Uncle Jabba's Blog at GardenStew.com

Seeds in a tray and in the ground

Uncle Jabba — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:57:35 -0500

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 9:57 pm (GMT 0)

Well last week, 2/18/8, I started two kinds of Spinach, 2 kinds of cabbage and some kale, 5 tray cells of each variety. Some sprouted and others I have reseeded. Today I planted four 14-foot rows of a Sugar Snap peas.

The lettuce in the cold frame continues to grow well. Although one head of lettuce just wilted and died a week or so ago. I can probably begin to harvest at any time but I think I will give them about two more weeks.

Soil is prepped and seeds are here

Uncle Jabba — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:55:49 -0500

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 9:55 pm (GMT 0)

Well my soil has been loosened and a couple inches of some real nice compost has been added.

Check this truck load out and guess how much a load of compost like this costs.

Just $12.50 for all of this. There were probably 2 wheelbarrow loads laying on the ground behind the truck when I pulled away because the bucket on the loader was longer then the truck.

So here is the ground prepped

Here is the top coated garden

Closeup of the compost

Here is my Cilantro growing from last years seed drop.

This is what the contents of the cold frame looks like.

AsI mentioned above my seeds arrived today. Tommorow the sugar snap peasgo in the ground and I start a tray of seeds inside.

Seeya,
Uncle Jabba

Turning dirt (barefoot) in NC

Uncle Jabba — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:17:15 -0500

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 10:17 pm (GMT 0)

Hello All:

Just wanted to post a quick update. It was beautiful here in the North Carolina Piedmont today. In anticipation of my seed order arriving I took the garden fork and loosened about a 1/3 of my garden this morning. It was so warm I was working barefoot, wearing shorts and a tshirt. I love to garden barefoot it just feels so nice to be barefoot in good garden soil. I saw a lot of nice fat worms today. Most had at least one visible One fork full of dirt had three in it.

I also gathered a soil sample and took it into Raleigh today and dropped it off at the NC Ag dept lab. It is amazing to see the volume of orders waiting to be processed. There were mail carts filled with boxes just arrived with the mail, There were even pallets of little boxes. It only took a couple of weeks last year but they were not backed up on the loading dock.

I think I am going to see if a neighbor will let me get him to take me to get a load of compost. There is a landfill that composts the local yard waste. Its really nice looking and pretty inexpensive. I would like to finishing loosing up the soil this week then get a deep layer of compost on top. It will really help to drought proof my garden and minimize my drip irrigation usage this summer.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

2008 Garden is underway

Uncle Jabba — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 08:35:41 -0500

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 1:35 pm (GMT 0)

Hello All:

I just wanted to give a quick update showing the end of 2007's garden has volunteered to provide a 4 season harvest.

I have built a small straw bale cold frame to shelter the lettuce that appeared as volunteers from my lettuce that bolted this summer. I even had some beautiful colors of lettuce in my yard for a while.

The cold frame is just 6 bales covered with plastic. I used some random pieces of lumber that I rolled under the plastic and staple gunned the plastic around it. One end is held in place with tent stakes, no lumber this end. One corner (windy side)is stappled heavily to the garden border timbers. Yesterday I also ran drip irrigation into the bed, weeded and side dressed with organic fertilizer. I should hopefully have lettuce in a month.

Fall Garden Planted

Uncle Jabba — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 12:51:16 -0400

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 4:51 pm (GMT 0)

It has been a couple weeks since I started planting the fall garden so this update feels late to me. I now have in the ground both golden and Chiogga beets, Purple Haze Carrots, red meat radishes, some pickles I never planted earlier, and all 6 kind of lettuce I bought and the spinach.

Everything but the carrots has sprouted. I have been running the drip irrigation for 10 to 20 minutes every day or so.

The pumpkins are doing great and I am still harvesting more peppers and tomatoes then I can eat. But unfortunately not enough tomatos to can any.

I’ll post another update soon to much to do today.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

Pumpkins seeds in the ground

Uncle Jabba — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 12:48:29 -0400

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 4:48 pm (GMT 0)

Well I managed to get the pumpkin seeds in the ground yesterday. They were the biggest priority, they have a 95 day harvest time line. That would put harvest at November 3rd. So we will hope for the best and carve what we can into Jack-o-lanterns.

I spent a couple of hours on the rest of the garden and packed the compost tumbler again. I had emptied it last week onto the base of all of my peppers and tomatoes. So with the grass growing in the garden spots that had been empty since the peas, beets and carrots got done along with the bolting lettuce and the wax beans I have another full load to cook down.

I will finish up prettying up the open space in the garden over the next few days and then begin to plant the fall garden.

I'll post a mater and pepper update soon.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

Fall Garden seeds have arrived

Uncle Jabba — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:25:06 -0400

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2007 11:25 pm (GMT 0)

I have been solarizing parts of the garden for a week or so. I know it is not long enough to do much good but some is better then none. I was doing this to help prep for the fall garden.

