Baby Placket Pull Over

I knit this sweater for some friends of ours who are about to have their third child, and first son. I made it out of cotton since he's a spring baby and because it will easily go in the wash. It always looks as though the proportions are odd when I knit this pattern, but then I have to remember that baby's bodies are odd proportions. It's a free pattern from purlsoho.com called Child's Placket-Neck Pullover and will download as a pdf from the link. It's a very easy pattern that is knit from the bottom up to where the arms join in. You knit the arms and then use a raglan decreases to knit the body and arms together. The only seaming to do is joining the underarms to the sweater. Next time I make one I might try some stripes.

Special Chocolate Bars

I heard about making your own chocolate bars with special toppings back in December on the Splendid Table. However, there wasn't time to experiment in the mist of the Christmas travel season. Recently I saw a picture of some chocolate topped with pumpkin seeds (pepitas), and it brought the idea back to mind. While shopping at the Coop, I found Belgian Dark Chocolate in the bulk baking section. I made an impulse purchase of about half a pound. I came home to find the general directions on the Splendid Table website. Here's what part of the block looked like when I started. Before you begin, line a baking sheet with wax paper. Then prepare your toppings. I toasted almonds and pepitas separately.

Roughly chop all the chocolate. I tried to chop it in the food processor, but all it did was spin around and start to melt. I found the cutting board and my serrated Cutco knife worked best for roughly chopping the chocolate. Put half of the chocolate into a heavy-bottomed pan.Melt the chocolate over very low heat. Once it is melted, stir in the other half of the chocolate. Stir together until is is all melted. Pour chocolate on to a sheet of wax paper in a baking tray. Spread to 1/8 inch thickness with a spatula. Let sit for 3 minutes.

Sprinkle on your toppings and some coarse sea salt.
Let the chocolate cool for an hour or two until set. Then break or cut the chocolate into pieces and store in a tin for up to two weeks. Three different sections were topped with pepitas, almonds, and almonds and lavender. The hardest part of this recipe is not eating it all at once.

Transplanting Seedlings 4/11

Today was a busy day in the garden. First we moved the composter back to it's summer-time position. The compost isn't ready yet, but we drained three gallons of compost tea from the base. I'll dilute this with water each time I need to water the garden from now on. Since we put the row cover on the beds, I decided to transplant my freckles lettuce, spinach, kale, and arugula into the garden. I want to see how they'll do under the protection of the row cover and I also needed to free up room under my light. I noticed that the garlic has sprouted up more and is greening up now that the row cover is on. I decided to experimentally sow some carrots, and placed a bottomless milk jug over one quarter of the seeds to see if that will help them sprout faster. Here are my transplants clockwise from top left: Freckles romaine lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula.
Here's a collage of my other seedlings clockwise from top left: my first tomato sprout a Roma,two pink heirloom seedling(seed saved), the first pepper about to peek through, golden beets, bright lights swiss chard.
And here's my volunteer tomato.
Today I planted more tomatoes, though if all my others sprout I won't need them. I'm not confident that all my others will sprout, because I saved some of the seed myself. Today I planted two Campbells Tomatoes (free seeds), and two Fedco Heirloom mix. I decided to try the egg shell potting method since I'm running low on pots. It was hard poking holes in the bottom without breaking the shell, but I figured if they have a crack, at least their supported by the egg carton.
I also seeded German Thyme and Oregano into small yogurt cups. I'm a little late getting these started but I just picked up the seeds at the grocery store today. Now the hard part of being patient for everything to sprout.

New Inspiration

I've greatly enjoyed reading a few new gardening books which my dad bought me earlier this week. They've given me some new inspiration and ideas to try.

The first one is Growing Chinese Vegetables by Geri Harrington. I like it because it gives detailed growing information on some non-traditional vegetables like bok choy, soybeans, luffa, water chestnuts, sesame and ginger. Also she's based in Connecticut so the growing information is similar enough. I've been inspired to plant a piece of ginger root in a pot. I hope it sprouts. I'm also trying to start some sesame seeds. I'm being cheap and trying to use the ones from my spice collection rather than order the seed. I'm giving it some time in wet paper towels under the grow lights to see if they sprout. The ginger is supposed to be given two weeks before you dig it up to check on it. I'll probably give the sesame seeds a week or two also.

The other book is one that I've read about on many other gardeners' blogs. It's Eliot Coleman's Four-Season Harvest. I'm not yet finished with it but, I'm enjoying his stories and his clear ideas about how to extend your harvest. I'm excited by the different plants to try for wintering over, but I'm waiting to buy seeds because we don't have a cold-frame. I'm trying to convince my husband to use his wonderful carpentry skills to build a cold-frame that we could use this fall. The hard part would be clearing out space in the summer crops to have room to start the fall and winter ones. In the meantime, it has encouraged me to just go ahead and put some radish and pea seeds in the ground. We covered them with some floating row cover we got for free. Hopefully that will help the soil warm up and they will soon sprout.

Signs of Spring

Signs of spring from a walk around town:
Snow drops
Siberian Squill
And signs of spring in the garden:
Garlic sprouting
Chives sprouting

Sowing Seeds 4/2- Tomatoes

Tonight I started my tomatoes. It was a very hard choice to decide on only six. I knew I wanted more paste tomatoes than last year which meant at least three, but then hard part was deciding what the heirlooms I would plant and whether I'd use the seeds I saved or try a heirloom mix a friend gave me.

I ended up seeding:
(3) Burpee Roma Paste Tomatoes
(1) Yellow Brandywine Tomato (saved seed)
(1) Green Zebra (saved seed)
(1) Pink Heirloom (saved seed)
(1) Sweet Chelsea Cherry Tomato (this is an extra I may put in a pot).

I saved the Yellow Brandywine seed from the garden and the pink heirloom and green zebra from store bought heirloom tomatoes. If they don't sprout, then I'll use the heirloom mix instead. The cherry tomato was also some extra seed and I couldn't resist because I love eating them off the vine.

I finally found the name of the yellow heirloom I grew last year by looking at the Fedco catalog. It's a Yellow Brandywine. I'd gotten the seedling from a friend's heirloom mix and so by looking at the descriptions I was able pick out the type it was, the potato leaf style helped identify it.

I also have one volunteer tomato plant. Now I know what you're thinking..." The ground is still frozen below the top six inches, how do you have a volunteer tomato plant ?" Well this one wintered over inside with my experimental transplanted swiss chard.(which turned out fine, though it wasn't much of a producer.) I mixed compost in with the garden soil I used to transplant the swiss chard and so this Fall the tomato seedling sprouted. I didn't pay it any special attention, it just hung on all winter. But now that the sunlight has increased it is starting to shoot up. So I dug it up and re-potted it fairly deeply because it had a strange bend from reaching toward the sun. I'll put it under the florescent lamp and maybe it will give me a head start on tomato season.
So in the end, I will have eight tomatoes started and only planned for six. We'll see how that ends up when it is time to put them in the ground in June.