FRIDAY FINDS

Have you noticed that I've not shown you much (or maybe anything) from the vegetable garden this year? That's because I got so late planting stuff that even my kale is only a few inches tall. The only variety I grow anymore is lacinato, which, as you can tell from the photo above from Mackinac Island makes a pretty great ornamental, as well as being so tasty!

If you've read much on this blog you know I can't resist a good alliteration, which makes me even more excited to be one of the "Garden Gurus" contributing to the Proven Beauty blog. My first post there is about how to get your garden ready for your vacation. I'd love it if you checked it out and maybe even left a comment. Thank you in advance!

Most people in today have never stood under a majestic elm tree, but a huge effort to bring elms back has been underway for years. This story about the process of reintroducing Dutch elm disease-resistant cultivars and getting elms back is fascinating.

The size of the landscape projects Deborah Silver works on is astounding to me.

Warning: This next bit has a couple of Amazon affiliate links in it. Thanks for supporting The Impatient Gardener!

I have found a product that seems to keep the rabbits from nibbling! It's a spray by Plantskyyd. But oh my lordy, it smells so foul. The smell goes away as soon as it dries, but it will clear your patio if you spray it. It's also made of blood and it looks like it, so the garden takes on a bit of a murder scene look. The staining (unless you get it on your clothes) also goes away. BUT I just found out they make a granular product that I'm going to try. Seems like it would be a lot nicer to use. I'll report back.

By the way, I still swear by Messina's Deer Stopper II for the deer situation. And it smells like cinnamon and cloves, so you're basically spraying Christmas on your garden.

This is such a lovely podcast episode by Margaret Roach and well worth a listen, but I warn you, it will make you hungry!

We are actually going to be social this weekend! We have a very large party (it's sort of a work thing but also all of our sailing friends will be there) tonight and then we're having people over tomorrow (I have a bit of last minute weeding to do for that). That's quite a lot of socializing for us so some time in the garden on Sunday will be lovely.

Do you have gardening plans this weekend and if you're growing food, what are you harvesting now?

Have a great weekend!

STAKING MY CLAIM AS A GARDENER WHO NEVER LEARNS

I have learned a lot of lessons about gardening over the years (case in point: don't buy one of everything!) but I'm starting to think there are some lessons I will never really learn.

One of them is the lesson of staking. Plants that need staking need to be staked before they need staking. And even though I know full well that they will need to be staked, I watch them grow tall and long and think, "Wow, that plant doesn't even need staking."

And then it rains, or a big wind blows through, or the plant grows a millimeter beyond the point where the center of gravity shifts from the bottom to the top. And I look in the garden and my once-stunning plant is reduced to a heap. And I know full well that any attempt to stand it back up again will probably fail.

I could be forgiven for not staking things earlier if I didn't know better. But I do. And yet, all over the garden, there are plants laying on the ground, looking like the smoke monster from "Lost" trudged through the yard late at night.

The list of plants that have suffered for my lack of staking attention this year is long. A variety of particularly tall-growing sedums, a few dahlias that were forgotten along the way, some hydrangeas that got a little floppier than I anticipated (although that's more a case of tying up rather than staking, to get technical), all but one of the many castor bean plants spread around the garden and the 'Redbor' kale that should be the star of the fall garden but instead is impeding any sort of movement through the circle garden.

Horrible quality kale selfie. That's some big kale.

The kale is a mishmosh of still-standing stalwarts and flopped-over Suessian cruciferous purple goodness.

The 'Redbor' kale counts among the great successes in this year's garden. Grown from seed, the plants have flourished and defined the circle garden. When a few of them started listing several weeks ago, I dutifully staked them with 3-foot stakes. But the kale, which was rapidly approaching gargantuan size, laughed at my lame staking attempt. Even the staked kales toppled. Before one of the largest started tipping over, it was a good foot over my head.

This one was one of the lucky ones who was staked early on, but I didn't continue tying it in, so it flopped over anyway.

I have no explanation for my lack of staking other than optimism. Every year I convince myself that my plants will defy gravity and not need any support.

Have I learned my lesson finally? Stay tuned until next year, but I wouldn't bet on it.

What garden lesson do you just never really learn?

AS THE SEEDLINGS TURN: A GROWING FROM SEEDS UPDATE

I started more things from seed this year than I ever have and I'm so happy I did. More than just the satisfaction of growing from seeds and the fact that I'll have a well-stocked garden for pennies, it kept me busy during those hardest months for gardeners. It was lovely to tend to something green.

In fact, I'm still tending. Our last frost date is somewhere around May 10 so I won't be planting anything that is sensitive to cold until after that (by at least a week). Some things, like basil and nasturtiums have just recently been sown. With the exception of a few larger things or things that don't like root disturbance, everything was sown in soil blocks and then potted up into either 4-inch or 3.5-inch pots.