I just got my seed order from Territorial seed.

I got:
Golden and Chioggia beets
Purple haze carrots
Lettuce: Tom Thumb, Winter density, Little Leprechaun, Valmaine, Italienisher organic & Capistrano
Magic Lantern Pumpkins
Red meat Radishs
Space Spinach

I also received their winter catalog to plan what greens and garlic i will grow this winter.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

Vacuum packed Wax Beans

Uncle Jabba — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 17:43:15 -0400

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 9:43 pm (GMT 0)

I just vacuum packed three one-pound packages of Yellow Wax Beans. I borrowed a FoodSaver Vacuum machine from my cousin and I just love it.

I prepped the beans by first par boiling for 1 minute then into an ice bath and then draining and freezing them on a cookie sheet. This then gave me Individually Quick Frozen (IQF) beans. I believe they have you do this so the vacuum does not crush the food. After that you just put them into the vacuum bags and the machine draws the air out and heat-seals the bag closed.

This was so much easier then the process that I went through to can green beans with my pressure cooker. And after canning like 12 quarts of green beans we did not even like them, they were too much like mushy tin can beans from the store. I really feel that this will give us beans that we will enjoy eating this winter.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

Yellow wax beans...Deep Fried

Uncle Jabba — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 08:17:37 -0400

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2007 12:17 pm (GMT 0)

Just a quick note to say I picked another 1 3/4 pounds of Yellow wax beans last night and we fried them. We took Tempura batter and fried the beans. That was a yummy dinner they were great. We had had Green Beans cooked like this a few years ago at a restaurant and thought we would give it a try.

I'm prepping today for a fourth of July party. I am getting ready to rub down 4 slabs of spare ribs that will go in the smoker first thing tomorrow morning.

Have a great 4th of July.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

PS
In response to Daff:

All that can find me are welcome to have some ribs. and if you can get here tonight I just put this on the smoker for dinner

Yellow Wax Bean harvest begins

Uncle Jabba — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 12:36:19 -0400

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 4:36 pm (GMT 0)

Hola Y'all:

Just a quick note to show the first big harvest of Wax beans.

Remember those sprouts I posted in the Gallery?

http://www.gardenstew.com/about5877.html
well we are going to eat some tonight.

Well here they are ready to eat. We picked 3 1/4 pounds of them last night and tonight I will take some over to my Grandma's house for dinner.

Pile 'O Beans

Seeya,
Uncle Jabba

Pea's are done

Uncle Jabba — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 14:20:16 -0400

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 6:20 pm (GMT 0)

Hola Y'all:

Just a quick note to say that the sweet peas are done, pulled from the garden and packed in the compost tumbler. I'm not sure what I am going to put in that spot next. Maybe a three sisters garden there, or maybe a ton of pickles and zucchini will go there. With the compost tumbler packed I am going to see if I can crank out a 21 day batch of black gold.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

Lettuce eat our greens, and reds and speckled and.....

Uncle Jabba — Mon, 14 May 2007 12:25:27 -0400

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 4:25 pm (GMT 0)

Good Morning:

Here is the update on my lettuce bed. I have now harvested three massive heads of Australian Yellow leaf, Bronze Mignonette & Speckled Lettuce. We have also eaten Spinach and some mescaline mix. I had some sort of small beetle feasting on the Mescaline mix and the tops of my radishes. But I figured that's OK they ate their fill and now appear to be gone, all part of organic gardening. I guess they were good trap crops.

Here is a couple of shots of lettuce harvested yesterday.

This is the Bronze Mignonette

Speckled Lettuce

Check out the size of that Lettuce. The container is a glad ware 13 cup or for Gardenstew himself and the other Metric based people out there, 3 liters.

Besides the ones already mentioned there is butter crunch in the above shot.

The purple in the bottom left is Cherokee, the bright green in the center is Adrianna and there is more Speckled and Bronze on the right.

Here are some detail shots

The speckled lettuce is my favorite looking. I had thought that the speckled or Bronze was a lettuce I had read that Thomas Jefferson grew at Monticello. When I looked it back up today I found that it was "Tennis Ball" I was thinking of, which is a butter head type dating back to the early 1800's. I'll have to try that one next year.

Here is some interesting reading for you regarding Thomas Jefferson and his gardening. Read carefully because there may be a quiz later. http://www.twinleaf.org/articles/vegetables.html I also found something very interesting regarding heirloom varieties versus hybrids today on the website vegparadise.com on their heirloom page

"Hybridized plants are the result of a cross between two varieties.
For instance, two varieties of tomatoes are chosen because each has
particular traits the grower wants to cultivate. When seeds are taken
from the cross-pollinated tomato, these seeds will not be able to
reproduce this crossed variety, but will revert back to one of the parents.
Heirlooms, which are open-pollinated plants, on the other hand, reproduce
themselves generation after generation."

