The Garden is In!

The 2020 vegetable garden is officially in the ground. I planted all the seeds and transplanted the seedlings on Friday, May 22. It was a lovely warm day without too much sun. As soon as I finished watering in the last of the seeds, a gentle rain began to fall.

First view of the fully-planted garden

My original plan, in light of the global pandemic in which we find ourselves, was to just use seeds that I had on hand from previous years. I was going to call it the “Leftover Garden.” But, I happened to find myself at the big box home store to pick up an item for my job, and saw that there were still lots of seed packets and no one browsing them at that moment. So, I got some. I purchased royal burgundy garden beans, rocket salad arugula, mixed colors swiss chard, black turtle shelling beans, flatleaf parsley, and fernleaf dill to supplement my leftovers. Those leftovers include rattlesnake beans, purple dragon and St. Valery carrots, Chicago pickling cucumbers, oakleaf lettuce, Cascadia sugar snap peas, and black beauty zucchini. Some of those seeds are as much as six years old, so we’ll see what happens.

I decided once again to try growing some of the tomatoes in buckets. Last year, I had troubles with both woodchucks and deer disturbing the plants where they were on our back patio. I ended up moving the buckets into the main garden last year, and then proceeded to ignore them as I was doing with the rest of the garden. This year, I’m trying again with the buckets on the patio, but with an inelegant yet hopefully successful solution. We got some leftover plastic mesh from the building site of my in-law’s new house. I wrapped it around the buckets as a barrier to furry menaces. I hope it works well. I also planted four tomato plants in the garden proper. It will be interesting to see how they do in each location.

Spooky tomato plants! Pink brandywine, black vernissage, black cherry, and red cherry, like last year

We also decided to rebuild the plant teepee in the front yard. Last year we (meaning my husband in this case) tried loofah sponges with surprisingly great success. This year, he planted birdhouse gourds. The seeds are leftovers from several years ago, so, again, we’ll wait and see.

Front yard teepee take two.

In the few days between then and now, all the pepper (Poblano and sweet banana), tomato, and basil seedlings have perked up nicely, and the arugula, cucumbers, and shell beans are sprouting.

Arugula

Black turtle beans

Some squirrels have been digging in the beds, making shallow little round indentations in the soil, but they’re only disturbing the seeds by chance. It’s annoying, but not the end of the world. I have seen some blue jays hanging around in the garden too. Hopefully, they won’t cause any trouble. Never can tell with those tricky birds. They’re too clever for everyone’s good sometime.  

I wish I had a better picture than this fuzzy one, but the jays have been too quick for me so far.

Dandelion Jelly

Sometime this spring, I stumbled across the idea of dandelion jelly. I think it was a Facebook post from Mother Earth News, but I can’t be sure. When I looked out the front door yesterday morning, and saw all the dandelions in our yard, I decided to make some.

Just a few of the dandelions in our front yard.

I grabbed a big ol’ plastic bowl, and headed out around 9:30 in the morning. It had rained overnight, but the lawn was drying out, and the dandelions were perking up for the day. One interesting thing about foraging like this is that I wasn’t the only one after the little yellow blossoms. After I grabbed my first black slug (and apologized to the little thing profusely), I became more aware of my competition. Quite a few tiny green leafhoppers were hanging out on the dandelion heads, and the honeybees were out working busily. Part of me was concerned that I was taking food away from these creatures that we share the world with, but every time I stood up, stretched my back, and gazed over the yard, I saw there were plenty for all.

My buzzing competition.

My squishy competition.

I have to say, I am glad I am in fairly good health and physical condition. There was a lot of squatting involved in picking dandelions. It took about an hour to fill my bowl, and when I brought my haul back into the house, our cat was duly impressed.

He does seem impressed, right?

Okay, so now I had a giant bowl of dandelion heads, an impressed cat, and very sticky, orange hands. The next step was to pull all the yellow bits of the blossom off the green parts. (Can you tell I’m a historian, not a botanist?) I did this by twisting the base of the flower, and plucking the petals out in clumps. In a way, it felt like plucking a chicken, but I’ve never done that before either, so I’m just guessing.

After a little over an hour of blossom plucking, my husband joined in the efforts. Maybe another hour later, we finally had four lightly packed cups of dandelion bits with which I was to make a tea.

We stopped plucking when I had just enough done, and I actually returned maybe a quarter of the dandelion heads I had picked to nature.

Before starting all of this, I asked Mr. Google for a dandelion jelly recipe. I found quite a few, and ended up choosing one from Lonely Pines Farm. So, as guided by this recipe and all of the others I found online (there really is very little difference in the recipes out there), I poured four cups of boiling water over my pluckings, and let it steep 24 hours. The tea smelled a bit like steamed asparagus to me.

Dandelion tea just beginning to steep.

And dandelion tea after 24 hours.

 After straining the tea through cheesecloth to pull out all the flowery bits, I added the tea, two tablespoons of lemon juice, and one box of Sure Jell to a pot and brought it to a boil. I added four cups of sugar, brought it to a boil again, and let it boil for about two minutes. Then I ladled it into waiting jars. I filled seven small jelly jars and three half-pint jars. The jars then went into a hot water bath for ten minutes. I had gotten the water bath going before I even strained the tea so it had time to get up to a boil.

Jars of dandelion jelly straight out of the bath.

Some people online wrote that dandelion jelly tastes like honey, others that it tastes like sunshine, or joy. It certainly has a honey quality to it. I just tried a little off a spoon, and now I want waffles.  

He actually wasn’t that impressed.