Seedlings/Gardens/Planning

In a few days the kale has sprouted to attention! Upward and outward those little leaves are coming, and it's an absolute joy to watch them grow each and every day. The scene at home looked like this only last week:



We've been slowly plodding along on vegetable garden prep this year... moving manure here and there, and lots and lots of planning. The neat thing about having a garden for many years running is I'm actually starting to learn something. (I know, unbelievable right?) I'm learning about which seedlings to start myself, which to direct seed (and when), which to purchase as seedling sets and which to let somebody else grow! I've also learned which vegetables our family loves to harvest lots of, fresh, and which we like to just have a taste of each year. Also which vegetables are hard to come by, for example, I love daikon radish, but it's hard to find, so I'm growing it myself this year. Also I love cutting lots of fresh herbs from the garden for fresh use as well as drying for winter so I'll be cultivating my perennial herb bed a bit more this year! This year I'm concentrating on greens and veggies for preservation.

We'll be planting delicata and buttercup squash (and popping corn!) in our cow manure pile. A whole bed of cucumbers for making fermented pickles from and the bed of garlic is just beginning to sprout out from under the seaweed placed on it last fall. I've just planted an entire bed of shelling peas, we find those are amongst our very favorites to pull out of the freezer, they freeze well and are just too delectable to eat plain or inside a fried rice.

In terms of what I'm planning on preserving this year, I'm going to pair back considerably. With the 2 greenhouses Eat Local Eastport now has access to we were eating fresh greens and carrots the better part of the winter. I'll also be doing less pestos as we don't seem to eat as much pasta as we once did. I think I'd like to try my hand at tomato paste and ketchup this year. I'm learning so much more about storage crops and that is creating less of a need for the frozen and canned items.

Of course fermenting is becoming my favorite form of preservation. It requires minimal time and you don't have to be over a hot stove in the middle of summer, just a bit of chopping, some layering of salt and occasional mold removal and you're good! I think I'd like to set up a more sanitary area in the basement to use as a "fermentation station" I think that could be really very nice! It's a bit cooler down there so things would work slower, it also wouldn't stink up our kitchen and take up all the counter space we have. Plus the health benefits!

It's exciting, thinking of this new season of gardening and eating coming to us!