Vegetable Varieties 2010

Artichokes
~Green Globe (1st time growing artichokes so I am not sure how it will go.) (Green variety)

Beans
~Chinese Red Noodle Yard Long (Red yard long beans) (keep their red color when cooked, best when cooked as in stir fry rather than boiled)
~Blue Lake (Regular green variety)
~Rattlesnake (Green with red stripes)
~Purple Podded (Purple variety) (change to green when cooked, acts as a timer for when they are done being cooked)
~Dragon Tongue (Yellow with purple stripes)

Broccoli
~Broccoli Raab
~Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli (kind of like the broccoli raab (small) but purple)
~Windsor Broccoli (Regular green variety) (is suppose to be very heat tolerant)

Cabbage
~Red Acre (red variety)
~(Cone shaped variety)

Cauliflower
~Purple of Sicily (Purple variety)
~Cheddar (Yellow variety) ~Possibly a common white variety

Carrots
~Dragon (Purple variety)
~White Satin (White/Light yellow variety)
~Amarillo (Yellow variety)
~Tendersweet (Common orange variety)

Celery

~Zwolsche Krul (Stem Celery) (Thinner that regular celery, with a stronger taste, will be sold in bunches)

~Red Stem Celery (Common celery with red stems)

~Also a common green variety

Corn
~We will be growing the same variety of bi-color sweet corn as we did last year
~We will also be trying a new white sweet corn variety (will only be growing a small amount since it will be the first time trying this variety)

Cucumbers
~Mexican Sour Gherkin Cucumber (very, very tiny cute little cucumbers that I will be using for in salad mixes)

Eggplant
~Blush (Long white with
~Black Champion (Long purple)
~Thai Green (Long green)
~Lao Green Stripe and Lao Purple Stripe (Tiny round eggplant)
~Mix of four different varieties

Greens
~For bunches: Red Russian Kale, Dinosaur Kale, Collards, Swiss Chard (many colors), and a mix of 4 or 5 Mustard Greens
~There are so many other different kinds of greens we plan to grow, some spicy for salad mixes others to be sold as a bunch

Herbs
~We have plans add a whole new section for all of our herbs. Hopefully we will have a very large selection of herbs available to be sold in bunches. We will also be selling all the different kinds of basils we had available last year plus some new exciting varieties. At some point I will post a list of all the different kinds of herbs we plan to sell with descriptions.

Kohlrabi
~Early White Vienna (Common green variety)
~Early Purple Vienna (Purple variety)

Leeks
~Licolyn Leeks (Used for baby leeks, ready to pull early)
~I will also be growing a couple of regular common leek varieties

Lettuce
~I have many different kinds of lettuce seeds, I probably will not be able to plant them all at one time, but I can tell you one thing, I should have a very good selection available

Okra
~I think I over did it when it came to ordering okra. I may have ordered more varieties than I should have. We will see how many I get to plant come spring, all of them would be nice :)
~Eagle Pass Okra (A green and red fat variety)
~Pitre's Short Bush Red Cowhorn Okra (A skinnier longer green and red variety)
~Burmese Okra (Green variety)
~Cow Horn Okra (Green variety)
~Red Burgundy Okra (Red variety)
~Milsap White Okra (White variety)

Parsnip
~Hamburg Rooted Parsley

Peas
~Golden Sweet Snow Pea (Yellow sweet snow pea)
~I will be growing a normal green variety also to go along with the yellow peas

Peppers
~Bianca Bell Peppers (Yellow variety)
~Islander Bell Pepper (Purple variety)
~Purple Beauty Bell Pepper (Purple variety)
~Chocolate Beauty Bell Pepper (Green maturing to chocolate variety)
~Gourmet Bell Pepper (Green maturing to orange variety)
~King of the North Bell Pepper (Green maturing to red variety)
~Alma Paprika Pepper (Yellow maturing to red sweet/mild paprika pepper, small round bell variety)
~Feher Ozon Paprika Pepper (Yellow maturing to orange sweet paprika pepper, long variety)
~Shishito Pepper (Green sweet/mild Japanese pepper)
~Jimmy Nardello Italian Pepper (Long skinny green to red, looks like a cayenne but without the heat)
~Sweet Banana Pepper (Long yellow sweet pepper)
~(Green sweet pepper, same kind we had last year)
~Red Ruffled Sweet Pepper (Round ruffled look, green to red)

Pumpkins
~I do not think we will be selling any pumpkins this year for market but we will be growing some to be used for baking (pies, breads, etc.)

