Value of the vegetable garden

Our vegetable garden is a 17'x14' area in our front yard - small but easy enough to tend in 1 or 2 hours a week.

I've been wondering if it's really worth it. I mean, other than the pleasure I get from toiling in the dirt and the smallish chance my children will be inspired by the sight of vegetables growing and actually want to eat one of them.

So, part of this project is keeping track of the cold hard cash value of what we're pulling out of our garden. So, far, we've gotten about 5 pints of strawberries, 1/2 lb of snap peas and several bags of lettuce and spinach. I'll forget that what we have is local and organic and that that combination commands jaw-dropping prices at the local Whole Foods, and focus on the price of these items as if they were plain old vegetables from the regular grocery store. Current price are $2.50/pint of commercially grown California strawberries, $4.99/pound of snap peas and $4.99/box of mixed greens - bringing the total value of our garden to $24.99, (and it's only June 19th!) and that's ignoring all the snips of chives, basil, garlic scapes, oregano, parsley and cilantro for which I can't begin to calculate the value.

Black bugs on Nasturtiums

These little buggers are kind of aphid and they descend with ferocity on my nasturtiums. Nasturtiums serve 2 purposes in the vegetable garden. Firstly, they're delicious. But I'll discuss edible flowers more when I actually have some flowers to eat. Also, they act as a "trap crop" which draws little haters like these aphids away from my more valuable vegetable crops.

My first course of action has been to pick them off by hand. If the assault continues, I have heard of some pepper-based organic insecticides that might keep them away.

Growing cucumbers in Boston

We've successfully grown marketmore cucumbers from commercially grown starts in our garden for years, but buying the starts doesn't seem nearly as efficient as starting my own cucumbers from seed.

Last year, I direct sowed cucumbers in the garden and got nowhere. We got 1 or 2 cucumbers from the 20 or so seeds I planted. The few seeds that sprouted never really grew. This year, I started the seeds indoors in newspaper pots (persian cucumbers and an asian variety) in late April. My first problem was that a sunny south-facing window sill does not provide enough sunlight to start seedlings. I need to get a grow light. The seedlings emerged quickly enough, but they grew tall and spindly and not thick and strong. Nonetheless, I planted them out where I knew they would get a lot more sun and hoped for the best.

Late May and early June have served us a hearty helping of cold, rainy weather - which is not a curcurbit's best friend. My seedlings languished. Several died (hey, that's why you plant so many!). Facing the terror of another summer without cucumbers, I went to the greenhouse and bought 2 well-established marketmore seedlings ($3.99 for both), and started feeding everything regularly.

There is some sign of hope amoungst the seedlings I started myself, but can you see the difference between the vigorous 4-leafed marketmore in the bottom left and the other plants in the picture? These cukes get sun from about 12:30 until 7:30 or so in the evening and 2-3 inches of water per week. I'm hoping the weather warms some more, and we get some cucumbers this summer!

Growing leeks from seed part 2

Growing leeks from seed has turned out to be a tedious venture. These leeks were started indoors in early March. Here they are 14 weeks - finally starting to add some girth!

The ones that I direct sowed in the garden in early April are even smaller - barely more than a blade of grass!!!

I have been feeding them every other week with Neptune's Harvest, and the regular feeding has really helped.

I have maybe 12-14 more weeks before there is a frost in Boston. I wonder if the leeks will be ready before then....

Growing green beans

The green beans (a combination of Kentucky Blue and haricot verts) are finally looking happy.

-some of these beans were started indoors in newspaper pots in late April
-some were started in plastic bags in early May
-some were direct sown in the garden in mid-April
-some were direct sown in the garden in early June

There is very little difference. OK, the ones started 10 days ago are definitely smaller, but the rest of them are about the same size. The ones started indoors in late April struggled for a long time after I planted them out in mid-May.

It seems the warming summer weather has perked them up.

Three sisters garden (corn, beans, squash)

When the corn was up 4 inches or so (around June 8th), I thinned the corn to about 12" and planted 3-4 pole beans seeds at the base of each stalk (a mix of Kentucky blue and haricot verts). 10 days later, the corn has survived a rabbit attack and the beans are starting to sprout.

I also planted pumpkin at either end of the corn bed. This is the "three sisters garden", a supposedly beneficial planting arrangement where the beans climb the corn stalks and the squash, in this case pumpkins, fill in around the base to form a natural mulch. Greg normally does not go for such promiscuous co-minging of plants, so I've never tried this approach before.

Vegetable garden in Massachusetts

It's been about 10 weeks since the garden was started with some of the earliest seeds - bibb lettuce, mesclun mix (spinach, blood beet, mustard greens, lettuce), carrots, snap peas and mache.

