Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Recent VEGarden Posts

Cement Block Raised Beds
15 May 2013
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A Small Summer Project

From time to time, I get great ideas in my head. Those great ideas usually end up in a lot of work. I spent the weekend at Menards, pricing out the difference between pine boards, cedar boards, and cement blocks. Turns out, per foot, cement blocks and pine boards are pretty close to the same price. Taking into consideration the weather in Minnesota and number of years that we are (hopefully) going to be gardening, cement blocks win out as a more practical long-term solution. Solution to raised beds, that is. Two years ago I wrote about the Perennial Beds made with Cement Blocks I put in front of my garden. A year later, I decided to add another raised...
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Pasque Flowers
11 May 2013
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Pasque Flowers

I’m not sure where these came from, but they showed up under our deck the other day. A bird or squirrel must have brought them over. Nice little hint of spring. The daffodils are starting to open up too. Cedar enjoys checking out the flowers. It’s still too cold to plant our seedlings, so I’ve spent a bit of time browsing Pinterest and other garden websites for ideas and inspiration. I spent some time at Menards pricing out the difference between pine boards, cedar boards, and concrete blocks. Guess which one came out the cheapest (and most weather resistant)? Let’s just say I have a bit of a large project ahead of me this summer…pictures to come!
Garden Seedlings
08 May 2013
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Asparagus and Chives

It looks like Spring might just be here to stay! We had our first mini-harvest of the season yesterday: asparagus and chives! Chris fried them up with shiitake mushrooms, mock duck, and stir fry noodles for dinner. I’ve finally been able to leave my seedlings out on the deck overnight. It looks like we may get some rain today (fingers crossed!) and I’m sure they will love that. Check out the size of those tomatoes – I can’t wait to get them in the ground!
female cardinal
02 May 2013
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Bird watching

We’re in the middle of a(nother) cold snap this spring. We haven’t been able to enjoy the sunshine and the garden much yet, so we’ve been watching the birds congregate at the feeders on our deck. Here’s a female cardinal who showed up for a few short seconds the other day:
VEGarden - responsive mobile/tablet friendly website design by Iceberg Web Design
30 Apr 2013
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VEGarden: Now Mobile

It’s nothing terribly fancy – but our garden blog is now optimized for your mobile viewing pleasure! Now, I just need to get a cell phone with a better camera so I can post pictures directly from the garden as well. We had an absolutely beautiful weekend, with temperatures reaching nearly 80. I managed to seed peas, carrots, spinach, beets, lettuce, and radicchio! It looks like we have another cold snap ahead this week, but I’m glad I was finally able to work the ground a bit. We’re more than a month behind last year’s garden, so we have a lot of catching up to do!
Cascadia Peas soaked
26 Apr 2013
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Peas ready for planting!

There’s just something about that first “real” day of spring… The forecast was correct – and then some. It hit 70º today for the first time in many, many months! We got a late start to the garden this spring. Until just a few days ago, it was still covered in snow. But the weather is gorgeous, the snow is finally gone, and it is officially planting day! If you recall, last year at this time we already had spinach ready to eat. We have a lot of catching up to do this spring! We soaked our snap peas overnight, and they are already sprouting. Hopefully this will give them a jump start, and they will produce before the weather...
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April 19, 2013
22 Apr 2013
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2012 vs. 2013

It’s crazy how much the weather in Minnesota can vary from one year to another. Here are a couple of pictures from last April 19th: Compare the beautiful April spring weather last year to a couple of pictures from April 19, 2013: Traditionally, I plant tomatoes on Mother’s Day. I’m guessing that won’t happen this year. The weather is forecasting another 4-8″ of snow in our city tonight. Warm wishes for a happy spring to all of you!  
17 Mar 2013
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The Season Begins

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! We celebrated the day by doing “green” things…setting up our seed starting shelves, mixing up dirt in the bath tub, bringing in flats and trays from the garage, and digging out our endless supply of seeds. We set up the shelves and lights in the kitchen this year…usually we do that in the spare bedroom, but we no longer have a spare as a little guy moved in three months ago. Chris started a whole lot of sea kale and some herbs. And probably some other things, though I wasn’t paying much attention to his trays. I started a bunch of tomatoes and peppers. A lot of the seeds were quite a few years old (2008...
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14 Feb 2013
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Winter at VEGarden

Long time, no post! Life has changed quite a bit for us over the last few months. Sadly, we lost our Puck to terrible bone cancer in early December. He was 11 and lived a very long, full life and will never be forgotten. On a more positive note, we welcomed our first child into the world on December 12th. So he will likely become the star of our garden blog soon, and I fully expect he will be growing his own carrots and selling them on the side of the road in a year or two. 😉 Here are a few pictures I snapped this morning after a beautiful snow fall. Warm winter wishes to all of our followers...
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Apple Guild Flowers
30 Aug 2012
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Apple Guild Flowers

Along with comfrey, false indigo, and a couple of other deeply rooted bushes, Chris planted an annual/perennial flower mix in our apple guild this spring. I forgot to take pictures when the flowers reached their peak a couple weeks ago. My niece and nephew, and their two friends from down the street, have had a lot of fun this summer making bouquets. Chris even showed my 4-year-old niece which flowers were edible – and she remembered a few weeks later when she came back! I don’t think she actually tried to eat any of them, but she did think it was pretty cool that there are flowers you can eat. I’m not sure which of these are perennials, but I...
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Watermelon
19 Aug 2012
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Summer’s End

