Is a Digital Kitchen Scale an Essential Garden Tool? I Think So

I'm working on a post called Six Worthwhile Kitchen Investments for Gardeners, but since my favorite Oxo 11-pound digital kitchen scale is currently on sale for $37.44 at amazon.com with free super saver shipping (and their sales don't often last long) I decided to skip ahead and write about it first. It's worth every penny of the regular $49.99 price (which is what I paid three years ago), but this is a very nice deal. I've raved about this scale before, and no doubt will again.

Basil from the kitchen garden on 9/4/10

Realization of the day:

I literally cannot remember life before my kitchen scale. I often use it several times a day.

If you read the title of this post and your immediate answer was no, I kindly suggest you do these two things and then come back:

1. Go to three different places and buy a bunch of Swiss chard or kale—or even parsley or cilantro—at each one. Are they anywhere near the same size? Didn't think so.

2. Ask three people to measure out two cups of basil leaves for you, then lay the piles side by side and compare them.

Another interesting experiment, though it isn't relevant to my yes, you really do need a kitchen scale argument, is to buy a lemon at three different places and compare the sizes. Zest and juice them if you want, too. Yeah, whoa. Huge difference probably, huh? And how many recipes simply call for 'the zest of one lemon,' or 'the juice of one lemon?' That kind of drives me nuts.

But back to the scale. Once you have one in your kitchen, it's amazing how many things you'll probably find yourself weighing while cooking and baking. They're also are great for weighing postage, especially since you need to know the weight of a package if you want to print out a mailing label online and avoid waiting in line at the post office.

If you're a gardener, a kitchen scale can be put to even more good use—weighing all of your beautiful bounty. A scale will give you a real idea of how much you're harvesting. For example, I had no clue how many total pounds of tomatoes I grow each year—until I started buying them from our Amish neighbors a couple of years ago when I didn't have any and realized we managed to eat 25 pounds in a couple of weeks. And they were all consumed fresh! Thank goodness their prices are very reasonable, but I still really need to get back into my tomato growing groove. Next year, next year.

I've noticed running harvest tallies on several garden blogs this summer, and it's been fun to see how much bounty other gardeners are getting. If you want to feel like a real underachiever be totally impressed, check out Nathan and Aimee's list of harvest totals in the left sidebar of their blog, 2 Acre Farm: The Experiences, Trials, and Lives on a Small Farm in Rural Illinois. Here are just a few of the things on the list as of August 21st, their 16th Farmers' Market Week:

13.35 lbs. Cilantro

29 lb. 11 oz. Purple Top Turnips

46 lbs. Purple Top Turnip Greens

9 lb. 12 oz. Burgundy Okra

4 lbs. 8 oz. Rocket Arugula

121 lb. 9 oz. Provider Snap Beans

A scale is so handy, even if your bounty doesn't weigh anywhere near what theirs does. Thirteen pounds of cilantro? Forty-six pounds of turnip greens? Oh my gosh. I just realized that these might actually just be the harvest totals for that one day, not the entire year to date. There's a total of 49 different vegetables listed. Are these two gardeners amazing or what? Everything is Certified Naturally Grown, and this was their first full season!

I bought my first digital kitchen scale at least ten years ago, and immediately fell in love. So many things to weigh! Three years ago I upgraded to this 11-pound Oxo Good Grips scale, which is currently on sale at amazon.com, and have nothing but good things to say about it. It weighs in both grams and ounces, and the pull-out display, which allows you to weigh big bowls of things, is fabulous. It's no surprise that America's Test Kitchen (the publishers of Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country magazines) voted this scale #1.

It's also small enough that instead of storing it away in a cupboard, I just stand it on end and lean it on the back of my big butcher block work table, so it's always within easy reach. If you're a bread baker, a kitchen scale is great for dividing up dough. For example, my Oatmeal Toasting Bread recipe makes three loaves, and weighing the dough allows you to easily make them all the same size. And portioning out 16 Carrot Herb Rolls is a snap.

I haven't been harvesting much of anything by the pound lately, but I did manage to snip almost 12 ounces of basil from my one plant back on September 4th. After trimming off the stems, I ended up with the 6-7/8 ounces you see pictured above, which I turned into some wonderful pesto. This was the second cutting—remember how I ruined the first one back in August?

