Tag Archive for: radishes

How to Get Kids to Eat and Love Kale

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Do your kids beg you to feed them kale or other dark green, leafy vegetables?  

Probably not.

I confess that I don’t particularly like to eat kale when it is in large pieces.  But, after planting it for the first time in my vegetable garden this year, I was determined to learn to enjoy eating this vegetable along with my kids.  The question was how?

dark green, leafy vegetables

I decided to take my freshly picked kale and cut it into narrow strips, about 1/3 of an inch wide.

radishes

I did the same with radishes from the garden since some of my kids don’t like them either

radishes and kale

My idea was to make their individual size smaller and then mix them with other leafy greens, hoping that they could blend in with the rest of the salad.

leaf lettuce , iceberg lettuce , cucumbers ,kale and radishes

Salads in our house consist of leaf lettuce from the garden, a little iceberg lettuce (the kid’s favorite), diced cucumbers and finely chopped kale and radishes.

dark green, leafy vegetables

Once mixed together, the kale, along with the radishes, blends in rather nicely as do their flavors.

So, did it work?  Do my kids now like kale?

Well, earlier this week, I overheard them discussing what we were going to have for dinner and my two youngest kids said, “I love kale and radishes”.

You know what?  So do I.

**Have you ever found a way to get your kids to eat certain foods?  If so, please share your experiences with me 🙂

Winter Garden Harvest: I Never Thought I Would Love Kale!

My Newly Planted Vegetable Gardens

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Newly Planted Vegetables

*This blog post contains affiliate link for a product that helps get rid of caterpillars. If you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). Thanks for your support in this way.*

Fall is a busy time for me in the garden.  However, you will usually find me in other people’s gardens helping them achieve their goal of a beautiful, low-maintenance garden. I did manage to get my cool-season vegetable gardens planted.  I planted my favorites, which include carrots, cauliflower, garlic, a variety of leaf lettuces and radishes.

my mother's garden)

I included broccoli in my list of vegetables this year, despite the fact that I have yet to grow a healthy head of broccoli (the broccoli in the photo above is from my mother’s garden).

Every year, I grow beautiful cauliflower while my broccoli decides to produce very few flowering stalks.  At the end of the season when I look at my less than stellar broccoli harvest – I promise myself that I won’t try again.

But, after 6 months pass, I am always tempted to try again hoping that this year will be different.

With the exception of carrots and radishes, I planted all of my other vegetables from transplants.  Normally, I almost always use seed, (with the exception of broccoli and cauliflower, which do better when grown from transplants) but I knew that I wouldn’t have time to come out and thin excess plants later.

Newly Planted Vegetables

This smaller vegetable garden is closer to my kitchen and so I put in vegetables that I would harvest more frequently throughout the season in this area. Leafy greens such as lettuce, Swiss chard, spinach and kale all went in here.

The larger garden is a bit further away and so it was planted with broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, garlic and radishes, which are harvested once.

My artichoke plant from next year died back to the ground in the summer, (which is normal by the way) and is now growing again.

bell pepper plant , Newly Planted Vegetable

In addition to my artichoke, my bell pepper plant is also a holdover from last year’s garden.  Actually, it is 2 years old.  Although pepper plants can die from freezing temperatures, I protect mine when the temps dip below freezing, so they are qutie large and produce a lot of peppers much to the delight of my husband and children who like to eat the bell peppers raw.

bell pepper plant

I also dice them and freeze them for using in my favorite Mexican rice recipe.

I’ve already had to spray my leafy greens with BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) to deal with the caterpillars that had started to eat holes in the leaves.  It worked great, but I will need to reapply every once in a while. I use Safer Brand 5163 Caterpillar Killer II Concentrate, 16 oz.

Nasturtiums ,

Nasturtiums are coming up again from seed in the gardens.  I just let them go to seed each year and they always come back.  I use nasturtiums in my vegetable gardens because they repel bad bugs.  Besides, they look pretty, don’t you think?

Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums aren’t the only flowers in my vegetable gardens – marigolds are also great at keeping damaging insects at bay.  This year, I planted a marigold at the end of each row of vegetables.

I love how their orange flowers brighten up the garden in the middle of winter.   Marigolds and nasturtiums are just a few of the flowers who actually help vegetables.  For more information on other plants to include in your vegetable garden you can visit my previous post, “Even Vegetables Need Friends”.

weed

I am having a problem in one of my vegetable gardens that began this past summer – spurge!  I have come to truly hate this creeping weed and it has decided to move from the nearby landscape areas into my vegetable garden.

It got pretty bad last summer and we ripped it all out.  To help combat it, we added 4 inches of compost/manure, which did help to smother some of the weeds.  But, some are still coming up.  So, I go out every week and spray them with my homemade weed killer, taking care not to spray my vegetables by accident.

