It's a slow, cold spring. Garden fever bit, I planted my brassica starts about a month ago, I think it was. They're sitting out there, growing roots, but not doing much else. I protect them from the slugs with that pet-friendly iron-based bait, Sluggo. The slugs took a hit from the cold, but they're growing fast. My ragged daffodils tell me it's time to watch for slugs in the beds.
I'm holding off on planting more. I have some carrots in, a short row, a couple of rows of cut-and-come greens for early salads. But I plant by the weeds. We have the first, hardy weeds that come up in late February, early March. They're supplanted later by the weed species that like warmer soil. That's when the garden takes off. But right now, those early varieties are just sitting there, growing slowly. Very slowly. Nice for the weeding schedule, but means I'm not rushing stuff into the soil. Now I'm high here, about 700 feet, so lower, sheltered microclimes are probably warmer than I am right now. The pasture is growing, but we need a week or so of warmer temperatures to get the chill out of the soil and wake up the seeds that need higher germination temperatures. Meanwhile, the slugs and I are duking it out.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Winter Survivors
This is a hard spring after our seriously freezing winter. Plants that came through damaged are fading under a repetitive cycle of nighttime freezes without any stretch of warm weather. I found that my rutabagas mostly came through okay, tough roots that they are. More so than I thought. A bit less than half of my kale plants are budding out new leaves in spite of the tough weather. All of my self-seeded plants are doing fine. Lesson there. Looks as if a few chard will sprout for my spring treat of chard-buds and pasta. But the crocuses are blooming and the pussy willows are showing white, so sping will get here eventually.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Starting the New Year
Well, this has been the worst winter I've seen, in terms of overwinter gardening, in about ten years...maybe more. The cold in the teens, east wind, and long duration, pretty much wiped out stuff that usually weathers the winter just fine here. Even my kale got clobbered and it's about the toughest stuff out there. But a week of low twenties/teens did too much damage to the cambium layer of the plant stems. Ah well. Weather happens. So I'm not left with a lot and it's lean right now! Chickweed sprouts magically on every warm day. That makes a great salad, mild and tasty as any lettuce. A few kales survived -- mostly my reseeded plants. A few walla wall onion seedlings made it. They got frozen on top, but seem to be doing okay. We'll see. My olive tree has dropped all its leaves and I'll find out later if it sustained killing damage or not.
But today I planted my peas and fava beans. I could have gotten them in a week or two ago, but I've been busy, helping out my neighbor who had open heart surgery right after New Year. So things are getting done when I have time. I filled some big, shallow pots (12 - 24 inches) with soil and I'll seed in lettuce and braising greens tomorrow. On my covered deck, these should yield greens quickly. Time to get my lettuce, cauliflower, and early broccoli seedlings stared. Two weeks ago was the target date, but as I said.... Oh well, you do it when you can.
And the peas are in and I have two lambs down so far, more on the way.
Off to check the lambing pen...
But today I planted my peas and fava beans. I could have gotten them in a week or two ago, but I've been busy, helping out my neighbor who had open heart surgery right after New Year. So things are getting done when I have time. I filled some big, shallow pots (12 - 24 inches) with soil and I'll seed in lettuce and braising greens tomorrow. On my covered deck, these should yield greens quickly. Time to get my lettuce, cauliflower, and early broccoli seedlings stared. Two weeks ago was the target date, but as I said.... Oh well, you do it when you can.
And the peas are in and I have two lambs down so far, more on the way.
Off to check the lambing pen...
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Squashed Garlic
Well it's garlic planting time. Day before yesterday, I went down to prep my garlic bed, dig it, add some of my organic fertilizer mix below my anticipated rows, clean out the weeds that had sprouted. This was my corn bed, so all the stalks had been pulled and turned into sheep feed. But my Kuri squash vine had overrun the bed (squash is one of corn's lovers, along with beans, after all) so I decided I should bring the Kuri in and feed the vines to the sheep.
So.
Twenty-one three plus pound squashes later... Oh, my aching back! (My garden is on an east facing slope. A SLOPE.) This is from one hill with three seedlings in it. That's Kuri for you! It loves to run, but it pays you back with dense, fine grained, sweet squashes that make great pies, are wonderful as baked squash, and make superior soup. I have tried most of the winter squash out there and this is the one that I keep growing. Now it's prohibitive for a small garden...it covers about a 30 x 40 foot area and can run farther than that (my sheep prune it when it gets through the fence). Next year, I think I'm going to do a strong verticle trellis and try to do it in less space. We'll see.
