buried treasure

along with the unseasonably warm weather we’ve had, comes the urge to get out into the garden and begin serious preparations for planting—it’s been two weeks for heaven’s sake; we don’t want to get behind on things!

haha, and that would be such a mistake.
our weather here is so tricky; it’s often warm like this in late march and april, but may and june are bearish almost every year—cold, chilly, and rainy with a very good chance of frost right up until memorial day.

on the other hand, i’ve always wanted to plant an early spring garden of my favorite frost-resistant crops. it would be heavenly to soon eat greens such as spinach and swiss chard, and to get the onions, scallions, and shallots in the ground at the proper time, so they can enjoy a long growing season. i’m a weenie for having my hands in the dirt when it’s cold, so i haven’t ever managed it in other years.

the vegetable garden has been sleeping under a heavy layer of mulch since late october. we didn’t pull out anything, just let it all die back and then dumped our own compost on top. so while david worked on sunday, upgrading the electricity in the garage, i was lured out into the 75-degree afternoon to take a look around and do a little scratching in the dirt.

there is actually quite a bit that over-wintered well out there, without dying completely—some greens, some scallions, and some new growth as well.

the strawberry plants have been making their way through the leaves for weeks now—they are eager to get to work. i really hope the berries are good this year; they will be three years old, i think and so far, i haven’t been impressed. but i hear they get better each year, so i’m hopeful.

the escarole i left in place is a beautiful row of bright green mounds with new leaves uncurling at their centers, the old large ones having protected the plants. they seem a bit tough, so i won’t try to keep them through the summer, but i may pick them once they fill out a bit for an early spring soup.

there is also a whole row of collards left in place that are showing signs of a great comeback, having stood with small, tightly shut—but green—leaves all winter. since we never had a deep freeze to kill them off completely, they managed to make it through and now they want to be active.

i’ve been watching them open up and grow over the last month, but i haven’t tried cooking them yet. they look quite veiny and they feel pretty thick, so they might be tough or bitter, but it won’t stop me from tasting them . . . who knows, maybe they’ll be excellent

far into the back corner, the garlic is getting higher, too. we won’t disturb this area; this is a 2012 crop we planted in the fall, so this patch is all set for the coming season.

and check this out, near the walkway at the front of the garden, just outside the back door—remember those shallots that disappeared from my garden last summer, the ones that the squirrels dug up and made away with??

well, apparently they didn’t go far with them—they are all sprouting up all over that general area, albeit not in the neat rows i’d planned. and they did form bulbs, just not very big ones. once the critters scattered them all willy nilly, i was not able to find them in the fall to harvest.

well, at least now i have seed shallots—i hadn’t ordered any for this year yet. and it’s probably a good thing that they are getting a head start; maybe they’ll grow bigger this year because of it. what i need to do when i get a chance this week is to dig them up and divide them so that each clove can make a new bulb.

and i’m definitely laying a coating of cayenne pepper or something on the dirt around them to keep those pesky squirrels away. i don’t know why but shallots are the ONE thing they can’t help dig up—they don’t really touch anything else.

i was also anxious to examine the asparagus bed—it’s that time of year for our favorite vegetable to be available and i wanted to see if ours was coming up yet. we overhauled our entire asparagus bed three years ago, so this will be the first year we can really eat from it. last year we cut just a few stems to taste and they were delicious. hopefully, we’ll have a good crop. there is about a foot of mulch on top right now which had gotten quite wet and heavy over the winter. i loosened it up with a fork so the new growth could make its way through, but i didn’t remove it entirely. i know from last year that the stems are plenty strong enough to poke through when they are ready—probably not til late april or early may (last year they were up during the first week of may).

once i’d had a look around i got to work on my main goal for the day—to uncover the small planting bed on the other side of the garden path in order to throw down some chard and spinach seeds. this was a very quick job—i just had to pull off the mulch we’d left on top and hoe up the dirt a bit to get it ready. there’s a saying in ohio—toss spinach seeds on top of the snow in march and in may, you’ll be eating fresh greens. well, haha, we haven’t haven’t had snow this year that laid that long on the ground, but i’m still game to try this method.

i pulled out all my partially-used seed packets form last year and any unopened ones as well and just used up all of them for this purpose. that way, i’ll be done with them and can start with fresh ones for the next planting.

and later that night, the heavens complied with my actions by providing a good, drenching rain to help them get started.

they were nice and wet on monday morning, the perfect state in which to germinate seeds. and by afternoon, it was 80 degrees, with sun to warm them and coddle them along. i’m hoping to show you some sprouts in a few days if this weather keeps up.

we’re going to expand this bed into the yard some more to make space for additional vegetables and flowers—it’s one of our few good sunny spots and it’s going to wasted with just grass planted in it.

once i had my seeds planted, i headed for the middle of the garden where we’ve been keeping some root vegetables stored right in the ground. i’d always heard that overwintering carrots will make them super sweet and delicious, so we left a quarter row in the ground to try it. we also left quite a few rutabaga out there—mostly because we didn’t know how else to store them.

i had to poke around a bit under the heavy mulch to find them; i had just started to panic that they had rotted away when i spied the green feathery tips of some carrots tops.

a little more scratching produced a glimpse of orange—yup, this was the spot.

i got the garden fork and loosened the dirt on each side of the row

there were actually a lot more than i remembered leaving out there—is it possible they grew a little more since my last visit?

because i had to replant them last summer and then was away from home for weeks while they established themselves, i never thinned the carrots, so they grew quite close together in clumps, usually with a few big ones in the middle, encircled by a bunch of small ones. once i located them, therefore, they came out of the ground in batches of a dozen or so at a time. i ended up with a basketful—maybe two or three pounds.

i was thinking that roast carrots for dinner was an excellent idea. since this was my last garden task for the day, i pulled a big rutabaga on my way back to the house to toss into the roasting pan with them.

it took some scrubbing alright, didn’t they clean up nicely? i didn’t bother peeling them, not even the raw ones i tasted. they were deLISH—crunchy and sweet, but tender, too. just perfect. and you can’t get fresher than this; buried treasure indeed.

i cut a big sweet onion into chunks and laid those in the bottom of a pan coated with olive oil. i tossed in a head of garlic from last year’s garden, broken into cloves, but not peeled (that way, the flesh won’t burn). i peeled and cut the rutabaga and put that on top, then covered the pan and put it in the oven to get started and headed for the shower.

when i got out, i added the carrots to the pan with pepper, salt, another drizzle of oil, and a couple pats of butter, then  put the uncovered pan back into the oven for about 30 minutes. you have to watch it carefully after this, so i grabbed some knitting and sat in the kitchen listening to a book, turning the vegetables every 10 minutes or so and adding a bit of vegetable stock whenever they started to stick. this gives them a nice glazing as they caramelize in the pan.

and by the time david was done with his garage work, it was ready. we sliced some bread and cheese and sat down to eat. YUM.

now we really are ready for the upcoming garden. sure we have a few bags of frozen greens and beans to use up, but now we’ve had a taste to remind us of the fresh stuff. mmm, can’t wait.

if you’ve been working in your garden too and beginning to get antsy about spending more time there, why not visit the flash your garden thread in our ravelry group and post a photo, tell us a funny story, or peruse everyone else’s outpourings of garden love?