Then yesterday afternoon, with the threat of falling temps, I picked another 2-7/8 ounces, some of which will go into some of my easy homemade Italian sausage, which will in turn go onto a homemade pizza (you'll find my simple pizza dough recipe here). I covered the plant with floating row cover and an old bedsheet, but didn't want to take any chances. And good thing, as it's 32° this morning! I left plenty of new growth on the plant and may even get another small harvest from it, depending on the weather—and if I remember to cover it up each night. For more about this, check out my previous post, How To Keep Your Basil Plants Growing into Fall.

Do you have a kitchen scale? What do you love weighing with it?

For those of you who can't wait to hear what my other five worthwhile kitchen investments for gardeners—or anyone with access to a good farmers' market—are (and in case for some reason I never get around to finishing that post), I'll list them briefly here:

—A food dehydrator. My first one quickly paid for itself in dried tomatoes alone—simply slice paste tomatoes in half and set them cut side up in the trays. A few years ago I upgraded to this Nesco 700-watt model and love it. The adjustable thermostat is great. You can learn how easily I dry pear slices in this recent post on Farmgirl Fare: Got Pears? My Three Favorite Recipes, Plus How To Make Your Own Dried Pears.

—A food mill. I use a classic Foley food mill to make my Really Easy Low Sugar Pear Butter and Homemade Tomato Vegetable Juice, but I'm just looking for an excuse to order this Oxo Good Grips food mill, which doesn't cost much more than the Foley and has three different grinding discs, along with some other nifty features. Several Farmgirl Fare readers said they love theirs in the comments section of my Pear Butter Recipe post.

—A Water Bath Canner. Canning is a great way to preserve seasonal bounty. It isn't difficult or dangerous, and the basic equipment is very affordable. I use a canner like this one, and I've found this inexpensive home canning accessories kit to be invaluable.

—A FoodSaver vacuum sealer. We have one of the original models that still works after 20+ years, and have used it to seal everything from green beans to spare chainsaw chains (keeps them from rusting). A few years ago I bought this really nice one, which is still available although apparently discontinued by the manufacturer. You can purchase ready made bags, but it's much more economical to buy rolls of the FoodSaver bag material and make your own. The bags can be reused over and over. (I haven't had good luck using other brands of bag material.) The FoodSaver company also has excellent customer service.

—A chest freezer. We have several. The first tiny one I purchased nearly 20 years ago entirely changed my life. Our newest one is 24.9 cubic feet. Totally worth the initial investment and literally only costs a few dollars a month to run.

Okay, so I guess this pretty much does cover the entire originally planned Six Worthwhile Kitchen Investments for Gardeners post!

Did I miss anything? What kitchen tool does the gardener in you never want to be without?

© FarmgirlFare.com, the hot tea drinking foodie farm blog where it's time to get out there and see how everything in the garden and greenhouse look on this chilly morning, and then start preparing for tonight's predicted frost—12 days earlier this year than our 'official' first frost date. Yikes.

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My Favorite Heirloom Carrots (so far) to Grow from Seed: Parisienne

A Handful of Harvested Carrots on July 11th, 2009

Realization of the Day:

I never shared the final results of last year's carrot growing adventures (which I wrote about here and here)—mostly because they were so disappointing.

The short version (because I'll probably never get around to posting the long version) is I've decided that, for me, growing carrots from seed isn't worth the effort—at least right now. I did learn a lot about growing them, though.

We eat a lot of raw organic carrots around here, and the ones I can buy year round for less than a dollar a pound actually taste better than most of the carrots I managed to grow last year—which was a surprising discovery since most homegrown vegetables taste so much better than storebought.

Granted, they're packaged in annoying plastic bags and are grown in some other state and then trucked to Missouri, but there's always a give and take when it comes to what we choose to buy and eat. We raise so much of our own food that I don't feel too bad about buying bagged carrots, and at least they're organically grown.

That said, I haven't completely given up on homegrown carrots. And when I do try them again (who knows, maybe even this fall—I have huge plans for a fall garden since at this point the spring garden is pretty pathetic), I'll definitely be growing Parisiennes.

I'm a Sucker for Cute—and not Just Baby Animals

I bought my seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, and according to their catalog, Parisiennes (which they offered for the first time in 2009) are small, round carrots that are so popular in France. Tender, orange globes are superb lightly steamed. Easy to grow even in heavy soils. This little carrot is great for home and market gardens, as this variety is fairly uniform.

Mine had a nice, sweet flavor, and of course there's the fact that they're adorable. They make a fun addition to a crudite platter, and would probably be a big hit with kids. Someday I'll get around to making pickled carrots, and I bet these little babies would be perfect. Wouldn't a jar of them make a beautiful gift?

