Community Garden Update

Seedlings!

 

Yesterday it was time to do some more sowing in the community garden bed. Spinach, Rainbow Chard and Kale seeds were all added to the garden. A couple weeks ago Rocket (Arugula), Tsoi Sim (an Asian green), Chives, and Little Gem Lettuce seeds were planted.  The rocket and tsoi sim are showing cute little pairs of leaves already. Pretty soon we'll have food!



Our janky pea trellis

Yesterday during our work session in the garden we decided it was time to put up a trellis for the peas. This trellis will win no beauty pageants, but hopefully it will provide something for our Sugar Snap peas to climb up. They are growing taller day by day and in about a week they should reach the base of the trellis. We also planted out another two rows of peas that had been started in the greenhouse- they're looking very nice. I still can't wait to get my hands on some of those pea shoots!

Pea shoots!

This photo was recently sent to me by one of my fellow gardeners- pea shoots! Our little peas are growing like gangbusters. I can't wait until they're big enough that we can start harvesting some of the shoots. They have such a delightful spring-like flavor! Yum...



Pea shoots in a raised bed; taken by D., a fellow gardener



What We Plan To Grow

Turned soil, waiting for planting

As I mentioned last week, the peas are already in the ground. In addition to planting out the peas, we have planted our tomato and broccoli seeds.  We are growing Tumbling Tom tomato and Santee F1 Purple Sprouting broccoli.  They both need to start off in the greenhouse before they can enter the garden.  The rest of the veggies we plan to grow can't be planted yet.

Next month we will be adding Rainbow Chard (known as "Leaf Beet" here), spinach, kale and arugula (a.k.a. rocket) to the garden.  In May we will plant out our zucchini (a.k.a. courgette) and in July we will plant Claytonia, a waxy leaf that is apparently quite tasty.  We are also planning to grow potatoes in grow bags.  The potatoes are currently at the home of a fellow gardener "chitting".  Chitting is the act of letting the potatoes sprout eyes; these will be the vines once they go in the ground.

I suspect we will also add some other veg to the mix as we hit our stride, but to sum up, these are the vegetables we plan to grow in the WeeKG this year:

Sugar Snap Peas
Purple Sprouting Broccoli (Santee F1)
Tumbling Tom Tomato
Rainbow Chard
Spinach
Lacinato Kale
Arugula
Black Beauty Zucchini
Claytonia
Potatoes

So how about you?  What are you planning to grow in 2012?

Planting Peas

There they are, in all their black and white glory: PEAS!  Last weekend my plotters and I got together determined to do something other than turn soil.  Here in Glasgow most things can't go into the ground just yet; April will be a much more active month.  Nevertheless, it is time to start planting peas.

We selected sugar snap peas and we planted two small rows of them.  We plan to practice succession planting and plant a few rows every couple weeks.  That way we hope to stagger the harvest so that we're not innundated with all our peas at once.  Also, there is plenty of space between the rows to tuck in a few shallow-rooted greens like arugula.

Peas are a nice seed to start with.  They are large (the same size as peas because peas are the seed- did that make sense?) and so it's easy to space them out along the row.  You plant the peas at a spacing of around 2 inches at a depth of about half an inch.  We made depressions in the soil, then each of the four of us planted half a row.  I found it kind of adorable how democratic we were- no one wanted to monopolize the planting.  I think that bodes well for our future work together.

So how about you?  Do you have any seeds going into the ground, or are you waiting for warmer weather?

Parsnip & Apple

Second Woodlands Harvest!
back row: trowels and parsnips
front row: kale tops and spring onions

In my last post, I mentioned that my fellow plotters and I have gotten our beds ready for planting. I did not mention that prepping the beds also included harvesting! The photo is the haul the four of us split- a serious bunch of parsnips, a few spring onions each, and the tops of some sad kale plants! We all felt quite spoiled as none of us had planted these lovely veggies.

The parsnips were the first thing on my target list- I've never grown them before and I love their flavor. All root vegetables do well with roasting, but I wanted something a little different for these parsnips.  I decided to mix them with another fall/winter favorite- apples. I had made a leek-apple-parsnip soup before (delicious!) but I hadn't tried roasting the parsnip and apple together. I found a recipe from Martha Stewart as my starting point and winged it from there.

I must say, I am quite pleased with the results. In fact, a friend who came to dinner admitted halfway through the meal that she didn't like roast parsnips but was really enjoying these! It's always nice to have a confession turn into a compliment.  If you are looking for something a little different to serve alongside roast chicken or roast lamb (or anything, really), give these sweet and savory parsnips a try!

Roast Parsnips and Apples
Serves 4
modified from Martha Stewart

2 lbs parsnips
2-3 Gala apples or similar
1 Tbl olive oil
sea salt
cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F.

