Tag Archives: It’s food…coming from the ground!

Growing time

It’s that time of year again…stuff is growing…including my aching back and sunburned neck…but that’s a good thing too I guess. It’s great to be outside and doing stuff. We put the main garden in on Mother’s Day weekend when our chance of frost is gone. What may be more exciting though, I think, is that I got sorghum in the ground again and that it should grow. We planted it at Emily’s grand’s house where we used to do the bulk of our gardening. It’s too big a plot for us to garden in right now but will be perfect for a good sorghum crop.

Planting sorghum
Planting sorghum

I tilled a bunch of the land and we planted every sorghum seed I had. We first did sorghum a few years ago. Year 1 was great. Year 2 was a total flop…so bad we didn’t harvest a single cane. I expect that this year we will do well. We planted in good soil with appropriate spacing, etc. It’s a good bit of work processing sorghum and the end result yields not a lot of sorghum syrup but it is so cool to be a part of this old-timey process…kinda the same way I feel about beekeeping. It’s a great family time and, in both cases, the end result is literally finger-licking-good!

I didn’t get many pics of our work but Emily, Abigail and Emily’s Dad planted at the end of a long day’s work tilling and mowing and weeding.

Raspberries are coming!
Raspberries are coming!

The other big thing that is growing now is our raspberry patches! There are tons of berries on the plants and, after we got fencing in place, they are remaining there not being eaten by the chickens. I think raspberries are my favorite berry and possibly my favorite fruit. It’s hard to beat being able to eat out of your own yard!

A quick yard-garden broccoli update

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we converted a bit of yard-space into raised beds for growing food.  We got everything in the ground and it has pretty much all “taken”.  If you have never tried, stuff grown in your own garden  is far superior to food you buy in a store.  I don’t know if it is due to the extra talking-to gardeners give their plants or if it is the extra-special compost we add, but homegrown veggies are just the best!

Backyard garden Backyard garden

Broccoli and tomatoes and Brussels sprouts and peppers growing!

Perhaps my favorite garden veggie and the one that is most distinct in taste from what you buy in the store is that magnificent little delicacy most people call broccoli.  Raw broccoli is better, cooked broccoli is better, and deep-fried broccoli is better!  It is sort of magical as it grows.  The plant first sets really nice leaves that are a little hard to distinguish from cabbage or Brussels sprouts (my second favorite veggie!) or cauliflower.  So, if you garden like I do, sometimes it is a bit of a mystery which plant is which as they become jumbled in the frenzy to get stuff planted.  But one day as you check your garden, you notice a little green bush growing in the center of the stalk of leaves.  It quickly grows into a little broccoli head and then that grows and grows and before you know it, you have a magical head of broccoli!

Growing broccoli!

A baby broccoli growing!

I was so pleased to see the first few heads present themselves and now they are growing like mad.  In a few weeks I will take the first heads from the garden and we will make entire meals of broccoli!  The coolest thing is that when you cut one head, two more come to replace it.  Broccoli keeps making heads to replace the ones that were removed.  The plants looks  a little Frankensteinish after a cutting or two so, to preserve my children’s sanity, I don’t cut too many heads before we retire the plant to the compost pile in the sky.  Until then, however, we delight in the glories of home-grown broccoli!