The Pinetree Garden Seeds catalog lists a similar sounding variety of carrot called Thumbelina SG:

A round Paris Market-type carrot, Thumbelina was an All America Award winner for 1992. It's an improvement over older round varieties in the smoothness of the skin (important because you don't want to peel them). Another virtue is that they will do well in heavy, rocky soil. The flavor is very good at the 1-inch size but is retained up to golf ball size.

Because they're so small, they also have a shorter growing season than many other carrot varieties, which is always helpful.

So how about you? Did your carrot crop do well last year? Are you growing carrots this year? Any successes, failures, or other words of carrot wisdom to share?

Related posts (lots of helpful info in the comments sections):

6/6/09: Growing and Thinning (and Weeding!) Heirloom Carrots

6/12/09: Bigger Red and Orange Baby Carrots

Recipe: Carrot Herb Rolls (and a beautiful bargain bread book for beginners)

© Copyright 2010 FarmgirlFare.com, the crunch and munch foodie farm blog where our donkeys love organic carrots even more than we do—and can gobble up a pound of them in seconds flat.

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Garden Journal 1/31/10: Snow Days and the Dream Garden

And She Sleeps (the garden, not me)

Realization of the day:
It's a weekend for dreaming and scheming.

Friday's six-inch snowfall has us happily cozying up indoors—except for the three to four hours a day tending to the donkeys, sheep, chickens, dogs, and outside cats. But I don't mind doing chores even in the snow, especially when it's sunny and warm like today. (Does thinking 30 degrees is warm mean that I've officially crossed over?) It really is beautiful out there.

Now that I've lived on a farm for 15 years, I start to go a little stir crazy if I don't get outside every couple of hours. What's nice is that no matter what the weather, there's always some good reason to leave the kitchen or computer and head out into the fresh air, even if it's only for five minutes to empty the kitchen compost container, feed some scraps to the chickens, or just hug a sheep.

I'll admit that a little laziness does kick in when everything is covered with snow, and I'm perfectly content to stay out of the the garden for a day or two. I certainly don't stop thinking about it, though.

This is the time of year when the garden in my mind and the garden in my reality have so much in common. With no blister beetles or other annoying bugs, no weeds taking over, no ravenous rabbits and deer, no crop failures, no dog damage, no seeds that never sprouted, no seedlings that should have been put in the ground weeks (or months!) ago, no work that can really be done (though I'm sure I could come up with something if I tried), and all those big plans to harvest the most glorious bounty ever, it's definitely one of my favorite times of year in the garden—until I get hungry of course.

Is there anything going on in your garden right now—or is it all still happening in your head?

More snowy garden photos:
2/4/09: Why I Love Growing Vegetables in Raised Garden Beds: Reason #1
Garden Journal 3/1/09: Early Spring Planting Plans & an Unexpected Delay
Garden Photo Journal 1/11/10: My All-Weather Gardening Companion
And lots of links to Snowy Farm Photos here and here

A little help if you're dreaming and scheming about what to grow:
Favorite Heirloom Tomatoes to Grow—Mine and Yours
Growing Onions in the Garden
Growing Short Day Onion Varieties from Purchased Plants
Harvesting Spring Onions Grown from Purchased Plants
Endive and Escarole in the Kitchen and Garden
Growing Lemon Cucumbers from Seed (I love lemon cucumbers)

How to Grow Beets from Seed (and here's my favorite beet recipe)
How To Grow Swiss Chard from Seed and Why You Should (and recipes)
How To Grow Your Own Gourmet Lettuce from Seed (It's Easy!)
How To Grow Arugula from Seed in Less than a Month
Tips for Growing & Using Rosemary Year Round

© Copyright 2010 FarmgirlFare.com, the snowbound foodie farm blog where one thing I do miss in the garden this time of year—besides all that fabulous food—is seeing all the butterflies fluttering about.

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Garden Journal 9/23/10: Busy, Busy and Another Raised Bed Seeded for Fall

The bumblebees and I both love sedum autumn joy, which darkens in color as the season progresses.

Realization of the Day:

Okay, so it's probably going to take me months, rather than weeks, to get through that ambitious list I recently shared of upcoming blog post topics. But you knew that already, didn't you?

There were at least half a dozen bees on this one plant, all in a pollinating frenzy.