Plants in my hardening-off house.

But the back room, where I set up some grow lights, was turning into a scene from "Little Shop of Horrors" and something had to get out of there. I ended up buying a large temporary greenhouse that I use mostly for hardening things off. That has created room in the house for the dozens of dahlias I'm starting in pots. Dahlias just need warmth to sprout, but not light, so they are mostly stacked up. As they sprout, I'll move them into the greenhouse to grow on.

Redbor kale

As far as growing from seeds goes, I think I can qualify most of my efforts as successes. The redbor kale, which I will grow as an ornamental (although there's no reason I can't snitch a couple leaves here and there) in the circle garden is ready to transplant any time. I'll be growing other kinds of kale for eating, but I plan on direct sowing these in the garden: I can't start everything inside!

Nicotiana alata

The nicotiana alata is the big success story of my seed starting. The plants are lovely and healthy. Just last week they all tried to start flowering and I had to nip out the buds. In fact the only problem with these is that they grew much more quickly than I anticipated and they are going to get a little tight in their pots until I can get them planted (especially since a few are destined for containers that don't usually get planted until the end of May).

Signet marigolds

I fell in love with signet marigolds last year when I picked up a few at our master gardener plant sale. They have charming little edible flowers and citrus-scented foliage that is pleasant to me, but not to critters. I found the "Tangerine Gem" seeds to be easier to grow than "Lemon Gem" but I have enough of each to spread around the garden.

I'm also growing "Geisha Girl" calendula which I like for its flowers but I'm also hoping to learn how to use it in tinctures and creams (it's great for cuts and burns).

Sweet peas

Gomphrey (aka globe amarinth) didn't germinate as well as I had hoped, but I have enough of them. And the sweet peas, at least those that escaped the wrath of a cat hellbent on eating them every time she sneaked in the back room, are doing pretty well. All have been nipped back to create bushier growth.

Bronze fennel is gorgeous and I'm hoping I can get these plants to a decent size before putting them in the garden. I love the airiness of fennel. It's also a host plant for swallowtail butterflies so if it all gets eaten, I'll at least feel good about it.

Just sprouted basil.

The basil has just germinated but looks to be in good shape.

As is often the case with gardening, sometimes the things you want to succeed the most, end up struggling for no apparent reason. That is the story of my verbena bonariensis seeds. After sowing them the first time after chilling them in the fridge and having no germination, I consulted other sources that said nothing of doing that and did a second sowing. My information says that they can take 14 to 28 days to germinate and that they need darkness but warmth to germinate. For three weeks, my verbena seeds have stayed in the darkness of the basement on a heating mat, first covered with newspaper, then with the plastic cover of the flat covered by a towel. I would say that maybe a third or fewer have germinated and while I've not brought it into the light, I think it's time to start thinking about doing that. I haven't seen anything new germinate in recent days to make me think that any more are going to.

It's funny that the verbena is being so picky. For many people, it's almost considered a weed as it reseeds so freely. I've never found a self-sown seedling in my garden, either because it's too cold or maybe because I'm too quick with weeding (although that seems unlikely with my less-than-stellar weeding habits). Still, my dreams of a tray of verbena seem to be fading.

What did you grow from seed this year and how's it going?

DON'T LOOK NOW BUT GARDENING SEASON IS ALMOST HERE

Now THAT was a weekend. Temperatures here nudged up to 40 this weekend, birds were singing, the sun had warmth and I got a few more garden chores taken care of.

I got the last Limelight hydrangea pruned and it feels good to have that job finished. I also covered up the raised vegetable beds and the compost pile with black plastic in hopes of heating things up a little quicker (there is still a layer of snow on them). These are all small things but on those first warm days it feels wonderful to just be outside.

We even brought up a couple of chairs and basked in the sun on the deck for awhile. It was divine.

I'm thrilled to report that inside seed starting is officially underway.

Check out the root sticking out of this soil block.

I started a flat of Redbor kale, which I grow more as an ornamental than an edible (I prefer Lacinato kale for eating). I think kale does better when you direct sow it, but I'd like to have some established plants for growing as ornamentals so I'm hoping these will be a good size by the time I plant them out.

I'm growing a lot of things in soil blocks this year for the first time. I'm just experimenting with them right now, but once I get a better feel for them, I'll do a post about how to use them. One of the interesting things about them is that it's much easier to see what your seeds are doing. For instance, I was shocked at how quickly roots were coming out of the bottom of the block even with a small amount of top growth. Gives you perspective on how much is going on that you never see.

Chives growing away.

I also have a flat of chives under the grow light. I want to finish the chive hedge on the circle garden this year and between these new plants and being able to take divisions of what is there, I think I should be able to make it all the way around.

