Growing Nostalgia

My memories of childhood attached to gardening and my own experience trying to become the person I looked up to as a child.  If you too look back fondly on the days of your childhood spent in your parent(s) garden or your grandparents or perhaps just have a sense of Anemoia for such a time please follow and join me on my journey.

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You never know if you never try

Experimentation is half the fun of gardening and when you are as new of a gardener as I am this phase starts as early as seed starting.   What is the best way to start seeds?  I have no idea but I know three ways that I am trying right now and I bet one of them will win out.   I have the classic soil based seed starter, rock wool, and the one I am rooting for the hardest is the old fashioned damp napkin in a sealed Tupperware container.  I remember going to my grandparents and other for lack of better term old-timer’s homes in the spring and seeing seeds starting in a kitchen window on a damp paper towel.  

How do you start your seeds and why did you find it was the best way for you?    

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Some adventures from the weekend in the backyard. Found a carrot when I was turning the dirt in the garden (it was delicious), I found a toad, which my son followed and watched and kept me informed with hop by hop commentary. He then proceeded to discover millipedes and they were almost as cool as the toad. All in all a good time.

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My order from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds came in Friday.  My wife thinks it ridiculous that a man who gets excited about almost nothing gets excited about seeds.    I had to stop at Growing Indoors and get some starting medium.  I have never started in rock wool before but have heard and seen people who have great success with it.   We will see what happens.  

I want to start everything but learned my lesson in regards to that a couple years ago.   I refrained and only put in a handful of shishito plants, mostly because I have never planted this pepper before and don’t know what to expect and am hoping to get six of these plants in my DWC tray system.  

I also am trying to start some strawberry seeds for the back yard. Again not sure what to expect as far as germination times and success rates.  

Here is to a great growing season.

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An archaeological dig on the Menemonee Reservation in Wisconsin yielded a clay pot. The pot was dated to 800 years ago and contained seeds. Some of the seeds were planted to see if 800 year old seeds were viable. An ancient squash was the result. 

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I would love to get some of these seeds.  Maybe they will become available if they are prolific enough.

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As I grow older I realize...

Today has been a good day to end a good weekend.  Yesterday we had the second annual Trent Day.  It is a day we do every winter as cabin fever is setting in and take our son somewhere that he would like and let him spend all the time he can there or until he gets to tired and has mini meltdowns.  Being that he is only three we hope the last part doesn’t last to much longer, a 10-year old having a melt down is not as well received.  We took him to the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum and he spend almost three hours exploring and learning.   Then we went to Penn Brewery for the daddy and papa portion of Trent day and got amazing German food and beer.   All in all a good day.

Then today I was able to go to brunch, work on some homework (multi-tasking at it’s finest), and unwind from work and home for an hour or so.  As I grow older I realize how important unwind time is.  It is amazing how much better you feel when you take a few minutes of unwind time everyday and once a week just go do something for an hour or two by yourself.  You can still do things like homework and studying or whatever it is you need to do but just to step away from everyone who need something from you (spouse, children, employer, employee).   

The most exciting thing I have done today though, at least in regards to the theme of this blog, is I ordered my seeds for the growing season.  I finally got serious with my plans and ordered my seeds from the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed company.  I am so excited to start my seeds.   It will be torture having to wait a month or so to start some of the later season seeds.   If anyone has not checked them out before I recommend taking a couple minutes and looking at some of the rare fruit and vegetables they offer.   If I ever am in Missouri again and near Mansfield I will be sure to check out their farm.   

Next weekend is going to be a stop at the gardening store to get some supplies for seed starting and I haven’t been in to see the guys there in quite a while.   I am sure they don’t miss me.  They offer a seed starting medium that I have had outrageous success with and need to go buy a bag or two of it.   Also need to look into Ebb and Flow table materials.  If I can get my butt into gear my backyard will be unrecognizable from last year.  I also want to look into chickens because I think they would be awesome to have but I hate chickens so that is a tough decision.  I also think my wife will veto me on that one.  

The chickens though bring me to my next theme point.  As I grow older I realize that I have an ever growing need to provide for my family in ways that I didn’t even think about before.  In my early 20′s I was happy to make money and buy someone else’s products now I am 31 and find that I want to be hands on with all products that we use from produce, meat, furniture, and others.   I find a desire to not only have a better quality product then we have had in the past but to have something unique that has had the least amount of impact both financial and environmental.  This seems like an oxymoron at first because everyone knows that quality and environmentally friendly are never financially friendly but if you pay the premium for real quality you will find in the long run when you are not having to replace everything that you are indeed saving money.  

That being said hopefully in a couple months I will have pics of an up-cycled hardwood table that is about to start coming together.  I need to make some phone calls tomorrow to a man with a large planer and hope he is willing to help me out.

To get back to the seeds I got...I ordered Cherokee Purple Tomato (really excited of this one), shishito peppers (hoping for a good crop of these tried them at a restaurant in Cleveland and fell in love with them), crookneck summer squash, blacktail mountain watermelon, Craig's Grande Jalapeno Pepper, Monstrueux De Viroflay Spinach, Jimmy Nardello Italian Pepper, Zucchini Green Bush Squash, Dwarf Siberian Kale, Georgia Rattlesnake Watermelon, Banana Pepper, Tennis Ball Lettuce, Buttercrunch Lettuce, Riesentraube Tomato, Alexandria Alpine Strawberry, Basil - Blue Spice, Rosemary,  Arugula, Basil - Genovese, and finally Little Gem Lettuce.  I also get 3 free variety packs with my order.  It’s like Christmas in spring.

I may have over done it, I don’t care.  The good news is by next weekend pictures are going to start accompanying my posts again.  Pictures are way more interesting then my ramblings. 