Radish
~French Breakfast (sold last year, long white and red variety)
~Shunkyo Semi-Long Specialty Radish (long red variety)
~Easter Egg Radishes (Small round, mix of beautiful colors)
~Saxa2 (very quick to mature red variety, (18days))
~Crimson Giant (very large red variety)
~Rat Tail Radish (excited about this one, it is actually the seed pod that is edible, does not actually form underground)

Shallots
~Will be growing some shallots this year for the first time, will be a common variety

Summer Squash
~Common green zucchini variety
~Bush Baby Zucchini (Small striped variety)
~Magda Zucchini (Similar size and shape to Bush Baby but with light green color)
~Green Patty Pan Squash
~Bennings Green Tint Scallop/Patty Pan Squash

Tomatoes
~IsIs Candy Cherry Tomato (red, yellow striped cherry)
~Black Cherry Tomato (Purple cherry)
~Dr. Carolyn Cherry Tomato (Yellow cherry)
~White Current Tomato (Smaller yellow cherry)
~Sungold Cherry Tomato (Orange cherry)
~Aunt Ruby's German Cherry (Green cherry)
~Pearly Pink Cherry Tomato(Pink cherry)
~Mr. Stripey (Yellow, red, orange striped slicing tomato)
~Black Prince Tomato (Purple slicing variety)
~Cherokee Purple Tomato (Purple slicing variety)
~Amish Paste Tomato (Red paste)
~Opalka Tomato (Red paste)
~Wapsipinicon Peach Tomato (Fuzzy like a peach, yellow cherry)
~Yellow and Red Pear Tomato (Cherry sized, pear shaped)
~Japanese Black Trifele Tomato (Purple and shaped like a bosc pear, will be sold mixed with yellow and red pear)
~Striped Cavern (Red, yellow striped stuffing tomato)
~Reisetomate Tomato (Is like a bunch of red cherry tomatoes fused together, that pull apart easily)
~I will be growing a red cherry tomato as well just not sure which one yet I have a few different kinds that I can grow.
~I also have a couple of other striped tomatoes that are slightly larger than a cherry tomato but I am not sure if I am going to have the room for them, will have to wait and see.

Turnip
~Common variety

I think that is everything, hopefully I did not miss anything.

Once I get the website done this list will be there also, plus I plan to have pictures of the vegetables we have already grown and when the season begins I will take pictures of the new varieties and add them also.

Planting inside will begin this weekend, I probably should have already started, but come on do you really expect, me, to be right on schedule? As long as I start planting things this weekend I will not be to late, just not early.

Summer is closer than you may think!

Well, I pretty much have my seed orders all ready to go. I should actually already have them in by now, but I am always behind. I have been spending so much time lately looking through catalogs, searching vegetable varieties online, and adding more and more things to my list of seeds to order. Probably way more time than I should, but oh well. Anyhow I have started planning when everything needs to get started inside and outside. In doing this I suddenly realized how close summer really is. The first things that are going to need be planted are going to be the leeks, which I will probably be starting as soon as 2 weeks from now. The tomatoes and peppers are going to get started in just over a month and a half from now. Then in just over 2 months we will be starting our cool weather crops outside. Can you believe that? Just about 2 1/2 months till we can start planting outside!

I can not believe that everything is going to be getting started in just 2 or 3 weeks. Once I start planting the first seeds then every week after that I will be starting seeds, then before I know it transplanting seedlings begins, then things start moving outside into the hoop house and finally things start getting planted outside. And it will all be beginning very, very soon.