In the meantime, while racing the darkness on the last fertile day in the second quarter, and using the same scatter and cover seeding technique I described in my recent post on growing Asian greens, last night I planted another 4' x 8' raised bed for fall. This seeding technique works great for growing lettuce. You can read more in my previous post, How To Grow Your Own Gourmet Lettuce From Seed—It's Easier than You Think!

All varieties below are open pollinated (not hybrid) and new to me, except for the Easter Egg and French Breakfast radishes, which are both easy to grow, tasty, and beautiful. You can see photos of them in this Radish Cream Cheese Spread with Parsley, Scallions, and Feta recipe post.

—Canton Bok Pak Choy (2009, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds)

—Freckles Lettuce, medium green with burgundy freckles (2009, Pinetree Garden Seeds)

—Cimmaron Lettuce, bronze-red heirloom romaine, long producer (2009, PT)

—Cherry Belle Radishes, round red roots, mild (2009, PT)

—Easter Egg Radishes, tangy and multicolored (2008, PT)

—French Breakfast Radishes, red and white, mild and elongated (2008, PT)

—Purple Plum Radishes, oval, 2 inches long, mild (2009, PT)

—Watermelon Radishes, sweet and mild, looks like watermelon when sliced (2009, PT)

Lucky Buddy Bear (who is shedding like crazy now that summer is over) needs to be brushed yet again & this poor sedum needs to be cut back for, um, the first time ever.

It was 91 degrees and humid as all get out yesterday, but the calendar says it's finally fall, my favorite time of year. Does it feel like fall where you are yet?

© FarmgirlFare.com, the crystal ball-less foodie farm blog where nobody can predict exactly what will happen in the garden, but I'm betting there will be some serious radish cream cheese spread making sessions in my future. Thank goodness, because I love that stuff and haven't had any in months. (So much for my plan to start a row or two of radish seeds every couple of weeks.)

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Garden Journal 6/17/10: How To Easily Attract Pollinators to Your Kitchen Garden

Just plant some echinacea!

Realization of the Day:

There's a winged frenzy going on out in my flowerbed.

It's 92 degrees in the shade, 89 in the living room, and still several more hours until sundown. The sheep are lounging on the cool ground by the spring, the chickens are standing around panting, and there are cats sprawled out everywhere. I keep telling myself that all this sweating has got to be detoxifying.

Nobody wants to move—except for the moths and butterflies. They're over on the echinacea, excitedly fluttering from flower to flower as fast as their little wings will let them. It's an exhausting but beautiful sight.

I love echinacea, also known as purple coneflower, almost as I love seeing all those pollinators. Last June I wrote about echinacea in this post, declaring it to be one of my favorite flowering perennials and touting it as easy to grow, no maintenance, heat loving, drought tolerant, long blooming, self seeding, pollinator attracting, poor soil loving, insect resistant, cold tolerant, and pretty much impossible to kill. Yep, that about sums it up.

Once you get your echinacea growing (it loves full sun), it should basically take care of itself, reseeding and gradually spreading as the years go by if you let it. I started with a couple of plants that I dug up and brought with me when I moved here ten years ago, and I now have a patch of echinacea that covers about 40 square feet.

I did learn last summer that echinacea isn't totally insect resistant, when the Japanese beetles came out in force and attacked it, as well as just about everything else in the garden. They eat something like 270 different types of plants. I'd never seen a Japanese beetle here until two years ago, when we had an unusually rainy spring, which was great for the hayfield and pastures but caused a lot of bizarre things to happen in the garden.

We had a fairly wet spring this year, too, and I saw the first Japanese beetle of the season yesterday while I was snapping these pictures. You can see that many of the flowers already have bites taken out of them.

Maybe those moths and butterflies know it's probably now or never.

6/22/10 Update: I just posted some more echinacea pollinator pics on Farmgirl Fare I like even more than these. Click here if you'd like to see them.

Do you have any echinacea growing tips, stories, or memories you'd care to share?

Echinacea is always a joy to photograph:

8/23/05: Hardy Echinacea Blooms All Summer Long

6/20/06: Preparing to Burst into Color

7/16/06: Butterfly Bonanza

8/26/06: Butterfly Photos are Better than Nothing

6/28/06: Butterfly Paradise

7/8/06: The Stuff of Life

11/25/06: The Easiest Way to Store Seeds

6/25/07: Echinacea by the Cat Cabin

8/14/07: Echinacea Visitors

7/6/08: Been Busy

7/8/08: Winged Spectacular (one of my favorite photos)

6/24/09: My Favorite Easy to Grow, No Maintenance, Heat Loving, Drought Tolerant, Long Blooming Flowering Perennial? Echinacea!

