adventures in broccoli

I have never had much success growing brassicas (cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, Brussels etc..) in the past. Most of the places I have lived don't have much of a spring.. It goes from freezing to warm in a matter of a couple of weeks, these conditions make cool weather veggies difficult. So I was really excited when we got our broccoli started indoors nice and early, got them in the garden and they took off! Out in the garden we had chest high plants in our raised beds, a huge accomplishment for both of us farmers! Much to our disappointment though, we noticed that once the temperatures started getting warmer the heads of broccoli stopped growing and are almost ready to harvest! WAIT, STOP, NO! GET BIGGER!! What was it? Was it to much nitrogen from the manure causing the plants to grow big but not enough potassium to help form the heads? Was it the heat? Did we need to feed it different nutrients? So as with everything in gardening, it is a learning process... we are just happy to have gotten as far as we did with them..

On the cool early spring days we built our salvaged wood raised beds, filled them with soil, compost and local composted horse manure and put our little baby broccoli in our beds along with cabbage, radicchio and Kohlrabi..

 Obviously we did something right because the combination of the cool days and all that nitrogen from the manure caused them to reach for the sky~

Here the plants are only about 1-3 feet tall and looking so juicy and healthy

A couple of weeks later you can see one of the beds and most of the plants are chest high... But unfortunately it is started to get hot and as you can see here the plants would start to wilt in the middle of the day

 But the plants would perk back up in the cooler evening temperatures. We continued to feed them with homemade compost tea to promote healthy and happy growth.

 Once the stalks were beefing up and the leaves got massive we started to notice little baby heads nesting the center of the plants... protected by a little blanket of dainty leaves...

They grew,,,

And grew,,,

Then this is where the heat started to take its toll on our process... so once it starts getting warmer the heads of the broccoli stop bulking up and start to bolt which is the plants preparation to start flowing and then eventually going to seed...

All three of the photos below where taken on the same day as we harvested them and shows the range of maturity in the heads...

This one didn't get a chance to bulk  up and looked more like broccoli rabe than regular broccoli... The nodules were starting to plump up and ready to pop out little yellow flowers...

This head looks perfectly formed. It is nice and tight but just didn't get very big...

These ones got a bit larger and remained nice and tight but if it went a day or two longer the nodules would have popped flowers if we didn't keep a eye on it and harvest it. Notice the sacred geometry type formation that the nodules create... very cool...

We harvested the biggest heads and ones that were close to flowering first to ensure that they were still tender and delicious. Seeing that there were still small heads and lots of leaves we decided to leave the plants standing for another few days... We came through and harvested all the rest all at once about 4 days later, making room for a new crop and letting sunlight in to help the Kohlrabi, Cabbage, Beets and Radicchio mature.

The amount of green, leafy, yumminess we ended up with was astounding...  These pictures don't do the quantity justice... We got one huge trash bag full as well as one overflowing large box. So once we saw how much food we actually ended up with between the heads, leafs and tender stalks our disappointment started to fade away into the thought "holy crap what do we do with all this food?! And that right there is a satisfying feeling!

We all are familiar with broccoli heads and I'm there is a abundance of delicious recipes to include them in.. But what the heck to you do with all the rest? Staring at a mountain of leafs on my counter I started to ponder, investigate and research ideas. I wanted to do more than just saute them in a stir fry or cook them down like collards (which I did and it was delicious). I wanted to learn something and try something new so excitedly I dove into my books and into the vastness of the Internet to chart uncharted broccoli leaf territory.

 My first adventure led me to Quiche discovery, I had never made a Quiche before... when I was younger I thought they were weird and wasn't quite sure about them. As a adult I have grown to love them and all their endless possibilities. So I dove in and made a homemade Cheddar and rosemary crust and filled it with garden fresh rosemary, sage, broccoli, broccoli leaf, leeks, with cheddar, smoked Gouda. WOW IT WAS AMAZING! Great, now I am hooked and have a new addiction... :)

My second major journey took me down a old road that wasn't so familiar any more... Sauerkraut.

 With the help of  Wild Fermentation's Web Sight and a few other great Internet sources I came up with a plan, gathered my ingredients and got to work.

We combined the Broccoli leaves, leaves from small cabbage plants that didn't fully form heads, carrots, golden beets, juniper berries, peppercorns, mustard seeds, garlic and lots of yummy course sea salt (the salt must me non-ionized). There are two large batches set up now so all we have to do is wait! yumm cant wait for all the pro biotic fermented goodness in my belly!

WHEW!

That concludes this seasons ADVENTURES IN BROCCOLI! We learned alot, ate alot, and now know what to do better next time. I cant wait for the fall to start up all of our cold season crops again.

