Seeing Red

Here are this year's most prolific crops, and they all happen to be red. (I haven't dug up potatoes yet, which I hope were heavy producers, too. But half of them are reds, so they just add to this group.) All of these plants have been producing food since July, and they just keep going. Love it!

Peppers

I started an 'Ancho' pepper plant from seed this past spring, and my fried, Tina, convinced me to get serious about a pepper crop when she gave me five more pepper plant starts in May. I haven't grown peppers much before, because I really don't know what to do with the vegetables at harvest time. But they were free, so I gave them a shot.

Unfortunately, I planted on a breezy day and the plant tags were scattered by the wind as I was about to place them with their plants, so I don't know all of what I grew!

One plant produced these huge bell peppers. I have grown bell peppers before and that plant gave me almost 20 medium-sized peppers that were delicious. I wish I could remember the variety. This year's plant has given me two huge peppers and two medium ones. I let the big peppers sit on the plant until they turned red, and then paired them with a green and a sweet onion from the garden to make two dinners of fajitas. Because we are mostly vegetarian, I add rice and red or black beans to the veggies and season with powdered fajita seasoning. My family really likes this dinner.

Another plant, not pictured, is growing sweet baby red peppers, the type you would use in a veggie tray with dip. Except mine never make it out of the garden. We love to snack on them as we work outside.

A couple of the pepper plants didn't survive, including my Ancho. That was at first disappointing because I found a tasty ancho and mushroom recipe last winter; but I developed a mushroom allergy this year, which helped me accept the loss of that pepper plant.

Then there are these plants. I have no idea what they are, but I really like the peppers. They have produced like crazy! At first, I was harvesting the light yellow peppers, but some have started turning red, so now I wait. These peppers have a little bit of heat to them. It's not too noticeable until you finish eating them and notice that your lips are burning. Kent likes to stuff them with cream cheese, grill them over charcoal, and then dip them in strawberry jam. I've also sautéed them with onions and bell peppers and served with sour cream in a corn tortilla. Does anyone know what they are? I'd like to grow them again.

This year in my garden, I've started analyzing which plants are worth the effort and space they take up. Peppers are definitely worth it. I would spend a pretty penny buying this quantity of peppers from the store. But when I can go pick a dozen peppers for dinner whenever I've wanted for the past few months, I'm really saving cash and supplying good vitamins to my family. The pepper crop will definitely make repeat appearances in years to come.

Garden Box Construction

Last year we began constructing our garden boxes. I mapped out our vegetable garden area to include three 4'x8' boxes (6" tall) for standard root and summer vegetables, one 2'x12' box with a frame and netting for vine plants to climb vertically, one 2'x8' box for my raspberries, several 1.5' square boxes for tomatoes and potatoes, and a 3.5' tall angled box to act as a wall, which visually separates the garden from the rest of the yard.

This first close-up picture of the tall box shows how we constructed all the boxes. I used unfinished, 2"-thick cedar boards, which are actually 1.5" thick with the finished cut. Using a jig saw, we cut joints from the ends. (Please leave a comment if you want more detailed instructions on how we measured that.) My dad used his drill press to make a jig from a block of oak, which is a harder wood than cedar. We cut a 3/8" hole and used that jig to keep straight holes when drilling into the cedar. It was helpful to run the drill through the hole a few times to make it just large enough to easily hammer in 3/8" steel rods. I bought the steel rods at a metal retailer and cut them with a saws-all. A hacksaw works too; it just takes longer. The shallow boxes have rods 4" longer than the height of the box. The rods on the tall box go about 12" into the ground.

Constructing these by hand, not everything lined up perfectly. The smaller boxes were relatively easy, but the four levels of boards on the tall box made it difficult to line up exactly right, not to mention cutting for the angled corners. There are small gaps between the boards and in some of the joints. But it's just an outdoor garden box, so no big deal. None of the gaps are so large that the boxes can't hold soil and water.

Tip: In laying a box on the ground, carry it in pieces and not assembled. We put a box together in the garage and attempted to carry it that way to the garden. On the way, a board slipped and split. After laying the box out, squaring the corners, and driving the rods into the ground to hold it all in place, I used a level to ensure a flat grade for the box. To get the boxes level, I had to slip rocks under boards or dig into the ground a bit.


