Secrets to a Great Fall Harvest

Written By: Tom DiGangi, Jr.

Photos By: Laura Knott & Tom DiGangi, Jr.

Each autumn, friends and family respond with quizzical looks and surprised comment when we report on the garden’s output in October, November and – yes, sometimes – December.  When most folks are raking leaves and tossing rotting jack-o-lanterns, we are harvesting greens, peppers, root vegetables, and an assortment of herbs.

What then is the secret to a great fall harvest, you may ask?  Actually, it’s at least three secrets.

First, the gardener must be lazy or preoccupied, and fail to harvest in summer.  See previous blog posts, such as this post , which shall serve as testimony to the truism about us being lazy or preoccupied.  This year, we simply didn’t harvest our fennel bulbs when they were ready in July – preoccupied I suppose.  Maybe we were too busy watching the Philadelphia Phillies magical 102 win regular season.  Then nature took its course. The large stalks began to die in the heat of summer, and all hope was lost for a harvest.  Yet we let the dying plants just stay in place – lazy I suppose.  Don’t repeat this to the kids, but our inaction was ultimately rewarded.  Now, young bright green fennel plants are emerging around the brown and brittle stalks.

Unfortunately, this is not metaphor for the Phillies season, as they failed to sprout anew in the playoffs, instead just dying-off after the regular season.  But, at least I have fennel for football season.  Sunday football will feature whey-fed pork sausage sandwiches (from our friends at Bobolink farm) with sautéed fennel.  I can taste it already.  That sandwich could benefit from some peppers.  But, peppers - you say - are summer fruits.  They can’t join the party.  This brings us to secret number two.

Invest in a fabric “greenhouse” or plastic “coldframe” to keep your summer plants going into winter.  The theory is that a transparent cover over your planting beds allows sunlight in to warm the soil during the day and traps warm air throughout the night.  If the greenhouse is too great an investment, then pick-up some cheap cloth row covers that you use to literally cover your crops (i.e., a sleeping bag for plants).  You can remove them in the morning to allow direct sunlight and replace them in the evening to keep off the frost.  They won’t work too long into the cold months, but will definitely extend the growing season.  With row covers on, chances are the pepper plants, like the Giant Marconi seen here,

will last longer than my beloved Philadelphia Eagles will remain in the NFL playoff hunt.  However, defeat in sports is much easier to digest when followed by a sausage, fennel and pepper sandwich.

Let’s say that you don’t have the patience for row cover management, or you're just not that into peppers.  Then, focus on secret number three... next year.

Plant a garden that produces more than just summer season favorites like tomatoes, eggplant or cucumbers.  Add in cool weather crops like celery root, fennel, horseradish, leeks, peppers, pumpkins, spinach, swiss chard and turnips.  In our garden, these are all still going strong this fall.  Some of these crops can be planted in spring for an early summer harvest, and may produce a second harvest in the fall.  The fennel and swiss chard did just that for us this year.  The multi-season life of chard is evident in this photo.

New crisp leaves appear from the tops of the roots, now revealed from the snipping of leaves from those roots all year long. 

Come to think of it, that swiss chard sautéed in a bit of garlic and olive oil would go really well with the sausage, fennel and peppers.  Now, if we could figure out how to grow beer, then we would really have something to make us feel better about Philadelphia sports this autumn.

A Beginner's Cut Flower Garden - First Steps

An ideal day for a cut flower article would have been Mother's Day, but I am running severely behind schedule (as usual) and  haven't gotten to it. I normally celebrate Mother's Day with a reprint of my favorite blog entry ever, known as Joyce's Mother's Day Heist. Alas, even that little bit of nostalgia got passed over this year in the May melee of summer garden prep.

You see, we last left off in the fall with the semi-completion of what I fondly call "The Great Wall of Tommy" (hereafter known as GWOT). All of the remaining grass inside our fence was tilled up and turned into a two-tiered vegetable garden with about 17 raised beds, plus the plantings all around the fence perimeter. In total it's about 3600 square feet of delicious full sun exposure resulting in (FINALLY!) enough room for a cut flower garden.