Free is just around the corner!

Thanks to great community and the symbiotic relationship between those people we can take a problem and turn it into a blessing. Often there is an abundance of both people with to much and people who want or need in a community setting, it just takes some effort and communication to bring them together.
In this case there was a local young family who had a garden almost being taken over by strawberry plants and raspberry bushes, they needed people to come and take what they could dig out of the garden for free. So here we see people helping one another out and both benefiting greatly from it. It's a beautiful thing and a natural balance in life.
This family posted an add in our local food coalition's mass e-mail list, and lucky for us my estate mate read through all the adds and alerted me of this great opportunity. We took our shovels and some large pots down the road about 10 minutes, found the house and greeted the family. When we arrived there was already a local strawberry enthusiast digging up her fill of plants. The man showed us around the garden, told us what was off limits, gave me some asparagus growing tips and left us to our digging. Now its funny when you think about it because this guy just has to write a e-mail, point to some plants and people will come over and do all the hard work for him, but those people doing the work feel as though they are getting a great deal by getting tons of free plants just by having to go do some mild digging... Funny because they both feel like they are winning! COZ THEY ARE!!! GO COMMUNITY AWESOMENESS!!!!

These are the raspberries... He said the ones that were bigger and growing along the fence were off limits but they had all shot out thousands of little suckers into the garden creating a carpet of little plants. All we had to do was dig down and pull up a few big clumps. Now when I say little I don't mean tiny little starts, I mean these are a couple feet tall and already have thorns... These guys are virile!

These are the strawberries... I was jealous of his, they were much larger and he had a lot more of them. Now if you remember we already have a whole established raised bed full of strawberries and also a clay pot that I transplanted some into, so we have no shortage of berries but more never hurt anyone! yum yum yum!!!

So the moral of the story is that LOCAL is BETTER! 

We are POWERFUL as a COMMUNITY

and 

Food is FUN!

Link* to Nevada County's Local Food Coalition

Link* to "Nevada County Grown"

Link* to Local Nevada County Classifieds

....................

More Progress... More callouses...

It's only 3:00 and already we have made a lot of progress in the gardens. After getting a truck load of aged manure yesterday we were ready to get to work this morning.  

 Just to give you an idea of how stoked we are! This is the local aged horse manure that we have a seemingly endless supply of and its just down the street! It is teeming with red worms! 

 

We put in a couple of wheel barrows full of aged manure, some peat moss, compost and nutrients put into one of last years beds that already has some asparagus growing in it..( you can see it over along the left hand side ) We ran some shovels through everything to mix in all the new amendments and it is almost ready to plant!

Little baby asparagus spear

This is another beautiful bed that was also amended and turned over today... whew... This one took some serious muscle! I feel like I have been shovelling for a month straight...

Endless wheel barrow loads...

Our Black Beans went in the ground today!

It is kind of hard to see in this picture but this is the bean trellis I built yesterday.  I'm pretty proud of it, its going to look great once its all grown in with meandering vines... It is made out of three long bamboo poles with a piece of metal fencing attached with wire. At the top I put another piece of salvaged fencing and slipped it over the bamboo, secured it with wire and secured the other end to the fence. The vision is to create a walk through trellis... I hope they get tall enough...

Here is the trellis from another angle...

 Here we have my second bean trellis... This one is in NO WAY as pretty as the other one.. I used a roll of fencing that was driven over in the driveway and was quite mangled. I didn't want it to go to waste so I did the  best I could to straighten it out. I used the same technique as before and wired the fencing to the vertical bamboo poles and then attached the top piece to the back fence to make a sort of tunnel... It will be the tunnel of bean love! In the bottom of the picture you can see the baby Jacobs Cattle Bean starts that will make this trellis home... I also filled in the rest of the row with yellow snap bean seeds.

So this is bed all fluffy, amended and ready for more planting. In the back you can see the bean trellis a little better. This was the last of the beds in this garden that needed to be turned over so now we are ready to get everything in the ground in the next couple of weeks... Along the left side you can barely see the Dino Kale and Rocket Arugula I planted as sort of boarder. We are planning on making this one of the tomato beds, and our greenhouse is busting at the seams with HUGE, LUSCIOUS plants just itching to stretch their legs!

This bed has been sort of a afterthought and has been left alone until now. The leeks, onions and garlic have been residing in this bed and have had the whole thing all to themselves. We have so much more to plant this year and cannot really afford to leave any space unused so we tilled up the soil in between the rows and amended it so we can plant squashes, pumpkins and other trailing plants. This bed has fencing on two sides of it so I am hoping to utilize it as a sort of trellis for the squashes.

