Dinner (Noon Meal) on a SD farm

We just got through with dinner...our noon meal..(Noon meal is traditionally called dinner in this Midwest farming community).  Our dinner was produced on this farm.  We had rib eye steak, a steamed broccoli head; a vegetable dish of onions, kale and yellow summer squash, simmered in a little bit of olive oil, and the first tomato of the season, from an Heirloom tomato, sweet and ripened on the vine.  We did have a few purchased fresh blueberries to top off the meal.  What more can I ask of life?

Spring is here, or summer in SD on April 1st??

April 1, 2012 in South Dakota.  It was 90 degrees today.  It should not be this warm at this time of year.  At the very least a cold rain, or most probably a spring snowstorm.  Nonetheless, I dug through my seeds and planted a row of spinach and also some lettuce.  If it comes up and then it freezes again, which everyone thinks it is going to do, then I just lose a little seed.  If not, then perhaps some spinach and lettuce in a few weeks for our table.   We shall see.  Keep tuned!!  I have also been looking for kale seed and have not located any so far.  I put in 4 kale plants last year, and that kept us in that good vegetable for a good many weeks, but the greenhouse I go to was closed for the weekend...too early yet, I know, for them to be open.
I harvested fresh asparagus from my garden, plants that I put out 2 years ago.  It is too crowded, I did not separate the roots apparently, just plopped it in the ground.  Don't know why I waited to long to start a patch in my garden.  We have "ditch" asparagus in the fence line of a couple of our fields, but it is hard to find each year before the town asparagus hunters get to it.  I also pulled a few stalks of rhubarb, cooked it for hubby, who likes to spread it over a slice of bread for a treat.

June 1 Gardening

I picked an ice cream bucket of spinach today.  It made a delicious salad along with a romaine leaf, cottage cheese, parsley, one slice of crumbled bacon and sunflower seeds.  The cool weather has been working fine for the spinach, but some of the other plants are sadly in need of sun.  The cucumbers, watermelon, squash and muskmelon look like they are barely staying alive.  However, the tomatoes are looking pretty good.  I put cages on some of them today, took off the can that was around them.  I planted a few mammoth sunflowers along the fence today, as well as a few purple zinnias.  I think I will try to use seep hoses this year for watering as my garden is larger, and more spread out than ever before.  I have a flat 75 foot one, and used it on the spinach.  It is a raised bed, 8 x 4, about 6 inches deep.  The hose was much too long.  Think I will get a shorter one, so I can leave them in place.  I can see they will be hard to move after the plants get bigger.  This bed also has beets and 4 rows of onions.  The other seep hose is round, 50 foot.  It was very hard to manage, wanted to stay kinked, so I learned a little on how to purchase these.

Spring and Gardening

Beautiful day in South Dakota.   I did some laundry and hung it outside, love that outdoor smell!

We made the garden area bigger, brought up more panels.  Several raspberry plants made the winter, and the 3 lilac trees are inside and protected from the deer, but not the rabbits.  You can tell how deep the snow was this winter…deep…by where the lilacs are eaten off.  However, they are finally showing some leaves.  The apricot tree is starting to bloom today, and I saw plums in some other shelterbelts with blossoms.   Maybe spring is coming!!

I bought some asparagus roots…a $2 special, 6 crowns, each with lots of very long roots, so today,  finished digging the trench, watered and got them put in the ground.  My lone asparagus plant from last year survived as well, even tho I had to move it in the middle of summer.  There are 4 or 5 raspberries plants sticking out of the ground.  The spinach I planted is coming up, and the onion sets are peeking.   I spaded up a short row by the fence and planted a half dozen old sprouted potatoes.  Also bought another Rhubarb plant, a Canada Red, so now have three.  That should be enough.  The ones I put out last year look good.  Roger’s horseradish is 6 inches tall or so.  We can dig and grind any day now.  And my tulips, or some of them opened up today!   I got some lettuce and peas in the ground this week. 

Need to get another compost pile started, and let the one in the middle of the garden finish cooking.  I can see as I turn it, that eggshells need to be crushed, and I have no idea if I am getting the right greens (high nitrogen) to browns (high carbon) mix right.  It is supposed to be 1 part to 4 parts.  But I will keep at it, see what I get.

Roger brought up 3 railroad ties, and we extended one raised bed, so he brought in a tractor scoopful of dirt today to fill it.  Couldn’t get the tractor all the way to it, so it required some scooping.  We needed some younger bodies and backs here to move that dirt around, but we got it done and pretty well leveled off.

When we enlarged the garden, it also encompassed one of the burr oaks I planted 2 years ago, and it looks like it is still alive and budding out.  I decided that by the time it gets big enough to be a problem, I won’t be gardening anymore anyway.  They should grow to 40-50 feet, so don’t know if I will get to see that or not.

Wahoo, let the growing season begin.

Seed Catalogs

January, and the seed catalogs are in my mailbox with their beautiful, colorful pictures of flowers and vegetables, enticing me to think of spring, while the wind howls outside and the weatherman is promising very cold weather all next week.  Never mind the weatherman.  I will sink into my soft warm chair to browse the catalogs and dream of black soil on my fingers, what I will plant and in which bed,  and look at ideas for something I have not tried before. What worked last year, did I have too much of something, not enough of some other plant?  Should I plant some new flowers?  What should I put in my herb bed?
I have time to plan, after all it is only January, and this is SD, where the garden soil will remain cold well into May.  Dream on!

Frost in Central SD

We got our first frost of the season last night.  It frosted what was left of the squash vines, and the outside of the tomatoes show black and curly.  Still time to pick the last tomatoes tho.  We have the squash picked up, and have apples yet to pick.  The first frosts do not hurt them, makes them sweeter.   The carrots are still bright and green, they can go much longer before being dug.  I have dug them out of the snow on Thanksgiving week, and they were sweet and tasty.
Most of the deciduous trees show various colors now, faded green to bright yellows.  Some flowers hanging on yet...cosmos, some calendulas that did not dry up, and on my step, the Gerbera daisies in pots.  Wonder if I took them in, how long they would bloom in the house?   Not enough light, I imagine, now with shorter days.