You may see homemade weed killers that list salt as one of the ingredients.  DON’T add salt to weed killers – especially if you live in the desert Southwest. Our soil and water already has a lot of salts in them and adding more is not good for your plants – in fact, too much salt can kill them.

Homemade weed killer made from vinegar and soap works just fine on most weeds, except for the really tough ones.

Have you planted a vegetable garden this year?  What are you growing?

What Is Growing In My Vegetable Garden…

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Earlier this week, I shared with you the four vegetables that I am growing for the first time this year.  I will be sure to share with you how they do as the season progresses.

In addition to my experimenting with new vegetables, I am also growing some favorite cool-season vegetables…

My Vegetable Garden

My favorite cool-season vegetable crop is leaf lettuce.  I love nothing better then being able to step outside to snip off a few leaves to make a dinner salad.

Once you have tasted fresh lettuce from the garden, there is no going back.  Bagged lettuce is a poor replacement.

About 1/3 of my three vegetable gardens are taken up with beautiful leaf lettuce.  I like to grow different varieties of leaf lettuce including Romaine, Buttercrunch, Great Lakes and Black Seeded Simpson lettuce.

I usually grow lettuce from seed because it is so easy.  It needs temps below 80 degrees to germinate, so October is a good time to plant it.

**Don’t plant all your lettuce at once.  Stagger your planting dates by 2 – 3 weeks, so that when your first crop of lettuce is finished (bolting), then you will have more coming up.  Because lettuce can be planted throughout the fall, winter and early spring, you can enjoy lettuce until April, if you stagger your planting dates.  This is what experienced vegetable gardeners do to prolong their harvest.   

My Vegetable Garden

Isn’t this cauliflower beautiful?  I grew this one two years ago and made the mistake of not planting any last winter.  I’ll never make that mistake again.

I love cauliflower and cut the crown into small 1/4 inch pieces that we sprinkle over our salad – it looks like crumbled cheese and my kids like it.

Cauliflower can be hard to grow from seed, so I use transplants.

**Stagger the planting of your cauliflower as well, so that it does not all ripen at once.  For example: I plant 3 cauliflower transplants every 2 weeks until the end of November.

I do not like cooked spinach.  But, I do like putting it in salads or on a sandwich.

I have grown spinach from seed and from transplants.  It lasts all winter and into spring.

My Vegetable Garden

Carrots are a mainstay of any cool-season garden.  Because they are a root vegetable, they need to be planted from seed.

**My first year vegetable gardening, I planted all of my carrots at once and was rewarded with an ENORMOUS harvest.  We couldn’t eat that many carrots.  So, don’t plant all your carrots at once.  I recommend planting some every month through February, so you will always have some to enjoy, fresh from the garden

My Vegetable Garden

This is the only photo I have of radishes in my garden.  I must remember to take one when they are a bit more developed.

Radishes are the easiest vegetable to grow from seed.  They come up fast – 3 days after planting the seeds, which makes them perfect for kids to grow.

**Stagger your planting of radishes, just as I recommended for carrots for a continual harvest.

broccoli

I have a confession to make…

I seem to have problems growing broccoli.  I’m not sure why and after each disappointing season, I resolve NOT to grow it again.  But, I am trying again this year.

The photo above, is not my broccoli – it my mother’s 😉

**I have only a few broccoli planted now and will plant more through November, for a longer harvest.

garlic

I always plant garlic in October.  I haven’t gotten to it yet, but plan to next week.

Last spring, I was happy with my larger then expected garlic harvest.

The last vegetable on my list is onions, which I will plant from onion sets this month as well.

I promise to keep you updated with how my garden grows throughout the season.

I would love to hear about what you are planting and/or what your favorite vegetables to grow are.

Too Many Vegetables….How to Thin Seedlings

Is there such a thing as too many vegetables in your garden?

plant small seeds

My radishes are definitely doing well. But, there are too many growing close together.

Why did this happen? Did I plant too many? When you plant small seeds, you scatter them along small furrows.  You do plant more seeds then vegetables that will grow to maturity.

The reason for this is that some seeds do not germinate.

After they sprout, and begin to grow – then you have to ‘thin’ them out. This involves removing certain seedlings so that the remaining ones are at a proper distance from each other and have plenty of room to grow.

So, how do you ‘thin’ seedlings?  

plant small seeds

Simply use a pair of scissors and cut the extra seedlings off at the base.

This works much better then pulling them out because you can disturb the roots of the seedlings that are staying.

So how far apart should your vegetable plants be from each other? Well, it depends. Look at your seed packet, which will tell you how far apart they should be.

I just thinned my radishes (the easiest vegetable to grow, by the way). My carrots aren’t quite ready yet, so I will probably thin them out in a couple of weeks.

I hope your week is off to a great start! 

A Box of Seeds and an Impatient Gardener…