pretty cold and wet for about 5 or 6 days.  I’ve got some tomoatoes just sitting out in the garden getting used to the place and I’ve still got several transplants under the growlights.  Can’t wait.

Beans checking out their pole

Beet sprouts

Broccoli (Gastrocast)

Started from seed 3/25

Green rows

Bean teepee

Potatoes looking pretty

Wasp is thirsty

Pole Beans: They’ve been in the dirt for 3 weeks and are just poking their little muppet heads out now.  I’ve got a few varieties.  Should be spectacular.

Bush Beans: Same story as above.  Just a few poking up now.  I’m a little worried, but we’ll see what the week brings.  If they don’t pop, I’ll just replant.  Plenty of time for beans.

Beets: 3 good rows have been in since May 4 and they are popping very nicely.  These are the ones I’m using for the Growing Challenge.  So far, so good.

Greens: Mesclun transplants have been made into many a meal already.  Delicious.  The staggered plantings I’ve done have all sprouted at various stages.  I’ve got about 3 successions.  Tom Thumb lettuce, chard, oak leaf, mesclun, tyee spinach, space saver spinach, arugula, miners lettuce are all doing well.

Peas: Carouby de Mausanne and Cascadia.  The peas in the earthbox are about 8 inches now.  They’ve been going since the end of March.  The peas in the garden are about 4 inches and were planted mid April. 

Carrots: Not a whole lot happening here.  They’ve been in since 5/4.   Just a couple of little peekers.

Radishes: Black radishes are doing great.  They’ve been in since 5/4.  Radish mix that I have going in a container on the deck (planted chaotically.. we’ll see) are doing well too.

Broccoli: Just a few plants.  Two are transplants and they are absolutely thriving so far.  Foot tall already.  The third is a transplant from the seeds I got as part of the Gastrocast’s seed special.  It was a bit sickly early on, but recovered very well.  I popped it into the garden yesterday.

Cucumbers: Just put in a Bush Crop.  Six plants.  I had so many cukes last year that I cut down a bit.

Potatoes: Bigger patch than last year and they have all sprouted.  The potatoes are approaching the 4 inch mark and I’ll need to get some straw going soon.

 

Filed under: Peas, beets, growing challenge, potato, vegetable garden, vegetables , beans, chard, lettuce, mesclun, Peas, pole beans, potatoes, spinach, tomatoes, vegetable garden

Bittman Says: Save The World

Mark Bittman, NY Times food writer, is a reasonable man.  Much like Michael Pollan, he sees the problems with the earth and our diets as complex, but the solution as fairly simple.  Where Pollan boils his argument down to the pithy “eat food, not too much, mostly plants”, Bittman brings his down to the even pithier “eat good food”.

Good food, as it turns out, is mostly plants.  Plants, he says, and not the components of those plants.  The tomato, not the lycopene.  The carrot, not the beta carotene.  Lycopene, beta carotene.. those things are all good for you, but it is the tomato, the carrot that provides them.

The video here is from Ted Talks.  Ted, and I am hip enough to have heard about this long, long ago (two weeks… so sue me), is the intelligentsia’s way of creating a social site with just enough exclusivity to make it feel ivy league.  All longing for inclusion aside, it is actually full of good stuff from good thinkers.  Bittman was a surprise.  Not that he isn’t a good thinker.  He is.  It’s just that Pollan would have been a much more obvious choice. 

But Bittman more than  holds his own.  His talk is excellent and his points are well presented.  No real new ground is broken for those of us who read or watch this kind of stuff all the time.. except for this.

Locavores (people who seek local food), vegetarians, gourmets, we’re all essentially the same.  Opposition to industrial food is a common goal and it’s all about good food.

Fight the fight.  Grow a garden.  Eat your vegetables.

