First Harvest: French Breakfast Radishes

On May 23rd we finally had our first, although small, harvest of French Breakfast radishes. We have been growing them in two small pots that are roughly 6 inches deep. We also have some planted in an empty patch in our herb garden, but those seem to be a little bit behind.

These were all planted in mid-April.

They have been surprisingly easy to grow, and with all of the rain we have been getting in Southern Ontario, we haven't had to water them much. The most we have to do is check them everyday to see the progress they have made.

The radishes were probably a bit small when we picked them, at approximately 1-2 inches in length, but they were already poking far out of the soil. We will leave the other radishes a bit longer to see how big they will get.

The radishes were a really pretty pink colour with white tips. We ate them fresh and they were quite tasty and mild. We're looking forward to the next harvest of radishes.

Megan

Lucullus Swiss Chard

Megan and I planted our Swiss Chard seeds in three pots, roughly 12-inches in diameter, on April 14th. On April 15th, we planted some seeds in an empty patch of our little herb garden that we've been growing for a few years. They germinated within two weeks approximately, but seemed to be growing very slowly for some time. Recently they've sped up a lot, and we're almost in shock to see how the new leaves are constantly developing.

Apparently Lucullus Swiss Chard is quite an old variety from the Ancient world and has been named to commemorate Lucius Licinius Lucullus, who was a late-Roman politician of a higher class (Optimate) and also a builder of the Gardens of Lucullus (horti Lucullani). These gardens were later owned by Felicie della Rovere, otherwise known as Pope Julius II, which I think is kind of neat, because we've been loving the Showtime series, The Borgias, and della Rovere plays a pretty important part in it.

Well, getting back to the Swiss Chard itself, it happens to be a very prolific producer and can produce well throughout the entire season. It typically takes up to 55 days before you can harvest it, so considering we planted it about 41 days ago, we should be able to eat some soon. I'm so excited, because I've heard that the Swiss Chard one grows themselves tastes much better than the store-bought one. Stay tuned for more pictures, and recipes when the time comes! :)

Jennifer

Heirloom Tomatoes

Growing Tomatoes from seed for the first time has been a challenging, but valuable experience! As mentioned in our introductory post, we planted five varieties of Heirloom tomatoes; Yellow Pear, Green Zebra, Purple Calabash, Purple Cherokee, and Red Zapotec.

On April 13, we prepared 4 jiffy pots for each kind, which amounted to 20 jiffy pots in total, and we filled each pot with a moist soiless mix. We don't have plant lights, so we didn't use any; just natural sunlight from a south-facing window.

Due to the fact we planted 2 to 4 tomato seeds per pot, we had several plants sprouting in each. Rather than killing off the other sprouts so that there would be 1 tomato per pot, which is recommended, we decided to carefully separate the seedlings and pot them each in a pot of their own. We decided to use large red plastic beer cups because we needed something larger than jiffy pots, but regular pots would have been too expensive.

Approximately two weeks later, we lost quite a few of them through the process of hardening them off.Being first time growers of tomatoes from seed, we were under the impression that hardening the tomatoes off simply meant getting the plants used to the breeze and the temperatures. We didn't realized that the UV Rays from the sun were really the largest concern due to the thin quality of the tomato leaves which make them easy to damage. After having our plants out in direct sunlight for approximately 3 hours, we noticed the leaves were almost white, and brought them indoors. Some internet searching led us to the answer of sunburn and a detailed explanation of how to harden tomatoes off properly. We decided to leave our plants indoors anyway to help them recover. About 8 of the 30 pots (20 pots originally, plus 10 gained through re-potting)have survived. Three of these are Green Zebra, three are Yellow Pear, and two are Purple Cherokee. They are each approximately two to three inches high, so we're going to wait another week or two, with hope that they will get bigger, before planting them outdoors.

At least we have learned a lot this year, so maybe we'll have more success next year when we plant again.

Jennifer

Introductory Post

Welcome to our blog! We are a pair of twins located in Southern Ontario with a growing interest in gardening. Our mom always grew vegetables from store bought plants and we would sometimes help her with the garden over the summer, but it is only recently that we became interested in growing heirlooms. Because we cannot get most heirlooms at the garden centre as plants, this is our first time growing vegetables from seed. Over the course of this blog, we will be documenting our progress growing heirlooms, while also showing what we have cooked with our vegetables (we hope we get some). Given our interest in history, we will also include some historical tidbits about the heirloom vegetables we are growing.

The vegetable seeds we are growing this summer were all bought from The Cottage Gardener, located in Newtonville, Ontario. As you can imagine, we have already started growing many of them. So far we are really impressed. These include:

• China Rose, French Breakfast, Plum Purple, and White Icicle radishes (purchased as a mix)


• Lucullus Swiss chard


• Bull's Blood, Chioggia, Cylindra, and Golden Detroit beets (also purchased in a mix)


• Mixed coloured carrots


• Little Finger carrots


• Paris Market carrots


• An heirloom lettuce mix that includes Australian Yellowleaf, Black Seeded Simpson, Cracoviensis, Green Oak leaf, and Red Deer Tongue lettuces


• Jimmy Nardello's Sweet Italian Frying Peppers


• Bulgarian Carrot hot peppers


• Cherokee Purple tomato


• Zapotec Ribbed tomato


• Green Zebra tomato


• Purple Calabash tomato


• Yellow Pear tomato


• Musquee de Provence squash


• Benning's Green Tint summer squash

Stay tuned for details on our progress so far.

Jennifer and Megan