One of the odd things about gardening in Minnesota is just as the weather starts to change to fall, the signature summer fruit (watermelon) is ready to be harvested! My mom told me stories of growing up on the farm, sitting on the front porch in September wearing sweaters and eating fresh picked watermelon – because watermelon was a summer food, darnit, and you must enjoy it on the front porch! We’ve grown cantaloupe and a few other smaller melon varieties before, but this is the first year we’ve had nice big watermelons in the garden. There are a half dozen or more of them out there, and from the looks of them they still have a couple of weeks...
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Puck with Sweet Corn
08 Aug 2012
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Super Sweet Corn

We planted four varieties of super sweet corn this summer. According to Johnny’s seed catalog: “Super Sweets are sweeter than the other corn types at harvest and retain their sweetness and crisp “poppy” texture hours and days later. Great fresh flavor & best of all for charcoal grilling and freezing.” I didn’t realize that I had purchased super sweet corn until the seeds arrived. Super sweet varieties contain a gene which produces higher than normal levels of sugar – hence the name “super sweet”. This gene allows a longer shelf life for fresh picked sweet corn, making it a terrific variety for grocery stores who have their corn shipped in from quite a distance. Since I was a young kid,...
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Italian Heirloom Tomatoes
01 Aug 2012
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Italian Heirloom Tomatoes

See the Tomato Varieties page here. I picked up this tomato plant at Gordon’s Greenhouse this spring. I’ve spent quite a bit of time scouring the web, trying to find out what kind of tomato this is. The description on the tag just said, “Heirloom, 80 days, 1lb fruits.” And 1-pound fruits, no doubt! I had to pull out a scale to see for sure – of all of these, the lightest was 13.35 oz, with most weighing in at 15-17 oz. The largest came in at 1 lb 5.4 oz. The first few we picked were heart-shaped (see this picture for reference), but as days got hotter and a few inches of rain came down, the tomatoes started to get...
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Pasta, Eggplant, Zucchini, Tomato Sauce topped with Daiya vegan cheese
31 Jul 2012
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Tomato Season!

Today’s Pick: After months of waiting, the tomatoes are finally ripening! Our small purple eggplants are still producing like crazy, and we are now getting large purple eggplants as well. The zucchini are still producing, though we do have vine borers (like every other year), so I will probably start ripping the plants out soon. I was going to put in a second planting of zucchini in early July, but I ended up procrastinating/getting busy, and didn’t plant a second crop of as many things as I would have liked. Today we have a bunch of Husky Cherry Tomatoes, a couple of Celebrity Tomatoes (the smaller of the larger ones, front right), and quite a few Italian Heirloom tomatoes (I’ll...
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Puck and our Blackberries
21 Jul 2012
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Puck’s Blackberries

Poor Puck. He’s constantly being forced to come, stop, sit, stay in the garden so I can take his picture next to something I’m growing. He doesn’t seem to mind too much, but some days (like this one) he gets a bit tired of the constant photography games. Here he is sitting in front of our blackberry “bush,” which is likely going to take over the entire garden one day. A friend helped me put these in two summers ago, and we still haven’t seen fruit from them. They *are* Zone 4 (which we are), and are supposed to produce fruits on new canes. (Some berries only produce fruits on year-old canes, and blackberries in particular don’t often survive a...
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Japanese Eggplant
20 Jul 2012
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Loaded Eggplants

Tomatoes (and our non-bacon BLTs) may still be a dream for weeks to come, but we have no shortage this year when it comes to eggplant! I picked up three of these Japanese Eggplants at 101 Market in Elk River, because one can never have too many eggplants (and we needed something to replace the spinach with).
Italian Heirloom Tomato, on a tomato spiral
19 Jul 2012
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Green Tomatoes

My tomato spirals are holding up very well! They get a bit skinny at the top, so you can’t pull the entire vine through. I’ve tied a few heavy branches to the stakes, but for the most part they are excellent trellises. I think they may work better for peas and beans than tomatoes – but I am definitely going to use them next year with tomatoes again. The spirals (and the stakes) store flat, which is a good enough reason alone to prefer these over the metal cages. The photo above is an “Italian Heirloom” variety (see our Tomato Varieties page for varieties we have grown, and are growing this year). I got this plant from Gordon’s Greenhouse –...
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Emerald Cross Cabbage
04 Jul 2012
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4th of July Garden Plans

Here’s a fun little graphic: (That’s the CBS 7-day forecast for Minneapolis) But, but…I have the day off and I have garden plans! The heat index will likely be close to 110º today with humidity in the upper 70s. Fortunately, our air conditioning is keeping the house at a comfortable 75º. I should probably turn that up a few degrees…not looking forward to the energy bill next month. Given the heat, the tentative plan is short 10-minute intervals in the garden pulling out cole crops and replacing them with vegetables for fall. We’ll see how much I actually get done. Here’s another Snow Crown Cauliflower that’s ready to be picked. We have a bunch of Cheddar Cauliflower that is ready to come...
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