Radish haul and potatoes in the dark

 It's been raining and cold here for what seems like forever now.  Most of this week, anyway.  I am concerned because things just don't seem to be taking off the way they should ~ not enough warmth to grow and too much rain.  But I digress....
Last week was a nice week.  Finally got the rest of the garden planted (except for the horseradish, which will go in large pots in the potato patch).   I even got a small flower bed planted (finally!) but no pictures yet as I finished it in the dark and it started raining that night and hasn't stopped yet.  We also had an "incident" with a neighbor's large animal (we think it was a cow).  I went up into the garden one day to find huge hoof prints through every. single. garden.  All three.  And not just one or two on the edge, but a nice meander through every damn patch!  I was just sick.  Huge hoof prints right through the cucumbers that I had planted the previous day (which are now up, I might add...take that, you damn animal!), in my baby basil, in the corn, in the potatoes, you name it, it was tromped through.  I felt vandalized.  Violated.  Pissed off.  I almost cried.  In the end, I sighed, replanted the baby basil that was in the hoof print divot, pulled up the corn that had been trashed, tried to rescue the squash that had been stepped on, recovered the potatoes, replanted the tomatoes that had been torn up, hoped for the best for the cucumber and other seeds that hadn't yet sprouted, and am hoping that it won't happen again. 

The potato patch mentioned above isn't the three rows we planted early on, it's the "new" potato patch - 200 square feet with 50 lb. of seed potatoes that should yield about 4,000 lb if all goes well.   We were out planting until 9 pm one day last week to get them in the ground before it rained again

In this pic you can see the first row going in and the rest of the rows ready.  It just got too dark to take any more pictures.  By the time we were done it was tough to see well enough to cover the last of the rows and we had to go back and check the next morning to make sure they were all covered.  They were, but all this rain has exposed some of them so as soon as it stops raining and things dry out a little I'm going to have to go get them covered back up again.  I tell ya', this weather is nuts.

Also last week I had the first moderately big haul of radishes

The French Breakfast radishes have finally taken off, and the Philadelphia White Box are just crazy!  The Cincinnati Market are still not as plentiful but they are coming along.  Here's a good photo of one of each

And here's the cleaned haul

Close ups of each
Philly White Box:

 Cincinnati Market:

 French Breakfast:

As you can see, they've been cleaned and topped.  That's because we were gonna' EAT them!  The Philly White Box are still my favorites raw but I did actually saute the French Breakfast in butter and salt and, lemme tell ya'..... omg!  Delicious!  If you can get your hands on some, give it a try.  I halved or quartered them lengthwise and used about a tablespoon of butter and a generous pinch of salt for the amount you see here and I now have a new favorite way to eat radishes!  I just can't go on enough - I loved them!  Now I can't wait to try that lovely recipe I shared with you before, with the tarragon..... and am kicking myself that I didn't plant tarragon this year!  Next year, for sure.

THIS is why heritage/heirloom varieties and breeds are so important:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/07/food-ark/siebert-text

Rain + sun = growth!

The potatoes, beans, and most of the radishes have taken off:

For some reason, the Cincinnati Market radishes are patchy:

but the ones that have come up look fine:

and the abundant Philadelphia White Box look fabulous:

I think radishes are on the menu for tonight.  I may even try sauteeing them.


And, the peonies have popped!

They're so beautiful.  They're just beyond the potatoes, beans, and radishes.  It's really nice to be working in the garden and look over and see them. 

Busy, as always

Wow..... the week has flown by!  I've been trying to sit my butt down at this computer and write about what's been going on, and feeling guilty that I haven't.  I planted all the rest of the tomatoes and peppers, filled out that third row in the second garden with carrots, sage, and lettuce; plotted out the rest of garden # 2, hoed the radishes and beans, and planted more lettuce in the center of the radish rings under the bean teepees.  There's probably more, I just can't remember right now.  Oh, yeah, I moved a couple of wheelbarrows full of rocks to the edge of the garden to mark the rows because I needed a visual orientation point at each end -  fifty feet is a long way for me to just "eyeball" a straight line.  I'm sure I'm forgetting other things, too.  In addition to this, I am taking a Permaculture Design certification class through the Vermont Wilderness School and was in class from 9 am. to 5:30 pm (or a little later) on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  Before classes started, I had visions of coming home and going out to the garden ~ NOT!!  OMG!  I was so exhausted by the end of the weekend that I went to bed at 8:00pm on Sunday!  That was after showing up an hour late to a neighborhood pot-luck (they knew I was going to be late and very graciously said to come, anyway) and having to choose to not go with everyone to a dance at the town hall (Cajun dance lessons, and I had to miss it! Sob!  Snif!) because I was so tired I couldn't think straight by the time I'd finished dinner.
We actually got to eat some of these amazing heirloom radishes this week.  I had to thin them because they were getting big enough to crowd themselves, so we had them with our salad with dinner one night:

The white ones at the top of the pic are my favorite:  Philadelphia White Box.  It's a wonderful, mild radish.  According to what I've been able to find about them,  the word "box" in the name refers to them being grown in cold frames as early as the 1890's.  Next in my order of preference would be the ones in the bottom left of the photo, French Breakfast.  It's sort of in the middle of the three, in terms of 'bite'.  Seed Savers Exchange (our source) says, "A very early market garden radish of French origin.  Listed by James J. H. Gregory of Marblehead, Massachusetts in 1875." and here's a nice article on them from the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home_garden/the-french-breakfast-radish-makes-a-handy-snack/2011/04/12/AF6E8uBE_story.html .  The last one in the picture, the long one on the right, is the Cincinnati Market radish.  In my opinion, they have the sharpest "bite" of all three varieties.  Still good, mind you, just more 'radish-y' than the other two and especially more so than the Philadelphia White Box.  Seed Savers Exchange says this about the Cincinnati Market radish:  "(aka Long Scarlet) Heirloom described in Vilmorin’s The Vegetable Garden (1885); now becoming scarce. Deep red radishes are 6" long and tapered.".  I think the thing I love best about these is that they are an heirloom that is becoming scarce and, that just by growing them and taking them to the farmer's market (when we have enough produce to go), we will be helping to preserve them in the gene pool and raise awareness about them.  Maybe that sounds a little overblown but, really, that's why we're growing the heirlooms.
Oh!  And, did you know that you can cook radishes?  I sure didn't.  Guess I've been living an uninformed life, folks, because I came across several references for cooked radishes, especially sliced and sauteed in butter (mmmmmmm..... I love butter!).  But then I found this:  http://nymag.com/restaurants/recipes/inseason/56730/.  It's a recipe for Butter Poached Radishes and it sounds sublime.  It makes me wish I was growing tarragon this year.  Next year..... definitely next year.

Eight hour day

That's what we put in yesterday in the garden:  an eight hour day.  Both of us.  The good news is that we could actually move this morning.  The bad news is that we didn't do much in the gardens today, only about 2 hours.  But that had to do with having another commitment that kept us out longer than we expected during the middle of the day.  Still, we did so much yesterday that I don't feel too awfully bad about slacking a little today.  We got the second garden tilled, raked, and partially planted and the first garden weeded and hoed.   Doesn't sound like much but, believe me, it was.  In addition to weeding and hoeing the first garden I also hilled up the three rows of potatoes that are in it. 

They're coming along nicely.

I did find three Colorado potato beetles, though, so I checked for them again this morning.  Thankfully, I didn't find any.  Doesn't mean they weren't there, but I didn't see them.  The eggplant on the end of the garden is actually intended to be a trap crop for them, so we'll see how well that works.   More of that companion planting stuff.  The potatoes are growing much more quickly than the eggplant, so I don't know how well that will work.  I'll keep you posted on that.  In the meantime, I'm going to make up a garlic spray for the garden that someone in my organic gardening class told me about and we'll give that a try, too.

So, progress so far:  garden #1 (20' x 75') is fully planted, garden #2 (40' x 50') is partially planted, and garden #3 (40' x 50')  has been tractor-tilled.  You've seen #1.  Here's #2:

In here, between yesterday and today, we planted 86 tomato plants (Red Brandywine, Yellow Brandywine, Sudduth's Strain Brandywine - aka Pink Brandywine, yellow pear, and red pear), 43 Genovese basil starts, and 10 Mexican jalapenos.  I still have all the Bull Nose Bell peppers to plant, along with some more sage.  The sage that I put between the rows of carrots is looking pretty good but I've lost a couple (rain?  rabbits?  dunno...) so I'll replace them with these that are left to plant.  In addition to the peppers and sage, I still have the other three varieties of melons, a couple of pumpkins, some acorn squash, and cucumbers.  The cucumbers haven't fared well and are looking pretty iffy, to the point that I think we're going to lose them.  That 2 weeks of rain really did us in.  We'll plant what we have and also direct seed them in the garden  - plenty of seeds left!  Sadly, we lost all of the habanero peppers.  They were looking great but that two weeks of rain was too much.  I'm going to start some more seeds tomorrow.  Hopefully, it's not too late.

This is garden #3:

This patch is exclusively dedicated to potatoes.  We bought 50 lb. of organic Kennebec seed potatoes which, based on information we have been able to find, should yield us somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 lb. of potatoes.  Yes, that was right:  4,000 lb.  We are, of course, hoping to sell them.  Or, at least, the vast majority of them.  Live local?  Wanna buy some potatoes in the fall?  I'll let you know when they're ready.

It missed us

The tornado.  The ones that hit Springfield, MA and surrounding areas have been all over the news and, for those who don't know, we aren't that far from there.  I had a few tense moments when the sky here was really, really black and the wind was picking up but, thankfully, we were spared.  I wasn't sure what I would do, being in the trailer as we wait for the house to be built - I didn't have a really good place to go.  The best I could figure on was the garage, but wasn't even sure I could wrangle all the dogs in time to get us all under cover.  Thankfully I didn't have to find out.  Sadly, quite a few folks in the area have lost their homes and, some, their lives.  Please pray for them.  We did get quite a bit of rain but it doesn't seem to have been heavy enough to hurt the garden.  Unfortunately, the invisible dog that ran through did.  I say invisible because only the prints remain.... in my rows of carrots, in the beets, in the squash, and in the corn.  Sigh.  However, if that's the worst of my troubles today then I am grateful.