Our garden is coming along more slowly than last year, probably because the soil was cold. We got something close to normal snowfall this year, for a change.
Within the past week the sugar snap peas have started to take off but the green beans are puzzlingly slow. So are several kinds of squash (spaghetti, blue Hubbard, pink banana), which aren’t anywhere close to dead but have somehow failed to launch.
Gardening is a series of trials and errors. But there’s still time.
Strawberries and raspberries look glorious, albeit still really green; we hope to be picking within two weeks. Carrots, beets, leaf and romaine lettuces, two kinds of Asian greens, potatoes and rhubarb look healthy. The spinach is pretty much spawned-out, so what’s left will probably go into the boiling bag.
The real stars this year? Quinoa.
The photo above was shot a couple of weeks ago. Since then the stalks have almost doubled in size and flower spikes are beginning to peep out from the tops of the plants. This super-nutritious pseudograin has DF pretty jazzed. He’s very interested in the idea of food security, and would like to see how much he can produce on a relatively small lot and with (relatively) small effort.
We’d been eating quinoa that I got for free, using Amazon gift cards I earned from the Swagbucks rewards program. One day, just for fun, I researched the plant and learned that backyard growers are having great success. When I told DF, he was delighted by the idea, since quinoa keeps for ages and has a ton of protein.
Quinoa now and quinoa later
It was Swagbucks to the rescue once more: I ordered the Brightest Brilliant Rainbow variety of quinoa seeds with more of that free Amazon scrip. He started some indoors and put some into the ground. Right now there’s a noticeable difference in plant size, but we’re hoping they all make it through the first frost.
Long before harvest they’ve begun to nourish us, since young quinoa leaves are good in salads. They taste like a cross between spinach and those edible sugar snap pea pods. Well, mostly they taste like whatever dressing you’re using, but that’s true of all salad greens.
The plant produces tall, colorful flowers, the source of those quinoa seeds we hope to eat. According to my research, 10 plants will produce a pound of product. Should the plant pan out, DF swears to plant at least twice as much next year, or maybe more.
Look at all the rice we eat, he says. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could grow a staple grain (well, pseudograin) in our own yard?
Currently we tend to eat it in curries, soups and a casserole of black beans, quinoa, chicken and enchilada sauce. Since approximately one gazillion quinoa recipes exist online, I think we’d find plenty of other ways to consume the stuff.
The plant looks a lot like lamb’s wort, we’d noticed. Yesterday I decided to look it up to see if the two were cousins. To my horror, I learned that if lamb’s wort is near quinoa it can cross-pollinate, affecting quinoa quality and quinoa quantity.
DF went to the yard and pulled up the lamb’s wort he’d seen out in the front yard and tossed it into the boiling bag. Better safe than sorry.
Some people obsess over sports. We obsess over pseudograins.
Slow but steady
Out in the greenhouse our tomatoes and cukes in the greenhouse are doing well, but seem slower to grow than last year’s. That’s likely because last year we had a couple of what DF calls “orphan plants,” i.e., those bought from the greenhouse after the initial stampede of Alaska gardeners.
This year all our starts were started here, using seed from last year’s crops. They’re doing great, and we hope to eat tomatoes at least as early (late) as last year’s Aug. 1 picking.
However, we have eaten a couple of Cherokee Purple tomatoes (see photo above left), plucked from two plants DF started back in December. Initially he did this to see if the seeds he’d saved were viable. Once they sprouted he couldn’t bear to kill them, and instead babied the plants throughout the long winter.
The mostly-indoor-raised tomatoes tasted the way all Cherokee Purples taste: insanely good, with a pronounced sweetness to the tomato bite. They’re ugly as sin but, like the pommes d’amour of my youth, all the more delicious because of it.
You’ve heard of crazy cat people. DF says we’re crazy tomato people. What do you expect from a Jersey girl and a homestead boy?
Readers: How do your gardens grow?
Related reading:
Our garlic was dismal. Did not even bulb enough for cloves. The green beans look like they will do okay. I think I will get sufficient Spaghetti Squash.
Each person who promised in the spring to come help me with the heavy stuff has never shown up. I will get this done even if I am planting in August. The sweet potato slips in the window are going like gangbusters and the potatoes have sprouted nicely in the dark.
Can I throw quinoa into a pot of soup like I do rice? So far, I think it is nasty stuff. Surely, I can find some way I like it since I have it sitting here.
I cook it separately and serve it on the side, so that each diner can put in as much as he wants. And as noted, so many recipes exist online that there’s probably something you would like. My niece eats it for breakfast, with apples and cinnamon.
I share your angst with the garden….We had a CRAZY Spring with temps staying cold….then warming then cold again. So the soil didn’t warm and I got the planting done late. The garden looks “OK” but nothing like last year’s BUMPER CROP. I had tomato plants 6 feet high and bountiful! I don’t see that happening this year. BUT do have a volunteer cucumber plant that grew out of the compost that is doing fantastic.
Our garden is slow going this year too. I don’t think I would have noticed, but Facebook has that pesky “on this day” history marker. One year ago yesterday we harvested our first cuke, tomatoes, and green beans. This year, I only have green tomatoes just getting started. I fertilized yesterday in hopes to move things along!
Ditto in Denver. My garden was a late starter due to late freezes, late/heavy snow and golfball sized hail. Argh! I have a few cherry tomatoes that are ripe, but the squash and cucumbers are just starting to flower.