I'm hoping for more than a drizzle tonight to settle the soil before I plant my garlic, but the soil has had a couple of days to settle so I can plant even if it doesn't rain first. I always wait until the missed cloves from this year's harvest sprout before planting, and they started sprouting last week. It's time!
So.
Twenty-one three plus pound squashes later... Oh, my aching back! (My garden is on an east facing slope. A SLOPE.) This is from one hill with three seedlings in it. That's Kuri for you! It loves to run, but it pays you back with dense, fine grained, sweet squashes that make great pies, are wonderful as baked squash, and make superior soup. I have tried most of the winter squash out there and this is the one that I keep growing. Now it's prohibitive for a small garden...it covers about a 30 x 40 foot area and can run farther than that (my sheep prune it when it gets through the fence). Next year, I think I'm going to do a strong verticle trellis and try to do it in less space. We'll see.
I'm hoping for more than a drizzle tonight to settle the soil before I plant my garlic, but the soil has had a couple of days to settle so I can plant even if it doesn't rain first. I always wait until the missed cloves from this year's harvest sprout before planting, and they started sprouting last week. It's time!
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Fall Transitions
Well, fall has fallen, as of this weekend and the rain. The season has changed...a bit earlier than many years. No fair, after our late spring and cool summer! Oh well, that's weather. Endless source of conversation and grumbling... I got my quinoa heads cut right before this weekend's rain. They got a bit wet with earlier showers, but seem to be drying without mold or sprouting under the shelter of my covered deck. I'll probably have to bring them inside. I'm going to have to give up and use the woodstove this week, I suspect. My passive solar house is still getting enough sun to keep it in the low sixties, but the next pair of gray days are going to bring on the first fire of the season. And then I'll bring the quinoa in.
I'm watching my cabbages. I planted the small type, mini-heads of a couple of pounds. They hold well without splitting, I've found, but they'll start getting a lot of slug damage in a long, wet fall, and then I'll have to bring them in. I store them in an unheated shed, wrapped in a sheet of newspaper. That keeps each head from drying out. Newspaper wraps work very well for apples, too, keeping them good well into early spring if they're good, hard keepers. I also store my kiwi in buckets layered with crumpled newspaper.
My onions have been curing in a wheelbarrow under my covered deck, tops on. I braided most of them today. That is the best way to store onions I've found. Better than bags. Way better than tubs or boxes. I hang them on my front porch and if we're going to get low-20s or less cold, I bring them in and hang 'em in the basement for a couple of days until we get back up above 25 again. On the porch they're right there and they usually keep nicely until late spring. (Copra keep like rocks!) I do the same with garlic when I grow softneck. This year, they were all hardneck, so no braiding, sigh. They make nice decorations on the porch, too, for that matter.
I've been pulling carrots. I have a vole issue. I need more owls. The voles don't bother the beets and rutabaga and turnip but they DO love carrots. I like my carrots crisp, so I mostly eat up my late summer planting rather than store and use beats for fresh sweet roots in the winter. They do nicely in salads, sliced raw. If you don't want pink salads, grow the white or yellow varieties. Try shredding beets coarsely. Toss with a garlicky balsamic vinaigrette made with good olive oil, sprinkle with feta cheese and a few toasted walnuts. Okay, the feta turns pink if you use red beats! It's still a great salad.
My seed corn is drying, with plenty to grind up for some very fresh blue polenta. I really recommend Triple Play although you can dry and grind any corn. For that matter, any string beans that you didn't pick? Save the dry beans from those shriveled and dried pods. They're great in soup.
So far, the squashes (Kuri) aren't ready to harvest yet, but sometime in the next couple of weeks, I suspect they'll be ready. If we're going to get a lot of rain, I'll go slip a piece of shingle or something like that under each squash, to keep them off the wet ground. I think I'll dig a few Jerusalem artichokes tomorrow and stir fry them. Another welcome-to-fall delicacy.
I'm watching my cabbages. I planted the small type, mini-heads of a couple of pounds. They hold well without splitting, I've found, but they'll start getting a lot of slug damage in a long, wet fall, and then I'll have to bring them in. I store them in an unheated shed, wrapped in a sheet of newspaper. That keeps each head from drying out. Newspaper wraps work very well for apples, too, keeping them good well into early spring if they're good, hard keepers. I also store my kiwi in buckets layered with crumpled newspaper.