© Copyright 2010 FarmgirlFare.com, the pretty in pink foodie farm blog where I'm seriously thinking about having ice cream for dinner.

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Garden Journal 7/23/10: Why I Haven't Set Foot in My Garden in Over Two Weeks

Harmless little snake in the greenhouse, September 2007

Realization of the Day:

It's time for a new game plan. Actually more like an extended half-time period but without all the outrageous festivities.

Back in early spring, I was doing an energy work session over the phone with a friend of mine, and as I started listing all the things I was so behind with—including my totally neglected garden—she said, "What would happen if you didn't have a garden this year?"

The thought was so inconceivable I literally had no response.

But now I know. Life goes on—just with fewer vegetables.

Gardening has always been a huge part of my farmgirl life. My kitchen garden may not be as big as the first one I planted back in 1995 (all 10,000 square feet of it!) after moving to the country, and I may not start everything from seed anymore, but I always plant a garden.

Except this year. Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration. I did get that bed of sweet peppers planted last month—and although it's just one 4'x8' raised bed, I do realize that some people's entire garden is smaller than that. Sometimes it's all a matter of perspective—and pretzel logic.

And there are a few perennials and volunteers hidden among the incredibly healthy weeds: Swiss chard of course, some arugula here and there, a row of stalwart chives. There are even a few black-eyed susans and bachelor's buttons (the best reseeders ever) adding some color here and there.

If pressed, I'm sure I could throw together some sort of a meal from the garden, or at least a halfway decent mixed salad, though part of the mix would have to be edible weeds. I've been meaning to tell you about some of these weeds for years, but I always have so many 'real' salad greens to discuss (and eat) that I never get around to it.

My extremely late planted garlic which was just about ready to harvest around the 4th of July may or may not have been ruined by the recent few rainfalls we finally got. I'm not complaining; I'd gladly sacrifice my entire questionable garlic crop for the sake of the rest of the farm. After nearly a month without any rain, the fields were already burning up, and even the weeds in the farmyard were crunchy. The heat and humidity haven't let up any (still 103° heat index for the week), but the rain really helped.

So why haven't I been out in my garden lately? You can read the whole crazy story in my recent post on Farmgirl Fare, It's Been a Hell of a Few Weeks (and Not in a Good Way). Oh, and it'll also make sense why I dug through my files to find a snake picture for this post.

I'm still having trouble believing everything that's happened around here recently. In the grand scheme of things, having a garden full of mostly giant weeds is really a very small deal, but sometimes it's the little things that end up meaning the most—or holding us together. I'm actually surprised I'm not more upset. Of course it could just be all the drugs I'm on. Knowing my Amish neighbors should have plenty of organic tomatoes for sale does help. And there's still that little sprout of hope known as fall planting!

In the meantime, I definitely haven't given up on garden blogging, and in fact, I'm hoping to have a chance to do a lot more of it in the next few months. I may not have much growing out there at the moment, but I have all kinds of of backlogged photos and post topics I still want to share. You know I especially love telling you about all the things I've learned and the dumb mistakes I've made in order to save you from doing the same in your garden.

So have you ever gone a year without a garden—or perhaps with a much smaller/different garden than usual? How did it go? Did it end up changing the way you gardened after that? I'd love to know. This unplanned break has been making me really think about all the ways I want to change both my garden and my gardening.

© Copyright 2010 FarmgirlFare.com.

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Garden Journal 8/18/10: Tomato Season Has Arrived and the First Harvest is In!

Yep, that's it. Pretty though, isn't it?

Realization of the Day:

One of the nicest things about gardening is that the littlest surprises can often mean so very much.

A month or so ago, I changed my blog header to a photo that more accurately reflects the season: tomatoes! But ever since then I've felt like a guilty impostor. Oh, those are my tomatoes up there alright—I just picked them back in 2008 (at the end of October!). And while pretty much everyone equates the summer vegetable garden with ripe tomatoes, I don't actually have any growing in my garden this year. Or so I thought.

Yes, they may just be a handful of mystery little cherry types from volunteer plants that sprouted up without my noticing over in the rapidly expanding pet cemetery portion of my kitchen garden (it's been a rough summer all around on the farm), but they're definitely homegrown tomatoes. They count. (I'm backdating this journal entry like I did with the garlic to accurately reflect the harvest date.)

Guilt be gone, the header photo can stay, I'm once again a real tomato gardener who can proudly hold her head up high while floating around the blogosphere. Phew.

I'm of the opinion that you should always have at least one type of cherry tomato plant growing in your garden, because in my experience they offer the best odds of bearing edible fruit. That's especially important when you're gardening in a challenging place like Missouri, where you never know how things will go—or grow—from year to year.

The reason cherry tomatoes are an almost guaranteed winner is simple: they're small. They mature quickly, which means the diseases, pests, plagues, and other terrible things that always seem to happen have less time to show up and attack your plants.

In general I stick to the small to medium sized tomato varieties. Those one and two pounders? Their longer growing season allows way too much wiggle room for disaster to move in, and I learned this the disappointing hard way.

My one exception is Kellogg's Breakfast, an extremely large (for me, at least) sunny orange beefsteak that I did almost give up on. You can read all about them in my August 2006 post, Growing Kellogg's Breakfast Tomatoes and a Colors of Summer Salad with Tomatoes, Zucchini, Sweet Red Peppers, Beet Greens, Basil & Garbanzos. This variety is definitely worth the risk.

Are you growing tomatoes this year? How's it going? Any new favorites? What about failures?

Looking for more tomato talk? Last September I wrote about my favorite varieties of heirloom tomatoes to grow, and a couple dozen of you shared your favorites in the comments section of that post.

Last August (ha - five days later than this year!) my first tomato was ripe, and 42 of you joined in the tomato growing conversation in the comments section of that post. (Your comments are one of the best parts about keeping a garden blog, and I apologize for not being better at replying to them.)

Other tomato growing posts are here:

7/31/06: Growing Arkansas Traveler Tomatoes & How To Save Your Own Tomato Seeds

8/5/06: How to Trim Tomato Plants

8/9/06: Growing Kellogg's Breakfast Tomatoes and a Colors of Summer Salad

9/16/07: Kissing Summer Goodbye with the Easiest Greek Salad Ever

6/2/08: Planting Tomatoes Later is Better than Never (I Think)

9/4/08: How To Freeze Tomatoes the Really Easy Way (and Why I Don't Do Much Canning Anymore) (lots of great comments from other gardeners here)

10/12/08: Growing Tomatoes: How Many Plants Do You Need and What To Do If You End Up with Too Many Tomatoes—Make Easy & Delicious Homemade Tomato Juice! (lots of tomato growing comments here, too)

And my favorite ways to use fresh tomatoes are here:

Homemade Tomato Vegetable Juice

Quick & Easy and Oh So Refreshing Gazpacho

Fresh Tomato Pizza Sauce

Pasta with Sun Dried Tomato & Artichoke Pesto, Cherry Tomatoes, and Fresh Basil (I practically lived on this stuff last September)

Fiesta Cottage Cheese Veggie Dip (and going on factory tours)

Savory Tomato Pesto Pie with a Foolproof Biscuit Crust (one of my most popular recipes)

Fresh Tomato & Basil Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread

Tomato Pesto Pizza, My Basil Pesto Recipe, & A Simple Tomato Salad

Three No-Cook Summer Recipes: Mexican Jumping Bean Slaw, Easy Vegetarian Tacos, & High Kickin' Tomato Dressing

Cream Cheese & Tomato Sandwiches On Italian Black Olive Cheeks

The Easiest Greek Salad Ever

My Seven Second Tomato Glut Solution

Saving the Harvest with No Sugar Green Tomato Relish

How to Freeze Tomatoes the Really Easy Way

© FarmgirlFare.com, the red, ripe and ready to grow foodie farm blog where first tomatoes or no, I am so ready for this long, hot, incredibly humid summer to be over. But the tomatoes do help a little.

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Easy to Grow from Seed Favorites: Miniature White Cucumbers

I Love these Crunchy Little Things

Realization of the Day:
I can't let another year go by without telling you about my new favorite cucumbers—and for once I'm actually telling you about something in plenty of time to plant!

If I had to choose between growing lemon cucumbers (which I wrote about here) and these mini white cucumbers, it wouldn't be an easy decision.

What are the advantages to growing this open pollinated variety (which is really more very pale green than white)? First of all, just like with cherry tomatoes, smaller cucumbers mature more quickly than their larger counterparts—49 days versus an average of 55 to 70 days. They can be picked and eaten when they're even smaller than the ones in this photo (and I don't have especially big hands).