I've always wanted cut flowers but felt that every square inch of sun needed to be reserved for tomatoes and peppers. That would not have been a problem if only I lived in Vermont somewhere in the proximity of Waitsfield. If I did, I would just buy a share of Amy's Organic Cut Flowers and let her do all the work. A $100 share gets you 10 fresh bouquets - one per week for ten weeks. That is an amazing deal, considering you would pay about the same amount for non-organic, non-local, and not-long-for-this-world flowers from your grocery store. I really wish I lived closer and could do this, but without an expensive relocation on the horizon, I figured the next best thing would be too start digging and then check in with Amy Todisco herself for some advice.

The two beds I chose flank the GWOT, and will hopefully make a lovely first impression upon entry to the veggies. The bed on the left had been empty and mulched last fall, and was not too bad when April rolled around. However, the bed on the right had some token fall plantings and no mulch. The result? Well, let's see. Or let's talk about what you DON'T see here: some lovely varieties of stonecrop slowly choking to death , a series of unimpressed rose of sharon saplings, overwintered ornamental cabbages, depressed mums, buried lamb's ears, a high-maintenance diva rosebush crying into her martini, and my lonely little buddha (though enlightened and non-attached, still secretly wishing to be back safely on the shelf at the Christmas Tree Shoppe with his other identical buddha friends). What you DO see is an obnoxious little white flowered creeper called chickweed, which spreads by running along the ground and dropping seeds to come up next year. The bed on the left had a total of about four of these plants and took minutes to weed. But weeding that other bed resulted in scenes both dirty and graphic, involving filth, sweat, and various and sundry four letter words. Let's take this time to look away, and check in with Amy about some important first steps.

I asked Amy for advice about starting a cut flower garden for the first time. What follows is Amy's handy to-do list.


1. Choose a full sun location (at least 8 hours per day).
2. Soil should drain well.
3. I would recommend getting a soil test to see what kind of fertility it has and what it might need. Usually the agricultural extension office in each state can provide this for gardeners.
4. Choose flowers. Probably planting seedlings versus seeds is the easier route for the first garden. Seeds take a long time and it's more satisfying for the new gardener to see something already in the ground.
5. Ideally, grow organically (which means using compost as opposed to Miracle Gro, as well as liquid seaweed and/or fish emulsion for fertilizer, and no pesticides.)
6. Water, weed, and watch as the flowers grow, attracting butterflies and bees, and impressed onlookers.

Wonderful! Now here's the part where I admit that I asked Amy's advice after already choosing the site, buying plants, and digging. As luck would have it, I did pretty well except for the soil test part.  I always mean to get one of those! One of these days ...

Soon after I started, my beds looked more like this:

I managed to rescue the lamb's ears from the right and move them to the left bed, as seen above. The mums and rose of sharon trees were relocated, and the cabbages put in a pot until their inevitable death due to the heat of summer. Most of the stonecrop survived, and I transplanted some creeping thyme between the stones in the path. The diva rose stayed put, shooting me dirty looks and talking on her tiny cell phone the whole time  (she's named "Bella Donna" so I should've known she'd be a pain). The buddha breathed a sigh of relief and I gave him a nice wild portulacca plant to hold in his cupped hands. Done.

And now for the real fun. I had already done the shopping for plants, doing a lot of googling to find recommendations. I was planning on mixing perennials with annual plants, annual seeds and even vegetables, space permitting. Here's my current inventory:

Perennials - Foxglove, Delphinium, Liatris, Thrift, English Daisy, Sea Holly, Yarrow, Blanket Flower, Salvia, Peony, Lupine

Annuals - Zinnia, Osteospermum, Dahlia, Snapdragon, Cosmos

Seeds - Zinnia, Sunflowers, Sweet Peas

Veg - Malabar Spinach, Grapevine (to grow over the deck)

Of course, I had to ask Amy about her favorites as well: "Let's see, my favorite cut flowers at this point, and I may change my mind after this season growing some new ones, are zinnias, sweet peas and snapdragons. I also like the perennial peonies-the more fragrant the better. And, I love lavender-the flowers, the essential oil, you name it." That means Amy can jump off the turnpike the next time she's cutting through Jersey to get someplace else and will still be able to find her favorite flowers in my yard!

