My 2017 garden

[Gary350]

I made a mistake picking my tomatoes in the dark with a flashlight last night it only got down to 40 degrees not 34. Tonight's forecast has change 33 tonight not 31. It is warming up next 5 days 67 to 69 degrees & 40s at nite. I looked in the garden today there are 9 tomatoes that I missed with the flashlight. I had a good salad with dinner, chili and garlic bread too.



I was surprised today to find my little green onion seeds are germinating about 30% are coming up. It looks like it is plenty warm enough for onion seeds to grow.

[Gary350]

Frost killed the tomato plants & potato plants last night. I dug up the volunteer potatoes and harvested 8 potatoes. I put the Onion planter boxes in place next to the garlic now I need a pickup truck load of top soil to fill them up. I staked the garden rows for next springs garden and put the potato planter boxes in place too. Planter boxes will keep potatoes and onions out of the spring mud.
I made a new garden map, I moved the melons next to the corn and gained an extra row because corn will be gone before melon vines reach them. Potatoes will be gone about the same time as corn because potatoes get planted a month before corn. Beets germinated and are coming up. Onion seeds germinated and are coming up. All of the garlic plants have tall green tops.

[Gary350]

Today I mixed organic material with garden soil to make 50/50 potting mix. I filled up 8 pots all 2 gallons each. 1 pot is now planted with 300 chive seeds.

Dinner tonight was vegetable stew. Peas, corn, carrots, potatoes, onion, garlic, stew meat, can of cream of mushroom soup, can of french onion soup, black pepper, 2 tablespoons flour to make a gravy, cook all day in the crock pot.

[Gary350]

2018 Garden revised again. Squeezing 6 rows of corn into 2 triple rows of corn gave me 2 extra rows in the garden. I have grown corn like this before it work good. I always put 3 bean plants between each corn plant this provides nitrogen for the corn. I finally got everything I want squeezed into the available space. Pantry may need to get larger this year 420 ears of sweet corn will need to be frozen or canned in Mason Jars. 150 jars of tomatoes, 50 jars of green beans, 243 garlic, 400 onions, 100 lbs of sweet potatoes, 150 lbs Russet potatoes, 25 watermelons, 25 cantaloupes. Garden is planted now with 65 beets, 400 carrots, cabbage, napa, kale, pac choy, broccoli, peas, swiss chard, onions & garlic. I'm still not sure if I want to plant strawberry berries 100 plants in 3 rows 18 ft each will cost more than buying berries at the grocery store. I need to think of something different to plant beside strawberries. Lima beans would be nice but they might cross pollinate with green beans. I have 6 rows if Blue Lake Bush beans plants in a 3 ft wide 18 ft long patch, this gave us so many beans last year I had to give beans away then I let the plants go to seed, I have 2 lbs of seeds. I have peas planted now and more pea seeds on the way to plant and see how they do. By the time the watermelons, cantaloupe, sweet potato vines reach the corn and potatoes the corn & potatoes will be harvested and gone. I went out to the garden to move in row marker stakes it turns out I have 1 more 35 ft row that is not on my garden map, this is good now I need to decide what to plant in that row. I have a lot of flower seeds on order I will have the garden full of flowers next year.

[Gary350]

Last night I watched an Irish cooking show. Tomorrow morning we are having an Irish breakfast. Today I made Irish Parsley Butter & bread. I like it best toasted in the toaster oven just enough to be a bit crispy on top. I would love to travel to other countries just to eat their food. I could probably spend a year in India. The easiest way to try other country foods is find restaurants in the USA where you can eat foreign foods like, China Town, Cuban food southern part of Florida, certain areas of the USA were settled by people from other countries. I should have eaten more Louisiana food 20 years ago when my stomach could still handle hot spicy food. I like to eat Mexican food 18 miles north of town a family runs a restaurant in a 1 room house it is take out only they have picnic tables in the yard. They no speak English and I no speak Spanish but they know what the word chicken means when I order lunch and ask for chicken. They ask me several things and I just keep saying, YES no comprenday which is Spanish for, no understand. I have no clue what I order each time I go there but Wow it is always good, well worth the 18 mile drive for lunch. Their bright red hot sauce looks like it would kill a cow but its not very hot just the best flavor anyone can imagine. Tonight dinner is vegetable potato soup, make broccoli cheese soup and potato soup in the same crock pot, add onions & celery & your favorite vegetables & German sausage, Wow this is good. Tomorrow night dinner is, India Tikka Masala with rice and vegetables.

