Lettuce and Peas...And Edamame!

Sugar snap peas, lettuce, 'Buttercrunch, and 'Cimarron' sown about 2 1/2 weeks ago in the large pot on my deck.  They had germinated before the last snow and night when temperatures reached 12 degrees (F).  Still looking good!  

Here in the United States, we must be pea snobs.  We tend to eat peas shelled and steamed (or boiled).  Regardless, when we eat peas we are usually talking about eating the immature seeds, not the fresh shots or tender pods.   We do this not only with peas, but a host of other garden vegetables.  We eat the beets, but tend to forego the beet tops, we eat the lettuce when it is mature.  We wait to eat the florets of broccoli and ignore the leaves.  Same for immature cabbage before it has formed a head, we decline to snip off a few tasty green, or red leaves to add an extra peppery crunch to our spring salads.

Once you start growing your own salad plots you begin to understand how much food we waste, even as gardeners.

Bountiful Garden, Yours in Exchange for a Freezer

The family garden is fulfilling its promise. My brother with his growing family (three boys three and under) and myself and Handsome Son (college-bound), and nominally my parents will all eat from its bounty. My brother has been diligent in his role of chief waterer, an important job this year, to which he has really stepped up.

I'm the grower, and I have been notably successful with everything this year except germination in the garden of spinach (but we will be having a fall crop, rest assured!).

Even with eating fresh from the garden everyday, and my canning and drying and putting up different oils, a lot of our bounty will be frozen. I have hunted recipes for edamame and amaranth. We have a juicer for the grapes. We are already out of freezer space. Time to get a second freezer.

So my brother and I have decided as the family garden is actually visible from a major highway (car count of at least 10,000 car a day, probably a LOT more) with an exit right THERE, that we should sell our bounty, picking it literally in front of our customers' eyes. We take that money and buy whatever sort of freezer we can afford. Future income a better water supply (rather than hoses from the house) and a green house (drool).

My brother, very pie-in-the-sky, decided instead of words we should paint pictures, a picture being worth a thousand words. Pictures with the crunch of a fresh cucumber, the snap of a bean, the juiciness of a tomato...

My brother is a fair artist. An oil he did of his wife hangs in her dressing room. You can see the love with which he captured her expression and you can easily see it is my sister-in-law, but...

So, "Yo!"

"You painting these pictures?" I query.

"No,...I'm just a hack... you are. You have more time."

Ugh. Thusly decided, I was given the job of painting the sign(s). Turns out we need lots of these 10" x 3' sign blanks painted with sweet corn, cukes, peppers, beans, you get the idea.

I wish I had pictures of the others. As my sister-in-law says, "they are so dang cute!"

Maybe I'll take some pictures of the others, I don't know. I spent some time working for a muralist. They are sorta cute, without faces you understand, and easily conveying at 65+ MPH that "we got some good organic tomatoes over here!"

Maybe in a different life I might have made a living doing art or writing, but do you know anyone who really makes a living from their art or words these days?

Faithful Companion, Cinnamon, gets aromatherapy from Handsome Son's athletic shoes and flip flops. She says a few minutes and all the creative impulses pass.

Fused glass buttons, pendants and a dragonfly plate I made in a fused glass class I recently took from the artist of Blessings Glassworks.

Some jewelry I made. You can probably tell I'm self-taught!

A wire-wrapped bead collection that will go into an as yet,unfinished bracelet. Someday the creative impulse will certainly pass!

So if you see the juicy tomato or crunchy cucumber sign, stop and say hi!

Update on Garden Projects:Apples

Sticky trap hanging in the Chicago Botanic Gardens (CBG).


This is a picture of some apples on an espaliered apple tree at the CBG. The black blemishes show the apple has been infected by either apple fly maggot or codling moth.

The CBG is in the fourth year of their organic gardening project. They have a number of apple trees, which I have to assume are also under the same organic dictates. The CBG was not bagging the "king" apple. They did not allow the grass to grow under their feet, so to speak. Some organic apple growers cite a dense, taller grass as a method to prevent or lesser the number of insect going to ground during certain life stages of the insect.



These are great tips, but they don't go far enough. Seeing the heavily-dimpled and spotted apples, the CBG will not have many, if any, blemish-free apples this fall.

As you might remember, I used a dormant oil spray in late February. In May, when I had nearly complete petal drop I sprayed with the chemical Malathion, not an organic choice. The recommendation is spraying at 75 percent petal drop. High winds took the trees from no petal drop to complete petal drop in the matter of hours.

The idea of Malathion use is treating codling moth and apple fly maggot during particular life stages. Another application will be done in the third week of July. I also hung sticky traps to capture apple fly maggot. These application of Malathion at specific dates are in contrast to spraying every two weeks.

If you do not have tall grass under your apple trees, black landscape fabric is recommended. I did not put down landscape fabric, but I do have my apple trees under planted with lilies, onions, and alliums.

So far I see no dimples, frass (a extruded gooey jelly typically from the blossom end), or any other blemishes that signals larval insect damage.

I am hopeful.

Two sprayings and a dose of dormant oil, the last a good two months before harvest, seems a lot better than regular twice monthly spraying. This one application of Malathion has been the only pesticide or fungicide has been the only chemical use in either the potager or family garden necessary so far this season.

Now, if I could get the Mantis tiller to cooperate!