Colorful Vegetables

When I grew up cauliflower was white, broccoli was green, beets were dark red, tomatoes were red, potatoes were white and lettuce was green As I was harvesting today I marveled at the new colors of our vegetables. I always plant a few new varieties every year and this year I decided to try some old favorite vegetables in new colors.

Cauliflower has always been one of my favorites. Coming upon the snowy heads peeking out of their leaves is always a delight! Last week instead of a white heads, there were bright orange cheddar cauliflower heads and this week there were green spiral heads! What a treat to take to the market tomorrow along side my old favorites in white.

Beets also come in new colors. This week I harvested the yellow Goldens and the light red Chiogas. They are so pretty alongside the deep red traditionals and what a lovely beet salad they will make when I combine them.

Tomatoes when ripe should always be red, unless of course they are pink or yellow or even green! I especially love the Lemon Boys. Not only do they taste wonderful, they make a colorful splash along with the reds in salsas or salads. Tiny golden tomatoes are a fun change from the red cherry tomatoes.

I have had fun with potatoes in other colors for several years. I love the Magic Mollies that are purple clear through. I might correct that statement and say that I love growing them. I still have a hard time eating purple mashed potatoes and my family will not eat potato salad that's purple. I do love the bright red Norwegian Fingerlings. They are marbled with red in their white flesh and add color in addition to flavor to any plate.

Lettuce too comes in more colors than the old fashioned green. This year we are growing lettuce tat is red tipped, read and green, all red and some so read that it is nearly black and named Blackjack!

All these new colors in vegetables makes gardening even more fun that it already was! It is so fun to take new things to the market that people have never seen before and to know that my customers will have such colorful food on their plates!

Farm Tour, Working Hard and Beans

Friday the Farm Bureau hosted a Farm Tour of various farms in the valley. I am the secretary of the Farm Bureau so I helped put the tour together. We wanted to bring people who shopped at the farmer's markets to the valley to see where their food is grown. Because our place is very scenic and because the house is big enough to accommodate seating space for 50 if it should rain, the lunch stop was here. Fortunately it didn't rain and we were able to eat in the yard with a fabulous view of Pioneer Peak in the background and the gardens below. We had a meal of all Alaska Grown food catered by Delicious Dave and it was fantastic! Everyone walked through our greenhouse and gardens and we pulled up celery and ate it right in the garden! I so visiting with everyone, answering questions and showing off my gardens and flower beds. The whole tour was so successful that we are definitely going to repeat it again next summer.

Having the tour here Friday meant that this week I was busy--very busy! As luck would have it, Rachel and Sara and Irene, our helpers, were all three gone to a church youth conference this week and I was on my own to do the harvesting, the markets and prepare for the tour. It's a good thing I have three married daughters and a mom and dad who live close at hand. They love me and are willing to help me out rather than let me have a heart attack from working too hard. Nevertheless, even with all their help, I put in long days all week trying to keep up with markets and still have everything neat and tidy for the tour. That meant a lot of weeding, weeding, weeding! Don't feel sorry for me though, I loved every minute of it! I truly enjoy every aspect of gardening and I love being able to be in my gardens and greenhouse fourteen hours a day. It was a perfect week!

The markets this week were very busy! My daughter Rita helped me in Anchorage Wednesday and we were swamped with customers even before we were set up. I have vowed to get set up earlier this week! Celery and carrots made their debut for the year at our stand and they were so good and in such demand that they sold out by noon. This week we'll be bringing twice as much. Green beans were also a hot item.

Speaking of green beans, we are finding them not so easy to grow. We have a small greenhouse dedicated to pole beans and this is our third year trying to grow them there. Something is wrong with our system as we get beautiful plants and few beans. The first year we wrote off to inexperience, last year we blamed the cold wet weather and this year we are out of excuses. We are ready to give up on them, convert the bean house to cherry tomatoes and leave the bean growing to others. That is hard for me to say because I really want to be able to grow everything!