My parsley plant in the garden is doing fine this will make a lot of Irish Parsley butter bread and other things like very good spaghetti. My thyme plant is 2 years old I have no clue how cold it has to get to kill it. Most likely the parsley plant will not survive the winter.

[Gary350]

Reading all the information I can find online it says, Peas grow best in 50 to 70 degree weather. That totally goes against what everyone says around here about growing peas. Spring garden peas get planted in April.

[Gary350]

Weather man says 27 degrees tonight. I'm not sure I believer it they are very often wrong. I harvested 20 kale leaves to put in a zip lock bag in the refrigerator. The rest of the kale stays in the garden I hope it survives. I sure hate to loose my kale. I have had kale survive 21 degrees and had kale die at 28 degrees.

[Gary350]

Garlic is going good. I kept garlic in the refrigerator almost 3 months then planted it. There is about 300 garlic plants there. The box is just to hold 3" of soil to keep garlic out of the mud in spring. Boxes on left will be onions in March. Boxes in another place will be potatoes in March.

[Gary350]

27 degrees this morning kale feels like ice I hope it is not dead. Boc Choy is suppose to be good down to 25 they feel like ice too. Russian Red Kale is good down to 15. Tomatoes and peppers are probably dead now. We have a large bowl of green tomatoes in the kitchen some are almost ripe we will have 7 garden tomatoes for Thanksgiving dinner. We are still hoping to have garden tomatoes for Christmas dinner. Herbs are fine I picked parsley and thyme for the crock pot.

[rainbowgardener]

It went down to 30 last night here, there was frost on things this morning. I haven't been out yet to check on my broccoli, kale, chard, but I have seen them survive a lot worse.

[Gary350]

Kale, Boc Choy, Chard, onions, garlic, peas, Rhubarb, Herbs, are doing good after 27 degrees. Tomatoes and peppers are dead.

Dinner tonight.



Tikka Masala dinner a few nights ago.

[Gary350]

I have 100s of tiny plants coming up in the garden. I bought seeds on Ebay from China & Ireland 99¢ per pack free postage for 250 to 1000 seeds. I tossed seeds in patches like grass seed several weeks ago. 100 tiny Russian Red Kale baby plants caught my eye in the garden early this morning. Other plants are coming up too, carrots, beets, cabbage, mustard greens, collard green, cilantro. I don't see Swiss chard yet. I think there will be too many greens. Oh well it will be fun to watch them grow this winter.

[Gary350]

My friendly mole family made 16 of these little volcano looking mounds around the oak tree this seems to be where the mole family lives. There are tunnels all over the garden, back yard and front yard. There are little volcano mounds scattered several places around the yard & garden. I'm not sure what these little piles of soil are for maybe it is there living room. LOL.



Russian Red Kale, Boc Choy & ripe garden tomatoes salad.

[Gary350]

We love our garden pantry. Wife made the best garden vegetable soup today I have ever eaten. We bought a small Honey Glazed Spiral cut Smithville Ham a weeks ago. We cooked the ham in the crock pot for Thanksgiving dinner. Wife saved the bone and the drippings. 6 am this morning, ham bone, 1 quart of drippings, 1 quart of garden tomatoes, 1 large onion, 5 cloves of garlic, went into the crock pot. About 12 noon potatoes, carrots, peas, corn, green beans go into the crock pot. About 2 pm I put in 5 sprigs of garden Thyme and about 3 tablespoons of chopped garden parsley. About 3 pm I tasted it, WOW......LETS EAT. Alice heated up some garlic bread and the 4 of us we ate. It is almost gone only 2 bowls left. If I get hungry about 6 pm 1 of those bowls will be gone.





I saved the seeds from 2 grocery store Acorn Squash 2 of these seeds will be planted in the 2018 garden.

