tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61514748269754158412024-03-20T07:45:47.176-04:00Rock Garden ProjectA Self-sufficiency Blog Gone MommyMollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.comBlogger86125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-46075942191212514292012-03-22T08:19:00.000-04:002012-03-22T08:19:13.040-04:00Back in the Garden!Here we are! I will be gardening with a one year-old this year. If you are one of the three people that followed this blog in the past, I should warn you that this is probably going to be a "mommy blog" with an emphasis on gardening. It's inevitable. And my methods for getting some produce on the table... well, I'm not sure that even I will be able to recommend them to anyone.
I got 45 minutes Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-29522754953103495232011-07-07T06:36:00.001-04:002011-07-07T06:37:42.977-04:00This Blog on HiatusUntil I have enough time to actually garden.
Until I have enough time to keep the swirls of postpartum hair from getting from the floor to my child's mouth.
Until I have enough time to properly care for the soil.
Until I have enough time to take a picture of anything more than a baby in a Jumperoo.
Until I have enough time to vary my diet from handfuls of raw pecans and chocolate chips on the wayMollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-27839967027808735792011-06-10T08:56:00.000-04:002011-06-10T08:56:30.727-04:00Three Months Later...The new little gardener arrived March 1st. I assumed I would be ready to get lots of gardening done by the beginning of May. Ha! Turns out new motherhood is a bit more complicated, painful, and time-consuming than I was aware. And the little sugar pea is much more interested in:
the Jumperoo...
sleeping...
and toys she can chew on.
I've managed to plant a couple of squash plantsMollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-82605601292076540162010-12-14T12:08:00.000-05:002010-12-14T12:08:46.567-05:00Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda: The Last of the RegretsI'm only going to say this one last time: Ooops. I've never failed so hard at gardening. I was a little distracted by the hormone haze of nausea. I also had a big fat case of the Maybe Laters. Imagine someone on muscle relaxers. (Actually... pregnancy does involve natural muscle relaxers. I hadn't thought of that.) Here's my Didn't Do List:
1) Rake and pile up leaves in my compost. Snow fell Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-34924129981221508572010-10-07T08:54:00.002-04:002010-10-07T08:56:49.867-04:00Oh, Garden!There are two reasons that I've been neglecting and avoiding this space. One, my garden sucked eggs this year. Two, we have a baby on the way, so I was pregnant and sick for most of the summer. I still had a garden this season. I did have some successful harvests. However, I had the worst gardening season I've ever had in my 8 or so years of gardening.
To begin, I had the toughest time getting Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-24431579326891890122010-08-16T15:58:00.000-04:002010-08-16T15:58:39.977-04:00Harvesting Butternut SquashWinter squash is probably my favorite garden food. I love it baked, roasted, or whipped into a spicy soup.
I actually harvested two butternut squash today. One looks perfectly tan and ripe and basically fell off of the wilting vine. The other one still has faint green stripes and I kind of yanked it off of the vine by accident. So, I have an experiment on my hands. I've never grown butternuts Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-27740918987241405022010-07-02T10:40:00.000-04:002010-07-02T10:40:42.345-04:00Letter from the GardenDear Reader,
I hope these words find you well and enjoying the long days of summer. It's early in the morning as I write and already warm and humid. After two days of haltingly chilly breezes, the hot soup of summer air is promising to collect and linger. The tomatoes, squash, and celery will thrive. I've pulled up the last of the peas to make room for tomatoes and more rows of carrots. Always Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-17615077026488163742010-06-21T18:40:00.000-04:002010-06-21T18:40:10.978-04:00PanniersAfter getting really cranky with some annoying marketing awhile ago I thought I'd share a very exciting purchase I've made recently. I'm happy to say that the consumer experience this time was lovely, probably because I knew what I wanted but also because the bike shop is pretty laid back. I was running a lot of errands on my bike, and I was wearing a small backpack to carry water and Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-87023757255158791912010-06-10T18:50:00.000-04:002010-06-10T18:50:30.042-04:00Diatomaceous Earth In ActionThis seedling kind of reminds me of a sick little E.T. all ghost-white and pitiful. But what you see there is diatomaceous earth. It's not a chemical; it's actually the crushed cell walls of unicellular algae. Diatoms live in water and when they die they sink to the bottom and form a crust of diatomaceous earth.
The powder is actually made up of lots of jagged edges from the perspective ofMollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-16292340568092803722010-06-09T21:54:00.001-04:002010-06-10T14:52:21.252-04:00ENOUGH!It seems like this has been my mantra for several months. Not that this is a new idea to me. It's that lately the sentiment comes with an exclamation point.
I'm sure this is in large part due to my move to the suburbs. Uhgh. I understand that busy, important people need to get where they're going fast. I just wish they'd consider the beating heart and smooshy, tender brains inside the person on Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-42549067625578511992010-06-08T18:22:00.000-04:002010-06-08T18:22:40.036-04:00Things You Won't Find in a Grocery Store: Radish Greens and Seed PodsAside from the handful of crisp, perfectly purple gumball-sized radishes I harvested on May 4, my radish harvest was a bust this year (due to root maggots, ew), until...I discovered that the spicy roots aren't the only parts of a radish plant you can eat. First, I tried sautéing the greens. You might be thinking, "Wait a minute! Don't radish greens have tiny little scratchy hairs on Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-58384662094687430272010-06-06T11:35:00.000-04:002010-06-06T11:35:44.995-04:00Healthier, Happier, and Smarter... With DIRT!Long ago, I used to feel a teensy bit of shame when I was out in the garden and I'd pull up a carrot, wipe it on my pants, and then eat it even though there were remaining clumps of soil in the little grooves of the root. I felt a bit uncivilized. I've long since abandoned that shame for the not-to-be-duplicated experience of grazing straight from the garden. Turns out there may be some very goodMollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-49920499347889443452010-06-03T17:28:00.002-04:002010-06-03T17:34:21.210-04:00No More Baby LettuceThe lettuce harvest is in full swing. The weather has been wet and mild and perfect for it. I've harvested 7 bags. Now it's not mesclun, and they're not full heads of lettuce, the product is somewhere in between. So far the harvest has still been from thinning out the plants, so the lettuce comes in small, sweet, juicy tall clusters. (Thinking about it made me crave some, so I just got up to grabMollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-63105535555550979282010-05-23T22:21:00.001-04:002010-05-23T22:25:47.484-04:00Last Spinach HarvestI woke up at 6 am this morning to a warbling vireo and a field of fog outside my window. Last night I just wanted to go to sleep fast so I could wake up and get to Sunday. Like a little kid. I was looking forward to a sunny day in the garden and then a bike ride to the arts festival downtown and some live music. And maybe some ice cream.