 

Filed under: reviews, vegetables , eat good food, mark bittman

Time To Harden Off

Early to mid April was hot and it lured me in! The cold temperatures here in Connecticut of the past week or so haven’t really done any harm, but I am glad I resisted the urge to get tomatoes going. It doesn’t really help all that much to get the warm-weather plants like tomatoes and peppers going too early, but it just feels good to get them in the garden.

Today I started hardening off my transplants. I put out about 7 tomatoes, 3 peppers and a couple of others for the first phase. Hardening off gets your plants used to the outdoors, the temperature variations, shade to sun, and wind. Here’s the way it usually goes:

1. I prefer to harden off only when it’s 50 or warmer. Avoid rainy or windy days in the earliest stages.

2. Day 1 to 3 I place the plants outdoors for about 30 minutes. Don’t put them in direct sun.

3. Day 4 I move it up to about an hour. I give them a little bit of sun.

4. Move the time outside up each day over the next two weeks until the plants stay outside for a whole day and night.

5. Once you’ve got them hardened off, they’ll take to the transplant into the garden much better.

Here’s a video from expertvillage that’s pretty close to the way I do it.

Filed under: hardening off, transplanting, vegetables , hardening off, tomatoes, vegetables

Cancel The Ark: Maybe Just A Dinghy

So the rain came down and down and down.  Everything drank it up – including my beds and my pathways.  It really seemed like extra rainy rain.

Garden seemed to enjoy it.  Some soil got washed off of my beds.  The trouble is that my beds are raised a few inches, but I don’t have them framed.  Once  the beds tighten up with more moisture and plant roots it should be fine.  Next year, if this layout works for me, I’ll frame the beds.  Probably.  If I’m not too fat and lazy.

Quick stroll out in the garden just now and the peas are coming up nicely.  Some chard just in front of them.  And a cat.  Sniffing around the peas to probably pee.  Shooed her away. 

Lettuce transplants look great and I tasted a leaf from one of them.  Very nice.

There is a frost warning for tonight.  Uh oh!  Looks like somebody jumped the gun!  We’ll see.  I think we’ll be okay.

So, cancel the ark.  Send a dinghy because it’s pretty much supposed to rain after tomorrow and never stop.

Filed under: Peas, soil, vegetable garden, vegetables , beans, frost warning, lettuce, Peas, rain, soil

Sunday In April: Sowing The Seeds Of Love

I’ve slowly been working in seeds and transplants. I don’t want to get too sucked into this unusually warm Connecticut weather, but it just feels like stuff needs to get planted!

This weekend was a bit more seasonal. In the 60s, overcast. I just got back from a Minnesota business trip.. where it rained like it was going out of style. I missed the bright, warm sun of this weird Connecticut spring! But here I am back to reality.

Today I got arugula seeds started, miner lettuce seeds going, black radish, radish mix, carrots, pole and bush beans all started from seed in the garden. In the meantime, the mesclun mix from the Gastrocast seed special have sprouted. Kale has sprouted. The peas in the garden have sprouted and the peas in the earthbox are getting heartier.

Honestly, I’m most excited about the pole and bush beans I planted. The pole beans are a mix of kentucky wonder pole and borlotto beans from the Gastrocast seed special. Last year the three bush (provider) beans I planted were CRAZY productive. That’s what I’m looking for. I think the pole beans will be gorgeous running up the simple wooden teepee I built.

Soon I will need to thin the kale and mesclun. The mesclun transplants I put in are doing very, very well. I ate a few leaves today. Delicious!

Wide shot with guard dog

Peas sprouting in the garden!

Chard transplants near peas

Broccoli and lettuce transplants

Delicious lettuce mix transplants

Kale and Mesclun sprouts.. thin soon!

Peas in the earthbox

Closer peas in the earthbox

Filed under: Peas, seed starts, vegetable garden, vegetables , arugula, beans, gastrocast seed special, Peas, radish

Beets: Friend Or Foe?

Friend! Especially their delicious green tops. And actually the fruity rooty part too. Good for you too.

