Garden looking good

[8greenbeans]

Thank you for those tips on broccoli! I did not know about the salt water soak for bugs. Do you do that for anything else?

[RWS]

If you have cauliflower you would do the same.  We can't keep the black mold off cauliflower so we quit planting it.

[RWS]

Today is Broccoli day.  We have been picking broccoli for the last few days.  The frig in the garage is full, so today it will get washed, cut up, blanched and bagged for the freezer.  Since we eat broccoli all year long from what we grow, I guess it could be considered a prep.
Since it is still cold here I suggested we have chili for supper this evening.  The wife said she was going to make some cinnamon rolls with blue berries added.  While the oven was going she will bake a few potatoes.  I like chili & baked potato w/broccoli & cheese.  Then we use any left over potatoes for home fries for breakfast with scrambled eggs.  You would think I was fat, but not so.  It must be the metabolism. .

We got 8 quart bags from this batch.  That is a large mixing bowl full of washed and cut up broccoli.  Then soak in salt water.  This is a bug check step not needed this year due to the cold.  In warm Fall weather there is a chance a bug has laid eggs that have hatched.  If so the larva will crawl out and float to the top.  We don't normally use pesticide on broccoli except early we used oil soap to combat white flies and it works.

The wife forgot to put the potatoes in the oven while it was on.  After supper I washed up 4 potatoes, buttered them, salt & pepper then wrapped them in tin foil.  Since the wood stove was hot, I put the potatoes in the cast iron dutch oven and put it on top of the wood stove.  S L O W, slow but finally after 4hrs they got soft.  We had home fries with egg scrambled in.  That with toast & coffee was breakfast.  I had blackberry jelly that was given (traded) to me when I went and looked at someone's solar system that wasn't working last Summer.

[RWS]

The English peas came up.  Looks like 95 to 100% germination.  The seed was from last years crop.  I had a quart container in the seed freezer.  You can barely tell any are missing and I planted a 50 ft row.  I will try to save another quart of seed this year also.
I have my seed potatoes, but due to the recent rain the ground is too wet.  It will be a few days before I can get them in the ground on this colder than normal February.
My corn seed just came in the mail today.  I got 200 seds from Burpee "Golden Bantam" an open pollinated sweet corn from 1902 origin.  Last year I planted "Stowells Evergreen Corn" an open pollinated corn.  From that I saved 15lb of seed to the freezer.  So this year I will do a different type.  Stowells Evergreen does not like a cold start and my first planting got killed with a frost.  The Golden Bantam is supposed to be cold hardy.