And there you have it. My cut flower garden is on it's way, but not completed. The plants are in, seeds are sprouting, soaker hoses are laid out, but the mulch isn't in place. I'd like to have my "after" picture with some big beautiful flowers in it, so give me another month for the fascinating conclusion of my cut flower adventure! Thanks again to Amy Todisco for indulging my requests for input, and best of luck to her and her cut flower garden CSA. Please check out her websites, especially the cool products she offers on her website www.greenlivingnow.com.

Thanks for reading, and see you soon!

Wild Foods Of Spring: Fresh Trout and Twin Crustini

by Tom DiGangi, Jr.

I set out to create a meal constructed fundamentally of wild ingredients.  This endeavor has become something of a rite of spring in recent years.  It sounds like a big project - making a meal without a trip to the store - but in all honesty, it’s pretty easy. 

The project began at six o’clock on a drizzlely Tuesday evening, after the standard vehicular combat along Interstate 78 that some people would call “commuting.”  A quick change of clothes – from blue suit, red tie and winged-tip shoes to wading pants, fishing vest and Indiana Jones-inspired hat – and I was soon casting a fly into the Pohatcong Creek that borders our property.  A dozen or so casts later, and the main ingredient was procured and dispatched, streamside.

SOAPBOX WARNING (If you are uninterested in conservation, skip this paragraph.)

Now, it is rare that I keep a fish to eat.  Years of informal fishing education have gotten at least one important concept to stick in the chowder that passes for my brain.  That is…we can’t just treat our planet like everything in it is ours for the taking.  We humans have to conserve the gifts of nature, not screw around with them, or worse, not recognize them as gifts at all.  I suppose that’s why Laura and I take so much pleasure in gardening.  You plant something.  You care for that thing.  That thing and the other things around it support each other (e.g. bees and fruiting plants).  Finally, that thing feeds you, and you start the cycle all over, again.  So, when I kept a single trout for dinner on that Tuesday evening, it was with great humility and respect, and promises to release the next dozen fish I catch and to support a Trout Unlimited stream restoration project next weekend.

ALL CLEAR (It is now safe to keep reading.)

Cleaned trout in hand, I proceeded to the garden, along the way, pulling some dandelion greens from the lawn.  In the garden, I snipped some chives and harvested some over-wintered spring onions.

Here is what I did with the ingredients, including some of our previously harvested and stored garlic, locally produced honey and unfiltered apple cider vinegar.  Laura makes her own bread.  So the only products not self-produced or local were the salt, pepper and olive oil.  Not bad.

Pan-Seared Wild Trout with Dandelion and Spring Onion Crustini (Serves Two)

Ingredients

1 Whole Wild Trout (gutted, head and fins removed)

4 Spring Onions or Scallions (roots removed)

4 Slices of Crusty French Bread (½-inch think slices)

1 Garlic Clove

3C Dandelion Greens (roots, stems and flowers removed)

½C Chives

1T Wild Flower Honey (local, if possible)

7T Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1T Apple Cider Vinegar

Black Pepper (freshly cracked)

Salt to taste (sea, grey or kosher)

Procedure

To make the Crustini… Toast the bread slices until golden brown.  Rub each slice with the whole garlic clove to transfer the essence of garlic to the bread.  Drizzle 1 teaspoon of olive oil over each slice (4 teaspoons in total) and set-aside.

