Welcome to the Acre, where I share my gardening & foraging adventures, trying to use every bit of what I grow & forage to make, cook or preserve.
All in Gardening
Now the fun part! Let's start talking vegetables! Dreaming about plants is so much fun. I love to think though all different varieties, even way more than I could plant, then hone into the very best plants to grow for our palette, yield, and growing season. I also like to include a few varieties of things I have never grown or cooked to keep things interesting in the garden and kitchen.
Every year I try to bring in new varieties of fruits and vegetables inspired by something we enjoyed from our local farmer’s market or from our travels. Many of the new vegetables I have chosen this season are from our vacations. I love how these vegetables where discovered through an experience or memory, and cannot wait to see how they grow in my own garden.
It is Mother’s Day weekend, which means it is officially garden planting weekend! You would feel the excitement this week at our local urban farm supply store, as people loaded up with plants, purchased their spring chicks and hauled giant bags of dirt. As you all are out planting, wanted to do a quick post on some planting tricks I have found super helpful in my garden!
It's planting weekend! As many of you head out to the garden beds this Mother's Day, one thing to consider is the soil you are planting your precious veggie babies into. Plants need a mix of different factors to thrive. To set myself up for success, I take a couple things into consideration as a prepare my garden beds for planting: the soil pH, adding compost and top soil, and fertilizing with a balanced fertilizer. I will break down the importance of each, and how I go about adding these to my beds.
Since I was a little girl, the idea of growing throughout the summer and stashing away for the winter sounded so perfect. Having the rafters full of drying spices, baskets filled with potatoes and squash in the cellar, and only venturing outside to grab winter carrots from the garden - how wonderful!
My favorite part about starting seeds is getting to grow plants months before the snow stops falling. I love watching the tiny plants pop their heads out of the soil, preparing for spring before there is even a robin in sight.
Herbs for me are perfect things to add in where there is a pocket of space, or where they can benefit the plants that need it the most. Herbs are perfect to grow amongst your vegetables, as they help with pest control. Herbs can actually mask the sent of your plants to pests, confusing them of the tasty vegetables' location. Some herbs actually improve the growth and taste of other plants. Basil actually helps tomatoes grow, and blue borage makes strawberries sweeter. How cute is that?
Asparagus and rhubarb are so bizarre to watch as they push their way out of the ground in the early spring. They seem to defy nature with the way they push through chilly soil, with rhubarb unfurling into big beautiful green leaves, and asparagus poking their bright, long stalks out of the ground, which I swear sometimes grow several inches overnight. Strawberries come with their own level of wonder, as bright, super sweet berries fill tiny little plants. I am so looking forward to how my perennial plants will grow and develop this season!
I am so excited about the onions and garlic I am growing this year! Garlic is a garden wonder I am so excited to keep working at. The fact that you stick them in the ground in the fall, and wait for them to make their way out of the ground in the spring is so amazing to me! I have also found that homegrown garlic and onions have a flavor unlike anything you can buy in the store. They also keep through the long and cold months of winter, making it so enjoyable to dig into the winter storage and still use something fresh from the garden.
Kale, cabbage and broccoli are still new vegetables to me as far as growing them in my garden beds. This patch of my garden will be a lot of testing and learning this year, and I am so excited about it!
In past seasons, I considered greens to be a garden staple, and grew the most basic cut-and-come-again lettuce and butterhead lettuce. After having enjoyed a few salads while traveling in Europe, I realized that the world of salad greens is vast and full of various textures, flavors, colors and forms. I am excited to branch out this growing season and try out a range of different greens.
Root vegetables are my favorite to grow, and I grow ALOT of them:) I love the surprise of pulling a vibrant radish or beet out of the garden. I am in awe of how stunning the colors can be, fresh from the garden soil. Roots are also perfect to grow as they can be harvested at almost any growth stage - young, crisp beets and carrots are perfect in spring, while full-sized, earthly and rich roots make excellent fall and winter dishes. Root vegetables also benefit from a touch a frost, making their earthly flavor a touch sweeter. This makes them perfect to grow here in Minnesota, as our growing season is so short, and frost is bound to happen early in the fall.
For me, green beans are a garden staple, something you must grow if you are a backyard gardener. They are high yielding and just about everyone loves garden-fresh green beans. Peas on the other hand were a new vegetable to me when I first started gardening. I mean, of course I have had a bag of frozen peas from the grocery store, but I had never had a crisp, sweet fresh-from-the-pod pea. They are now a must grow for me, and are given a hefty space within my garden bed. So excited to share the pea and bean varieties I am trying out this year!
I know, I know, there is still snow on the ground outside, and the last thing you can imagine right now is tiny plants sprouting from the ground. To be honest, I never stop thinking about it! I dream about the garden often, rethinking garden plans, how to get the most out of my space and growing season, what I want to have to enjoy over next winter, and how all the plants growing together will look and taste. Garden planning is one of my all time favorite thing to do, and it breaks up the cold monotony of winter.