2. Peel and chop the parsnips into bite-sized chunks. Core and chop the apple into similar bite-sized chunks (I left the skin on for more texture and to help the apples retain their shape).

3. Put parsnips and apples into a roasting pan. Toss with olive oil, sprinkle generously with sea salt, and add a dash of cinnamon. You want this to taste ever-so-slightly-reminiscent of apple pie so easy on the cinnamon.

4. Pop into the oven and roast, turning occasionally, for about 35-45 minutes. Stab parsnips with a fork to check for doneness. Serve and enjoy!

Welcome to Woodlands

Woodlands Community Garden

A few weeks ago, I had my introduction to my new community garden!

The space is really neat- in 2010, a group of volunteers cleaned up an abandoned lot where a building had burned down decades earlier. Last year, the Woodlands Community Garden was born in that space. That's why all the gardens are in raised beds- we're growing on rubble! In addition to the plots, there are community growing areas and a teaching center made of recycled wood pallets. The whole thing is very eco-ghetto-fabulous.



The view into the garden from across the street.
Note the walls of the adjacent buildings on the sides of the photo.



Garden entrance catwalk, with geometric wall grafitti



I met the organizers as well as half my fellow "plotters." There are 4 of us so far and we are starting to get things sorted.  We've ordered our seeds and last weekend we got our beds weeded, turned and composted. We can't wait for our seeds to arrive so we can get planting!



Working away, with pallet shed in the background

p.s. Happy Leap Day!

My First Woodlands Harvest

Ta Da!  There it is- my first harvest from the Woodlands Community Garden in Glasgow.  It's not much, but it's the first fresh picking I've done outdoors here in Scotland and it made my very, very happy.

The wee spring onions came out of my new plot!  There are still a small group of onions growing in the bed.  These two were picked as we investigated what was still growing in the plot and tried to decide what we want to plant and where to fit it all.  I sliced up the onion and sauteed it in butter for about half a minute, then added toasted garlic and tossed it all with fusilli.  It was a very simple pasta that had great flavor from the combination of aromatic garlic and sweet, grassy onion.  The onions were so small that the taste was reminiscent of chives.  Speaking of chives, I should add those to the planting list.

The four sprigs in the picture are two varieties of fresh thyme.  These were from my garden-neighbor's plot; she grew at the garden last year.  The skinny one is your standard thyme, while the other one is a variety of creeping thyme.  The leaves are more succulent and really lovely, but it's taking over her plot.  The creeping thyme sends out runners so instead of growing like a little shrub, it grows (creeps) laterally, sending out roots all over the raised beds.  I've been instructed to take as much as I want and I intend to!  I also want to separate some divisions so that I can add thyme to the windowsill parsley and get a proper windowsill herb garden growing.

Carnage

This is what remains of the lovely Amaryllis the downstairs neighbor gave us:

The other night, it was completely dismantled by the disgruntled housecats. 

Plate: smashed,
Amaryllis: in tatters,
trash bag: shredded. 

They were in rare form.

I was particularly upset because not only was it *just* about to start blooming, but also, they seem to keep dashing my hopes that I'll be able to grow things in this flat without them being destroyed.  My only hope may be to grow things in the bedroom because they aren't allowed in there.  Ugh.  I love the little mongrels, but they do put a damper on my gardening around here.

Happily, there is good news on the community garden front!  They had a lot of applicants, but they decided that they want us all to have a chance to garden and as such, are going to be organizing us into teams to take over certain areas of the garden.  My team should consist of a range of experience levels and be made up of about 6 other people.  On February 12th, I'll get to meet them and start in on my Glaswegian community gardening.

Thank goodness.  I don't know if the cats and I were going to be friends for much longer.

Stalking a Community Garden Plot

Dreaming of a new raised bed...

Gardeners are a good bunch.  It doesn't matter where in the world you go, if you meet another gardener, you are sure to hit it off somehow.  I was lucky enough to learn that my new colleague in Glasgow has quite the kitchen garden of his own out in the country.  He has multiple raised beds, some greenhouse space, and chickens.  I am jealous already.

Once he learned that I am a big veggie gardener too, he took it upon himself to help me find a community garden plot.  Another colleague is involved in a garden close to my new place of employment.  She sent me all the info needed to apply for a raised bed in this garden plot. Last month, I filled out my application and I should hear any day now if I was successful in my quest for a shared raised bed.  I hope that the MKG can continue in this small way here in Glasgow.  Plus, I have never gardened in a climate like this one; a community garden would be the perfect way for me to meet local gardeners and learn from their experiences.

Here's hoping that I can get my fingers in the dirt here soon!  My little wee Phalaenopsis is cute and all, but it's not very tasty.