Gigante parsley, which is notoriously slow to germinate, is on the heat mat in the basement, but I don't expect to see anything popping up for a couple weeks.

Sweet peas when they had germinated sufficiently to be brought upstairs.

The sweet pea trial had an interesting outcome. Sort of. To refresh your memory, I took three seeds of two varieties of sweet peas: a Spencer variety for cutting—Lake Windermere—and an heirloom variety grown mostly for its scent—Fire and Ice. For each variety, I soaked one seed for 22 hours, nicked one seed and left one seed alone. Then I planted them in 4-inch pots (three per pot), heated them to between 60 and 65 degrees and watched for germination.

Here's when they germinated:
Day 6: Untouched Fire and Ice
Day 8: Untouched Lake Windermere
Day 10: Nicked Fire and Ice
Day 13: Soaked Fire and Ice

From there, Fire and Ice took off and Lake Windermere was stuck in time. The one seed that had germinated wasn't exactly thriving and the other two never germinated. Upon a close inspection, I found something crawling in the Lake Windermere pot and I'm pretty sure it was some kind of fungus gnat because the soil was too wet. That's the danger of using a larger pot with seeds ... it's very easy to make them too wet.

Fire and Ice is doing well enough to be ready for a little pinching back.

Because of that, I don't think this was really a fair trial, although I think the fact that the untouched seeds were the first to germinate in both pots suggests that you probably can't go wrong, no matter which way you choose to treat your sweet pea seeds.

I did sow another pot of Lake Windermere, so it will be interesting to see what happens with that.

The "real" sweet peas as well as Verbena bonariensis and several other things are scheduled to be planted next weekend. Good thing I ordered a bigger grow light!

FIRST PLANTS IN, MORE SEEDS TO COME

It was a great weekend in the garden: two marathon days that left the garden in pretty good shape and my body in pretty bad shape. There is something so satisfying about the pain one feels after long days in the garden.

I put some row cover over the peas and lettuce seed, if only to protect them a bit from the torrential rains predicted for this week.

A highlight of my work in the garden this weekend was planting my first veggies in the garden. Kale, lettuce, peas and onion seedlings (purchased) all went in this weekend. Some of the kale and the peas were among the seedlings I started inside.

By and large, the seeds have been doing well. Everything germinated and grew very well. As seedlings got their first sets of true leaves, I pulled out or snipped off all but the strongest seedling in each plug of basil and kale. I let the bunching onions get bunchy and I had already thinly sowed the nasturtiums.

On Friday I potted up the basil into 3-inch pots. They have a long way to go before I'll plant them outside. In a normal year I wouldn't plant basil outside until the last week in May at the very earliest. With the way the weather is going this year, it could be a couple weeks into June before it is warm enough for them. Most of the pots are back inside and will be moved to the mini greenhouse (essentially a cold frame) when it gets a little warmer. A few pots didn't fit in the tray, so they are outside in pots protected by row cover fending for themselves as a bit of an experiment.

I've been hardening off the kale for the last week or more and planted out the plugs directly into the garden on Sunday. I also planted some kale seeds as well. I will plant more kale in coming weeks as well.

The bunching onions aren't doing much. They seem to be stalled in their growth. I may harden them off and move them out hoping to spark some growth.

The nasturtiums are growing really well. In fact, when I picked up the tray the other day, I noticed roots were jumping out the bottom, so I also potted them up in 4-inch pots, two plants per pot, on Friday. I pinched them back at the same time, hoping to encourage nice bushy growth.

The roots of the peas were already coming out the bottom of the biodegradable pots.

Peas planted in their pots in the garden.

I read that while peas like cool weather to grow, they germinate best at 70 degrees, so I sowed some snap peas in a cardboard seed tray. They germinated quickly and I immediately started hardening them off. Sunday, I planted out the trays intact into a corner of the garden where they will quickly disintegrate (the roots were already coming through the bottom). I hope to have a better pea harvest than most years, as I'm using first planting seeds outside at this point.

The biggest challenge so far has been keeping the cat away from the seedlings.

With some room in the seed trays and under the grow light, I was able to sow a few more seeds.

I planted an entire tray of kale. Yep, more kale. I intend to plant most of these in the ornamental gardens where they will be beautiful foliage (that we'll nibble on when we're too lazy to walk to the veggie garden). Once those germinate (i.e. move off the heat mat), I think I'll start some zinnias and some more nasturtiums, or perhaps some parsley. I'm so impressed with how the basil is doing (it's already at the size I have purchased plants at in the past) that I'm inspired to give parsley (which I never have enough of) a try.

Some ciopollini onion seedlings also went in and plenty close as they stay small. Also, you're getting a sneak peek at another project I'm working on in the background.

How is your seed growing going? Did you get to plant anything in the garden this weekend?

