THEY DIDNT FREEZE!

SUCCESS! The low tunnels & cold frames worked! Yea!

   

 

    Escarole lettuce

    Radicchio 

   Chard  wild arugala

   Russian kale & califlower

   

   Cabbage & Kavolo Nero( black kale)

   

   Lettuce

   

   

    

Heirlooms are living COLOR

I only grow HEIRLOOM tomatoes. They are from seeds that have been saved over time for many years. Think of them as special. What you grow from them are very special!

They are of of work to grow. Can be fussy, temperamental, and can need at lot of attention.  Depending on the type, they can grow big & super tall. They can grow really wide too & crazy vines all over the place. I GROW organically & that means the plants need more attention to keep pests & watering issues under control. Commercial farmers don't have the time for them.

The colors they come in are endless. And if you love color like I do, well they are how you "play" with your food, as an adult! I always plant a mix of colors. A tomato does NOT have to be red.

This year I planted from seeds: a green stripe( when ripe!), an intense sun yellow, a bright true red, a brownish-red, a purple-red, 2 different pale yellows, one with red through it & other with orange-red & green, an orange one, and some red with green. Amazing.

These heirloom tomatoes are known for growing big & heavy. Mostly when you see them at farm markets, they are sold by weight. 

2013 Consulto Genovese & Black Krim

I entered my tomatoes in a local nursery & garden cemter's first annual Heirloom Tomatoe contest last summer. I won! Twice! My Black Krim took first place in "Tastiest". And my Consoluto Genovese won 1st as the "Ugliest Tomato".

After the judging, all the growers of these gems, sat around and talked shop. All tomatoes & deer fencing. Two serious issues for us. This is where I learned about anheirloom called Italian Heirloom. It was big fat plum, few seeds, very meaty, tasty and an orange red.  He got the seeds from his Italian neighbor.  As it turns out, my friend sent me those same seeds from Iowa this year! I can't wait to grow it this summer.

See how growing in a garden can be so creative for an artist? So many colors to choose. And here I was only describing colors available for heirlooms tomatoes. This varied color palette applies to all the vegetables.

Seeds from many places

I am fortunate to have friends & family save me seeds or buy them for me from where they live or travel to.

I have gotten wild arugala seeds that really GROW wild, in fields, along the roads, in the hills of Rome. The Italians every where in Italy have a long history of foraging for there food: always eat local, always what 's in season only, as wisely we have began saying that mantra. But for Italians it's been a way of life for centuries.

   

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My cousin brought wild arugala seeds back for from Rome. I have been growing them in my garden since 2009. Some in planters, some in ground, in the flower beds too. And until this winter, they were perinneal here. But not worried if I lost them. I have been letting some plants go to seed so I can save and replant. The yellow flower comes first, then the green seed pods appear along the stem.

I also got tomato seeds from Sicily. My friend's father was visiting here & he gave me some tomato plants he started here in buckets from his seeds back home. I saved those tomato seeds. A paste tomato but more chubbier round than a true plum. I saved those seeds and this spring I am planting them for the first time to see how they grow. They might change as tomatoes are tricky to save. Pollination might mix different plants together.

Also I'm planting two kinds of San Marzano plum tomatoes. One is from Italy, by FRANCHI Seeds of Italy, that I order online. I planted these last year also.

The other San Marzano are from another seed company in Italy my friend in Arizona sent from her trip to Florence. I like the Italian seeds best because they are not treated, success always with them germinating & growing, and you get triple the amount of seeds than an American company for the same cost, which is super because they last longer too!

Still another friend from Iowa sent a new type for me to grow: an Italian Heirloom, from Seed Savers. I did see this one before for the first time last year. They are big, dense with very little seeds & an orange red tomato. Excited to try.

Saving seeds, collecting them & trading them with others enhances your gardening experience. Not hard or time consuming. Just like planting them,

REMEMBER to label your saved seeds immediately.

 

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Cold frames. & low tunnels

2012 was the first winter I used low tunnels & smaller cold frames with the windows I found.

    2010 Summer

I have an established cold frame my father made. It's full with plants all winter: Herbs, radicchio lettuce. He made this frame which is covered with opague panels that sit above the electric cord frames that he plugged into shed,  to have the electricity under the covers to keep the plants warm & alive inside. When he built this and used succesfly for many years, winters were really cold here, when I was growing up. Now he would have probably used solar panels. I added straw for worth around the plant, plus count on sun heating up the cinder block wall & radiate that back to plants at night.

   2013: Oregano, lemon verbena,    rosemary, raddicchio, Italian flat parsley, chives 

But I found it easier for me to leave off the electrical panels. Heavy for me to set up.  So since winters here are warmer now that we are a Zone. 7, higher & hotter, I just put straw around whatever I plant inside & then use just the opague covers. Not true solar panels but they work that way. Successful overwintering since 2009! Even this past 2013-2014 winter from hell! Of course, my "Wish List" includes solar panels for lids!

But when you take off the covers in March when it starts to get warm & see all this GREEN growing underneath.... It's the coolest joy making feeling ever!!

And by May, the plant that went dormant under cover in winter, is now fully grown & ready to pick!

    2013 Sicilian cabbage

Saving

Seed saving is a simple task to do. All gardeners should! Super easy. Plus it saves you money. My goal out of necessity was all the last years and currently too is to GROW my garden the cheapest way possible! 