To make the Fish… Season the whole, cleaned fish inside and out with salt and pepper.  Add 1 tablespoon of the oil to a non-stick pan and place over medium heat.  When the oil starts to shimmer, add the fish and the spring onions to the pan.  Cook for 5-7 minutes depending on the size of the fish.  Flip the fish and cook an additional 5-7 minutes.  The onions should finish in the same time as the fish.  Remove the fish and onions from the pan.  With a sharp knife, remove the fillets from the fish by making an incision along the back (dorsal) of the fish and gently separating the fillets from the bones.  Set-aside.

To make the Salad… In a non-reactive bowl, make the dressing by whisking the honey, vinegar, salt and pepper to combine.  Slowly add 3 tablespoons of the oil while whisking to create an emulsion. Add the dandelion greens and chives to the bowl with the dressing and toss gently to coat.

To plate the dish… place a fillet in the center of each of the two plates, and a slice of crustini on both sides of each fillet.  Top one crustino with the green onions and the other crustino with the dandelion and chive salad.  Duplicate with the other plate.  Drizzle both plates with the remaining oil, and serve with a white wine such as Riesling Trocken.

Gourmet Weed Primer - Dandelions, Part II

Dandelion Pappardelle with Chicken Ragu (Serves 4) - Tom DiGangi Jr.

Here are a few things to know about this recipe. First, pappardelle is a ribbon-shaped pasta about five inches long and one inch wide. Second, if you don’t have duck fat lying around the house like we do, just use a little extra olive oil or bacon fat. Third, please do not use chicken breast meat, as it will be dry and tasteless in this dish. Finally, stirring-in the ricotta cheese with the heat off is critical to making a creamy sauce. Enjoy!

Ingredients

Pasta:

3 Eggs

2 ½C (300g) All-purpose flour

1C Blanched and squeezed-dry dandelion greens

4 Chicken thighs (bones and skin removed)

1T Extra virgin olive oil

Sauce:

3T Extra virgin olive oil

1T Duck fat

1 Yellow Onion, diced

1 Carrot, diced

2 Celery Stalks, diced

2 Garlic Cloves, crushed

1t Red pepper flakes

2t Dried sage

1C Red wine

8oz Canned Plum tomatoes with packing juice

½C frozen peas

2T Fresh garlic chives, minced

2T Ricotta cheese

2T Grated parmigano reggiano cheese

Salt to taste

Procedure

To make the pappardelle, squeeze all of the water out of the dandelion greens and process to a fine paste in a food processor. Add the eggs and 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, and process until well incorporated. Next, add the flour and process until a ball of dough is formed. Remove the dough and kneed for a few minutes on a lightly floured surface to form a smooth, not sticky, ball. Wrap the dough in plastic and let it rest in the refrigerator for at least a ½ hour. Roll out the pasta into thin sheets, using extra flour to keep the dough workable. Using a pasta roller attachment for an electric mixer is a good way to make the rolling process easier and the end product more consistent. Then cut the sheets into 1-inch wide ribbons to form the pappardelle.

To make the ragu, heat the duck fat and 2 to 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a large dutch oven over medium heat. Brown the chicken thighs for a few minutes on one side. Turn the chicken over and add the onion, carrot, celery, garlic, red pepper flakes and sage. Sauté the chicken, vegetables and spices for a few minutes more, then add the tomatoes (crushing them in your hand as you go) and red wine. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover and let simmer for 40 minutes. Add the peas and continue simmering for another 10 minutes.

To finish the dish, boil the pasta in a gallon of salted water for just a couple minutes. Add the pasta to the ragu. Remove the ragu from the heat. Stir in the chives and cheeses. Adjust the seasoning and serve immediately with a hearty red wine, like Dolcetto.

Think we're done with dandelion? Nope. Stay tuned for Tom's next wild foods meal and his recipe for Pan-Seared Wild Trout with Dandelion and Spring Onion Crustini.

Gourmet Weed Primer - Dandelions, Part I

I mean it! It's dandelion week in our yard, house and blog, and Tom is fired up about it. I harvested a smidgen of a fraction of those onerous weeds cropping up in our garden beds, and Tom has been blanching, sauteing, kneading and pulverizing these things into new recipes. Even NPR caught the vibe of his enthusiasm this week with an interview of wild greens forager Sam Thayer. If you're not sure WHY you should be eating dandelions, check out the NPR interview or visit my blog entry from last year - The Easiest Way To Remove Dandelion Weeds From Your Garden. But if you want to know WHAT you should be doing with the dandelions once harvested, TommyD is your man.

