First lettuce of the year

The other night, we had cheeseburgers and potato salad for dinner.  I was getting my burger fixings ready – ketchup and onions – when I realized that I had some leaf lettuce that was just about ready.  So I hurried up to the garden and got some lettuce – about three leaves per burger – to give our burgers a bit of the “fresh from the garden” taste.  I’ve tried to take a picture of my first harvests, but the lettuce was all eaten by the time I thought about it.

This lettuce has a bit of an interesting history.  Last spring, I tried starting more seeds indoors than I usually do, but with limited window sill space, I ended up with a lot of straggly seedlings.  So I bought a grow light, hoping I’d have a larger area than a window sill to start seeds.  I also wondered if I could grow some leaf lettuce during the winter.  I found a spot I could put the light – it’s not the best place, but I’d have to clean out a spot for something better – and planted a small pot with some old seeds.  And nothing grew.

In late winter, I went and bought all my seeds for the year, including new leaf lettuce.  I planted another small pot, and it germinated.  At first, it seemed fine, but then it still went a bit straggly.  I think my light was too high, something to fix for next year.  But about a month after I planted it, it finally stopped snowing and I worked up a spot and transplanted out my indoor lettuce.  I also direct sowed a larger patch. 

That was about a month ago.  The lettuce I direct sowed looks like it will be ready to harvest sometime next week.  So it took a month of growing lettuce indoors to get a harvest about a week-and-a-half earlier than if I had just waited to plant outside.  Of course, if I hadn’t tried to grow lettuce indoors, we wouldn’t have had any for our cheeseburgers.

Garden roundup: January-April

In the first four months of this year, our chickens laid 405 eggs, of which 400 made it to the house. 

The only other harvest we’ve had so far are the parsnips we planted last year.  After cleaning them up and cutting off all the little side roots, we were able to get five quart bags in the freezer.  That doesn’t seem like much, but I think it was more than we got last year.  I think we didn’t have the best germination rate last year, so we’ll just have to see how this year goes.

Speaking of this year’s parsnips, they’re planted, but haven’t germinated yet.  Also planted are some turnips and some leaf lettuce.  My sister got a thing of, probably, 100 onion starts.  She planted some, then gave us the last 40 or so.  This happened just a couple days after I went and bought a bunch of new seeds, as well as a pack of 80 onion sets.  I have all of them planted, along with about ten old onions we didn’t eat over the winter.  So we’ll have plenty of onions this year.

Last fall I bought a grow light.  Over the winter, I tried two experiments.  Every year there are a couple onions that start growing, and I’ve planted them but they never do much because they were just set up against a winter window sill.  I hoped with a grow light they might actually do something.  And they grew, they just didn’t produce anything.  I also tried growing a small pot of leaf lettuce under the grow light.  The first batch with old seeds didn’t germinate, so I waited until I bought new, and they grew, but they seemed to get rather scraggly.  I’ve transplanted them outside, and we’ll see if they do anything.

Other seeds I’ve planted, but haven’t transplanted yet, are some zucchini, cucumber, watermelon, sun flowers, and some other flowers.  I think my grow light wasn’t low enough, so they were getting scraggly, and it was warm so I set them outside to get them ready to transplant.  And then the weather grew cold.  I think in a couple of days it’s supposed to get down to just about freezing.  I do have a couple of clearish totes that I set over them to act as a mini greenhouse, and hopefully that will be enough to get them through any cold nights.

As to everything else, I’m waiting for the garden to dry out enough to work it up.  And I need to add soil to my raised beds, but I don’t have enough and don’t really have the time to do it all, so I’m doing some, hoping that will be enough and that I’ll have more time and energy this fall to top them off for next year. 

We’ll just have to wait and see.

First harvest of the year

 

Here's a photo after I cleaned it up a bit.  There was also a smaller one growing right next to it that came out when I pulled this one.

I pulled these yesterday, and we fried them up with some potatoes and onions, and they were very tasty.

A quick 2025 roundup

I had planned on writing up a post about all the problems I had in 2025, from old seeds not germinating to slugs killing the ones that did.  But as with most things, I kept putting it off.  Getting into December, I figured I should really get that written up so I could just add in how many eggs we got this year and be ready for a year end roundup.  And then I had a series of minor, yet annoying health issues.  I spent a lot of December either not being able to do more than watch YouTube, to just not feeling like doing more than watching YouTube.  So none of that stuff got written up.  My new plan, is to go over some of that stuff in a month or two when I put out a post on my plans for 2026.

The one thing I will roundup, will be our eggs.  Our old hens had just started laying again when they were killed by a mink at the end of January.  We only managed to get 8 eggs from them.  We fixed up the coop and got new chicks, which started laying on September 1.  Since then, they’ve laid 434 eggs, of which 428 made it to the house.  We’ve used a lot of them in baking, and giving a bunch to my siblings.  I’ve also sold 11 dozen to my coworkers.  The cold weather hasn’t seemed to slow them down that much, so here’s looking forward to 100+ eggs a month for 2026.