In this last picture, you can see the boxes at varying stages of completion.

The empty frame in the foreground is waiting to be positioned before we drive in the rods. The box on the left was busy growing cool-weather crops. The box with the grid had grown summer crops, which I had cleaned out for the fall (when this photo was taken). The tall box in the upper right of the photo forms a wall for the garden.

For the box with the grid, I attached a 4'-long 2"x4" across the bottom in the middle of the box to prevent the sides from bowing. I did not brace the other boxes because I later decided the boards are thick enough to not bow. I'll let you know if I notice any problem, but so far this season, they are all full of soil and plants and have not bowed.

Spring is in the...Skylight

I am taking a gardening class taught by Gordon Wells. On Friday he told us he would be starting the seeds for his spring garden this past weekend. I have never planted a spring garden, so I was excited to learn it is already time to get started.

Saturday I bought the Jiffy 72-pack of peat pellets at Wal-Mart for $6, as well as some seeds of cold-weather plants. Today I mapped out on paper two 4'x8' garden boxes that will grow several types of lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, Brussels sprouts, peas, carrots and beets. These crops should do fine if they meet a freeze, and they are most tasty when grown in cool weather. I selected varieties with shorter maturing times so they will be ready to harvest by early June.

Two of my children helped me expand the pellets--they thought it was magical--and then we planted seeds. The peas I will plant directly into the soil, but the other plants are better to start indoors so the seeds don't rot in the cool, wet soil of spring. When my seedlings are ready in three weeks, I'll harden them off and plant them outdoors.

Brother Wells advised starting seeds indoors so they can be transplanted in mid-March. He said to put the seed-start box in a place where it will get plenty of sunlight so the seedlings don't get "leggy" and topple themselves over when the leaves grow.
I wanted a place where small children would leave the box alone, but it would still get light all day. I thought about every window in my house and finally arrived at the perfect place: my skylights! The playroom has an angled ceiling with three south-facing skylights. The tray for the pellets was exactly long enough to set it in the skylight box easily and in a position where it holds its own weight. I jammed two wooden dowels in the frame of the skylight to catch the box just in case it falls. When I checked this afternoon to make sure the plastic lid was still in place, the temperature in the skylight was noticeably warmer on my skin than the playroom. I am so happy to find these three miniature "greenhouses" that are out of reach for my kids but at arm's length for me.

I know not many of you could copy my solution, but I suggest thinking about all your options, not just your obvious ones, if you want to get light to start your garden early.

Trimming the Tree

Most of you probably think winter is a time to take a break from gardening. I disagree. I love to look through plant catalogs and plan my beds and how much I need to save up for new tools. And there is still a good reason to get outside and work a bit: pruning trees is a good winter activity.

I read somewhere that pruning during the hard freeze months (December or January) is good because the tree is not putting energy into growing and it will heal easily. I like pruning in the winter for two reasons. First, I can't bring myself to cut off branches with new, green wood and growing buds. That just seems mean. And second, with no leaves on the tree, it is easy to see what all the branches are doing and which ones need to go while still keeping the overall tree shape and dimensions in mind.

We had a nice day in the middle of this January, so I headed out in my snow boots with pruners in hand to manicure my young Honey Locust. Locusts generally don't need much pruning, but I wanted to remove some branches that were too low. (I apologize for the overexposed photos. My camera batteries were almost dead, so I snapped three quick pictures on the automatic setting without checking them until I had new batteries, and this is what I got.) In the overexposed pictures, you can sort of make out two branches on the left that were growing three or four
feet above the ground. I want to be able to walk under this tree, so those branches had to go. Tree trunks grow at the top, not from the bottom. Branches will not end up higher than they originally grow. I've also read that one should not remove more than one-third of a plant's branches when pruning. I took off a little less than that. You can see the finished result and fallen branches in the last picture. I had taken off some branches last winter and left those two to leave strength in the tree. Last summer, the locust added at least three feet to its height, so this winter I took off all
the branches that were too low and everything that crosses weird in the interior of the vase shape I am going for. I planted this tree in October 2005. January 2008 was the first time I pruned it, taking off a branch that accounted for one-third of the tree. I was pleased with the top growth last year and I hope this month's pruning will encourage it to put more energy into height this year.