Dandelions – My Port in a Storm

Tom DiGangi Jr.

In all honesty, I don’t love dandelion greens. Most of the time, I just like them. Arugula, chard and spinach are the greens I would marry. Dandelions deserve a couple of dates, and then… move on. But, that’s just fine with me.

As winter wanes, my desire for fresh greens waxes. So, each spring, dandelions and I have a nice dinner, maybe take-in a movie, you know… get reacquainted. Then, we lose touch for the rest of the year, until winter creates that longing, once again. It’s a great relationship. And, after a harsh winter like this one, I’m fired up about spending some time in my port in a cold and snowy storm.

The dandelion is bitter and intense. Yet, it is enticing because it is the first produce from our yard. The trick is to find ways to tame the intensity of dandelions. Here are two recipes to mellow the personality of this spring spark plug. They both employ a technique called “blanching,” which reduces the bitter flavor and sets the bright green color of the greens. The recipes also utilize my other favorite harbinger of spring – garlic chives – highlighting the adage “what grows together, goes together.”

Thai Dandelion and Carrot Soup (Serves 2)

Ingredients

1 Quart Asian-inspired stock (see below)

1 Carrot, quarter inch dice

1 Quart freshly harvested dandelion greens (no roots or flowers, please)

1T fresh garlic chives, minced

2T soy sauce

Salt to taste

Procedure

Blanch the dandelion greens by placing them in a large pot of salted and vigorously boiling water for two minutes. Remove the greens and “shock” them in a large bowl of ice water, mixing the greens until they are cool. Then drain the greens, and set-aside.

Combine a quart of the stock and the diced carrots in a small pot. Bring to a boil, lower the heat and let simmer until the carrots are almost cooked through (about 10 minutes). Chop the blanched dandelion greens into bite-sized pieces and add to the pot to simmer for a few minutes. Turn off the heat and stir-in the chives and soy sauce. Adjust the salt to taste and slurp up the liquid health.

Asian-inspired stock

Ingredients

Handful of leftover chicken and/or pork bones

1 Onion

1 Carrot

3-4 Fennel stems

3T Fresh cilantro

3 Dried Thai chiles

1 Star anise

3T sun dried tomatoes

3 Garlic cloves

3 Fresh quarter inch thick ginger slices

3 Quarts of water

Procedure

To make the stock, combine all ingredients in a 4-quart (or larger) pot and simmer, mostly covered, for at least 2 hours. Skim the foam off the top of the stock occasionally while simmering. Pass the stock though a sieve. Discard the solids. Let your imagination and the contents of your pantry and fridge create variations on this list. Ultimately, you are just looking for a homemade, healthy and flavorful stock, with some classic Asian dimensions.

Come back tomorrow for Tom's recipe for Dandelion Pappardelle With Chicken Ragu!

Seed Starting Update: The Analysis of Failure

Once again, it's been a month since a post even after I swore I'd be doing weekly garden journal updates. Although my first crop of seeds fared mostly well, I had a few large exceptions. What better way to learn from mistake than by a thorough self-deprecating analysis, right?

TWO RULES FOR SUCCESSFULLY STARTING SEEDS:

1.) Don't accidentally delete your business website, or undertake a kitchen renovation, or pick up a completely consuming fiction trilogy (damn you, Lisbeth Salander!) or anything else that might cause you to totally forget to water your seeds. News flash: seeds need to be kept evenly moist. Duh .... loser! (C.Sheen)

2.) Don't decide that all seeds generally follow that same rules for soil, temperature, and lighting needs. Well, actually, you can, and get fairly good results. But you will have failures and will wind up disappointed. Here's my real life example.