Garden roundup for August and September

At the beginning of September, I knew I needed to do a roundup for August, but it seemed like one thing after another kept coming up, and I delayed it so long I figured I’ll just do a roundup for August and September.  And here it is, late on the third of October, and I’m just going to do the most basic of roundups.  This gardening season hasn’t been the best, and I really just want to get started on next year.  I still have carrots and potatoes and some other things left to pick, but I’ll probably save all of that for a year end roundup.

Anyway, the good stuff.  As I mentioned in a previous post, our chickens have started laying.  During the month of September, they laid 81 eggs, of which 80 made it to the house.  They’re still a bit smaller than typical eggs, but it’s nice to have fresh eggs again.

Towards the beginning of August I finally started getting zucchini, and by the end of September I’ve picked 46.  So we’ve had fried zucchini and zucchini bread and given several away to my siblings.

I’ve picked all of our green beans, and shell beans, peppers, and onions, which did pretty well.  Just yesterday I picked our third and final pick of broccoli.  Our tomato harvest was … okay.  Not great, but not terrible.

Terrible harvests were kidney beans (few), pears (3), and the one tree for applesauce, which only made enough for three, small servings of applesauce.  But those were better than our corn, which did nothing. 

Part of me wishes I could just jump to next spring to try again, but there’s a lot of work I need to do before then.  For example, my raised beds settled way more than I expected, so I need to get them filled back up.  Hopefully, I can get that done before it snows.  We’ll see.

The first egg from our new hens!

They're still learning.

Potato tests

Last fall and over winter, I had several ideas for tests to do this year involving potatoes.  For example, last year I got my first metal raised beds which I filled on the cheap using a lot of fill dirt.  Mixed in with this fill dirt was a lot of organic stuff like grass clippings and banana peels as well as some compost.  The idea is that while the soil might not be the greatest this first year, by adding compost every year it should get better.  So one test I wanted to do was to get three containers and fill one with just the fill dirt, one with the fill dirt and some compost, and one 50/50 fill dirt and compost to see how big of a difference compost makes.  But I didn’t have three empty containers that were the same size, and there was a lot of other stuff going on so I never got around to it.  Maybe next year.

Another test I wanted to do was I had seen some posts of people mocking people – worried the economy would collapse under Trump – of wanting to grow all their food.  The mocking was along the lines of, “You don’t even have a shovel to work the soil up,” or something.  So I had the idea of marking off a section of the yard and planting some potatoes as best I could to see if they did anything.  I think the plan was to also plant some in a raised bed to compare.  But I forgot about it until after I planted all my beds, and again there was a lot of other stuff going on.  Again, maybe next year.

But the third test, I actually did.  We have some old tires we grow in.  I know, I know, you shouldn’t do that, and I’ve been meaning to write up a post why I still do.  The main reason being, I live in a part of the country where if people have a brush pile that is too wet to burn, they’ll just throw some old tires on to get it going.  People worry about stuff leaching out of the tires, but worst stuff might be blowing in on the wind no matter where I plant.  Anyway, the bigger old tractor tires I plant with onions or beets or whatever, but the smaller ones I plant with sunflowers and potatoes. 

I have seven tires for potatoes, and last year after harvesting them I covered them in grass clippings.  I wanted to do a very basic test where I did very little work and started with smallish potatoes.

I took a handful of shifted compost and put it on top of the old grass clippings.  I then pushed a potato into the compost.  And since the level in the tires had fallen, I filled them up with the fill dirt.  Once the potatoes sprouted, I mulched them with grass clippings.  And that was it.  I didn’t even water them.  Although, we did have a wet spring, and it’s only the last few weeks – when the potatoes were already dying – that it’s become hot and dry.

Five of the potatoes came up, and after waiting a couple of weeks, when I dug up the other two, I found one had rotted and the other I think was eaten by a mole.  I replanted those tires, but I didn’t include them in this study.  Later, when the plants were starting to go strong, one of the remaining five and one of the replanted ones were killed.  Something chewed them off right above the mulch.  So I lost almost half of what I planted for the test.

Still, when I dug up the first plant, I was pleasantly surprised.

I should have used the same container for comparison, but probably that green one was about the size I planted.  And this is what I got from the four surviving plants.

Was it a great harvest?  For starting with smallish potatoes, only fertilizing with a handful of compost when I planted them, and not watering them, it was okay.  We’ve already eaten some of the larger ones.  I might save seven of the smaller ones to plant next year.

The one difference I plan to make for next year, is while harvesting them I noticed the soil was rather hard since there’s little organic matter in it.  So when I have an afternoon to kill, I plan to work up the soil, add some compost, and then cover it with grass clippings so the worms and such will have the rest of fall and winter to work.  Then depending on how low the level is next spring, I might not add more dirt.  We’ll have to see.

But that is the results of the one potato test I was able to run this year.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to do more next year.