On Lemongrass and Seed Buying Addictions

Faithful lemongrass

The lemongrass is growing. I am so excited. Lemongrass chicken here we come! As you might be able to tell from the photograph the lemongrass is planted in a styrofoam shipping container that would be normally thrown away. They can usually be picked up for free from grocers, or any big companies that use supplies that need to be kept cool like hospitals.

I have a seed buying problem. There I've admitted it. A new order of vegetable seeds have come in the mail and it looks like in a fit of late night temptation, ten varieties of eggplants were ordered plus two varieties of tomatoes. Which is absolutely insane because I already have 14 eggplant seedlings and 53 tomato plants. There is really no excuse, except that I noticed some of the eggplant seeds at the Bakers Creek website were now out of stock, and a strange hazy logic of "oh no, what if they run out and next year they have a crop failure and can't offer the seeds again" came over me. So, today ten varieties of eggplants were started in peat pellets:

• Applegreen - heard about this one in a gardening forum where someone mentioned it as a favorite. Plants are listed as being small with wonderful yields of delicious tender round green fruits.
• Aswad - described as giant purple black squat teardrop shaped eggplants that can weigh 3 pounds or more with sweet tender flesh.
• Bangladeshi Long - stated as green with purple streaks on cylindrical fruits giving early and huge yields.
• Cambodian Green Giant - listed as huge ribbed fruits with light and dark green streaking and full bodied eggplant flavor.
• Ma-Zu Purple Chinese - deliciously sweet and tender Tawain variety with 8-12 inch long by 2 inch diameter fruit.
• Pandora Striped Rose - said to have teardrop lilac rose colored fruits on heavy yielding thornless plants that should be picked young otherwise they tend to be seedy.
• Ping Tung - supposed to have long purple thin skinned fruits with sweet creamy white flesh and a heavy producer.
• Thai Light Round Green - described as vigorous prolific plants that produce little round light green fruit used extensively in Thai coconut soups and curries.
• Thai Long Green - says the plants needs lots of heat which will yield sweet and mild superb 10-12 inch lime green fruits on 2-3 foot plants.
• Thai Long Purple - said to have long dark purple fruit that are mild and sweet and perfect to grow in hot humid areas.

And two varieties of tomatoes were also started in peat pellets:

• Ananas Noire - Ananas Noire is listed as a tricolored tomato with greens, yellow, and purple and is supposed to have a sweet and smoky flavor with a hint of citrus. Sounds yummy.
• Hillbilly - is listed as a gargantuan flame colored tomato with orange and red striations and a sweet savory bacon flavor.

Spring has Sprung in the Vegetable Garden

Grey Spring Sky

A styrofoam container planted with lemongrass seed.

Intermittent spring storms have been passing through bringing rain and warming winds. I am so excited about spring finally being here, I just can't stand it. All I can think about is giant pepper bushes loaded down with large succulent bright red fruits dangling from their brittle stems, indeterminate tomato vines heavy with their fruited orbs, and dragging in buckets and buckets of vegetables to be canned and eaten fresh and cooked up.

In celebration I went ahead and planted some lemongrass seed in a used styrofoam shipping container filled with a couple of inches of seed starting mix. The seed packet stated that the lemongrass needs light to sprout so the seeds were just sprinkled onto the surface of the soil instead of buried. Hopefully they were started early enough because lemongrass needs a very long growing season to get some worthwhile stalks that can be frozen and used as a seasoning or herb. Lemongrass chicken and lemongrass pork is absolutely delicious, and the herb adds a whole new dimension to curries that takes it to a whole different stratosphere. Too bad lemongrass is completely unavailable in this area otherwise I would just stick some store bought stalks in the ground.

With spring finally here all I can think about is tilling the soil, but the ground is still way too moist to be rototilled which is making my eye twitch. I did go out there and pull a few weeds around the Swiss chard bed but I have half a mind to go ahead and rototill under the overwintered plants, and get started with situating the beds for warm weather crops. There is still about a month and a half before warm weather crops can be planted out maybe the end of April. Although a friend of mine who has farmed this area for years says he wouldn't plant any tomatoes out until May 1st.