As we were turning over the rows we thinned out some of the crowded onions.. Spring onions are great with brussel sprouts, green beans with butter and white wine!
 

Our stunning strawberry bed, with some chive and leeks to keep them company. This bed has been planted and producing for quite a few years now, it was here way before we were... I cannot wait for the little succulent gems! yummmmmm

Great view of our newest garden. The two beds on the right have been planted for a week or two already and are looking beautiful and healthy. The middle bed in the back row was just planted with the remainder of our red cabbage and broccoli with beets, marigolds and sunflowers sprinkled in. The other three beds are being built, filled and awaiting plants.

Here is an up close shot of the newest bed with the cabbage, broccoli etc... The planter at the foot of the bed has Kale, Opal purple basil, sunflowers and nasturtium.

So much done and so much more to do!

puppy in a pot

......*PROGRESS*......

The last few days have been very productive....

The starts and seeds are reaching toward the sun and driving their roots deep into the rich soil. 

The construction projects have sped up and are looking wonderful.

and Our bodies and minds are growing stronger.

Rhubarb flower... we don't remember ever seeing this plant put off a flower before.. Really beautiful..  any insight?

And so begins another raised bed... 3 in total today! We lined the bottoms with gopher wire and weed cloth and are filling them up manure and soil..

OUR FIRST POPPY!



















The Greens Bed...

This is one of the beds in the main garden. The main garden was here when I moved in and had 6 large raised beds originally. This year we added the long 7th one up against the fence... Our greens bed was one of the first things to show signs of life this spring and the first to be planted. We were lucky to have some mustard, lettuce and chard seeds voluntarily sprout up this year..

Volunteer mustard greens from last year... SUPER spicy!

Baby Spinach

Yellow Swiss Chard that came up voluntarily from last year...

Sweet little Radicchio rosettes

Fern like, robust yet dainty Russian Kale...

*(We also have Chinese Cabbage, Mizuna, Sparkler Radish, and various flower seeds planted in this bed.. )*






Looks like we are destined for yumminess!  

MORE FUN AT THE RE-STORE...

 

 If you remember from my previous post that featured many of my inspirations and ideas there was a photo of a wall covered in hanging planters made from re-cycled gutters and filled with lettuce.. Great idea right? So last time I went to the Re-store I found these beauties... They are sturdy, straight metal gutters that actually have a cute scalloped edge on the outward facing side... one is about 10 feet long and the other about 6 feet long... I am planning on painting them white and mounting them on the sunniest wall outside my cabin.. I am still deciding if I want to cut them into shorter pieces, put screen on the ends, drill drainage holes and stack them or if i want to leave them long and just tilt them slightly so they drain out the ends... I will letcha know.. Apparently this is the hot new trend in around these parts because when I went to the Re-store and was carrying these out I had two of the attendants ask me if I was using them as planters! Ha,,, up-cyclers UNITE!
 

This is such a GREAT score! This is a huge, heavy bottomed stock pot perfect for canning, stewing and feeding the troops! Only 6$!!

 Cool wooden framed metal vent that slides back and forth...  Not sure what for yet... Any Ideas? (probably will just be decoration of some sort) 

 This is a super score! I'm not so into the colors but the green matches the free dark green tile that we salvaged and is going into my newly painted bathroom, so the fact that it goes perfectly with my colors and was only 2$ means I can be happy with it~

TOTALLY EXCITED! I have been wanting and looking for a bed frame for about a year now.. Most of the ones I found on Craig's List were really expensive or to far away to go pick up. So when I saw this mission style, solid wood fixer upper for only 25$ I jumped at the opportunity. My plan is to sand it down and either stain or paint it. I am looking forward to the storage provided by having my bed off the ground and the finished look it will create in the studio.

We found about 3x this amount in the garden section of the store.. some of them are dirty or broken but in this case it is worth the extra effort to save some real money, these were only 15 cents each. Always check with your local garden store, nursery, or Re-Store for used pony packs, flats and pots, often times they will give you a bulk deal.. Never hurts to ask.

 This looks to me like a old piece of office storage equipment. Well once its lined with coco mat or peat moss it will be a great shallow planter for lettuce... This will look good with the other metal baskets I bought.

 I grabbed a few handfuls of these nuts and washers from the tools and home repair section. I'm cooking up some creative decorative ideas with these already...

I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate these into some sturdy semi-permanent name tags for the vegetables.

                                  

This adorable folding, metal step stool was only 6$... I have had my eye on this for a little while, I cant believe it was still there!

The mission to create treasure from trash continues!