Patching the Row Cover

This weekend we realized that the edges of our row cover where we drive in the garden stakes to secure it to the ground had made large holes around the stake entry points. This is caused by a combo of normal wear and tear and the number of wind storms we had this year. My clever hubby found a great way to patch it though. Just like all other row cover care, he used good ol' duct tape. He placed a piece over the stake holes and then drove the stake through. Now the stake still has something to grip and the cover is very secure. 

 

 

Recipe: Easy Roasted Beets

Just took the last of the beets out of the garden yesterday. This got me thinking that we should post about how we usually use them up. Typically we roast them in the oven. There are many ways to roast beets, which seem to be the super food du jour, but as with all things we favor the simple method. This recipe roasts the beets with the skin on and doesn't require par boiling or making foil packets, etc.

Supplies:
Knife and cutting board
Bowl
Spoon
Baking sheet

Ingredients:
Beets (lots or only a few)
Olive oil (or oil of your choice)
*Sea salt

*Optional but gives it a nice flavor

Instructions:
1. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.

2. Take your fresh from the garden (or wherever) beets and cut off the beet greens (but don't throw them out--we'll do a beet green recipe as a future post).

3. Scrub up the beets to get all the dirt off. (If you clean them before you cut off the beet greens be sure not to get the greens too wet; they will last longer in the fridge if they stay dry).

4. After they are all cleaned up cut them into small pieces. The Cylindras (red ones in pic above) we cut into medallions since their shape makes them so easy to cut, but the Goldens we tend to cut into little quarter sections. The smaller the pieces the faster they will cook. 

5. Put your cut up beets into a large bowl and drizzle olive oil over them. Mix with a spoon so each piece is more or less covered and then spread them out onto your baking sheet.  If you are plan to use salt, then take your sea salt grinder and sweep it quickly across your beets now (or just lightly sprinkle by hand).

6. Put sheet in the oven and bake for 30-45 minutes or until you can easily pierce with a fork. If you are only doing a few beets reduce the cooking time and check them often. When you take them out they will look a bit shriveled and reduced in size.

7. Try and get them to the table before you eat them all right off the baking sheet.

Enjoy!

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Use Homemade Seed Tape to Pre-Plan Your Fall Garden

I mentioned a few months ago that we were going to test out making our own seed tape following Garden Betty's instructions. We tried it with a single row of Golden Beets, and it was an astounding success (see here for pics). Not only did it make sowing seed much easier (no accidental volunteer seeds falling into other rows), but I think it actually helped improve our germination rate.

Since we are actually expecting a baby any day now and will not have as much time to devote to the garden the rest of the summer, it dawned on me that I could make seed tape ahead of time for all of our fall garden sowings to make it easy to plant what we want quickly and efficiently (especially when we are highly sleep deprived with a newborn).

After making all this tape, I realized this could be a great overall garden planning tool for anyone because it makes you really think through what you are going to plant and what you can actually fit in your garden and allows you to prepare ahead of time. Some people have no problems with this but we are newer to gardening and still screw things up from time to time.

Why do this when it is so time consuming and you can just direct sow into the garden? Here are a few reasons:

• It forces you to plan out your space precisely. Helpful for those of us who tend to think they have a way bigger garden then they actually have and who rudely realize this after they have planted too much of something and have run out of space for other things.

• It makes sowing easier since you only have to scoop out a little trench the right depth, throw the tape on it, and cover it with the soil. We found this a bit more back saving then normal sowing and MUCH quicker. 

•  It helps you plant things with consistent spacing, and if you are careful, at a consistent depth. This makes your rows look neat and tidy and improves your germination since you didn't accidentally sow one seed 1/2" deep when you should have sown it 1/4" deep. 

• It aids germination because the paper helps keep seeds moist. This is particularly helpful for seeds that are garden princesses like carrots and parsnips that refuse to germinate if they are not kept comfortably moist in the beginning. 

• It makes succession planting a breeze because you can tear however much tape you want to plant at one time and save the rest for a later planting. Again, of course you can do this with seeds, but I know we at least never end up doing succession planting because sowing is already time consuming and we don't want to do it twice or we forget to bring the right seeds to the garden. 

• It allows you to prepare things ahead of time if you know you will be strapped for time at a certain point in the season (like if you are having a baby for example) or if it is winter and you want something garden-related to do.

Convinced? Then just follow the steps below.

Step 1: Planning Phase--Get out all the seeds you want to plant for your summer or fall garden. Figure out what you want to go in which garden bed and then use the row distance measurements provided on the seed packets to figure out how many rows of seed tape you will be able to fit your space. To help me, I drew out a picture of my beds and how much could fit where. (For example, my big bed is 8'x 8' but I have beams in a t-shape that we walk on so in each square I can fit seed tape lengths that are about 3 1/3 ft long.)