[Gary350]

I think garlic likes this nice 65 degree weather.

[Gary350]

Green tomatoes are still getting ripe.

[Gary350]

I am getting my potato beds ready, 3 ft wide 30 ft long filled with a mix of tree leaves, pine needles, broken dead sticks, and 5 gallons of wood ash. I hope wood ash will make the organic material compost by last week of March. I am also planning to shovel all the soil from each side into the wooden frames.

[Gary350]

What is a realistic amount of potatoes to expect to harvest per plant?

I think I have screwed up it rained all day yesterday leaves are wet and matted down like an old wet carpet. I have seen this before roots can not get through a thick pile of wet leaves. I wish I had a way to grind up leaves and mix it with soil.

[thanrose]

Don't know about potato harvests, but if you have cleats on any sport shoe, they'll break up the leaves a bit, or maybe mix it up with a scuffle hoe.

[Gary350]

My 400 organic carrot seeds arrived from China today 55¢ free shipping. China does not charge 5 times extra for the word organic. You can't get service like that in the United States. I buy a lot of my seeds from China, Ireland, Netherlands, Ukraine, on Ebay, never been disappointing. I'm all stocked up for spring gardening.

[Gary350]

REAL Italian Pizza Pie seen on Bizarre foods from Italy.

Recipe from TV Show called Bizarre Foods. Use a large diameter deep dish pan, put in the crust so it goes up the side of the pan, then bake in the oven about 7 minutes just enough to cook the crust a little bit but not crispy. Cover the crust with 2 layers of sliced Smoked Provolone cheese plus big hand full of mozzarella cheese. Add Italian pork sausage, onions, pepperoni, herbs parsley, thyme, oregano, then pour a jar Pizza sauce over the top. Bake in the oven 375 degrees for 30 minutes.

First time we made this we had no smoked provolone cheese and still have not found it at the store yet. We used non smoked provolone cheese 2 layers plus 1 small bag of mozzarella cheese, plus fresh picked garden herbs parsley & thyme cooked Italian sausage, onions, pepperoni, dry oregano from grocery store then poured pizza sauce over the top. Baked 375 for 30 min let cool 20 min WOW best pizza we ever had. This makes 6 slices it feeds us both 3 times.

Today we made pizza pie again. Wife decided to add Italian pork sausage plus left over Italian chicken sausage too. Everything else same as before except we added a left over 1/4 pack of Monterrey Jack cheese too. It turned out very good but a little too much meat. If we had added more sauce extra meat would have been ok. Grandson is here tonight so we have 3 slices left over for tomorrow.

I will find smoked provolone I know Kroger use to have it I bought it there once.





















My Thyme plant survived last winter and doing good this winter it has been 22 degrees several nights. I had another Thyme plant that died it was in the garden. The one that lived is in a flower pot. Both are English Thyme. My oregano died. Parsley is going good. We sure are loving these herbs they do very good in winter.

[Gary350]

My parsley and thyme are looking very GOOD in this cold weather but they do not grow any larger, they did all there growing in warm weather. We have been eating a lot of herbs the parsley is about 70% gone. Next garden season I need to plant 3 parsley plants.

[Gary350]

Chicken vegetable pot pies are so good. Corn, peas, carrots, green beans, potatoes, onions, garlic, parsley, thyme. I finally managed to get pictures this time. Last 3 times they were gone before I could go get the camera.

[Gary350]

My plants are frozen it is 22 degrees outside. I sprouted Broccoli seeds over a month ago, I have been keeping them outside under glass. Plants would get plenty of sunlight if we had some, it is mostly over cast every day this time of the year. Water & soil are both frozen. Plants are not looking good. LOL. We just got home from Florida beach been there since Dec 26th it was sunny and 50 degrees. Local people say it is usally 65 to 70 deg all winter. We camped on the beach $28 per night. We took food to cook but Waffle house is only 2 miles away and lots of good sea food restaurants $5.99 to $7.99 for lunch and dinner. We ate sea food for every meal. I harvested some more herbs for another pizza pie parsley is almost gone. This is last day of Dec I guess there won't be any more posts after this one subject line says 2017 tomorrow is 2018.