Batman Remembrance Ribbon

I have created a Batman Themed Remembrance Ribbon to Honor the Victims of the Aurora Colorado Shooting.

All Proceeds from sales will be donated through http://www.crowdrise.com/helpaurora

 

 

Garden Update: Grass

Bolted Spinach

If you look very closely at the picture above you will see three rows of bolted spinach nestled among the grass.

Close up Bolted spinach

This has been a very trying garden year. With the 100 degree days, I have not been out to the garden as much to do the work.

Weedy Snow Peas

To compound the problem, the Platt Garden is grassy to the extreme. Any non-weeded patch of soil becomes a lawn. Above,the grass has attacked my giant snow peas.

Weedy Garden paths

The folks who splurged for straw were the smart ones this year.

I rarely do the straw thing. I tend to be a fan of the hula hole, which allows me to weed most my garden without hand weeding. This includes the rows.

A few minutes of hula holing once a week for a few weeks and my garden was good to go. The weeds stop coming. But not this year.

The weather kept me away and the grass took over.

Cardboard Weed Barrier

So I am now on the defensive and the name of the game is cardboard.

I have used cardboard on all of my rows and will have to put in the extra hours to weed all of my beds by had (UGH!!!) And I will need to do that for the rest of the year.

For now, I had to turn over my radish and spinach beds without getting a harvest.

Ready to Plant

Vegetable Adventure

Ann Arbor is now in Zone 6A

Check out the latest plant zones Here (USDA Plant Zones)

Ann Arbor is now in zone 6a, which is one zone up from our last rating. (yes it is getting warming)

It is still freakin over 100 degrees. Ugh! which makes me think this zone hardiness thing should be redone every year.

On my own garden front, I realized that I was not growing a “New” vegetable this year.

Every year I try to grow at least one vegetable that I have not eaten before, so I can expand my veggie horizons.

I guess, I am growing “salad” potatoes, which I have never had before, so that is my experiment.

But this got me thinking about my gardening and how far I have come as a veggie eater. My last post mentioned Tatsoi, an Asian stir fry green, which I added to my veggie vocabulary five years ago.

The question is where do I go from here?

Have I reach some kind of veggie peak, at least the veggies that I can grow and eat locally?

It kind of feels that way.

My garden does not represent every vegetable I can grow in South East Michigan, but it is a good sampling especially for an annual Plot.

If I had a year round garden, there would be a list of things I would love to grow.

Grapes
Berries (blue, black, raspberry, strawberry, currents, wine berries)
Fruit Trees (plum, apple, peach, apricot, pear, quince, cherry)
Nut trees (especially hazelnut)
Rhubarb
Garlic
Artichoke

Westside Farmers Market Run

tatsoi

I was at the Westside Farmers Market today for some great picks.

Yes, even though I have a huge garden, I do not grow everything.

The pick of the day:

Pint of blueberry
Quart of Peaches
4 quarts of Yukon Gold Potatoes: From Hand Sown Farm
2 bunch of Tatsoi Dragon Wood Farm
3 kinds of buns from San Street (chicken, mushroom and tofu) All were great

WHAT IS TATSOI?

I was happy to see the folks at Dragon Wood has this great green vegetable. They had a bunch of it, but no one besides me seemed to know what it was.

I got a few bunches. It is a sweet green. I use is like spinach or a choy and cook it only for a few minutes at the end of a stir fry.

It makes for a great veggie side.

To Prepare:

Stir fry for a few seconds with some oil, garlic and touch of soy, some rice vinegar and a drop of sesame oil. Garnish with some chopped toasted peanuts or sesame seeds.

Potato Update 2012

(Pictures coming soon.)

I was watering today (like everyday…where is the rain?), and I n0ticed some roque potatoes in my garden. Now this is a new garden spot, which was lawn for years before it was turned over.

The deal is that they ran out of seed potatoes at Downtown Home and Garden, so I figured I try buying organic potatoes and let them spout and plant them.

Well a few weeks go by and nothing, so being eager to use the real estate, I planted green beans in half of that space and ended up finding some seed potatoes at Colemans.

Well it turns out that I might have jumped the gun because I am seeing potatoes come up in my green bean patch, which creates an issue of how to mound up the potatoes without affect my now nicely growing beans?

And I also now have 2X the amount the potatoes growing in the other half of the potato bed.

Maybe it will work.