Watch My Food Grow

Malcolm called me out to the backyard this afternoon because he had something important to show me. It turns out, we had a lot of beans ready to harvest.

Malcolm Harvests Green Beans

Malcolm isn’t the only Steinhoff to have picked beans from his own garden. His Great Grandfather, L.V. Steinhoff was also a fan of beans. His bean plants, however, look a lot better than mine.

L.V. Steinhoff Harvests Green Beans

Show Us Your Backyard Vegetable Garden Beans

How is your garden doing this season?

The beans are doing surprisingly well. Those are the first vegetable we have grown from seed. Everything else came in a pot.

Tonight we’re doing stir-fried beans with a bit of onion, garlic and a bit of bacon.

—Farmer Matt

Yesterday I went into the backyard and my broccoli was standing tall and ready for harvest. In fact, it may have even been a tad bit past ripe. Some of the heads were looking a little seedy. In any case, I harvested from five of the eight broccoli plants. Nice! Broccoli with smoked provolone cheese was on the menu last night.

Broccoli, Tomatoes, Eggplant, Green Peppers, Jalapenos

In addition to the loads of Broccoli, we had a great garden day yesterday. We had plenty of fairy tale eggplant, hot bird peppers and jalapenos. There was a nice bell pepper and, of course, there are always sun sugar tomatoes ready to be plucked. Check out all this food…

What Is Your Garden Producing Today?

What are you pulling from your garden today? What is ripe? What is on the menu for dinner? Let me know.

—Farmer Matt

Truth be told, I’m not much of a farmer. Fortunately, I didn’t know any vegetable gardeners better than me in South Florida when I started this project. So, I was secure, if naive, in my pursuit.

A few weeks after starting my backyard vegetable garden, the future cousin-in-law of a friend, Kara, emailed about my garden. She had just gotten the renewed green itch.

Kara’s Garden

Here’s the big difference between the two of us… Kara knows what she is doing. And, on her five-acre homestead in Palm City, she has the space to grow. Kara’s Garden looks amazing. It’s huge and well-landscaped. While mine is a box of dirt, hers has presence.

You really need to check out the late March garden update to get a feel for the size and variety of her backyard vegetable garden.

Make sure to check out Kara’s garden. Not only does she have a better vegetable garden, she updates her blog more often, too. If she had live video from her garden, I’d be out of business.

—Farmer Matt

A friend of the family gave us some mulberry plants a year or so ago. They were less than 18 inches tall and haphazardly tossed in pots. We planted them along the fence and figured they would die soon enough.

Mulberry Bushes Turning into Mulberry Trees

The mulberries are now 20 feet tall and their bases are more than three inches in diameter. Best of all, they are covered in mulberries…

Each time we go out in the backyard to check on the garden, we pick the black, ripe mulberries. This inevitably leads to a family with stained hands and full bellies. There are so many mulberries I keep thinking that we will try canning mulberries but they never make it to the kitchen without being consumed.

What Variety of Mulberry Do We Have?

I’m going to guess we have black mulberry trees. According to this web page about all things mulberry, the black mulberry only grows to about 30 feet tall. The red and white mulberry trees can grow to 80 feet tall. Given that ours are about full grown and just 20 feet tall, I think they are black mulberries.

The black mulberry, while smallest of the varieties, is the longest-lived. A black mulberry will produce fruit for hundreds of years while red mulberry rarely makes it 75 years.

Mulberry Wine?

Hmm… A few web sites recommend brewing mulberry wine. I hate wine but it might be fun to try making wine from my very own muberries. Anyone tried that?

—Farmer Matt

For more than a month, the most visibly growing vegetables in my backyard garden were the broccoli plants. They grew and grew. Almost too big. They are now casting a shadow over my red leaf lettuce. However, as big as they got, I never saw anything that actually looked like the broccoli that I was used to seeing on my dinner plate.

Grow Your Own Broccoli — It’s Really Broccoli

Then, last week, we got a lot of rain; eight inches in two or three days. Imagine my surprise and thrill when I saw what I could clearly identify as broccoli!
Go ahead. Click the picture. Check out the size of my broccoli. It’s not huge yet but at least it looks like actual broccoli.

I wonder how much broccoli I’ll actually get from the garden and how much the plant will produce? Any ideas? Let me know how many people I need to invite to my all-broccoli dinner party.

I’m not the biggest gardening geek on the block any longer and that is saying a lot given that I have live streaming video of my tomatoes.