My onions have been curing in a wheelbarrow under my covered deck, tops on. I braided most of them today. That is the best way to store onions I've found. Better than bags. Way better than tubs or boxes. I hang them on my front porch and if we're going to get low-20s or less cold, I bring them in and hang 'em in the basement for a couple of days until we get back up above 25 again. On the porch they're right there and they usually keep nicely until late spring. (Copra keep like rocks!) I do the same with garlic when I grow softneck. This year, they were all hardneck, so no braiding, sigh. They make nice decorations on the porch, too, for that matter.
I've been pulling carrots. I have a vole issue. I need more owls. The voles don't bother the beets and rutabaga and turnip but they DO love carrots. I like my carrots crisp, so I mostly eat up my late summer planting rather than store and use beats for fresh sweet roots in the winter. They do nicely in salads, sliced raw. If you don't want pink salads, grow the white or yellow varieties. Try shredding beets coarsely. Toss with a garlicky balsamic vinaigrette made with good olive oil, sprinkle with feta cheese and a few toasted walnuts. Okay, the feta turns pink if you use red beats! It's still a great salad.
My seed corn is drying, with plenty to grind up for some very fresh blue polenta. I really recommend Triple Play although you can dry and grind any corn. For that matter, any string beans that you didn't pick? Save the dry beans from those shriveled and dried pods. They're great in soup.
So far, the squashes (Kuri) aren't ready to harvest yet, but sometime in the next couple of weeks, I suspect they'll be ready. If we're going to get a lot of rain, I'll go slip a piece of shingle or something like that under each squash, to keep them off the wet ground. I think I'll dig a few Jerusalem artichokes tomorrow and stir fry them. Another welcome-to-fall delicacy.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Walla Wallas, Quinoa, and Squash...oh my!
My fall spinach, mizuna, broccoli raab, and Walla Walla onion seeds are all up and doing nicely. This is your last chance to plant Walla Walla onions to divide and replant next spring for early summer onions. Beats buying those tired clumps of field-grown plants from the nursery next March! You can get them in this week and give them some extra care. This time of year, weeds infiltrate quickly as the rains begin. The baby onions don't get very big this fall and it's easy for the weeds to overrun them. I plant them quite thickly in a short row. Sometime in March, as the weather dictates, I'll dig up the young plants and set them out with plenty of space in my bed.
The fall and winter spinach varieties do very well for salad greens up until the first really hard freeze. Often that can be January. If you use a plastic row cover you can keep them going quite late, even if we do have a hard early frost or two.
Mizuna, a frilly, deeply cut Chinese green, has never failed me, even in the worst winters. I harvest it all winter for salads (it's a bit like curly endive in taste -- more mustardy and not as peppery -- and quite tender after some frosting). My broccoli is heading up and I'll pull the plants after I've harvested a first set of side shoots in order to plant my fava beans there in November. If it's too unremittingly miserable in November, I've found that a January planting matures at just about the same time.
My quinoa is looking good. I was afraid that our summer was too cool for it to set good heads, and I'm going to have a lot of shoots still in blossom I'm afraid (they're great, steamed, so they sure won't go to waste!) but the main heads are turning yellow, orange, and vivid red. I have discovered in the past that once the seed is mature any rain will cause extensive sprouting in the head, so as soon as we get a forecast of rain, I'll cut all the heads that are showing color and hang under my covered porch where they can continue to dry and ripen. I recommend that you tie the stems in a row on a long cord (I use bailing twine from my hay bales) rather than bunching them. If the weather is too damp, you can get mold in the bunches. If it looks like a long spell of rainy weather, I'll bring them inside and hang them in my main room, from my exposed beams. That's where my woodstove is and stuff dries there very nicely. They do shed some as they dry, so if you hang them indoors realize that. But they look pretty.
My copra onions are falling over, so I've cut the drip water to that bed. And my corn is ripe. I grow Triple Play...it's an heirloom variety from Seed of Change; white, yellow, and blue. It has great flavor, grows very well in even a cool summer, and if you miss the ears at the fresh corn stage, it's a good cornmeal and hominy corn. I always save a few ears for fresh stone ground cornmeal.
The kuri squash are turning color nicely. Kuri is an old variety, teardrop orange, with the driest, sweetest flesh of any of the many many winter squash varieties I've tried. I like banana squash as well, but dealing with 100 lb squashes is a chore. Kuri are just a few pounds each. The vines are huge, though. One year, my two plants grew all along my fence, through my fence, and well into my neighbor's rhodies. He got all the squashes on his side of the fence, I got all the squashes on my side of the fence. The final tally was something like 40. And they keep well into the new year in an unheated garage or outbuilding...just don't let them freeze. When I finally pick them, I immediately dip the stem into bleach solution to keep bacteria from migrating into the squash and I wipe them all over with a bleach and water solution to kill surface bacteria. This seems to help them keep longer. (I use about a tablespoon of bleach in a pint and a half of water.) But it's too early to pick them now. I wait until the tendrils closest to the squash have shriveled up. An 85 year old lifetime gardener told me that trick and it seems to have improved the keeping quality of the squashes in general. By the way, those young winter squash, the ones that won't mature before frost? They're great! I slice them and saute them with garlic in a bit of olive oil, add a bit of broth and cover to steam them lightly. They're tender and much like summer squash in flavor, although a bit 'meatier'.
The fall and winter spinach varieties do very well for salad greens up until the first really hard freeze. Often that can be January. If you use a plastic row cover you can keep them going quite late, even if we do have a hard early frost or two.
Mizuna, a frilly, deeply cut Chinese green, has never failed me, even in the worst winters. I harvest it all winter for salads (it's a bit like curly endive in taste -- more mustardy and not as peppery -- and quite tender after some frosting). My broccoli is heading up and I'll pull the plants after I've harvested a first set of side shoots in order to plant my fava beans there in November. If it's too unremittingly miserable in November, I've found that a January planting matures at just about the same time.
My quinoa is looking good. I was afraid that our summer was too cool for it to set good heads, and I'm going to have a lot of shoots still in blossom I'm afraid (they're great, steamed, so they sure won't go to waste!) but the main heads are turning yellow, orange, and vivid red. I have discovered in the past that once the seed is mature any rain will cause extensive sprouting in the head, so as soon as we get a forecast of rain, I'll cut all the heads that are showing color and hang under my covered porch where they can continue to dry and ripen. I recommend that you tie the stems in a row on a long cord (I use bailing twine from my hay bales) rather than bunching them. If the weather is too damp, you can get mold in the bunches. If it looks like a long spell of rainy weather, I'll bring them inside and hang them in my main room, from my exposed beams. That's where my woodstove is and stuff dries there very nicely. They do shed some as they dry, so if you hang them indoors realize that. But they look pretty.
My copra onions are falling over, so I've cut the drip water to that bed. And my corn is ripe. I grow Triple Play...it's an heirloom variety from Seed of Change; white, yellow, and blue. It has great flavor, grows very well in even a cool summer, and if you miss the ears at the fresh corn stage, it's a good cornmeal and hominy corn. I always save a few ears for fresh stone ground cornmeal.
The kuri squash are turning color nicely. Kuri is an old variety, teardrop orange, with the driest, sweetest flesh of any of the many many winter squash varieties I've tried. I like banana squash as well, but dealing with 100 lb squashes is a chore. Kuri are just a few pounds each. The vines are huge, though. One year, my two plants grew all along my fence, through my fence, and well into my neighbor's rhodies. He got all the squashes on his side of the fence, I got all the squashes on my side of the fence. The final tally was something like 40. And they keep well into the new year in an unheated garage or outbuilding...just don't let them freeze. When I finally pick them, I immediately dip the stem into bleach solution to keep bacteria from migrating into the squash and I wipe them all over with a bleach and water solution to kill surface bacteria. This seems to help them keep longer. (I use about a tablespoon of bleach in a pint and a half of water.) But it's too early to pick them now. I wait until the tendrils closest to the squash have shriveled up. An 85 year old lifetime gardener told me that trick and it seems to have improved the keeping quality of the squashes in general. By the way, those young winter squash, the ones that won't mature before frost? They're great! I slice them and saute them with garlic in a bit of olive oil, add a bit of broth and cover to steam them lightly. They're tender and much like summer squash in flavor, although a bit 'meatier'.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Lettuce Fill In
I pulled some bolting lettuce next to my Copra onions and quick, seeded some more in the same place. The soil was moist from my drip system and ideal for new seeds. I quickly seed any new patch of bare ground this time of year. Pretty soon the days will be too short to stimulate maturity in lettuce, so the planting window is closing folks! This nice bit of cool and rain is perfect. I'll try to get my fall greens in this week along with my Walla Walla seed for transplanting onions next spring. Asian greens: baby bok choi, Tah Tsai, Mizuna, all the mustards, do great here most of the winter, all winter if we don't get a killer east wind and hard freeze. I usually mound leaves and straw up around them or hoop them with plastic 'grow therm' (plastic sheeting with holes that allow cooling) to give them some added protection. The mizuna almost always goes into spring and bolts about March. So does the Tah Tsai, although the flat rosettes of tender leaves are a slug fest unless you keep at it. But they make nice winter and spring salads!
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