I figured I could get all of my transplants in the ground,Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-82821594294937987042010-05-18T19:57:00.000-04:002010-05-18T19:57:37.670-04:00JamFrom where I'm sitting at my computer I can spot the outrageously fat groundhog that has been climbing over the fence and mowing down my peas. I can't see him or her right now, but I'm waiting. At the moment the HAVAHART trap is set (though I've never actually heard of anyone getting a groundhog to enter one) and I'm trying to confuse the thing to death by covering up the peas with floating row Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-14408070876285824072010-05-14T19:43:00.000-04:002010-05-14T19:43:42.713-04:00There is Nothing Like a Groundhogsighting to make you angry.
It ate my peas.
Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-62552179538560685152010-05-12T18:28:00.002-04:002010-05-12T18:33:16.095-04:00(Quick Update... Almost)"I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-8390590448647748222010-05-04T19:34:00.004-04:002010-05-12T17:30:41.722-04:00May FourthI just planted a few things...
1. Mokum carrots in between the rows of spinach. They will be ready to harvest in 48 days. 2. On the edge of the spinach I eeked out room for a row of beets. Chioggia beets. (I still have a pile in the fridge and I ate some a week ago. Not bad.)3. I stuck the little broccoli mix transplants in the ground.4. I threw my stunted failure of a try at onions in the Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-21743117559989132212010-04-18T14:57:00.001-04:002010-04-18T14:57:54.110-04:00Cilantro HatersI love cilantro. When I worked on a small farm, there was a young kid who was very grateful that I'd been hired. He squirmed whenever you mentioned cilantro and he hated harvesting it. I ended up doing all of the cilantro harvesting. It was all I could do to keep from stopping, dropping and rolling in it.
THE CURIOUS COOKCilantro Haters, It’s Not Your FaultBy HAROLD McGEEPublished: April 14, Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-70900971049200959682010-04-12T19:20:00.000-04:002010-04-12T19:20:08.004-04:00Haul Report: Spinach I have plans to keep track of harvests this season. I saw someone else's harvest report on Kitchen Gardeners International with everything assigned a market price. The guy's garden added up to over $2,000. (The link is currently busted.) I'm interested in what kind of value I'm getting out of this hobby (obsession). Here we go with harvest number one...
So Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-10638245203977828242010-04-02T16:53:00.002-04:002010-04-30T22:53:09.848-04:00Spinach, Garlic, and Some Double Digging
The temperature is hovering around 80F this afternoon. Yesterday it was the same, but with some really summer-like sun rays. I'm afraid that my overwintered spinach is going to bolt the first week of April. I've hosed it down the last two days so that the breezes would keep the temperatures down. Plus, it is DRY here. I actually *needed* to water the lettuce sprouts so that they Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-52171293230389200892010-03-18T20:28:00.026-04:002010-03-21T15:32:34.598-04:00Spring WindI had a list of things to do today, but I went out to the garden instead because first, the chorus frogs lured me outside. Then, I thought I'd just go turn the compost. The next thing I knew I had my fleece off and I was pounding away at grass clumps and tossing cutworms over the fence to the chickens.
I've been reading this choose-your-own-adventure garden book before bed lately and I've Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-2269533986940058042010-03-16T23:03:00.001-04:002010-03-16T23:05:43.228-04:00Spring PortraitIn the hot, bright afternoon, I rousted a mourning cloak butterfly from where it was sipping on a pothole in the driveway. I watched red tailed hawks soar circles around a blue sky above the dried-up, rustling fields. I stopped along the roadside to dip my fingers into the soil below the leaning skeletons of asparagus stalks, checking for new growth, taking the pulse of the earth. Bluebirds Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-89620632959991418282010-03-15T20:22:00.000-04:002010-03-15T20:22:54.174-04:00Giddy on the Ides of MarchI was under the eaves of the grocery store where I'd locked my bike last Friday when I heard one of those advertisements that interrupts the store's radio station. You know the canned radio stations that push and pull your emotions to make you forget that you're shopping. One minute you're drifting down the aisle in a cloud generated by pop-song sap, the next minute you're singing along to that Mollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6151474826975415841.post-82242982345248851122010-03-12T18:28:00.001-05:002010-03-12T18:29:58.684-05:00WormWORM VIDEO
I was out in the flower beds planting my leftover peas so as to fix some nitrogen when the chickens came waddling over. I'm trying to discourage the co-dependency of my neighbor roostr-boy. He follows me around everywhere because I once spent an afternoon tossing him worms over the garden fence.
I ducked inside to discourage the chickens from following me everywhere. I'd love to haveMollyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14640872963708373735noreply@blogger.com0