To your right, please see my newest garden technology find, the EasyBloom Plant Sensor.

EasyBloom Plant Sensor and Educated Garden Advisor

• Step One: Buy the EasyBloom Plant Sensor.
• Step Two: Stick it in your garden.
• Step Three: Stick it in your USB port.
• Step Four: Do whatever it tells you.

Does the EasyBloom Plant Sensor Work?

I don’t know. I don’t own one. I’m seriously thinking about buying one, however. My tomatoes are brown and I’m not sure if it is from too much water or too little water. My mom used to have a plant hydrometer that would report the level of water in the soil. I came across this product while looking for a hydrometer.

The Amazon Reviews are fairly positive — three and a half stars out of five with 24 people voting. The editors at the technology magazine CNET also gave the EasyBloom a ‘Very Good’ rating.

EasyBloom Plant Sensor Review and Recommendation

I love metrics. I’m just not sure if I’m willing to spend $60.

I like that the device accurately measures the amount of sunlight and soil conditions. I like that it connects to the internet and figures out which of 5,000 possible plants would like your garden the best. I like that it will tell you what is wrong with your plants based on a description and its captured condition data.

But, for $60, I also want it to do, at minimum, a pH test of the soil.

Anyone Using the EasyBloom Plant Sensor?

If you’re using the EasyBloom or another automatic garden data gathering device, please let me know. I’d love go know what else is out there. Also, why are my tomatoes brown?

—Farmer Matt

The question, what’s for dinner, takes on new meaning when you have a backyard vegetable garden.

“What’s For Dinner?” Requires Trip to Backyard Garden

When you have your own vegetable garden, you never really know what you’re going to eat until you see what is available. Some vegetables are always available such as tomatoes (of one variety or another). There is also plenty of cilantro and lettuce. The question then becomes what are we going to use as our accent food.

Fairy Tale Eggplant

Tonight’s accent vegetable will be fairy tale eggplant. They don’t get much larger than six inches. Most are less than three inches. I imagine I’ll just fry them up in a pan green-tomato style. If you have a better suggestion, let me know.

There are half a dozen green peppers that’ll be ready to eat this week. I’m thinking fajitas for them.

Cucumbers and snap beans are still a few weeks off but are sprouting nicely.

—Farmer Matt

Lunch is served, backyard garden style.

Before: The Raw Materials

After: A Yummy BLT Sandwich

It’s Not About the Garden

Lance Armstrong wrote an entire book to tell us It’s Not About the Bike. (Of course, don’t tell that to Trek Bikes, a major sponsor. They dumped millions of dollars into designing the most perfect bike for him.)

I’m here today to tell you it’s not about the vegetable garden. It’s about the food and process.

There is great satisfaction in walking 30 feet across your back yard and plucking the food you are about to eat.

Locavores and Locatarians? I Laugh in Their Faces

You want to eat local food? You can’t get much more local than my back yard. I’m not there yet but backyardavore may be in my future.

Well, at least as soon as I get my bacon seeds in the ground.

—Farmer Matt

My father-in-law, Devon, was kind enough to send me a copy of All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew.

I have heard of this book before but didn’t realize it was so darn popular. Everyone seems to have heard about Square Foot Gardening. In fact if everyone who bought or read his book had a garden, we’d all be self-sufficient.

Mini Book Review for Square Foot Gardening

The book is easy to read and even easier to scan. I really like his methods because they are completely mechanical. Follow his instructions exactly and plants will pop out of the ground like gangbusters, I’m sure.

If you have never grow vegetables before, this might be a nice way to get started. There is no lack of specific instruction in the book. In many ways, I wish I had started with his system. Then again, I have more than 40 square feet of garden and am finding it not enough.

One warning: no one can seem to find his secret sauce, vermiculite, locally. (Check the Amazon reviews for details and alternatives.) If you are serious about following his book, make sure you can find vermiculite.

New Palm Beach County Gardeners Wanted

I’m too far along this season to try the Mel’s square foot gardening methods but I’d like to find someone locally who would like to embrace his book. So, anyone want to be my test subject?

I’d prefer someone in the Palm Beach Gardens area so I could easily take pictures of your backyard square foot vegetable garden on a regular basis. Still, I’ll take just about anyone or a bunch of anyones. Comment below, if you are interested.

—Farmer Matt

Don’t be frontin’. You know you like the Pussycat Dolls and strawberries.

—Farmer Matt