Step 2:  Planning Phase cont'd-- On another piece of paper, take the measurements you just figured out and write down how many pieces of seed tape you need to make in each size. Then under each size, write down what kinds of seed tape you plan to make (ex, 1 carrot, 1 pak choi, etc) and how far apart the seeds should be spaced. (For example, in the 3 1/3 ft tape I needed to make 2 lengths of Japanese Red Mustard Greens and the seeds should be spaced 6" apart on the tape.) I also found it helpful to include when I planned to sow this in the garden since this helps you sort the tape later when you go to store it.

Step 3: Get out all your supplies for making seed tape.  Garden Betty's post pretty much covers what you need. The only extras I included were a ruler, a bowl for holding the seed and some tweezers for the really tiny seeds. I also got out my pop-up dry rack (you'll see why later).

Step 4: Pop in your headphones and start making your tape! Again, Garden Betty's instructions pretty much cover the waterfront but essentially, you start by cutting your TP to the correct lengths (based on your list). You can use 1-ply TP or split some 2-ply (which I did--very easy). Label each tape. You may also find it helpful to write down the planting depth information since you may not have the packets with you when you use the tape. Take your ruler and mark off the right intervals for the seed you are gluing (again use your list). You can just eyeball it if you are really good with measurements. Then start gluing and putting on the seeds at those intervals. Garden Betty did hers in a zig-zag but I did all of ours straight across.

 

Tip: I found the first time I did this that the glue soaks through quickly and can make the tape stick to your surface as you are still making tape. To make drying easier and prevent sticking to the table as I worked, I put my pop up dry rack next to me and fed the tape onto it as I worked. Then I readjusted the finished ones across the rack (taking care to make sure that the gluey parts were not on the poles).  Let dry overnight.

Step 5: Put your dry tape in a bag (preferably waterproof) and store the same way you store seed. If you have used a planting schedule you can mark your bags according to when the seeds should be planted and then divvy them up that way. I have ours separated this way according to our Fall Garden Plan.Then when you are going over to your community garden, you grab the bag for that week and you are good to go!

And that's it! We now have tape for all the seeds we plan to plant in our fall garden. Hopefully we won't be too tired to actually put them in. I would love to hear people's comments if this is helpful to you. Happy gardening!

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How to Make Your Own Chamomile Tea

 As we have chronicled in previous posts, our chamomile did really well this year (until its demise in early June--likely from excessive heat). Now all that is left is to make tea.

Process: Plant some chamomile seeds in the spring. When your plant starts to flower, wait til the leaves are fully extended outward and then go through and hand harvest as many as you need. This step of removing the flower heads is sometimes called "deadheading." (I admit that by the end this year we were harvesting flowers that weren't completely ready but it didn't seem to make a big difference.) You will have to separate the flowers from the stems which can be rather tedious but is no hard to do.

Drying: Spread the flowers out on a foil lined baking sheet and leave it out somewhere with good airflow. Make sure the place you choose isn't too damp or cool.  I just left them on my kitchen table. After about a week they should be dry enough for tea.

Storage and Usage: You can then either store the flowers whole  (recommended) in a glass jar or you can crush them. Storing and brewing them whole or crushing as needed will allow the tea to maintain more of its oils, keeping it fresher longer since the oils in the flowers are released a bit when crushed. (For a greater discussion of size of tea in relation to taste and brewing I found the Harney & Sons site very helpful).

We opted for crushing dried flowers with our finger tips to make a better comparison with commercial bag tea and ended up with enough tea to fill a Ball pint size canning jar all the way to the top. Store in a glass jar with a tight fitting lid and out of direct sunlight, like a pantry. In hindsight (and after reading the Harney & Sons page months later) I regret crushing it and will probably not do so in the future.

When you are ready to use, put the tea in a tea strainer and pour almost boiling water over. Let steep for 2-3 minutes. You can also can put it directly in a cup and brew and then pour it into a strainer over another cup. In retrospect, the latter method would have worked better for us .

Comparison: Here is what our crushed tea looks like:

Here is commercial chamomile--Stash Organic Chamomile brand--(left) compared to our tea (right). You can see that the commercial tea is ground really finely :

and here is my first cup of our chamomile:

Verdict: Our tea smells AMAZING whereas the commercial organic chamomile has barely any scent at all. Likely because it is already crushed AND has been sitting in that little pouch for goodness knows how long. Ours is not as finely ground but even so it was too fine for our IKEA tea diffuser to completely contain it all and little bits of chamomile escaped. It tasted lovely though. Only job now is to find a finer mesh diffuser or remember to do the two cup method.

Hope this is helpful. Please leave any comments you may have as they are always appreciated! :)

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