I am so excited for this year. I can hardly wait to try some of the new exciting vegges I plan to grow. There are so many different unusual things we will be trying this year. I am working on a list of what we will be growing this year and hopefully will be posting it soon.

I still plan to experiment with seed starting mixes and potting soil mixes but I think it will be best if I wait until I begin starting my regular seeds for this year. Before I begin my seed starting I am not really consistent with turning on my plant lights and it stays kind of cold in the basement also. Unless I have good growing conditions I do not know how successful the experimenting will be. Anyhow, tonight I am going to work on getting my soil mixing recipes together that I plan to try. Then I will get everything together and ready to go so when I start planting seeds I can start my experimenting also.

Off to do more planning.

Let the Experiments Begin!

Now that Christmas is past and the rush is over, it is time to start some experiments! That is after I get a plan together and clean up my plant area in the basement. It is kind of a big mess down there, what do you expect plants are dirty. But every year before planting begins everything gets cleaned up, and it is that time now. But anyhow, now for my experimenting plans.

The first thing I plan to do is mix up a good seed starting dirt mix. I have not got any recipes together yet but I will soon. The seed starting dirt should be fairly easy to come up with since most seed starting mixes do not have very much in them and they are pretty simple. Seeds do not need much in the soil to actually get started, the most important thing for starting seeds is the temperature. I plan to try at least 4-6 different mixes. I will start somewhere around 6-8 seeds per mix. Next I will take the plants from the mix that works the best and try a bunch of different potting soil mixes. I will probably use the seedlings from the mixes that are not a good to experiment with some different homemade fertilizers. I love experiments. So much fun! I am not 100% sure what kind of plant I am going to use for my experiment, but I am thinking my best choice would be tomatoes. I do not want to use something that grows too fast or too easily, because it may be happy in any kind of dirt. I also do not want to use something that grows too slowly since I do not have forever. Tomatoes are good because they are pretty easy to read if they are not happy, they usually let you know if something is wrong.

Tomorrow I will clean up the basement and get everything ready for my experiments, and also hope to get some plans together as far as what my soil mixes will be.

So those are my plans. But this is just the beginning of my experimenting, I plan to try a lot more soil mixes in the future. I also plan to do some experiments with different kinds of plants and what kinds of soil mixes each like. Experiment with fertilizers. I have all kinds of plans, and things I want to try. The list goes on and on. Well, anyhow hopefully tomorrow I will have some more plans to share.

Oh, I also realized that I need to get a new header picture taken. I think fall is over now, time for a winter picture. I need to get that done tomorrow also. (Looking out the window, snowing) Yeah it is definitely not fall anymore.

Janurary- Herb of the Month- Rosemary

~Rosemary~ Topic of the Month
Just thought I would start out by saying, Happy New Year everyone!
2010 is here!

As I have mentioned in a previous post I choose so make rosemary the herb of the month since I have been using it lately and have really started to like the flavor it adds to dishes.

Here are some medical uses and health facts of rosemary that you may find interesting:

-It is thought of to be a memory stimulant so instead of just keeping your pot of rosemary in the kitchen, you could move it do a more useful spot such as your desk where you do your work of where your kids do their studying and school work.

-Studies done on animals have shown that rosemary has cut their risk in half of getting lung cancer, colon cancer and breast cancer.

-Can also help to relax muscles, rosemary tea has been know for calming nerves.

-If rosemary tea is gargled it has been known to aid in healing canker sores and ulcers.

These are just a few of the many know uses of rosemary.


Cooking:
Rosemary is best used fresh, since it looses most of its flavor when dried, although it can also be used dried if you wish.

Rosemary can be used in cooking so many things, and it does not take much to add quite a bit of flavor. So far I have used it in stuffing, chicken, stir fry dishes, and possibly some other things that I am unable to think of at this moment, but there are sooooo many more options for cooking with rosemary that I have not tried yet.