I don't have a lot of extra money to pore into the garden. But there is so much you can do by repurposing things. Salvagaing & trash picking ARE a good thing!

Doing that, saving seeds, saves memories too, a part of the past, your past. And you can keep paying your garden forward. That's what HEIRLOOM SEEDS are. 

The most special seeds I have saved since 2009 are seeds from my father's most favorite flower( after sunflowers): CELOSIA or Cocks Comb.

I saved his seeds from these flowers he planted last in 2008. I have grown them EVERY YEAR since 2008! And will continue in my 2014 garden.

In his memory.

And to honor him & what he created.

Mad scientist?

Yes that's a part of gardening? Not sure but you can do a bit of "creating" with vegetables & flowers. Takes some knowledge & a will to take a risk & give idea a try.

So I read about propagation for figs plants from a fig tree, in a addition to what the senior from Sicily showed me.

I knew how my father propagated trees, but his way was too tricky, time consuming and it involved policing your fig tree for squirrels destroying your set-up!  NOT what I wanted to spend my time doing. And don't get me started on those garden pests, rodent like animals, those bastards: the squirrels!!! Hate them. Not enough room here to get into that subject here!

So to keep on point, my friend's father from Sicily gave me a plant he propagated in a big bucket and told me how he made all these fig trees from what he trimmed off his friend's tree. It's been three years now & I got his fig tree replanted in a pot. I have been over wintering it in my garage. And it gets an early start in the warmth of my garage. It comes out in the warm spring days with figs already on it.

I made 12 trees from my fig tree two years ago!!. I gave them all away. And then more this year. Gave them away too. This year I might try to sell them.

This summer I am planning to add a few new fig trees in my garden. You can NEVER have enough figs! 

Besides enjoying them just fresh picked, I've made fig gelato, fig sorbetto,

served them with cheeses and a friend's honey from Havertown. When they are in season, I want to try a quick pickle too.

This why one needs multiple trees. Way to yummy to not just eat as they are but when cooking is another hobby, using them in reciepes becomes OK to do. I don't feel like I am "wasting" them!

Before this year 2009 - 2013

 Like I said before somewhere here, I started growing a vegetable garden of my choice in 2009. I grew up here with the same vegetable garden that my father created & grew since 1954,  when he could no longer physically do it in 2008.

I moved back East in 2004. Other than times in garden as a child which are just hazy memories or times as an adult that we had heated discussions on where to grow the Italian flat leaf parsley, mostly I was a failure as an indoor plant grower. And the only planting seeds & tending a vegetable garden was my year round arrugala in hanging planters off my back porch in LA. And picking the radicchio lettuce my father planted for me with seeds he brought with him when my parents visited me.

So when I asked him if I could take over his garden & grow what he wanted & what I wanted too, he sadly said: "OK".

So I hit the ground running!! I read online anything I could, got books from library, and parcipated in a year long workshop one Saturday a month, for 1 year for the whole planting season, at this marvelous free 2 hour workshop, that I attended at a local nursery/garden center called TERRAIN, in Glen Mills, PA. Then I started taking courses at Neumann University towards a certificate in Horticulture. And I had the BEST teacher: my father and his huge 700 sq ft vegetable garden ( that I begged him to make into a pool as a child !!) 

Trial & error. A test garden almost. So LUCKY. And SO MUCH FUN!

He was always telling me I was "doing it wrong", "that won't work", "they're  going to DIE that close!!", "why ya planting that!?!? takes too long to grow & takes up space while it grows!"  I felt like he might be cursing my garden & I better get some protection from Saints, Spirits of grandparents, the color red to ward off evil spirits, light candles, etc etc. ANYTHING to prevent a bad thing happening to my garden. As a superstitious Italian all this fretting, worry, anxiety was normal, but as an adult sane rational woman,  I understood why my father was saying in what he was; I totally understood: he COULDN'T do it anymore. And true to what I knew in my heart & believed, everyone was telling me what he was saying about ME & my Garden when I was not around: a beaming smiling proud Papa!!!

He's with me EVERY MINUTE I am in OUR GARDEN. The two of us!

Gx2 Garden.

How my garden GREW before 2014

As an artist, I have been using the garden as my canvas since 2009. Every year it's been totally different. I love that aspect of it. I think it's why I enjoy it so much, never get bored. Tired, yes! Bored, NO!  

Gardening of any kind suits my creative style as I like to let what ever I am making evolve. I have a plan in my head, I "see" what it looks like, make some sketches, drawings, notes, even a color scheme. I was never an artist who had these perfect thumb nail sketches to scale & color of what the end work would be . Never. Not even in art college.  Could be why even back then I gravitated to photography & collage. My BFA is in Textile design . No could have predicted back then, when I was living in NYC, Italy or even LA, that I would find a creative niche in DIRT & GREEN!!!  It must be my ancestors. It's in my blood, my family is telling me. 

    2013 Spring

    2013 Summer

    2013 Summer

   2013 Fall

      

   2012 Summer

    2012 Fall

    2012 Winter 

    2011 Summer

    2011 Fall

    2010 Spring

    2010 Summer

    2010 Fall

    Summer 2009

    Summer 2009

   Summer 2009