My seed mix consists of 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss and 1/3 perlite. Once sown, I water seeds from the bottom, mist spray the top, and then cover with plastic to create a warm humid environment. They are placed under fluorescent lights which are on all the time. The seeds vary in age, depending on when I bought them. I put a heating pad under the peppers, husk cherry, epazote and culantro to keep the soil temp at about 70 degrees.

This method worked just fine for my tomatoes, epazote, chervil, and fennel. But not all my planted seeds worked as well, and here are my seed failure reasons.

• Inconsistent Watering: Once again, don't underwater. You will kill your stuff, or diminish germination rates. While we're on the topic, don't overwater either. Overwatering rots seeds, and can lead to fungus and disease trouble. Although my fennel and chervil germinated fine, the both perished the weekend we went to the Philadelphia Flower Show. The show was great, but my seeds did not appreciate my neglect.
• Old Seeds: My peppers barely germinated, and the parsley and the sage didn't germinate even a bit. One possible reason is seed age. I have ten year old tomato seeds which are still growing up every year, but pepper seeds only last a year or two. All seeds have the production year stamped on them, so pay attention or you're wasting your time.
• Soil Needs: I took a whirl at culantro (also called "false cilantro") seeds having no idea how they were going to work. Not surprisingly, they didn't work at all. Some brief googling revealed that culatro seeds are not only sensitive age-wise (they need to be used within months of purchase) but they prefer a pure peat moss starting mix with no seed burial. They also take some extra time. I'm going to retry these and see what happens.
• Seed Treatment: Certain seeds need to be tricked into thinking they are in their natural habitat and growing conditions in the real world. "Stratification" is the art of bringing seeds out of dormancy by applying levels of cold and moisture to imitate winter conditions. One way to do that is by keeping seeds between moist paper towels in the refridgerator. Another way is to just direct sow the seeds where you want them instead of starting them inside. This is another potential reason why my poor parsley failed.

I started two more flats this past week and for the most part, I will probably not learn from my mistakes. So stay tuned!

If It's For Free, It's For Me: Garden Resources To Get Organized

Picture this: it's three months from now, and time to transplant those meticulously grown tomato and pepper plants (multiple varieties of each, of course). That means it's also time to direct sow beans, and of course, I can't just grow one kind. I take my trusty (beat-up, dirty, and badly organized) garden tool bag, my garden journal (also a mess), my seed packet pile, and my hopefully-still-properly-labeled transplants.

Then I start to wonder which plants will go where and in what order. I start jotting down some scribbly notes which make perfect sense at the time but won't make any sense in a month when stuff starts growing. At the exact moment I realize my plant tags have faded in the sun and I can't tell hot vs. sweet peppers, I will also remember that I never made a proper map of the layout. Problem. The beans don't look happy either. Were they bush beans or pole beans? Were they shelling beans or fillet beans? Suddenly, meal times become a dangerous game of Russian roulette. "Here Tom, I sauteed some Italian frying peppers" "Are they hot or sweet?" "Erm, not sure" [watches as Tom pops one into his mouth, pauses, then makes The Face] "Yes, then those would be the hot ones."

I always garden like I am being chased by a live tiger, when the tiger is in fact made out of a giant to-do list shaped like a tiger and given tiger-like properties by my active imagination. Obviously, rushing around leads to an inattention to detail that produces some crappy results. Can I be saved from myself? Who knows. But with a stubborn two feet of snow still on the ground, now is the time to get some organization skills in place. Google, take me away!

Seed Starting Chart: Organic Gardening Magazine kept a seed starting chart housed on its website for years, and now that I need a fresh copy, it is nowhere to be found. Basically, it consisted of a list of common garden veggies, how long they take to grow from seed, and how many weeks before or after your last frost date that they should be planted. I always printed the sheets and kept two calculations - one for my "early" crops that would go out under protection from the cold (April 1st), and my "late" crops that would go out on time (May 15th). Once I decided my two planting dates, I would go backward from there and calculate when precisely to start the seeds which was an elaborate pain.