That is something I did not know about hybrids. I'm afraid that I have become a bit of an heirloom snob over the past couple of years. I just have a bias against bigger better faster identical corporate style food, especially in my garden. I had better slow down before I get up on the second step of my soap box and give you a glimpse of my thoughts on corporate medicine vs homeopathic, the Pharmaceutical industry, corporate farming and the causes of the poor health in our modern world today.

And now back to our regularly scheduled blog entry...

Australian yellow leaf. I love all of the texture and shades of green in this shot.

Bronze Mignonette

Adrianna

Cherokee

Adrianna close-up

Cherokee close-up

Bloomsdale longstanding spinach.

That's enough for now. Future posts (I'm still in catch up mode)
1) Carrots beets and radishes
2) Tomatoes and peppers in the ground
3) Herbs
and maybe
4)a little on the flower beds around the house.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

Remember those Sweet Pea Sprouts?

Uncle Jabba — Fri, 11 May 2007 08:41:32 -0400

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 12:41 pm (GMT 0)

Hola Y'all:

Remember my post of my little sweet pea sprouts? Well we have begun to eat some of them and check out these plants now.

Kind of out of focus but peas are on the right.

Thats all for now, next update will be on the Lettuce bed.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

Drip Irrigation installed

Uncle Jabba — Tue, 08 May 2007 18:50:30 -0400

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 10:50 pm (GMT 0)

Hello:

I'm still in catch up mode so here is a quick post to show the drip irrigation that I began installing back on March 12th and 13th, according to the date stamp on the photos.

Last year I used individual emitters that put out 1 gallon per hour. With those I manually put the emitters in the main feeder lines at the base of each plant or used individual inline drippers in 1/4 inch lines. That was a big ordeal in cutting the line inserting the dripper then adding more line, cutting...lots of work on my tired old hands. This year I am mostly using 1/4 inch line with 1/2 gal emitters built into the line every 6 inches. This is not as efficient but worth the work savings.

This is the drip lines in the sweet peas on the right and my lettuce on the left.

Sweet Pea sprouts

I love the nice dry paths.

Sweet peas

Spinach bed

Lettuce/spinach bed

Radish, Beets, Carrots bed

Thats all for today.

Seeya,
Uncle Jabba

my garden: Defined

Uncle Jabba — Sun, 06 May 2007 21:53:10 -0400

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 1:53 am (GMT 0)

Hello All:

I'm back after being lazy for a while and also after a PC rebuild that put me off line for two weeks. So I will attempt to put the posts together that I had planned as my updates over the next few days. I have been busy in the garden and have lot of pictures to share with you.

Lets get started with the definition of my garden.

websters defines a Garden as:
Garden
Pronunciation: \gär-den\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English gardin, from Anglo-French gardin, jardin, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German gart enclosure
Date: 13th century
1 a: a plot of ground where herbs, fruits, flowers, or vegetables are cultivated b: a rich well-cultivated region c: a container (as a window box) planted with usually a variety of small plants
2 a: a public recreation area or park usually ornamented with plants and trees <a botanical garden> b: an open-air eating or drinking place c: a large hall for public entertainment

I agree with that but I guess what I had in mind was the 6"x6" timbers that I used to "define" my garden.

This is a picture of my Cousin helping "define" my garden.

Sorry for taking the long way around to show you the new timbers around my garden but I could not help myself. I'll be back tomorrow with another update on the progress in my garden.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

Sprouts above the ground

Uncle Jabba — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:00:06 -0500

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 8:00 pm (GMT 0)

Hello All:

I was excited to see some pea sprouts have broken free from my cold dirt in the garden. With the ground temp only 70 degrees f near the surface and about 45 degrees f 6 inches down these peas have moved one step closer to my table.

Here are some pictures of the sprouts. The white rock used as a background/size reference is about an inch or so long.

Sugar Daddy Snap Pea Sprout

Dwarf Gray Sugar Snow Pea Sprout

Dwarf Gray Sugar Snow Pea Sprout

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

Seeds in the starter Tray

Uncle Jabba — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 11:16:34 -0500

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 4:16 pm (GMT 0)

My daughter and I started some other seeds in the starter tray yesterday. We started Burban and California wonder Bell Peppers, some Sweet Banana peppers, Marigolds and some Tyme.

We also have some spinach that I have to get into the garden yet. That spinach is Bloomsdale longstanding and some Strawberry Spinach.

You should see what I did to plan out my planting schedule. I put together an excel spreadsheet with columns for Crop, Sow timeline = +/- last frost, Days to harvest, approx plant date, approx harvest, actual plant date and expected harvest date. Our average last frost here is April 1, so that means for my earliest planting of items with a suggested plant date of six to eight weeks before last frost (notated in excel as “6-8 weeks –“ ) would be 2/4 – 2/18. So with my Peas that went in the other day, with days to harvest of 60 & 68 days, I can calculate expected harvest to be April 22 & April 30.

