ll. There are a huge abundance of beautiful, tasty plants in our garden. Click on the photo above to see the set. As for me, I wound up with some tasty mesclun for a salad Christmas eve. I wish you the best and a safe and happy holiday.
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t waiting for the birds and the bees to do their thing and get the tomatoes going. I planted some spinach and it's doing fine. My biggest challenge is telling sprouts from weeds, especially when the sprouts are mixed from a mesclun mix packet.
Marc Williams is one of our resident botanists. He's got an informative website called Botany Everyday which I love. He is guiding his readers (including me) through a book called "Botany in a Day", by Elpel. You can follow along at Marc's Botany Everyday Facebook page. He's posting commentary about a part of the book every few weeks, so you can read and follow along. You can ask questions on his page, too. Marc will try to answer your questions.
The object of Elpel's "Botany in a Day" is to teach you a pattern method of identifying plants. So, once you get the pattern, you'll be able to tell sprouts you've planted from weeds. At least, that's the vision.
Let us know what you think! …
t waiting for the birds and the bees to do their thing and get the tomatoes going. I planted some spinach and it's doing fine. My biggest challenge is telling sprouts from weeds, especially when the sprouts are mixed from a mesclun mix packet.
Marc Williams is one of our resident botanists. He's got an informative website called Botany Everyday which I love. He is guiding his readers (including me) through a book called "Botany in a Day", by Elpel. You can follow along at Marc's Botany Everyday Facebook page. He's posting commentary about a part of the book every few weeks, so you can read and follow along. You can ask questions on his page, too. Marc will try to answer your questions.
The object of Elpel's "Botany in a Day" is to teach you a pattern method of identifying plants. So, once you get the pattern, you'll be able to tell sprouts you've planted from weeds. At least, that's the vision.
Let us know what you think! …
always. I gave some to our new neighbor Mary and her son Asher (below).
Asher did the picking. Mary pointed out some purslane (below)
Now, do you know that "Purslane contains more Omega-3 fatty acids (alpha-linolenic acid in particular[4]) than any other leafy vegetable plant. Simopoulos states that Purslane has .01 mg/g of Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). This is an extraordinary amount of EPA for land based vegetable sources. EPA is an Omega-3 fatty acid normally found mostly in fish, some algae and flax seeds. [5] It also contains vitamins (mainly vitamin A, vitamin C, and some vitamin B and carotenoids), as well as dietary minerals, such as magnesium, calcium, potassium and iron."
My watermelons are growing! Man, you turn away for a minute and look what pops up!
I have to thank Maura for suggesting I plant watermelon in my patch. Great idea!
The jalapeno plant is yielding some mighty peppers. They taste great as I try and duplicate my favorite recipe in the world: Buddha Belly's Hot Cauliflower and Chickpeas. You gotta love a restaurant that serves both vegetarian food and cheeseburgers!
With that, I'll quote Carol's sign which says "May all your weeds be wildflowers"…
here was the white root that confirmed it as a Daikon!
The other plants are coming along. Bob gave me some radish and spinach seed. This is the radish. Or spinach! We'll apply the Daikon test as soon as they get big enough to look at the roots. Or, someone will help me identify the leaves as spinach or radish.
And, here's the other sprout from Bob's seeds. It's either radish or spinach.
The collard greens Sh'mal planted are thriving. I took some tender leaves home for tonight's salad. Important meal: 12th wedding anniversary!
Here's the Meyer Lemon I planted in April, 7 months later.
This is a shot of the Meyer lemon tree I took April 18th. Click on the photo to see some other historic shots of the garden. You might want to open a new tab in your browser by right clicking, if you can, to keep your train of thought.
Here's the garlic chives Sh'mal planted. I am still not sure whether it's best to clip the leaves or pul the roots. Comments?
This is bok choy Mary gave me, thriving underneath the huge collard greens.
And this is the mesclun mix greens that Mary also gave me. (Or, the bok choy is the mesclun and vice versa!)
Just as Sh'mal said, you can't kill Lambsquarter! I pulled most of it because it was taking over the garden. Here's some re-growth of this hardy plant.
And, these are my peppers, cleverly disguised as broccoli. (The name tag next to the plant says broccoli if you look closely)
So, there you go! It was a great day at the garden.…
pick some mint for tea. Mint is dependable. I pulled one strand of the mint, took a look around and saw that the garlic chives were thriving, as always. Troopers! Tomatoes all over the place. Meanwhile, someone visiting the garden said hi. I took a walk around and saw some old friends: the heavy pitchfork, Raggedy Anne, the hand tiller, lots of flowers, fire ants (better to know them as friends, I always say), the rooster, the owl and the others. I think we're surviving without the water timers, but it's been raining every day. It was hard during drier times without the timers. The new fence is looking more like a part of the landscape. All in all, a wonderful visit. Manana: return!…
ed Butte, CO. You can click on the photo above to see the set.
Here's my patch in "weeding progress". The weeds got pretty high while I was gone.
And, here's Justin Whitfield's patch, looking nice and weed free.
You can see a lot of the garden in this shot. My collard greens, originally planted by Shmal, are the hardiest members. I love 'em because everything else seems to whither away, but the collard greens abide! And, they taste great, sauteed with butter and some garlic chives. I have experimented a lot using the Ethnic Veg Cooking book, trying to duplicate recipes I tasted in Senegal. You can share your best stuff in the Veg Cooking group.
These are some hardy herbs growing in Ron's patch.
You can see here that Blake has been creative once again configuring his patch.
If you look closely here, you'll see the word "HARVEST" spelled out in the separator used between Blake's patch and the next.
Here's a good job of planting salad greens in well tilled rows.
This beautiful patch is full of hardy plants in a weed free environment.
This is my Daikon Radish grown from seeds Sh'mal saved and gave to me before he moved to Seattle. I see some seeds from it that I will send to Shmal for his new garden in the northwest.
Here's some manure ready to be distributed on the garden as fertilizer. We get it from nearby horse farms. There's sometimes bat guano, too. We have a big bat colony at Univ of Florida.
These are my hardy collard greens. As much as I travel, it's a good thing that the collards are the major inhabitant of my patch. They survive everything!
Here's Justin Whitfield taking care of his patch.
Alll in all, a great day at the garden. I'm writing this from Orlando - with collard greens ready for lunch in the fridge. I'll be back soon! Love to hear about your garden exploits and summer planting plans...Chow for now!
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