But hark! Having been forced to look for an alternative chart to share on my blog, in no time at all I found this wonderful excel spreadsheet that does the math for you. Check out the "lazy gardener's seed starting chart" at You Grow Girl. All you have to do is download it, and enter the date for your time zone. It even provides a link to the Farmers' Almanac list of frost free dates by region. This is already a huge improvement over my pencil scribble list.

Online Garden Planners: I still love my pencil/graph paper/college rule notebook. I do. But my vegetable garden has grown exponentially over the years, and I can't keep my paper templates in order. I don't have enough room to view the entire garden on one page per season as an aerial map overview, and it's really hard to keep track of crop rotations. I think my solution is to get some helpful software.

This will be my first computer-oriented gardening year thanks to Mother Earth News and their online vegetable garden planner. Although it does not belong in this article since it's only free for the first month, you can practice on the demo to see how it works and decide ahead of time whether it's worthwhile for purchase. I did the 30 day trial so I could actually start putting in my garden dimensions, and I'm finding it pretty user friendly. The demo videos show you exactly how to input your garden bed layout with its exact dimension. Once I get the bed layout put into the online map, I can click and drag various fruits and vegetables from the menu into their potential new homes. The software automatically calculates how many can fit in the space I have (which in itself is vastly useful to me since I am a pathological over-planter). Then it will help me use all this information to calculate crop rotations and succession planting. The downside to this is the yearly $24 subscription fee, and the fact that it doesn't SEEM to allow for integrating exact varieties of annual and perennial flowers among the vegetables. It has a placeholder called "flower" but that isn't the level of detail I need. But maybe I just haven't figured out how to do that party yet. If you have a small garden, I believe this application is really over kill, and probably not worth the investment. This year I will have about 18 raised garden beds of various shapes and sizes, so this might be really helpful for me, which saving Tom some unnecessary food-induced pain.

I've run into another great website with some truly free garden resources. Myfolia found me on the Twitter account that I can't seem to learn how to properly operate. It appears to be a hybrid garden planner and social networking site for gardeners. A free account let's you set your profile with your plant hardiness zone, which then links you to other gardeners in your area. It has easy connections to Twitter and Facebook, along with Flikr and other photo accounts. Aside from the community garden feel, the account lets you input and track your plantings, add journal entries, make task lists, organize your seed stash, and even arrange seed swaps with other members. This application seems more list oriented than map oriented, so it could be a good addition to the Mother Earth planner. They even have a mobile app so you can update your info FROM YOUR GARDEN! I don't know if I would use it, since I much prefer to write stuff down on random pieces of paper and lose it. Finally, wouldn't it be super neat-o to find other garden nerds in my area besides the only other one I know!?! (That would be you, Dina).

While we're working the free theme.....

Free Seeds: Oh no! This offer ends tomorrow, but I just heard about it. Click the link to the blog for Your Small Kitchen Garden and follow the instructions for getting your own free squash and tomato seeds. Move yourself up higher on the waiting list by sharing the info on Twitter or Facebook! But the generous gardener at this blog stops taking names tomorrow, so get moving.

Ed Hume Seeds will send you a seed packet in the hope that you will donate some of your veggie proceeds to the worthwhile program Plant a Row For the Hungry.

The Dinner Garden has designated national site for picking up your free seed offerings. If you don't have one nearby, you can submit your information via email for delivery via mail.

I'm stopping here, because there seem to be quite a few free seed offers once you start looking around. Also, I have given my self A LOT of homework to do as a result of this article. I need to follow my own advice and get organized.

JOURNAL NOTE: Day 7 of the tomato/pepper/herb seed under lights, and all is quiet. Hopefully by next weekend, I'll have some germination. Talk to you later!

I'm With Fergie. Let's Get It Started!

