A good mail day

My last seed order arrived today. I needed a few odds and ends so I ordered them from Pinetree Garden Seeds. They have a very good selection of seeds and good prices but those better prices come with less seed most of the time. Here is what I ordered:

Tatsoi, Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Pinetree Leaf Lettuce Mix, Sungold F1 Tomato & Martinos Roma Tomato

A couple packs of mung bean seeds, I am going to try out sprouting my own bean sprouts. A few years ago they started selling bean sprouts in sealed bags. Being sealed makes them taste awful from the trapped off gassing. I also ordered 80 plastic labels and ended up with 50 wooden labels. I have dropped them a line in hopes of getting my plastic labels resent. I'm not really a fan of wood labels, they mold.

Pinetree also had this 'No No Feeder' on clearance. It stands for no wood & no plastic which means the squirrels can't eat it, a plus in our tree rat filled yard. It was only up for a few minutes and started attaching chickadee's & house finches. Seems like a hit!

In the regular mail came the annual Lee Valley Garden Tool catalog. If you have not checked them out before, they carry a very good selection of garden related things, many things that are quite hard to find now the the big box stores have taken over. Things I am eying from them this year are:

The stainless steel digging fork with an ash handle. I have wanted this fork for a couple years and this year will be the year I finally get one. I don't have a fork in the shed and this one seems like excellent quality for $36 bucks.

I am also sick of buying peat modules for things that don't like being transplanted. So I am going to get a couple of these Rootrainers. I seen them used on Vegetable Heaven last yeat and they look like they work very well. I will use them for peas, broad beans, squash, beans, cucumbers and melons. The Rootrainers air prune the roots which greatly reduces transplant shock and they also stop the roots from winding around the pot.

Well that's all the garden consumerism for today... no affiliation with either company by the way.

At a loss for a title.....

I looked out the window around sunset and noticed the moon was huge. The picture really does not show the size well but it was close to the harvest moon size. I took this photo out my second floor bedroom window, got to love eastern exposure in the morning! I would have headed out but it was -15c (5f) at the time, before wind chill, burr!

I was over at Kalena's blog , her family baked up these red velvet cupcakes which looked amazing. She was nice enough to pass along the recipe so I gave them a try. It was my Mom's b-day on Jan 29th so I covertly baked them the night before for a surprise. They are excellent, the icing is even excellent-er! Here goes the recipe:

Red Velvet Cupcakes

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 2 1/3 cups flour
• 2 T coco powder
• 1 t baking soda
• 1 t baking powder
• 1/2 t salt
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 1/2 T red food coloring
  
• 1 t vanilla
• 1 t vinegar

Preheat oven to 350f. Cream sugar & butter together until fluffy. Add eggs and beat again until fluffy. In a separate bowl combine dry ingredients and mix. In another bowl at wet ingredients and mix. Alternate dry & wet ingredients into the butter mixture in 1/4's.

Spoon batter into muffin tins lined with cupcake papers. Bake for 18-22 minute or until a cake tester comes out clean. Allow to cool before icing.

Cream Cheese Icing

• 1/2 cup butter, room temp
  
• 8oz cream cheese, room temp (1 package)
• 3 cups icing sugar
• 1 t vanilla
  

Beat butter & cream cheese together until fluffy. Add icing sugar a bit at a time until it is all incorporated. Then add vanilla and continue to beat until the icing is aerated and stiff.

Onion & Tomato Update

Lets start with the onions shall we. It has been a week since I seeded onions so timing is perfect to do an update on their progress. I have some winners and losers that's for sure. The first seedling popped up within 3 days and the bulk of them came up between day 5-6. You may recall that 3/4 of my seed was from last year and thus germination on some has been pretty poor.

Here are the Red Long of Tropea onions that Daphne sent. They are germinating the best of all of them and are seed from last season. I planted 9 cells of them with hopes of two onions per cell and it looks like I will have many more then I hoped for.

The one with the worst germination is the Armador shallots from last years seed. I seeded 18 cells, 5 seeds per cell and only have two seedlings. They are definitely a crop failure and will not be grown this year.

Here are the Prince onions, also from last years seed. They have fairly good germination at this point, I would say 60%. I suspect within a few days more will germinate bring them to the crop levels I am looking for.

These are the Amish Bottle onions and these are from fresh seed. They are germinating quite spotty but it is still a little early to rule out further germination. I am rooting for these as they sound very interesting.

With the failure of the shallot crop I will need some replacements. I was sent a bunch of seeds to review from a US seed house that included some Spanish onions. I think I will replace the shallots with them and probably start another cell pack of the Amish Bottle onions. I am also playing with the idea of planting shallot sets in another part of the garden if I can find some for a good price. Shallots are nice to have around when you only need a little bit of onion and they are nice and sweet once cooked.

Now for the early tomato. I was getting a little impatient with these but in the end every seed I sowed germinated. These are Siletz tomatoes and will hopefully bring an early crop of tom's to the garden. I think I will go for 3 early tomatoes this year, one seeded on Jan 21 and a couple seeded near the end of Feb. The rest of the tomatoes I am going to hold off starting until 6 weeks before outdoor transplant. Tomatoes just grow to big to have to many kicking around.

Harvest Monday Meals

Not much to harvest at this point, asides from a bit more romaine. The rest I will leave in hopes of a larger harvest in March. With nothing harvested I decided to show off meals I have made during the past seven days. They were all made with things harvested last Monday as well as some root crops I harvested a while ago.

Mixed winter greens salad w/ beet, goat cheese & almonds.
All veg from the garden. In behind is chicken parmesan.

Mashed potatoes with spinach & chard from the garden.
In behind is chicken & dumplings, the dumplings are made
from frozen biscuit scrapes.

Here is some chicken soup, above is my veg that went into it. The
atomic red carrots turned much redder in storage as you can see.
In the soup is homemade stock, chicken, carrots, parsnips, celery,
onion, cauliflower & brown rice.

All the meals above were made with one chicken, garden & store veg and a few odds and ends. Overall the meals came in at less then a dollar per serving. I cut the breasts off for the chicken parm first. The carcass, legs & wings were made into stock with mixed veg. Then the chicken and dumplings was made with one leg, stock & biscuit scrapes. The other leg, wings & carcass meat combined with veg and the left over stock for the soup. Why I am on this topic is, I recently watched 'food inc' and they interviewed some folks who eat crap food because they say food costs to much. To them I say, you're full of it!

More Strange Weather

The last few days have been sunny and warm for this time of year, if you could call 3c(38f) warm! Tomorrow is bring a day time high of 7c(45f) and lots of rain. I decided to open up the cedar poly tunnel and cold frame today so the plants could soak up the sun & rain to come:

Sorry about the sun glare

I keep wondering if winter is actually ever going to come. The end of the month is coming up, then all the is left is Feb which usually is a bad month and March which is usually an on and off snow month. Strange times.... But we have been taking full advantage of the nice weather by heading out exploring on any sunny day. Below are some photos I took today. More to come that I took over our 2.5 week break during the holiday season:

I was surprised to see this mushroom growing this time of year.
Coincidentally I just watched a doc. called 'Know Your Mushrooms'.
It was very interesting, even some psychedelic folks in it... You can
watch it in parts on youtube.

Here is some moss that was growing like a vine. First time
seeing such a moss.

An overview of the Grand River. It has not changed much
from the last time I took this shot. Little snow and lots of brown.

A field just outside of Burford, ON. I love how the low winter
sun creatures the light pink & blue colours at the horizon.

Seed heads, possibly shasta daisy's

Here are some buds on a Silver Maple. This is the second
year I have noticed this trees starts budding quite early.