A sweet treat, just not for me

Some gardeners are much better than I am about planting late-season crops. A friend on Facebook just posted a beautiful haul of beets the other day. I am just burned out by the end of the summer and I consider it a success if I can just stay on top of harvesting and general maintenance. Planting, and more importantly, nursing seedlings along in their early days is just not going to happen.

But I've been judiciously using my kale so that it would extend into late fall. Kale, like many of its cruciferous breathren, gets even better when the weather turns cool and it takes on a sweety, nutty flavor. In fact I've been planning a dinner in which my favorite kale salad is featured.

So imagine my surprise when I went out to the garden this morning and found my formerly lush kale bed looking like a stripped forest.

All that is left are the thick stalks, but every leafy bit has been nibbled off. The culprits are not difficult to finger. It is, of course, our healthy herd of neighborhood deer who apparently also know that kale peaks in cool weather.

I'm sure they enjoyed every sweet morsel of that kale. But I might have recommended a bit of parmesan and maybe a few toasted pine nuts to go with it.

This year's veggie garden: A lot of flops and one huge success

Vegetable gardening is all but finished for the year. The occasional tomato ripens up and we're still eating onions from the garden, but for the most part, it's all over. I'll have to start buying vegetables from the grocery store within a week. That makes me so sad. (You can read about the varieties I planted here.)

Overall it was a lousy year in the vegetable garden. The tomatoes were mostly a disaster. It was so cold so late into summer that they got a really rough start. Last year I froze tons of them. This year I didn't even have enough to give away to neighbors.

The cucumbers were awful. I might have planted them too late, or maybe it was just bad weather, but I grow them almost exclusively for pickling and I didn't enough to even make one batch of pickles. We ate a few in salads and they were delicious, but if I'm going to be pickling, I need enough to make at least a few jars at a time.

 The zucchini were OK. Not great, and I never had to resort to making zucchini bread to use it up, but what we had was delicious.

The green beans were a disaster. I think green beans are probably my favorite vegetable. I didn't plant nearly enough of them and they just didn't keep producing. I had enough to make green bean soup (a summer favorite) just once and the rest were consumed in the garden. I love them raw!

Three crops that I planted at home did really well this year. The Swiss chard was amazing and just keeps on producing, to the point where we almost can't look at it anymore. The beets were so delicious, but I only really had enough for two dinners (with some leftovers to put on salads).

But the real standout was a new crop for me this year: kale. I'll be honest, I didn't like to eat kale in spring. I do love it as an ornamental. But I've learned that if I grow something, I'm much more likely to eat it and I was hoping that would be the case with this nutrient-packed superfood.

When it became clear that I planted way too many seeds in the new raised bed, I transplanted the thinned seedlings to bare spots in the circle garden by the house. To my surprise, they almost all grew and not a single critter (wild or domesticated) bothered them one bit. I still think they are gorgeous and worth planting just for that, but it turns out I love eating it too.

I planted three varieties: Redbor Kale, Rainbow Lacinato Kale and Nero di Tuscana Kale

For eating purposes my favorite has been the Nero di Tuscana, which has slim, dark leaves.

I know that kale chips are all the rage, and trust me, I've tried them. I think I tried them five separate times and every time I hated them. They sort of turned into salty dust no matter what I did.

And then I found this recipe and I'm hooked. I crave this salad all the time. It's so good. In fact, since I discovered it, this is the ONLY way I've eaten kale. I've also taken it to a couple parties where it was a huge hit, and I don't think kale is known as a big people pleaser. My recipe is a version of this one although I've changed it so much it doesn't really resemble that one much anymore.

The Impatient Gardener delicious kale salad

A BIG bunch of kale (my favorite for this is Nero di Tuscana, but other varieties work too)
About 3 ounces good parmesan cheese, shaved
One shallot
Juice from one lemon
Teaspoon of lemon zest
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Toasted pine nuts (optional)

Rinse the kale well, remove the back rib and chop crosswise into half-inch wide strips. I wash it again in a salad spinner to make sure no bugs have come along for the ride and that it's very dry.

Chop a shallot finely and combine it with the lemon zest, lemon juice, olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. You can play with the amounts, but I generally like more acid in my dressings so I do at least 50-50. Combine it all and put it in the fridge. I find that the dressing is best if you can let it sit for an hour or more to mellow a little.

Combine the kale with the shaved parmesan. I use my vegetable peeler to get wide strips of cheese. It will seem like a lot of cheese, and in fact it is, but everything else in this salad is super healthy so go for it.

Toss it all together with the dressing (go a little heavier than you would for a regular lettuce salad) and let it sit for 15 minutes or so so the kale gets a touch softer (don't worry, it won't go limp on you). Toss with pine nuts and serve.

If you try it, let me know what you think.