Even though I'm from Pennsylvania, I'm not referring to the single most important Sunday event in winter. Nor am I referring to the famous burrowing rodent from the western part of the state who pretends to be a psychic. No. Neither of these events leave me with any optimism or hopefulness after this beastly Northeastern winter we've had (and will likely continue to have, regardless of what the garden-gobbling varmint claims). My only source of hope lies in my dingy basement, since it is officially time to start early tomato, pepper and herb seedlings!

Seed starting is the official beginning of my personal spring, which is also the beginning of this year's grand garden schemes and resolutions. To hold myself accountable, 2011's garden resolutions are as follows:

1.) The meticulously chopped and bagged leaves from last fall will be placed on the garden for mulch AS the plants go in, as opposed to AFTER all weedy hell has broken loose.

2.) Trellises will be built and installed AS the plants go in, as opposed to AFTER the plants have hit that gawky teenager growth spurt that leaves them as impossible to manage as human teenagers.

3.) The blog will be ACTUALLY UPDATED and used regularly as a place to record relevant information, instead of being a high school creative writing project. Wherever she may be, Mrs. Timms is not likely reading this and recording my grade in that giant green ledger teachers used in the 80's.

4.) Thanks to this handy online garden planner, I swear to actually document what I plant and where I planted it, abandoning my previous habit of jotting stuff on random pieces of paper, losing it, and having no idea which variety of vegetable I am harvesting.

5.) Lastly, "Laura's Organic Gardening Adventures" will now just be "Organic Gardening Adventures" since Chef Tommy is doing more than his fair share of writing, cooking and hauling stones around. Time to give credit where credit is due.

I mean it, people. I really do. And where I would normally spend the next hour concocting a creative, funny and interesting last paragraph, I will now proceed to resolution #3. Let it be known that on this date, seeds were started in my homemade potting mix (equal parts compost, perlite and peat moss), packaged into plastic grape tomato containers saved from the grocery store, and placed under 4' fluorescent bulbs in my hideously ugly seed starting shelving unit shown here.

Seeds started today ..........

Tomatoes: Garden Peach, Sugar Snacker, Husk Cherry, Beaverlodge, San Marzano

Artichoke: Imperial Star

Fennel: Fino

Peppers: Ring-O-Fire Cayenne, Piquillo

Herbs: Common Sage, Italian Parsley, Chervil, Epazote, Culantro

I put the peppers, epazote, culantro, and artichokes on top of a heating pad, since they seem to need a little more heat to germinate. I have no idea whether the sage will germinate since it's a perennial, and those are usually tricky to start from seed. I'm just going to wing it and see what happens. The rest should be no big deal.

I'm most proud of the San Marzano seeds, since I filched them from Sicily (SSSSHHHHHHH!) in 2003 and the original seeds are still germinating well. I find this variety to be smaller and denser than other San Marzano seeds I've purchased elsewhere. Hopefully I'll get a good crop and save some of the seeds so I can get some fresh stock. I'm equally proud of the Sugar Snacker. I bought this as a plant from a big box store6 or 7 years ago and have never seen it since as a plant or seed. I save the seeds every year. The fruits are tiny, bright orange, and the sweetest cherry tomato you will ever taste. The vines themselves are monstrous, uncontrollable, and produce like crazy. These jerks topple every trellis I've ever made, but they are always worth it.

I usually consider these tomatoes and peppers my "early" plants because they will be put out under protective coverings called Wall-o-waters about two months earlier than is appropriate for my area. The goal, of course, is home grown tomatoes in June. The Beaverlodge variety is an early maturing hybrid with only 55 days to harvest according to the seed packet. So IF I do everything exactly the way I'm supposed to do it (not likely) tomatoes in June should be a cinch this year. Of course, hybrids with that early a maturity date were bred for speed, not flavor, so they probably won't be the most fantastic tasting tomatoes ever. But that first tomato from the garden tastes great every year, no matter what.

That's my story for today folks! By now the game should we winding down, marking yet another winter milestone. And even though I was out today trying to shovel through ice so the mail lady could drive to the mailbox to deliver me her goods, I was using Grandpa Knott's rusty old garden spade to do it. Let the 2011 garden season begin!