Side Beds on June 21
I took quite a few photographs over the last several days and wanted to share a few.
Our Square Foot Gardening (SFG) is progressing nicely. The Broccoli and first round of Romaine Lettuce are done, the plants have been removed, and the squares prepped for new crops. I’m not sure what we will be putting in all of these spots, but we will add some more Carrots and some Cilantro for sure.
Side Beds on June 7th.
Things are growing well. I haven’t had much time at all to spend in the garden, but luckily with the SFG method, not much time is required.
We’ve been harvesting Romaine Lettuce, Spinach, Peas and Broccoli which have made for some nice salads.
The Tomato and Pepper plants were transplanted about the third week of May and seem to be doing well in their new home. I overestimated how many tomato plants we would be able to grow, so we have quite a few that are going to end up as compost. We started 27 Roma plants, and only four made it into one of the side beds.
Side beds on May 8th.
We are getting close to planting time here in Ohio. Hopefully we are having our last cold spell this weekend with the forecast calling for 50s during the day and mid-to-high 30s as our lows for Saturday and Sunday. Mother’s day is usually our unofficial planting date for most crops and we are hitting it pretty close this year.
Our cold weather crops are coming along just fine. Pictured here are our side beds as of today. From left to right in the closest bed is Cabbage (4), Brussel’s Sprouts (8), and Broccoli (8). There are also a few Nasturtiums that I transplanted a few days ago, as well as 4 squares of Green Onions that have just sprouted this last week.
Side beds on April 14th.
This years gardening seems to be getting a better start than last years. 2009 was our first year gardening so we had a major learning curve, and while we are still learning; this year seems to be going so much smoother. Last year most everything was started fairly late. We’ve gotten a good head start this year, and might even be early on a few things.
We (read I, Amy can’t be blamed 
) transplanted the Brassicas out on about April 10th or so. We had been gone for a few days and left them under the row cover to continue hardening off and they were dry and wilted when we returned. I gave them a good watering and, since the weather had been so nice for several weeks, decided to transplant everything to avoid more watering issues. We got below freezing a night or two later, but everything survived just fine.
Two weeks later I am very surprised by the growth spurt of the brassicas. They are more than double the size of the few that remained in cups. I didn’t really see that they could be called root bound when I transplanted, but they sure have taken off since given more room.
We’ve had a couple of beautiful days this last week so I’ve been out puttering around the yard. I moved one of our raised beds to another location to get more sun, moved our compost bins to tidy up the back yard and make room for another bed for tomatoes and basil (Bruschetta yum-yum), and cut down some decorative grass that I need to figure out how to get to go away permanently. I hope we can squeeze another 2×16′ bed along the side of the house for cucumbers and dill.
I actually got a light sunburn on my neck today. It was absolutely gorgeous out there. I believe the weather man was calling for 65° today and I wouldn’t doubt that we made it.
Venison Burgers on Home-made Whole Wheat Buns.
Amy’s dad gave us some venison that I’ve been wanting to put to use. I thought I’d make myself a venison burger for lunch a few days ago but didn’t really fancy it on Wheat or Italian bread. Our new KitchenAid mixer has us looking for every opportunity to put it to use so I looked up a recipe for home-made hamburger buns. My simple lunch turned into a very large dinner hours later.
We generally eat whole wheat bread much more often than white bread, so I altered the recipe and used mostly whole wheat flour. I thought I’d write a little more about this experience instead of just posting my results as working with whole wheat has been a little difficult and I’d like to share what has worked for us.
KitchenAid Professional 5 Plus
Both Amy and I have tried our hands at making home made bread over years and have had some decent results. Amy’s zucchini bread was exceptionally good this year with our home grown zucchini. Although we really enjoy home-made bread, and like the idea of knowing all the ingredients, it has been a chore to make the standard type breads (white and wheat for regular use) using our Sunbeam mixer. While the Sunbeam does the initial mixing of ingredients just fine, it just can’t handle the kneading, and its something that neither of us enjoy doing by hand.
We’ve been considering getting a nice KitchenAid mixer for about a year now. Along with the ability to knead bread doughs, we like the idea of using the attachments to process our garden vegetables. I am particularly interested in the Fruit and Vegetable Strainer to make tomato sauce with all of those beautiful Roma Tomatoes, and Amy would sure put the Slicer / Shredder attachment to good use making our salads.
We can’t afford to get the attachments right away, but we finally bit the bullet and ordered our stand mixer last week. The KitchenAid Professional 5 Plus Stand Mixer arrived yesterday just before Amy got home from work, so I had just enough time to get it unpacked, inspected, and washed before she arrived. We dove right in and started mixing like mad people 
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If you have sites running on CubeCart v3 it’s time to update.
It appears that CubeCart version 3.xx is no longer working with the Paypal pro gateway.
We haven’t taken many pictures this month so I haven’t posted in a while, but here are a few images of our harvest and some new recipes we’ve tried recently.
Cucumber resting on the mulch
I snapped a few pictures of my raised beds this morning. The cucumbers are finally starting to look a little better. I have read that the slow growing is likely due to the amount of rain that we’ve received this spring. It’s been a very wet year so far. This being our first year gardening I’ve also been watering, and likely over-watered, my seedlings while they were still inside. It’s a learning experience
The cucumber plants are still smaller than I’d expected them to be by this time, but there are blossoms and cucumbers popping up in several places.