I’ve never grown them and I’m going to try just a few this year. In preparation, I found this very cool blog about it from In My Kitchen Garden (an offshoot of farmgirlfare). Great information.

Direct sowing is the way to go. Soak em a bit. Stick em in the dirt.

If it goes well, I’m going to go for a late summer sowing also.

Filed under: beets, vegetable garden, vegetables , beets, vegetable garden

Michael Pollan: Plant A Garden

I’m probably one of, I don’t know, 16 million people linking to this article by Michael Pollan in the NY Times Magazine. In it, he covers why we should bother trying to do things to improve the earth. And the majority of his point is spent covering why it should be more than switching our evil, energy consuming lightbulbs into less evil, less energy consuming lightbulbs. Plant a garden says Mr. Pollan.

The general scientific consenus is that the climate is changing and that man has had an impact. For many, this still feels unsettled, but… it’s settled.

Pollan’s comments on growing gardens (with a lot of history included) is fun to read as is always the case with him. Check it out. Feel good about your gardens.

In fact, feel smug.

Filed under: vegetable garden, vegetables , climate change, garden, global warming, michael pollan

Potatoes, chard, lettuce etc.

Lots of stuff in the garden now either as seed or as transplants. We’ve had a crazy nice stretch of weather here in Connecticut which has probably lulled me into a sense of frost forgetfulness. We shall see…

1. More peas. Planted a bunch of peas on the 14th. I made a quick trellis using twine and bamboo poles. Two basic varieties – carouby de maussanne and cascadia. I love peas and I’ve got more going in an earthbox on my deck.

2. Lettuce mix. A handful of transplants and also seeds in on the 14th of a mesclun mix from the Gastrocast special seed offer from Seeds From Italy.

3. Kale from seed also from the Seeds From Italy thing. Just a couple of feet of kale plantings.

4. Spinach. Space Saver and tyee also planted on the 14th. I’d say about two long rows of that. Love spinach.

5. Onions. Transplants. Just a small bunch since I tend not to like the one-and-done kind of veggies; I prefer stuff that keeps producing. (Carrots and radishes are the big exception to this rule for me. Love those.) Planted on the 14th.

6. Leeks. Same as above.

7. Chard. From seed on the 14th in a nice long row and from transplants today (4/20).

8. Onion sets. I’ve never done this before and wanted to give it a try. I’ll keep them in to have a handful of onions to store.

9. Potatoes. I put in some nice blue potatoes and some regular old potatoes too. Did that today.

10. Broccoli. Just two transplants on the 14th. I’ve got some others started and we’ll see if they will make it.

I still need to work on improving the soil – especially before tomatoes go in. I’ll do some beans, beets, carrots and more greens through this week.

Here’s the latest view from above:

Filed under: Peas, potato, vegetable garden, vegetables , new plantings, vegetable garden

Container Garden: Kyle’s Veggies

My 5-year-old son Kyle loves to hang with me while I’m doing gardening stuff. I’m not really much of a guy in most other ways – no ability to fix stuff, no idea what to do with a car when the hood is open, no understanding of tools – but it’s nice for us to work outside together.

This year, Kyle wanted his own garden and we decided to get some seeds going for him in a large pot on the deck, right next to the peas I’ve got in an earthbox and some new strawberries in a pot.

He wanted beans, lettuce and carrots. We put em all in! Could be tight, but we’ll finish off the lettuce (which is a mix) before July and let one or two of the bush bean (provider) plants go through the season. We’ll see how the carrots (flakee) do.

He picked out everything himself and he knows he’s in charge. Watering, weeding, de-pesting, cursing, shouting at the weather, etc. is all up to him with this!

Eyes wide shut.

Just a bit of soil to cover the lettuce seeds.

Mixed lettuce.

He’s hoping for a giant bean stalk.

Traded away the milk cow?

Filed under: vegetable garden, vegetables , kid's container garden