Strawberries are still green. I also have a rose garden and somehow the weird winter/spring has made them bloom like crazy.
My first year of homemade compost with a craigslisted compost spinner was successful, and has produced many surprise cucumber plants – 11 of them! This makes me feel so clever and rich!
I started the boiling bag thing about 2 yrs ago after reading about your adventures. I have enjoyed making all of my pots of pinto beans (I am an Alaskan from Texan parents) with homemade broth – yum yum. Thanks!
Both you and Jestjack got free cucumbers from the compost. Hope this starts a trend.
I’ve also heard of potato plants sprouting in compost, from the peelings.
Surprise plants from compost: One year I got pumpkins, enough so all the kids on the block received one, and I still had some. Last year we had watermelons.
That is so fun! Hoping for more surprises next year.
Bahaha, looks like your garden is still doing well! I’ve never grown quinoa, but I like that idea! I’ll have to see how it grows in our area. This year we’ve been inundated with tomatoes and cucumbers. Thankfully the garden is coming to a screeching halt with the summer heat picking up, so we can relax a little.
I’m not set up to grow any type of food product, but I had a bumper year for roses! It was quite pretty in my yard this spring.
Good luck with the quinoa.
My herbs are going great but the rest is a little slow here in NY. Our weather was crazy her during the spring with a few snow showers and now that summer is here…it goes from 93 in the day to 55 at night. I have had several tomatoes and taste is great but the consistency is different. My lettuce is also very good with taste but more of a lighter green.
It is just a learning process…year to year. This is the first year that I started from seeds!
We save seeds for two reasons:
We can get what we want (some years we can’t find specific varieties in the greenhouses), and
It’s soooo much cheaper than buying plant starts (up here, you’re lucky to be able to get a four-pack for less than $5).
I let some of the Asian greens ripen where they are, and give ’em a good whack to release the seeds. Tons of volunteers that way; I also saved seeds in an old envelope (good use for junk mail). Now I’m letting a lot of them flower so that they continue to draw pollinators over to the second strawberry patch. The plants are tall and the flowers are yellow, so they do get the bees’ attention — and then they stay for dessert, i.e., the li’l white strawberry blossoms.
Hope your garden provides delights despite the heat.
I’m sure things are more expensive in Alaska BUT I’ve noticed veggie plant “starter” prices have gotten crazy here. And the quality has diminished.
All the more reason for us to save seeds! Last year we couldn’t find Cherokee Purple plants in local greenhouses. Then DF had to make a trip out to the Matanuska Valley and found the seedlings at a farm market there, completely by accident. The seeds from those are the ones he started in December, plants that produced the ones in the photo.
If you don’t use the whole of seeds, are they good for the next year?
*whole packet
Depends on the climate and on the seed, apparently:
http://extension.oregonstate.edu/gardening/how-long-do-garden-seeds-last
Is lamb wort what we call lamb quarter ? If it is, an old USDA(1963) food chart shows one cup of leaves has 5 grams protein, 460 mg calcium, 120 mg vit c, 100 mg phosphorus, 14000 units vit A. I use like spinach- quiche,etc. We have pulled the small leaf variety over the years that only the larger leaf variety grows. Lamb’s quarter would cross pollinate with quinoa. Put it in your boiling bag!
We have done so already! But today as we were leaving for an errand I looked at the edge of the parking area and said, “Is that more lamb’s wort? Arrrrgghhhh!” So we yanked it all out and threw it in the boiling bag, too.
Eternal vigilance is the price of pseudograins. And yes, lamb’s wort is lamb’s quarter. Thanks for the nutrition info.
Quinoa! I love it…that is so amazing that you’re getting it to grow.
Got a surprise Campari tomato here out of the composter. Campari tomatoes must be some kind hybrid, because the vine-ripened product was tough-skinned and pretty flavorless, unlike the ones you get in the store. Darn!
We’re trying not to get too excited, in case we get an early cold snap and it doesn’t produce seeds.
And here I thought composters got too hot for seeds to sprout. Then again, I feel that way about Phoenix in general.
I don’t garden, but I’m glad my neighbors do!
Okay, off topic, but I finally put one of your suggestions into practice: I used an online coupon in conjunction with a gift card, and the end result is I got a 9-CD Beethoven set for $2.26, shipped. Wow. That’s quite a lot of Beethoven for $2.26, that I can listen to for years. Yes, it works to combine deals when you can. Now I always search for online coupons before I buy something.
That is a deal! Which Beethoven: the collected symphonies or something else?
Very interesting post thank you. It had me wondering if I could grow it here in Hawaii but it looks like we are too hot and low altitude for it. I have enjoyed eating it added to beef soups in the past.
After last year’s dismal performance, we gave the garden a pass this year and signed up for a local weekly CSA box. I’m enjoying the fresh produce, but it’s just not the same!
I wonder if quinoa would grow here? I’ll have to look into it. We don’t have tons of space, but it sounds as though a few plants might go a long way.
I do have a ton of spider plants in the house, and the aloe could stand to be dug up and divided, if only I knew where to put the extra plants! Or someone who wanted one.
A spider plant is like that Amish Friendship Bread: You’re frantic to find people to take the extras off your hands.
Fresh produce is fresh produce, but I do enjoy eating peas right where they grew — and we keep a shaker of salt in the greenhouse in anticipation of the tomatoes being ripe.
Thanks for being such a consist reader and commenter.