One thing that will probably be the next thing that I try with rosemary will probably be rosemary butter. Sounds good doesn't it?

Here is a link to a site that explains some good ways to use rosemary for barbeques and others cooking uses along with some recipes.- theherbspiral.com

How to use rosemary in your cooking- this site gives you alot of ideas of how to cook with rosemary. Lots of good ideas. I may just have to try some of these.

Here is a link to my Pumpkin Bread Stuffing with Rosemary


Nutrition Data:
From Nutritiondata.com:
"The good: This food is low in Sodium, and very low in Cholesterol. It is also a good source of Vitamin B6, Magnesium, Potassium and Copper, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Folate, Calcium, Iron and Manganese.

The bad: This food is high in Saturated Fat."
You can check out the rest of the nutrition data for rosemary here at Nutritiondata.com

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a very
Happy Thanksgiving!

Coming Soon-Topic of the Month-Rosemary

I know I have not really kept up lately with the Topic of the Month. I got busy for awhile and did not get a chance to work on it, and lately I just could not think of a topic of the month since we do not have very much growing right now. But I just thought of something that I would like to make the Topic of the Month for January, Rosemary. I have just started using it, and love it. I was very surprised how much taste one sprig of Rosemary can add to a dish. So next month the Herb of the Month will be Rosemary.

I plan to grow Rosemary next year along with many other new herbs to sell in bunches. I have wanted to grow more herbs for awhile now, but just haven't. I have never really cooked with herbs much but the more I use them the more I like them, there are so many different herbs that I jut can not wait to try next year.

Fall Chores

The past few days I have been trying to get a bunch of things done for fall. Everyday I have been saving seeds for next year, from tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and cucumbers. I still have a bunch of seeds to save yet.

Yesterday I finally got my collards, kale and leeks covered so that they will be protected from the cold weather to come. They are so beautiful I would like to have them last as long as possible. Plus I need the kale and leeks for my pumpkin stuffing on Thanksgiving. In fact I really need to cover my celery so that it will hopefully be around for Thanksgiving also.

Collards and Kale under cover.

A couple of days ago I dug up my dahlia tubers, and they are now drying a little and will probably divide them tomorrow and store them away for the winter. This year I am going to try storing them in ceder chips. Last year I just wrapped them in newspaper and put them in brown paper bags, they did ok, but I thought I would try something different this year. This is only the second year that I will be saving dahlia tubers so I am still new to dahlia saving. I was very surprised when I started to dig up my larger dahlia tubers and discovered that the dahlias that I started from seed actually formed very nice sized beautiful tubers. The ones pictured are actually the ones that I started from seed. I did not think that they would form tubers, so I learned something new.

Dahlia tubers waiting to be stored away for winter

The last picture is of my cold frame. About two weeks ago I planted a bunch of stuff in there hoping to have some lettuce, greens and other things soon. I should have planted these things sooner, but they should hopefully have a chance to mature. I really do not think the beets that I planted will have time but at least I will hopefully get some greens out from them that I can eat in salads and use as cooked greens. We will see, and hope.

All kinds of things in the cold frame (lettuce, greens, radishes, beets, and baby pak choi)

We still have lots to do before winter and before the ground freezes. Such as till some of our garden areas, and hopefully work on putting up the hoophouse that I have been talking about. I really wanted to have had it up already, but I guess, better late than ever, that is if it ever gets put up. I also need to recover our tiny hoophouse so that the snow does not break the plastic like it did last year. Since I am not using plastic for greenhouses (just the plastic from home improvement stores) it does not even last a whole year before it just starts to crumble.

Pumpkin Bread Stuffing

I was looking at Allrecipes.com for pumpkin recipes and ran across a recipe for pumpkin bread stuffing. I thought it was a really good idea, so I thought I would give it a try, and did. I think it came out really good. I do have some ideas for some changes that I will make next time, but first I will tell you how I made it this time.