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Returning to an old friend

It has been quite a while since I have done anything with this blog but I hope that things will quiet down now and I can get a good year of gardening in.  It is a little early to start with much of anything though.   I will probably use today to order some seeds and get some early greens started in another week or so.   I need to get down to the basement and clean out my hydroponics and prep them for a new batch of plants.  If I am able to keep up on my school work for college and keep over time down at work I might try to build and ebb and flow table for the backyard...ugh I don’t even want to think about the work that needs to go into the backyard this year.

The important part is I am thinking about it again and I really hated not having time to put a garden in last year.  This year hopefully I will be able to make up for it.  I plan on putting 2 or 3 more 4x8 raised beds in this year so that I can properly space my plants out, unlike the first year.   I want to do one for my soon to be 4 year old son as well so he can have some of his favorite plants in it.

I really need to start using the resources available to me for connecting to fellow gardeners and learning tricks and tips that will help me both in general and in terms of my locality.  I really look forward to this upcoming growing season and hope that everyone else is too.

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My 2 year old finally found his favorite part of gardening.

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New favorite snack.

I got the before bed snack craving something fierce tonight and went raiding the kitchen. As I finished off the green beans that somehow did not get sauteed up with the rest of them for dinner I through to pieces of bread in the toaster not sure what to do with them. The kitchen counter top provided me with summer squash (not going to be any use here), a tomato (saving that for tomorrow's lunch, zuchinni (same situation as the squash), an avocado, and cucumbers. I hit upon something with the last two ingredients.

A quick search took me through some recipes that were just a little to much for a quick snack but then realsimple.com (I was trying to link the page but it isn't working) popped up with a simple avocado and cucumber toast. Mashed avocado and thin strips of cucumber with a pinch of salt and sesame seeds. PERFECT, there were 5 ingredients and 1 step to the recipe.

It was so good. Next time I will refrigerate the veggies first and a squeeze of lime juice too the avocado. Try it, you will wonder why you haven't thought of it sooner.

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I can't decide what to do with it. I am thinking just a good old fashioned tomato sandwich for lunch tomorrow.

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The cherry tomatoes have been coming in for a while but the beef steak and romas are starting to ripen.

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The best part of being laid off is being able to make a good lunch

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Looking out my bedroom window tonight I could see the summer squash calling to me to come and pick it. Soon squash soon. If you look closely at this horrible pic you can also see the tomatoes on the vines. They are starting to ripen with the heat and sun we had last week.

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I often times wish I could have been born in the time of my Grandparents.  Life then was harder but simple.  Today life is Simple but more complex.   

Today everything is instant.   You can get anything shipped to you from anywhere for the right price and have it in a day at your front door.  When my Grandfather was my age you could go to the store and order something from a catalog and it would be eventually shipped to your house. Today, you drive up to a window give them a couple bucks and they pass a greasy bag through in no time at all.  My grandfather would go home and my grandmother would have a meal made for the family and they would all sit down and talk about their days over the course of the meal. 

You grew your own food, your worked on your own cars, you repaired not thrown away, what you had was to last you a life time at least.   Your free time was much less then today and you appreciated it when you go it.   Entertainment was a movie, or maybe dancing, a picnic next to a lake or in a park in the middle of a sunday drive, and maybe sitting around the radio for a broadcast that night with the family listening, not sitting around the house watching tv or playing on one of dozens of electronic devices all doing something different.   Pictures were taken and cherished even after they turned faded and orange not taken in the numbers like today where some people must chronicle their whole lives for every waking minute.

Yes I wish that I could have been born in the days of my grandparents and lived their hard but perhaps much more simple and meaningful life, yet at the same time I also would never change a thing because to be born when I did meant that I got to learn from my Grandparents and while I miss my Grandfather dearly every day and know that my Grandmothers time left is very limited now, I could not and would not ever ask for a perfect example of happiness and simplicity then the two of them.

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With time off comes bring out the flour and let's start baking.

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Is home where the heart is?

I have neglected adding things on here for some time but I am bit sure anyone noticed. I would rather have a few additions a month that are genuine then feeling forced to put whatever in the hopes of followers anyway. They say home is where the heart it is and it is a beautiful saying that most would say means that where ever your loved ones are is home. I don't know if that is completely true. Maybe it was written by someone who never moved more then the next town over from where he grew up, or perhaps by someone whose family never settled in one place for long so he never got a sense of home in a geographical sense. I grew up in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan and while I didn't think much of it at the time, the culture and lifestyle definitely became a large part of who I am, for better or worse. Now living about an hour east of Cleveland, and having lived here for a decade already I can say that thr saying should be "happiness is where the heart is." While I am very happy where I am with my wife and soon to be 2 year old son and I will be happy no matter where I am with them, home will always be for me Da U.P, eh! The more I get introduced to other cultures (and I love them all) the more I want to embrace my upbringing and lifestyle that I knew. Of course anyone who has been to the U.P or knows someone from there, knows that is most likely coming out in food, particularly food no one else in the country knows of. Pasties, vinegar tarts (thank you Canada), cheese curds, pickled bologna, smoked fish of every kind, gravy on everything, etc. (I was raised on the east end of the state the far west of the state is its own animal.) I have become border line obsessed with introducing the foods I grew up on to as many people as I can. Which is good for me because it means I get to taste the flavors of my youth as much as I want (though I don't think the wife will let me start smoking fish near the house). Has anyone else experienced this same thing? Being happy where their heart is but at the same time knowing home will always be where they learned to be the person they are?

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Growing up in the U.P these pasties were staples, anywhere else I have been they are mostly unheard of. You can take the yooper out of the U.P but you can’t take the U.P out if the yooper. I should have taken a picture after I cooked them but they never seem to last long enough.

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I couldn't wait any longer it has been teasing me for a couple weeks now. The first harvest has officially been picked