The main reason for creating the spreadsheet was to figure out my planting succession plan, or basically what’s there now and what’s going there later. What I found out was that most of what I was planning would not work out. When I saw all of the sow dates in a row I realized that most of my veggies, spring garden (17 of 20), should be planted prior to last frost. The rest of my veggies, summer garden, should be planted about 2 weeks after last frost. There is a big overlap even with the earliest things like the snow peas. So now I am working on what will be planted where and most likely reducing the number of plants of each variety to squeeze in all I want to grow.

Well that enough for now.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

Seeds in the Ground

Uncle Jabba — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 17:16:44 -0500

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 10:16 pm (GMT 0)

Hello:

Just a quick entry to say I have my first seeds of the year in the ground.

I put in two rows of Sugar Daddy Snap Peas and two of Dwarf Gray Sugar Snow peas today.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

Past Vegetable Gardens

Uncle Jabba — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 11:25:39 -0500

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 4:25 pm (GMT 0)

Hello:

Here are some pictures and history of some of my past gardens in response to Gardenstew's question.

Gardenstew wrote on Tue Jan 16, 2007 11:19 pm:
Is this your first attempt at vegetable gardening?

Lets start with 2006 and work back. 2006 is easy to show because I apparently took NO pictures of the actual garden.

Now lets jump to the end of the season Last year I grew only seeds from heirloomseeds.com and these were some of their Giant Italian Paste tomatoes. I tracked the weight of 41 of these GIP maters and they weighed in at a total of 20.62 pounds with the biggest single one weighing 12.7 ounces.

Here is a couple more pictures of my harvest.

I took this batch of paste tomatoes and made and canned some sauce from them and here is a shot of the results.

I entered my canned goods from 2006 into the North Carolina state fair. I entered 5 items the tomato sauce as well as Strawberry Preserves, hot peppers, green beans and a spaghetti sauce with meat. The Tomato sauce is the second jar from the right.
I managed to pull three second place ribbons at the fair. All items (except the preserves) were just judged on appearance of proper canning processes and standards. They actually opened the preserves to check the taste and the consistency of the fruit and the jelly. I was pretty excited to get three red ribbons at the state fair, but now I have to defend my ribbons and try for blue ribbons this year.

==================================================

Well that was enough for 2006 garden now here are a bunch of shots of a group garden that I did a couple of years ago with my two best friends (one of which has also just started his own blog on gardenstew as well).

Tim Tilling the plot

trying to solarize the weed seeds.

young lettuce

picking greens

veggies galore

pea trellis

peas and horse

lettuce & carrots & potatoes & Peas & Beets

harvest

Lots of goodies

That was the spring garden and here are a couple of shots of the summer garden as it was first being planted.

I dont have any pictures of the community garden after this. The garden grew well and apparently we never took any more pictures.

That’s all for now.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba

Answers to questions

Uncle Jabba — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 11:21:44 -0500

Author: Uncle Jabba
Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:21 pm (GMT 0)

Hola Y'all:

Here are some answers to the questions in the comments to my initial blog post.

Where are you that you are starting a garden now?

I am in Central, NC (also know as the piedmont) where the weather was in the low 70's this last weekend.

The dirt is beautiful. Is it naturally like that, or did you add amendments?

The dirt is definitely not naturally like that here. I have been gardening this spot for about 5 years now and prior to that this was a rose garden for three years or so. I have been adding my homemade compost the whole time as well as adding commercial bags of composted manure, topsoil and truckloads of leaves. I have not added any commercial fertilizer to this plot for over 4 years. Last year I did start using an organic fertilizer. I am also planning on sending in a soil sample this year for analysis to see what may need to be done to further amend it. Also, at one point or another the entire garden has been hand dug down two to three feet deep to turn in the good stuff into the natural existing sand/clay mixture the comprises the rest of the yard. To plant a tree one time I dug a hole using a pickax, a roto-tiller and a shovel to make the hole. After only getting down 6 inches or so I gave up for the day and decided to fill the hole with water to help make it easier to dig. That did not go so well….it took DAYS for the water to be absorbed.

What are you going to plant?
This is a vegetable garden and will be filled with Heirloom and organic seeds. Early Spring crop will include Snow peas, radishes, beets, fingerling carrots and maybe some greens of some sort. I will also be planting lettuce as soon as possible. Summer will include more lettuce/greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, beans, peppers hot and sweet. Fall will bring back the spring items and hopefully some collards, kale and such in the winter. I hope to run a 4-season garden this year. In the past I have only done spring and summer plantings.

Thats all for now.

Seeya,

Uncle Jabba