Ingredients that I picked fresh for the stuffing, just before making it. Celery, Red Russian Kale, Leeks, Pumpkin Bread, and a stem of Rosemary (between Celery and Kale).

I basically used whatever ingredients that I had available to pick, that I thought would be good in the stuffing. So here it is:


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Pumpkin Bread Stuffing

4 cups pumpkin bread
1 medium size leek
3/4 cup celery
10 leaves red russian kale
8 tbls. butter
1/2 cup vegetable broth
2 eggs
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1 tbls. fresh rosemary
salt and pepper to taste

I think it is best to make the pumpkin bread almost a week ahead, before you make your stuffing since pumpkin bread can be kind of moist just after it is made. That way it will be a little drier before you make the stuffing.

Cut pumpkin bread into cubes and let dry overnight, may have to bake in oven at 250 degrees to make sure bread is dry enough.
Melt butter in a pan over medium heat. Add celery, leeks, and kale, cook till tender.
Mix in rosemary, salt, pepper, and pumpkin pie spice. Fold in bread cubes. Add eggs and then vegetable broth.
Transfer to buttered baking dish. Bake for 35 minutes covered with foil, at 375 degrees.

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Once again I thought this came out really good the way I made it but here is what I am going to do differently the next time I make it.

• Will make it next time with at least 6 cups pumpkin bread instead of 4 cups
• May use 2 leeks instead of 1
• Will use a little less kale, maybe 8 leaves instead of 10
• If I make a bigger batch I am sure that I will probably have to add more vegetable broth also.
  
• Instead of drying the bread overnight and then putting it in the over to make sure it is dry enough, I will toast it in the toaster oven first and if I need too I will put it in the oven for the rest of the time.
• Since I will make a bigger batch next time I will probably be able to bake for 40 minutes covered and 10 minutes uncovered, which is what the recipe I found said to do.

I will definitely have to play around with this recipe for awhile till it is perfect. Anyway, I am sure I will be making this for Thanksgiving, for sure.

What's Available- Saturday October 17th

There are only two more markets left! We have not gone to market for the past couple of weeks. But we will be attending tomorrow's market! I had planned on baking a lot, but so far have not made as much as I had hoped to. I did not get any pies made so far, and since it is so late, I do not believe I will have time to do so. Hopefully next week I will get a lot more made. It is sooo hard to believe the end of this years market is almost here. Any how here is a list of the what we plan to have available. I wish it was bigger, but for this year it will just have to do. Next year our list should be a lot larger at this time of the year.

• Collards
• Red Russian Kale
• Leeks
• Yukon Gold Potatoes
• Golden Delicious Apples
• Red Delicious Apples
• Jona Gold Apples
• Pumpkin Bread
• Pumpkin Apple Streusel Bread
  

What to Grow Next Year?

I have already started making plans for what to grow next year, and I would love everyone's help. What would you like to see us grow next year? Is there something that you love but you can never find anywhere? Is there something that we grew this year that you really liked? We would love to know what you would be interested in.

As I have mentioned many times we love growing different things. I already have plans to grow many different things next year. Such as okra, yard long beans, kohlrabi, and many different types of greens.

I have had several people ask us about okra and even though I did grow some okra plants this year I did not have enough to sell. But next year I have plans to plant much more of it, I will also be planting it in a different location since I do not believe the location it was in this year was the best. I also believe it was just a really bad year for okra. I am not too familiar with okra, since this was my first year growing it, but from what I have read about it it likes it quite warm. I t seems to like temperatures similar to eggplant, and our eggplant did horrible this year due to the weather. So if you are an okra lover check back with us next year and hopefully we will have a better year for it.

I also grew a small section of yard long beans this year and though they were pretty cool myself. So I do plane to grow enough to be able to sell next year.

I love growing greens and lettuces, and there are sooooo many different kinds out there to try. Next year I will be growing many new kinds and hope to have a lot of greens and lettuces available throughout the season. Especially if we get our hoop house put up (which we need to get working on).

So let us know what you like.