This can be helpful if you have a short growing season, are usually plagued by cucumber loving insects and/or disease (the less time they're growing means the less time there is to attack), if you want to squeeze in two crops during one growing season, or if, like me, you always seem to be planting everything late and are racing your first frost date.

Other advantages? I've found them to be very easy to grow when direct seeded in the garden once the soil has completely warmed up (cucumber plants are not cold tolerant). In fact, these cucumbers are so easy to grow, last summer I harvested quite a few from healthy volunteer plants that sprouted up in our kitchen grey water runoff ditch—from seeds that had gone down the drain and weren't even fully mature.

For the 'real' plantings in the garden, I put four or five seeds about an inch deep in little hills a few feet apart and simply let the plants sprawl. Since this is a long vined variety, you could save space by planting your hills next to a trellis or fence and the vines should climb right up it.

I used to start all my cucumber seeds in containers in early spring, keep them indoors, and then transplant the little seedlings into the garden once the weather warmed up. But delicate cucumber plants can be temperamental, and I've found that the direct seeded plants grew so much faster out in the garden that I didn't end up gaining anything except extra work by starting them indoors.

All ease of cultivating aside, what's really important when growing anything of course is flavor, and miniature white cucumbers have a very nice one. They're mild and sweet, with a pleasant thin skin that never needs peeling. I bought some larger green cucumbers from our Amish neighbors last summer to supplement my garden bounty, and I remember being surprised at how thick and slightly bitter the skins seemed compared to these minis.

And, last but not least, they're adorable.

I ordered my miniature white cucumber seeds from Pinetree Garden Seeds in Maine, and their catalog says this small white, black spined pickling cucumber is a very heavy yielder (which always wins points with me) and is never bitter.

I've also grown Boothby's Blonde cucumbers, a long vined Maine heirloom which Pinetree describes as 'a crisp, medium sized slicer, 6—8" long, with a very pleasant flavor and texture,' and while I liked them, I like these minis better. I often found myself simply slicing them up and munching on them plain as a snack, or on a plate with cheese and crackers.

One of my kitchen garden goals this year is to keep a jar or two of refrigerator pickles (you can pickle almost anything!) on hand during the summer, and I think these little cucumbers would make nice ones.

At $1.30 for a packet of 10 seeds, the were a little more expensive than the other varieties Pinetree sells, but still a great deal. And once you've grown them in your garden, you can simply save some seeds from your best specimens to plant the following year.

If you don't have a magical kitchen grey water runoff, be sure to let the cucumbers fully mature on the vine before you harvest the seeds you want to save, which for this variety means the cucs will get much bigger and much darker in color. I know I have some pictures of what they should look like, but unfortunately I have no idea where they are. If I come across them, I'll post them.

In the meantime, what are your favorite kinds of cucumbers to grow?

More posts about some of my favorite things to grow:
Favorite Heirloom Tomatoes to Grow—Mine and Yours
Growing Onions in the Garden
Growing Short Day Onion Varieties from Purchased Plants
Harvesting Spring Onions Grown from Purchased Plants
Endive and Escarole in the Kitchen and Garden
Growing Lemon Cucumbers from Seed

How to Grow Beets from Seed (and here's my favorite beet recipe)
How To Grow Swiss Chard from Seed and Why You Should (and recipes)
How To Grow Your Own Gourmet Lettuce from Seed (It's easy!)
How To Grow Arugula from Seed in Less than a Month
Tips for Growing & Using Rosemary Year Round

© Copyright 2010 FarmgirlFare.com, the snow is finally gone (for the time being) foodie farm blog where now I'm suffering some serious cucumber withdrawals. I knew I should have put up a few jars of pickles last year.

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Garden Journal 3/11/10: Growing Onions from Purchased Plants - Ordering and Planning

1015Y Texas SuperSweet Onions Harvested Last June

Realization of the Day:
Despite numerous failures and disappointments in the garden over the years, when it comes to buying seeds and plants I'm still a consummate optimist. I also have no self control. This can be a dangerous combination—and pricey, too.

Last spring was the first time I grew onions from purchased plants rather than onion sets, and despite the fact that many of them bloomed way too early (which means I ended up with some fairly small onions) I enjoyed some delicious success—and still ended up with bigger onions than I've ever grown from sets. (The flowering was most likely due to some wet and wacky spring weather, and I'm hoping to cover this problem in a future post). I wrote a little about last year's onion growing here and here.