The bibb lettuce and mesclun is in full swing. We are eating salads exlusively from the garden right now and have been for about 10 days. Unless the weather turns suddenly hot, I think we'll have lettuce for a few more weeks. The mache never really took off, though. I'm thinking it needs more water...?

We are also starting to get snap peas - which are delicious snapped right off the vine (so delicious I've been eating most of them before they make it to the kitchen).

The carrots are almost, but not quite ready.

Growing strawberries

Growing strawberries in the garden is one of the most rewarding food crops I've ever grown. We started our strawberry patch last year with about 6 plants donated from our friend Gus.

They spread like crazy last year. Every plant sent out 5 or 6 runners for new plants. This spring, I rearranged them in their 3'X5' area. They are planted pretty densely - spaced about every 6 or 8 inches. I threw down a sprinkling of composted manure - about 1/2 inch deep and mulched them with pine needles. Strawberries prefer slightly acidic soil in the 5.5-6.5 range and pine needles will help lower the pH. That said, the pine needles had no immediate affect on the soil pH. The soil in the strawberry bed is still just over 7.

I watered them 2-3 times per week with the rest of the vegetable garden, and I put netting over them once the berries started to set to protect them from critters. (It's important not to put the netting on too soon, because the bees were not too keen to go through the netting to the flowers, even though the holes were plenty large enough for them to fit).

Now, in early June, we are pulling in a bowl of berries every day! 3'x5' feet is just enough for everyone in our family of 4 to have fresh strawberries in the morning, but not enough to justify making jam.

The total cost for our strawberry endeavour was about $2 for netting and maybe $1 in compost, and it will yield several pints of strawberries over the course of 2-3 weeks. And WOW! these strawberries taste like... STRAWBERRIES! I've gotten used to the giant, red, flavorless variety that comes from the grocery store. These taste like strawberry candy - they are so intensely strawberry-flavored and so juicey.

After the fruit is finished, they will again send out runners, and we will have more strawberry plants than we have room for. Anyone want to start a strawberry patch???

See more of our strawberry growing adventures in Boston!

Grubs in the Chard part 3

Suck it grubs! Chard victorious.

Growing mache from seed

Mache is a delicate, sweet green sometimes called "lambs lettuce". The mature heads are only about 2 inches across. This mache was direct sowed in the garden April 5th. At 8.5 weeks it is ready to be eaten. The problem is that not a lot of it grew from my seeds. I did not get enough mache from my 36"x18" plot to make a full salad, but I'll still enjoy the little bit that I got! If the mache had grown thickly in this area, I would have gotten several salad.

Mache is a cool weather plant and it's thriving in this cool June weather, but as soon as the days turn hot, I will pull the mache and replant with something else for the summer. I'll give the mache another go in the fall!

Cilantro at 7 weeks

At 7 weeks after directing sowing on April 15th, the cilantro is ready to eat.

First June strawberries

The first strawberries are in, and they are sweet and lucious and smallish. Mmmmm.

Don't let those fools at the grocery store sell you on that nauseatingly sweet spongey yellow cake and instant whipped cream. Real short cake is more like a biscuit, sweet and a little bit tender, and it's super easy to make.

Strawberry Shortcake Recipe:

2 cups flour

1 Tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

4 Tbsp. sugar

1 stick cold butter in 8 pieces

2/3 cup half and half

In food processor combine w/ several pulses:

2 cups flour

1 Tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

4 Tbsp. sugar

Add butter and pulse several times

Transfer mixture to bowl and add enough half and half to make dough moist

Transfer to counter and knead 3-4 times.

Flatten dough to 3/4 inch thickness and cut with bisquit cutter or drinking glass.

Bake 10-15 minutes at 425

Serve with fresh, halved and hulled strawberries and cream whipped with bourbon and honey. (The secret to great whipped cream is having the bowl, the beaters and the cream really cold.)

Picture of snap pea flower turning into pea

Picture of snap pea flower

Snap peas in June

The snap peas have grown another 12" in the last week, AND we have peas!

Corn has sprouted!

The second time was a charm! The corn from the second sowing sprouted like clockwork 2 weeks later. The trick this time was keeping the soil very moist and keeping the bed covered so the birds couldn't eat the corn.

This is Silver Queen corn - a silvery white sweet corn. I spent my childhood summers on the Maryland shore, and the road to get there wound through the farm country of the eastern shore of the Chesapeake bay. Farm stands dotted the route where you could buy peaches, watermelons, tomatoes and the unbelievably delicious Silver Queen corn.

Not sure if this southern transplant will succeed in Massachusetts. We tried it last year and, while it grew well, the corn itself was tough and inedible.

Once the corn is an inch or two taller, I will add bean seeds around the base of each stalk.

Ripe strawberries

The first strawberries are starting to ripen!