by Briscoe White | Mar 5, 2010 | A Year in the Life.., Flowers, Gardening, Growing, Herbs, Indoor Gardening |
We are finally able to report actual planting in our “A Year in the Life of a Garden” cold frame. Today we began by helping ourselves first with a salad garden. We are growing all the lettuce varieties offered by The Growers- Exchange.com: Wildfire, Arugula, All Greens, and Spicy Mesculin. All these annual plants will be finished by June, the lettuces wilt in the early summer heat.
The night temperatures restrict us to cool season plants for now, but as spring progresses we will add a basil plant along with any other herb plants useful in cooking. Our small gardens will produce plenty to eat from our veggies and culinary herbs.
We plan to add lots of flowering annuals to compliment our herb plants. Annual vines such as Moonflower and Hyacinth Bean will climb trellises and frame our beds. We like to grow old fashion favorites like celosia. We have several varieties: the brain varieties ‘Cramers Burgundy’ and ‘Lemon Lime’ always draw attention in the garden and as a cut flower. The plume type celosia plant has an entirely different flower and makes a great filler in bouquets. I am getting ahead of myself, celosia planting time is at least a month away.
For now we will grow salad plants and a little collards, kale, and broccoli too! Soon we will begin planting example gardens for our herb gardening kits. We hope to have pictures of all growth stages, which we can post on here on the blog. Herb gardening can look like weed gardening so our challenge will be to add flowering annuals for color and texture.
Next week we will have photos of the baby salad plants! We encourage you to follow our garden and makes suggestions if you like…
by Briscoe White | Mar 3, 2010 | Exploring, Flowers, Gardening, Growing, Life on the Farm, Wildlife |
Last fall when I first began this gardening blog, I reported on my seed collecting endeavors. Seed collecting is just the first step towards growing plants. All those ziplock bags full of seeds were carefully stored over the winter.
And now we are at the next step, which is to plant the seeds. I had collected seeds from various flowering annuals, some perennials, and a few herb plants. The goal is to plant wildflowers in all the conservation grasslands around the farm. Annual plants such as cosmos and Gomphrena will give color this year as the perennial natives establish themselves. To create a blooming prairie effect Dames Rocket and Shasta Daisies start blooming in spring and are followed by Coreopsis, Rudbeckia, Ratibida, and Echinacea in summer. A total of thirty types of flowers were planted
This year I am planting what I call “the grand finale”. Summer into fall will find Helianthus full of yellow sunflowers intermixed with the blue haze of wild Ageratum. I will have to wait until the following fall to see how it works, perennials must have time to establish. But for now we must wait and have faith that planting these seeds in the cold ground will sprout and grow in spring.
by Briscoe White | Mar 1, 2010 | Exploring, Growing, Herbs, Recipes |
As spring gets closer, these recurring winter storms will have to stop sometime. Today is bright and clear but the fifty-degree temperature feels more like forty. We are not there yet! Here in our greenhouse, spring feels like a real possibility. All of the little annual plants are growing nicely. Herb plants are a little more complicated, so some are grown but dormant.
No culinary herb represents summer better than the basil plant. Looking at these strong little seedlings, we know we will soon be herb gardening. And basil will be high on our list, our frozen pesto is long gone, so we cannot wait for this year’s first crop of fresh cut basil. Read this recipe and start dreaming yourself…
The Perfect Pesto
Ingredients
• 1/4 cup walnuts
• 1/4 cup pine nuts
• 3 tablespoons chopped garlic 9 cloves
• 5 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 1/2 cups good olive oil
• 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan
Directions
Place the walnuts, pine nuts, and garlic in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Process for 15 seconds. Add the basil leaves, salt, and pepper. With the processor running, slowly pour the olive oil into the bowl through the feed tube and process until the pesto is thoroughly pureed. Add the Parmesan and puree for a minute. Use right away or store the pesto in the refrigerator or freezer with a thin film of olive oil on top.
Basil seedlings growing at in our greenhouses.
by Briscoe White | Feb 26, 2010 | Exploring, Gardening, Growing, Inspiration, Urban Gardening |
I had to pick up some greenhouse supplies today. In the warehouse park where our supplier is located is one of those little areas time seems to have forgotten. At the rear of the park are a few lots no one wanted some thirty years ago where the park was built out.
Open land just sitting there is an open invitation to many urban farmers. This unwanted couple of acres has been converted to individual plots. Like everything else, the gardens are frozen for now, but come spring this place will look like an Asian market for vegetables. Everybody seems to have their own plan; some grow all peppers or all greens while others grow a diverse garden.
All the fences and cold frames are made of discarded materials. Most of the crops grown are annual plants, started from seed. This summer I will get a photo of the crops, but for now it is still too cold to garden.
by Kenan White | Feb 24, 2010 | A Year in the Life.., Basics, Gardening, Growing |
We have introduced our new garden we plan to grow in our cold frame beds and containers. In this garden we hope to recreate situations many home gardeners face. Limited space is our main focus and we will grow annual plants and various herb plants in combination to get the most out of a small space. This is an exciting venture for The Growers Exchange and we can already imagine the beds full of flowering annuals and all of our herb plants inter-planted. Vines will grow on trellises and melons will hang from the rafters. Will spring ever get here?
The other side of “ A Year in the Life of a Garden” theme is the outdoor garden surrounding the nursery office. A hedge was planted and a waterfall was built. As soon as the ground dries enough the beds will be cut out of the grass. Paths will be mulched and when the weather cooperates, plants will be planted. Here we plan to grow every plant we offer. By growing a test garden, we will be better able to know the ins and outs of the plants we sell. New plants will be trialed so we can see how they perform in all seasons. A photo record will be kept and journal entries made to our blog.
Follow the garden as it grows. We hope to begin planting the first seeds this week. Check back here to see the salad garden planted!
by Briscoe White | Feb 17, 2010 | A Year in the Life.., Flowers, Gardening, Growing, Herbs, Indoor Gardening |
We will plant these new beds. So far all we have been able to do is wait, all is ready but the weather. We have big plans for this garden we are calling “ a year in the life”. This cold frame structure is covered with a sheet of construction grade plastic, when spring temperatures are reliably warm we will remove it and cover with a shade fabric which gives about 30% shade and breaks up wind and heavy rainfall. The plastic keeps the inside warm, but not when temperatures are as low as now.
The beds are laid out to give us a demonstration garden for the plants we sell. We will keep a photo record of each planting, we will have flowering annuals and will mix in an assortment of culinary herbs. We hope to keep a bed of medicinal herbs and maybe some aromatic herbs, but would like some input as to what we should plant.
One bed may have a large basil plant surrounded by calibrachoa and celosia, combining herb plants with annual plants. First seeds will be sown in a week or two, as soon as night temps rise out of the twenties. For now I am still stuck talking about what I am going to do, but this has been one rough winter. Not yet, but soon we will have these beds full of plants!
The first daffodils are a sure sign that spring is on its way!