The Wind in the Flowers

Someone once told me that the definition of insanity is someone who keeps repeating the same behavior expecting different results. Saturday I was sure that once again I belonged in that category of the certifiably insane! Every year when I plant my flowers as small seedlings I promise myself that when they get a little bigger I will stake them up so they won't fall over and break off. You see, they don't need staked when they are small and the job has to be done after they grow for three or four weeks. Every year I have failed to get them staked before at least of few of them fall over, overcome by their own weight, a heavy rainfall or harassed by the wind. This year I was determined that was not going to happen. As I planted each one, I stuck a nice sturdy steak right beside it so it would be ready to tie to when the time came. My flower beds looked like a yard with big sticks poking up everywhere, but I knew those little plants would grow to cover those stakes. I placed a bag full of tying sting at the ready in the garage, ready for the day when they tying would be necessary. There would be no way I could make excuses this year for not tying up the flowers.



Early last week I looked at the flowers, especially the dahlias, which were heavy with foliage and buds and said to myself, "It is time you staked those flowers up." I put the sting and even a pair of sciccors to cut it with on the porch. Every day this week I walked by that bag of string and thought, "I will stake the flowers right after I _____(fill in the blank with plant the onions, pick the cucumbers, weed the lettuce, dead head the flowers or any number of any chores)". Saturday morning was a perfect morning to do the job but my husband began working on a greenhouse expansion project and although he didn't need my help, I thought it might be nice if I were near enough for him to call for me. I started weeding in the garden. The wind started to blow in the afternoon and so I told myself to quit weeding and go tie up the flowers. I went to the greenhouse and suckered tomatoes. That needed done too. I promised to babysit my grand children that evening and at 5:00 they arrived so I had to come in from the garden. As I walked up the hill to the house, I saw that the wind had done what wind does. It blows over and breaks off flowering plants. I quickly grabbed that bag of sting and with grandchildren in tow we frantically started tying up all of the flowers to my carefully placed stakes. I told the kids that we were on a rescue mission to save all of grandma's flowers. They thought that was neat and were respectfully sad when we discovered broken stems. All the while I was cursing my procrastination and wondering how I could once again have let this happen. In the end, only one dahlia was completely broken off and two others lost some major branches, but if I just would have tied them up earlier I would have lost none. Now I will never know what 'Heather Feather' would have looked like and the big dahlia in the wine barrel in front of the garage is half the size it was. I hope that I have learned my lesson and that next year I will not repeat this year's mistake, but then again I think I fit the insanity definition.

Onions, Onions, Onions!

I must admit that we grow some great onions. Of course, it is not like they are hard to grow or anything. You just have to put onions sets in the ground, heap the soil up around them and make sure they get plenty of water and in about a month you can harvest beautiful green onions-nothing to it. The tedious part is planting them, and well, maybe cleaning them. My kids have all complained about planting onion sets. I guess that is because when they were little and we were planting the garden that was a job I could give to them. The sets were large enough for them to handle, as opposed to tiny carrot or lettuce seeds, and it is hard to plant the sets too close together. It does take time to plant them, though and maybe that is why not many farmers have them at the markets. Rachel and my nieces have become excellent onion set planters so this year I decided that we would plant more onions, alot more onions. I ordered three fifty pound bags of onion sets. The first thing we planted this spring was a long row of onions. We have planted more onions each week. We have onions everywhere! One hundred and fifty pounds of onions goes a long, long way! We are all tired of planting onions!! Today I looked at what we had left and saw nearly a whole bag full of onion sets. We harvested potatoes for the market and so I decided that we would fill up that big empty space with those onions sets. Rachel said she'd do the planting if I made the rows--what a deal! In ten minutes I was done with my job and three hours later, the six rows planted Rachel announced she had quite of enough of onion planting. I looked at what was left of the onion sets--a whole two gallon bucket full. When we harvest Tuesday there will be more empty ground and we will plant the rest of those endless sets. I don't know if Rachel will be willing to make me the same deal again though, I may be down on my hands and knees trying to bury the last of our onion sets.