For experiment's sake, in late February of 2009 I ordered a total of 10 bunches (approximately 60 plants per bunch) of 9 different varieties of onions (along with hundreds of leek plants—which was a whole other growing adventure I've been meaning to write about) from Dixondale Farms in Texas, the oldest and largest onion farm in the U.S.

I'm running a little later with my ordering and planting this year, but according to Dixondale's shipping schedule, March 9th was their suggested ship date for my area. I also ordered fewer plants and fewer varieties, sticking to the ones that did the best for me last year.


Some of My 2009 Harvest: Red Candy Apple, 1015Y Texas Super Sweet, and others

Here's what I ordered yesterday:
2 bunches 1015Y Texas Super Sweet
2 bunches Red Candy Apple
1 bunch Candy
1 bunch Super Star

The 1015Y Texas Super Sweets (so named because October 15th is the Texas planting date) are a Short-Day open pollinated variety. Red Candy Apple, Candy, and Super Star are Intermediate-Day hybrids. I don't usually allow hybrids in my kitchen garden, preferring to grow open pollinated heirlooms instead, but I make an exception when it comes to onions and leeks, rationalizing that homegrown hybrids are definitely better than none.

According to Dixondale's 'Which Varieties are Right for You' map, Intermediate-Day are the best type of onions to grow here in southern Missouri. I didn't learn until last year that the size of an onion bulb is dependent upon daylength and temperature, not the size of the plants.

I really liked the flavor of the Red Candy Apples—so sweet, and the size was good. I couldn't get enough of them in this Garbanzo Bean Salad with Red Onion, Scallions, Cilantro, Parsley, and Feta Cheese.

I'm embarrassed to admit that none of the yellow Candys ever made it into the ground (I ordered too many onion plants last year!), but since it's Dixondale's most popular variety (they sold over 85 million in 2009), I have high hopes. They say this variety will work almost everywhere in the country and is great for beginner gardeners.


6/5/09: Just Harvested Super Star Onions Laid out to Cure before Storing

The Super Star onions started blooming early, so I ended up picking them on the small side, but the flavor of this white globe-shaped variety was very nice, and the plants were vigorous. And as you can see in the top photo, the 1015Y Texas Super Sweets—which are indeed sweet—did quite well.

If you're gardening by the moonsigns, the best time to plant onions—even though they grow below ground like potatoes and garlic—is on a fertile day in the first quarter, so if all goes according to plan (new bouncing baby lambs and other unexpected farm stuff notwithstanding), I'll be putting mine in the ground on the 18th, 19th, and/or 20th when the moon is in Taurus. You can read more about minding the moonsigns here and here.

In an effort to post more often on this poor neglected garden blog (and keep better track of what's going on in my garden!), my new goal is to write shorter posts (okay, I'm failing miserably so far) that focus on just one or two points. I plan to hopefully write more about growing onions, including soil prep, onion planting, an amazing way I discovered to organically control weeds, troubleshooting, and growing tips in the near future.

In the meantime, you'll find lots of helpful information about growing onions, including online and downloadable guides, on the newly redesigned Dixondale Farms website.

Are you growing onions this year? Any favorite varieties, stories, tips, or other oniony info you'd like to share?

Previous onion posts:
6/2/09: Harvesting Spring Onions Grown from Purchased Plants
10/8/09: Growing Short Day Onion Varieties in Spring and Free Green Onions in Fall
6/7/08: What To Do with 125 Green Onions (Scallions)
6/7/08: Wanted: Your Recipes and Favorite Ways to Use Green Onions
6/12/05: Growing Onions In The Garden
3/16/06: It's Time to Plant Onions!
4/4/06: Operation Onion Complete!
4/26/06: Companion Planting Beets & Lettuce with Onions

Scallions and spring onions should be here soon!
Sour Cream & Onion Dip
Savory Cheese & Scallion Scones
Fiesta Cottage Cheese Veggie Dip
Mexican Jumping Bean Slaw
Summer in a Bowl
Colors of Summer Salad
Healthy Swiss Chard Tuna Salad with Kalamata Olives
Swiss Chard Cabbage Salad with Garbanzo Beans and Cottage Cheese
Garbanzo Bean Salad with Red Onion, Scallions, Cilantro, Parsley, and Feta Cheese
Sprinkled on top of Hot Swiss Chard Artichoke Dip
Three Onion & Three Cheese Pizza

© Copyright 2010 FarmgirlFare.com, the happy to have onion breath foodie farm blog where buying too much and planting too much are half the fun of gardening, right?

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