Garden planning this year

[Hinotori]

We LOVE okra, IF it is prepared right. May be a good idea to try different recipes as well. I thought I hated eggplant for the longest time....until I found a delicious recipe I liked Now we eat eggplant pretty often as it's available.

I had fried eggplant once and it didn't take. My wife loves eggplant. If you have a great recipe that I'll like she'll be forever indebted to you.

Maybe I should just try wrapping it in bacon. That seems to make everything good.

Eggplant really needs cut up, salted, let sit, then rinsed to get the bitterness out. That said, I don't care a whole lot for eggplant. I like good eggplant parmesan and that's about it.

I hate cooked cauliflower as well. It's great raw but the taste change when cooked just is icky to me. There isn't enough bacon to cover that taste.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Oh yum! That sounds soooo good, WBF!

 

[sleuth]

Asparagus started from seed shouldn't be harvested till its third or fourth season--it needs 2 or 3 summers to grow first. That's why most people buy crowns.

I've never started my onions indoors, and I live in a Zone 3/4, so no advice from me there. I just plant onion sets in May and hope the frost doesn't get them (never had any problems).

...

Canned peas aren't peas anymore--try fresh, or at the very least frozen, and see if you like them.

I spent my childhood summers standing barefoot in the warm earth of our big garden picking pea pods and popping them open to eat fresh raw peas, and my own kids have done the same--they're like candy!

Also, your seeds will germinate just fine in the dark as long as they are at/above the correct temperature (how unheated is your barn?) so you don't need to get a fluorescent light over them until the baby plants emerge. Then you want to keep the bulb no more than 4-6" above the plants, so be sure to have a way to lower/raise either the light fixture or the seed trays as the plants grow

Thanks for the info. Maybe I can ask a neighbor to save me some fresh peas from their garden so I can try them this year.

I have a hundred year old barn with a newer lean-to on the side. The lean-to is insulated and so I planned to start the plants in there. So how unheated is my barn? Well, there's no heater out there, but there is a barn cat. And I don't get any frost or anything in my barn that I can tell. I'm also considering adding a cheap PVC greenhouse off the side of it.

I have a little flourescent desk lamp I can use with a flexible neck on it. Might need to hunt out some more though.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

We like cauliflower roasted best of all... sprinkle with some olive oil and maybe a little balsamic vinegar. The roasting and the balsamic carmelizes it a little bit and then top it with parmesan.... yumalicious!

 

[sleuth]

We like cauliflower roasted best of all... sprinkle with some olive oil and maybe a little balsamic vinegar. The roasting and the balsamic carmelizes it a little bit and then top it with parmesan.... yumalicious!

Here's something I learned from Weight Watchers. Take some raw cauliflower and sprinkle with butter and salt topping. Heat in the microwave for a few seconds (not long enough to cook it but long enough to melt the butter) and you've got a pretty good popcorn substitute.

Haven't tried it myself but I've been meaning to.

 

[Wannabefree]

There is so much I just eat raw. i can handle cooked cauliflower, but LOVE it raw, so does DD. We always eat straight out of the garden, and all my nieces and nephews do too. It's our favorite place in the growing season. I totally agree on the peas too. We like them raw., just not cooked.

 

[moolie]

Thanks for the info. Maybe I can ask a neighbor to save me some fresh peas from their garden so I can try them this year.

I have a hundred year old barn with a newer lean-to on the side. The lean-to is insulated and so I planned to start the plants in there. So how unheated is my barn? Well, there's no heater out there, but there is a barn cat. And I don't get any frost or anything in my barn that I can tell.

I have a little flourescent desk lamp I can use with a flexible neck on it. Might need to hunt out some more though.

Most seeds need temps above 50F to germinate, and some need higher, so might be a good idea to get to get a thermometer out there and check your daytime and night time temps over the next few weeks prior to starting your seeds.

All plants need a LOT of light to grow, even if you start them in a sunny window they will grow long and leggy and not necessarily get very green--not a great start in life. This is my light set-up:

Any table top or shelf will do, as long as you can suspend lights above your seed trays, and move either the trays or the lights up and down to get them close enough to the plants. I use a combo of cheap fluorescent shop lights from Rona/Home Depot/Lowes and a couple of desk lamps with cfl bulbs on the top shelf. My shop lights have chains and I just use S-hooks to shorten or lengthen the chains as need be.

 

[moolie]

We like cauliflower roasted best of all... sprinkle with some olive oil and maybe a little balsamic vinegar. The roasting and the balsamic carmelizes it a little bit and then top it with parmesan.... yumalicious!

Yummy! I love roasted veggies

 

[sleuth]

Most seeds need temps above 50F to germinate, and some need higher, so might be a good idea to get to get a thermometer out there and check your daytime and night time temps over the next few weeks prior to starting your seeds.

I do have a small space heater that we just bought I can use if necessary. Not sure how much it'll cost me to run though.

 

[Denim Deb]

OK, I know this is a couple of pages late, but when you want to harvest asparagus, you shouldn't harvest anything that's smaller around than a regular pencil. Depending on how well your plants do (if you start from seed), you may not even be able to harvest when they're 4 or 5 years old. The idea of not harvesting anything too small is that it will feed the roots and help you have good strong, healthy plants that will produce for years to come.