Backyard Garden

So now the seedlings have a light source to help the stay upright and not reach for the windows. I did contemplate the fact that we may be visited by the police because we have a fluorescent light out over a bunch of green on on front porch, but I doubt it. All they would have to do is peek in the window to see that it is nothing illegal. So any way I am running the light only in the daytime just to help the legginess of plants. Yesterday seemed to work already. Some of the seedlings are starting to get there real leaves and are starting to crowd each other out, just in time for our vacation next week when I break them up into separate containers...not sure I have enough room for that part though!

Yes we are a little crazy, but really how crazy is it to make the move away from processed sugars? We started thinking harder about our sugar consumption after reading Michael Pollan's book 'In Defense of Food'. Without entirely just consuming the same amount of sugar as honey we did want to move to more natural and unrefined sources of sweetness. Shawn woke up on Monday and decided that this was the week stop eating refined sugar.  So I pulled out an old 1970's booklet on cooking with honey to see what we could do for some sweetness. My father was a beekeeper in the late 70's and 80's, his hives were destroyed by mites and he gave up the hobby. At one point in my childhood we had a wooden sign hanging from a pole in front of our house that said "Honey for Sale", and a huge store of honey in the basement along with all the tools for extraction, which as you can image was my favorite part. I made the Honey Butter cookies form page 3 in the PDF and this

I planted some more seeds today... some summer squash, zucchini (so it will be a little staggered from what is planted directly in the garden), eggplant, parsley, sage, honey bear acorn/winter squash just to get things started in case the season is not perfect. I need to do my marigolds still, but otherwise most of the rest of the seeds will be directly in the garden. Now is not a bad time ot start lettuces, kale, and spinach. Although the weather here is going to be cold (40 degrees F as a high this weekend). I will be planting those outside soon. Very exciting. The other seedlings are doing well, the cat took out some of my cilantro so I have to have a gate up in the doorway to the porch, but not too much damage. We still need to set up a light although the seedlings are not too leggy yet some are getting close, like the cilantro and brussel sprouts. Now off to cubeland.

Just in the last year or so we became more interested in what there is for wild plants here in Maine. Mostly up at my parents house because we are here in the city. Interesting none the less and actually there are some things I want to try this year if we have time and can find them. Last years fun discovery was that of ramps, or wild leeks. You pick them in the spring for the shoots, which are extremely flavorful for there tiny size and can wait for fall to harvest the bulbs. We will be searching for these scrumptious little things again this year. Fiddleheads will probably up sooner than usual due to the crazy warm weather and this year I want to go picking them before we get too many black flies.  To help with looking for new edible plants we picked up a seemingly decent book, I like the fact they show many of the plants in varied stages and seasons (so if you see something in fall you could still identify that you should get it in the spring). I have an image of a cover from amazo

The seeds are coming up great, we need to get a light on them before they get more leggy. Hopefully it is not too late, tomorrow is Saturday and we should have time to get the light set up and hung.

other than the fact they need water the cabbage and morning glories are going very well! How exciting to see the new growth.

We undertook the semi big task of moving compost this weekend. Over the winter we left our summer compost alone and started a winter compost near the door and porch to ensure continued and plentiful composting. Now that the weather is so nice the winter compost was ready to be moved away from the door! I started by emptying the summer one out, and here is the winter compost. easy to take apart! when it was half frozen the vegetable clippings and hay were halfway up the structure. Just since the weather has been nice it decreased significantly. Shawn is hosing down the summer compost, it needs just a little more breaking down before we can use it in the garden. we will leave it in a pile and cover it with a tarp, this way we can turn it often and speed up the last stretch of composting. So I got half of the compost moved. The whole time I am layering the compost like a lasagna, a gross lasagna mind you. we had a high concentration of vegetable clippings and needed to break them up