Winter Garden...The End is Nigh

The end of winter is upon us (technically, the last day of winter is my birthday) and with that comes the end of care-free gardening. I have decided that I really like winter gardens because they require basically NO work whatsoever, beyond the initial planting and harvesting when it is done. You don't have to worry about irrigating because of the rain and there are few/no pests to worry about since it is so cold. If you plant from seed directly outside you will need to thin your crop once a few weeks after germination (which I neglected to do until too late) but that's really it.
Our goal is to harvest all of the winter crops (or relinquish them to the compost pile) the weekend of March 22 so that we can prepare the ground for our summer garden. Even then will be pushing the limit to get things in the ground in time. This time last year we were busy moving into this house and didn't get the garden planted (mostly from nursery starts, not seeds) until after Easter (Dave's birthday). That would have been okay, except that I made the mistake of hitting all the plants with two rounds of fish emulsion fertilizer too late in the game so all the plants grew HUGE and didn't produce fruit until sometime into the fall. Yikes, it was crazy to have 8' tall tomato vines and bell pepper "trees" that we giving us delicious red bells even after Thanksgiving. The tomatoes didn't really produce all that much; I think we were only able to can 4 or 5 quarts and freeze a half gallon Ziploc bag of whole tomatoes.

Glancing at my gardening journal back in September reminds me that we DID get about 250 POUNDS (that's right) of free Roma tomatoes from the UC Davis student farm. A plant science lab upstairs from my lab had grown 8 varietals of Romas that have been used at some point in the last 50 by major producers for condensed soup, tomato paste, and canned tomatoes. They tested various irrigation techniques for each to see which produced the most and best flavored/textured fruit. Very interesting. The lab sent out an email asking for help with the final harvest in exchange for all the free tomatoes you could ever want. Well, I wasn't about to pass-up free tomatoes and hanging out with folks in my department. I arrived in the fields that morning with two HUGE laundry baskets and 3 apple boxes (crates). I came home with all those filled, plus some Hefty garbage bags full, too. There was also a watermelon patch that was a free-for-all, grown by another lab just so students could pick them. I grabbed half a dozen of those for us and to use for some of my graduate group socials.

For the whole next week Dave and I spent our evenings after work washing, chopping, canning, peeling, and drying tomatoes. The skin on my finger tips started peeling from all the water and acidity. I think we ended up canning about 40 quarts of quartered or pureed tomatoes and 4 quarts of sundried tomatoes (well, dehydrator-dried). Dave was totally "over" all this preservation work by the end, but I'm glad we did it. (Don't tell Dave, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we can get more free produce this summer, too!)

Anyway, tonight I pickled the few beets that were large enough to harvest from our winter garden, along with 4 bunches that I bought at the Farmer's Market on the way home from school today. I only ended up with 3 pints, but it's a start. Hopefully the recently-thinned-and-not-large beets still in the ground will get big enough to eat in the next two weeks so I can pickle them, too. Dave doesn't like pickled beets--more for me! Like my dad, he does like pickled cucumbers ("pickles") and I promised my dad that I would make him a few jars of bread-and-butter pickles the next time the Farmer's Market has pickling cukes.

Tonight I totally splurged on a half-flat of huge, heavenly-smelling strawberries at the Farmer's Market, too. They are from San Diego, which has apparently had enough heat/sun already for strawberries. Or perhaps they were grown in greenhouses down there, I don't know. I made a strawberry cream tart with a melted milk chocolate layer. YUM. We're so full from dinner that we haven't tried it yet but it looks/smells good! I tasted the cream filling (it's really a custard, I guess) and it reminded me of the milk tarts we used to eat on Sundays when I lived in Cape Town. Those didn't have any fruit but were a sweet and delicious treat after a long morning of grocery shopping with my roommate, Amanda. Ah...memories!

Here's our first broccoli harvest. It is remarkable to me that we grew this all the way from seed! We ate it as part of a veggie platter with ranch dip. It was super yummy, and so much more tender than store-bought stuff.

On the plant:
First harvest:
Just look at these garden gnomes I found out there...aren't they SO cute? Normally the "garden yard" (we have three "back" yards plus the front yard because our lot is a triangle) is off limits to the dogs since they don't understand the difference between Mama's beloved rows of veggies and the walking paths. However, they were very good while I was out there taking pictures and picking the broccoli and they made sure to jump over the veggies rather than plow straight through them.

By the way, as I write this blog our entire family (us and two dogs) plus two laptops and Dave's work papers are ALL on the same couch. These animals totally make me laugh--when they are determined to snuggle with their Mama and Daddy, by golly, they will squeeze their way onto the couch with us no matter how little room there is. Potatoes' pre-furred sleeping position is halfway between being on his back and on his side, in this half-twist. Dave just plopped his pile of work papers right on top of his belly since there's no other room on the sofa. Every once in a while this long torso-ed dog stretches and the papers fall on the floor. Dave patiently picks them up, waits until Potatoes has collapsed back down, and then he puts the stack back down on top of the dog. Occasionally Ruby has to reposition her rump so it doesn't slide of the cushion. She also lets out these loud moans of satisfaction and soft snoring sounds of contentment whenever one of our arms nudges her. You know how newborn babies make those darling noises when they're sleeping? Ruby sounds just like that when she snuggles between us and we just love it! It is really hard to get any work done when you literally surrounded by such loving (and weird) babies like ours. =o) Here's the best picture I could get of all of us right now: