August garden update: Potatoes, garlic, pumpkins, canning, sunflowers, and more

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Sandy
Mixed berry jam bars

Mixed berry jam bars

I’ve been MIA from my blog lately because I’ve been busy. As Toni at Backyard Feast points out, it doesn’t feel as though there are enough hours in the day during the peak summer months. A lot has been going on in the garden and the kitchen. Let me do a quick recap.

First, I’ve been canning. In addition to making strawberry and mixed berry (raspberry and blueberry) jam, I’ve also canned a couple of boxes of peaches. I don’t get enough peaches from my trees to can, so I bought two boxes of peaches when we took the kids to Remlinger Farms for an afternoon of fun on the rides. Per usual, I’ve been making too much jam (yes, this is possible). As such, I decided to make a batch of mixed berry jam bars today. OK, maybe it’s not possible to have too much jam when there are always more jam bars to make.

La Ratte potatoes

La Ratte potatoes

Outside, I’ve been harvesting a variety of foods. Today, I took out the last of the potato patch. These are La Ratte potatoes, a fingerling variety good for soups and salads. I’ve also been harvesting green beans, lettuce, Sungold tomatoes, and cucumbers. The crop of tomatoes inside the greenhouse is looking good this year in spite of the cool weather, although only the small Sungolds have ripened so far.

Garlic braids

Garlic braids

A few weeks ago, I harvested all the garlic. I ended up with a braid each of German Extra Hardy, Inchelium Red, and Broadleaf Czech. Well, they aren’t exactly braids. I kind of suck at braiding garlic so I used twist ties to fake the braids. It worked out pretty well.

Cover crop planted raised bed

Cover crop planted raised bed

In the old garlic and potato beds, I completely cleared the beds, added a layer of compost (I still have a giant pile of compost I haven’t used up), and then planted cover crops in the beds.

Baby sugar pumpkin

Baby sugar pumpkin

The squash plants haven’t been happy about our cool summer. It has just been in the last few weeks that they’ve put on substantial growth. The sugar pie pumpkin plant has been doing the best and now has several pumpkins forming.

Sunflower in greenhouse

Sunflower in greenhouse

Inside the greenhouse, the sunflower plants have grown as tall as they possibly can. These  “Humongous” sunflowers are living up to their name. The top of the greenhouse is about 12′ tall, so these plants have far exceeded the 5′ – 7′ size noted in the plant description.

Goats on the job

Goats on the job

Outside the greenhouse today, we had the goats hard at work. Derek has set up a series of “hitching posts” to stake out the goats so they can graze and cut down grass and vegetation. This is a winning solution all around. The grass and vegetation get cut down, the goats get food, it’s quiet, and doesn’t involve heavy labor with a gas guzzling mower.

Shiro plum

Shiro plum

One area where we can’t stake out the goats is the orchard. They’d just love to eat the delectable fruit tree leaves and I just can’t let them happen. It’s a no-goat zone for sure. In the orchard, the Shiro plum is getting close to being ripe. Compared to my plum crop last year, I have about half as many plums and they will be ripe at least two weeks later than they were last summer. The apple crops are ripening nicely, but I only have one peach on my outdoor tree (again, far less than last year) and no pears at all.

Baby kiwi fruit

Baby kiwi fruit

Even though we won’t have any pears this year, we will have kiwi for the first time. I’ve got a good number of baby kiwi ripening on the vine.

Grapes ripening

Grapes ripening

Growing on the same pergola, the grapes are starting to plump up as well. It will be at least a month before these are ready. I think the kiwi might be ready about the same time.

Our tiny rooster

Our tiny rooster

Finally, I’ll end with a picture of our mini rooster (upper left). Based on his age, he should be getting close to full size at this point. He’s a Golden Campine rooster and this is a smaller breed. He really does look small next to our standard-sized hens. So far, aside from being dumb as a post, he’s not a bad rooster. If he continues to behave himself OK, we’ll keep him. Otherwise, we’ll be posting the “free rooster” ad on Craigslist, with the “no questions asked” clause.

Hope you are enjoying the summer bounty in your garden.

Sandy

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It’s all beginning

Posted on July 17, 2011 by Sandy
Patriot blueberry

Patriot blueberry

With the first blush of blueberries, the summer fruit crops are announcing their arrival. Everywhere I looked in the garden this morning, there was either new fruit forming or something in need of picking. The next few months will be the busy season in our garden because we’ll have the dual tasks of harvesting and preverving (and also eating of course!) our crops. We have 24 blueberry plants in the ground (at varying stages of maturity) and I just purchased another dozen young blueberry plants, which I need to plant soon. As some point, I will have WAY more blueberries than we can eat. I’m hoping that by the time the plants mature, Lily and Andrew will be interested in have a blueberry business in their teen years, selling at our local food co-op. If they don’t, maybe I will. Alternately, I could have enough to trade crops with other fruit/veggie growers. Now, I’ll run through a quick series of photos showing some of the fruit/berry progress in the garden.

Lapin cherries

Lapin cherries

We only have three cherry trees in the garden. All are young trees and all have ripe fruit. I’m going to pick everything that’s ripe today because the birds are already plucking this fruit.

Native huckleberry bushes

Native huckleberry bushes

The rain has made the native huckleberries especially fat this year. We have a number of plants growing on our property, especially near the wooded area of the yard.

Jostaberries

Jostaberries

I planted two Jostaberry bushes last year and I’m getting some first fruit this year. A Jostaberry is a complex cross between a black currant and a gooseberry.

Sungold tomato

Sungold tomato

I harvested the first ripe Sungold tomato today. Yum! I think we’ll have a lot of Sungold tomatoes this year and it just occurred to me that these would probably make a very good tomato jam.

Baby kiwi fruit

Baby kiwi fruit

And I’ll end with a photo of the thing I’m most excited about right now. After a five-year wait, I think our kiwi vine is finally going to produce fruit this year. The vine appears to have pollinated well (it is a self-fertile female vine) and a lot of baby fruit is forming. Unless something goes wrong and the fruit aborts, we should have kiwi this year!

Also, at the begining stage: Our serious investigation of solar power. Yesterday, Derek and I went to NW SolarFest. We met with a number of home energy audit experts, solar manufacturers and solar installers. We’re going to have the home energy audit done in the next few months to set the stage for eventual solar installation, hopefully using materials developed in Washington state.

Sandy

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Jam and this and that

Posted on June 26, 2011 by Sandy
Strawberry jam

Strawberry jam

Here’s my first batch of jam of the season. The kids are eating all the strawberries out of the garden as soon as they ripen, so we bought a half flat of strawberries from the Woodinville Farmers’ Market. I could have waited until next week when I should have enough of my own strawberries ready for jam, but I was eager to start making jam and decided to buy some. Plus, we go through strawberry jam so fast I’ll need to make a few batches anyway. This batch made 7 1/2 half-pint jars of jam. The 1/2 jar has already been consumed and we’ve already opened another jar. See, we do go through strawberry jam fast!

Asparagus stump soup

Asparagus stump soup

After reading the latest post on A Posse Ad Esse, I hung my head in shame for never using the ends of asparagus plants. I always compost or worm bin the ends, thinking they are not worth using. How wrong I’ve been. A Posse Ad Esse suggested using them in soup. I whipped up a batch, using a “wing it” recipe similar to this one, and the soup was great. Never again with I throw out the asparagus stumps.

Garlic scapes

Garlic scapes

Speaking of not wasting food, look at the lovely garlic scapes I harvested today. These will be part of our dinner tonight, although I’m still thinking about how I might use them.

Spreading sage

Spreading sage

Got any suggestions for using sage? I’ve got a lovely huge patch of sage that comes back every year. Using it to season foods only uses up a miniscule percentage of the plant. I’m looking for a recipe that would use sage leaves in volume. Maybe something like a sage pesto . . . . Any other ideas?

Parris Island Cos lettuce

Parris Island Cos lettuce

There isn’t much to say about this Parris Island Cos lettuce other than it looks pretty in the wine barrel, don’t you think?

Harry and Lucy eating blackberries

Harry and Lucy eating blackberries

Outside, the animals enjoyed the sun today. We moved Harry and Lucy over to a blackberry batch (staking them out) and they munched away happily.

Chickens in the pasture

Chickens in the pasture

Out in the pasture, the chickens scratched away at a pile of weeds I threw to them. This is the north side of the pasture under several large evergreen trees, so there isn’t a whole lot of grass in this area. The exposed dirt does give them good places to take dirt baths, which they seem to enjoy (as much as a chicken can enjoy).

Three pullets and a young rooster

Three pullets and a young rooster

Finally, I’ll leave you with a picture of our newest chickens. As you can see, one of these chickens is not like the other. Yes, we have a rooster in this batch. We haven’t determined his fate yet. We moved the new chickens out of the garage yesterday into the chicken tractor in the pasture. They’ll live in the tractor until they are large enough to join the rest of the flock.

So, I’ll end by coming back to the sage. What the heck should I do with the huge volumes of sage I have?

Sandy

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Pretty as a peach

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Sandy
Mini-dwarf peach tree fruit

Mini-dwarf peach tree fruit

Even though I almost killed the peach and nectarine trees in the greenhouse last winter (I totally forgot about watering them for months), the trees rallied this spring and came fully back to life after a few weeks of watering. Not only did they recover, they set fruit this year and the peaches are coming along nicely. These peaches need a few more weeks to ripen, but luckily it looks as though our peach tree in the orchard also pollinated fairly well this year and we might get another crop of peaches later in the summer. Here’s how that peach tree looked in late August last year. Hopefully we’ll have similar results this year, provided we get an actual summer, something Cliff Mass suggests we might on his weather blog.

Strawberries in June

Strawberries in June

In addition to peach progress, the strawberries are just beginning to ripen. I nibbled on both white and red alpine strawberries today as well as standard strawberries. We’re supposed to get some sun over the next few days and that would help the strawberries tremendously. It would be nice to have enough to harvest by Sunday evening.

With the berries starting to ripen, I’ll probably make my first batch of jam soon. We never seem to have enough classic strawberry jam. We go through it so fast. Now that I have three strawberry beds I should be able to make a good amount of jam, provided we get enough sun for the berries to ripen.

Here’s to the start of berry season!

Sandy

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Peas, tomatoes, roses, and an awesome water saving device

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Sandy
Oregon Giant peas

Oregon Giant peas

The peas are finally emerging! I planted these peas back in March and then they did a whole lot of nothing for a while and I thought I might have to start over. Germination was not great, so I recently added some new seeds to the bed. Still, I’m finally start to get real, edible peas for the first batch of seeds. Yay!

Greenhouse tomatoes

Greenhouse tomatoes

In the greenhouse, the tomatoes are growing so fast I can hardly believe it. I’m not exaggerating when I say the plants are adding noticeable inches of growth each day. The Sun Gold tomatoes in particular are getting tall. They are almost up to the rafters in the greenhouse. Last year, I tied the Sun Gold to the rafters because it grew so tall. Looks like I’ll need to do the same this year. I’ve also started doing some light pruning of the tomatoes to keep the plants open and airy.

Old-fashioned rose

Old-fashioned rose

The roses have finally started blooming. This pink one smells lovely.

Simple water timer

Simple water timer

I’ll end with my new favorite garden tool, a basic water timer. For my trees and shrubs, I water with a Ross root feeder. The whole point of the root feeder is to water just the roots to save water. It works great unless you forget to turn it off and waste a whole lot of water and end up with a huge water bill. This is why I purchased a simple mechanical water timer. It works great. When I go to water a tree or shrub I just set how long I want the water to run and it automatically turns off. Now I won’t have to wake up in the middle of the night to go out and turn off a hose I left on (yes, I’ve had to do that before). I should have bought one of these years ago.

Happy gardening!

Sandy

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Playing footies with my apple trees

Posted on June 7, 2011 by Sandy
Apples with protective nylon covers

Apples with protective nylon covers

I’m trying something new this year to protect my apple trees from pests — nylon socks! I’m not a big fan of spraying my fruit trees. Even with the most organically friendly materials possible, spraying is a pain and I don’t usually get around to the task at the right time. Plus, you have to have a nice sunny, but not windy, day to spray and that doesn’t always happen when I need it to.

So, I was poking around the City Fruit site and found link to another site with information about using nylon footies to protect fruit from coddling moth. What the heck, I thought, I’ll give it a try. I ordered nylon socks and orthodontic elastic bands in bulk from eBay.

When it was finally time to start putting the socks on, I was worried it would be a huge pain, but I worked out a system pretty quickly and found it wasn’t much of a pain at all. In fact, since I have to thin the fruit on the trees anyway, it just added one more step to thinning process. I did leave some of the fruit on the apple trees unprotected (as a control) and we’ll see if the nylon socks make any difference at all. Here’s to pest-free (hopefully) fruit!

Lilac bouquet

Lilac bouquet

I’ll end with a shot of my favorite lilac. It’s deep purple edged in white and smells wonderful. I love it and the bees do too.

Happy gardening!

Sandy

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The Mother Earth News Fair is this weekend!

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Sandy

The Mother Earth News Fair will be in Puyallup this weekend. Be there or be square! Derek and I will be taking the kids on Sunday and we’re really looking forward to it. Get all the details on the Mother Earth News Fair site.

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Raised beds, greenhouse, and peaches in May

Posted on May 29, 2011 by Sandy
Outdoor raised bed garden

Outdoor raised bed garden

It’s May, but barely, and I’m still working on getting all my summer crops into the ground. In part, this has taken extra time because we’re still working on our big garden infrastructure project of the year, a few new raised beds and gravel garden paths. As you can see, at the time I took the picture above, the project is still a work in progress.  In the newest bed, I’ve planted a few squash plants and a sad six-pack of corn. The corn was the last one at the store and was last for obvious reasons. I also planted a few bean seeds to make a poor man’s three sisters garden. It felt good to get this bed planted. It’s been on my list of tasks for weeks now.

Oh, one more thing about the outdoor raised bed garden. Take a look at my garlic in the upper left corner of the picture above. It is absolutely huge this year! I think I’m going to have a great crop of garlic to harvest. Yum.

Greenhouse beds in late May

Greenhouse beds in late May

Inside the greenhouse, everything is growing like crazy. I use the greenhouse for heat-loving summer crops. All my tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers are grown inside the greenhouse. I also have a few lettuce plants (slow to bolt varieties) and heat-loving herbs, such as basil and cilantro, in the greenhouse. My tomato plants are flowering and have finally taken off after a slow start as seedlings.

Peaches in late May

Peaches in late May

In the greenhouse, I also have two mini-dwarf trees, a peach and a nectarine. I thought I had killed them because I totally neglected to water them last winter. Well, a few months of spring watering later, the trees are fully leafed out and have fruit. Whew! I would have been really sad if I had destroyed these trees.

In the orchard, most of the trees have finished blossoming. In a week or two, I’ll have a good idea of what pollinated well and what didn’t. I’m pretty sure my Italian prune failed to set fruit again. If so, I think the tree will be coming out. It’s been a disappointment for at least four years and I don’t want to waste space on a tree that won’t produce. I am seeing little cherries on the cherry trees, so that’s good, and I think I’m going to have record blueberry and strawberry crops if the weather will cooperate even a little bit.

Well, back out to the garden to finish the gravel paths. Happy gardening!

Sandy

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The best Mother’s Day present and garlic potatoes

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Sandy
Derek power washing the greenhouse

Derek power washing the greenhouse

Derek provides the strong back in our gardening relationship. I dream up all sorts of projects and Derek gets roped in when something exceeds my strength or patience level. Today, without any prompting, Derek volunteered to power wash the greenhouse.  Garden house glass (or polycarbonate in our case) eventually gets a build up of pollen and mildew on the outside. This reduced the sun flow into the greenhouse so it has to be cleaned occasionally. Happy Mother’s Day to me!

Moles thwarted by hardware cloth

Moles thwarted by hardware cloth

After a long battle with moles that involved digging out all our raised beds and installing hardware cloth, I am seeing signs of victory. First, I have seen zero evidence of moles in the beds. Second, I’m finding spots outside the beds where they have tunneled up. This proves they are still digging heavily in the areas around the beds, but they can’t get in. Awesome.

Potatoes growing in the garlic bed

Potatoes growing in the garlic bed

I’ll end with a couple of interesting things I’ve noticed in the garden. First, I’ve got potatoes growing in my garlic bed. As part of the mole project, I had to completely dig out and redo this bed. I took out every left over potato I could find. Apparently, a few remained in the soil. I’m wondering if the two can cohabitate or if the potatoes will try to choke out the garlic. Any thoughts on this?

Rhubarb flower

Rhubarb flower

Second, one of my rhubarb plants has flowered. I’ve never seen this before. Based on some quick online research, the consensus was to chop out the flowering stalk as it would take too much energy away from edible stalk production. So, interesting as the flower would have been to grow, I’ve chopped it out.

Next time, I’ll post about the new baby chicks. Yes, more chicks.

Sandy

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For all the garden geeks out there – my “hot” bed

Posted on April 29, 2011 by Sandy
My "hot" grow bed

My "hot" grow bed

This spring has been cold and wet. We’re a few days away from May and it is still cold and wet. Fearing a year with wimpy tomato production (again), I took some drastic measures. I created a “hot” grow bed in my greenhouse. You’d think the greenhouse alone would be enough to warm up the beds. It helps, but without sun we’re not getting good tomato and cucumber soil temperatures yet.

Cold grow bed

Cold grow bed

Here, you can see another bed in the greenhouse that has not been made into a hot bed. There is a 14 degree temperature difference.

So, what is a hot bed? If you think of the seedling heat mats you use indoors, a hot bed is kind of like that, but on a larger scale. This hot bed uses heating coils and electricity. Here’s how I put it together.

Heating cables attached to hardware cloth

Heating cables attached to hardware cloth

First, I ordered soil heating cables. The cables were then attached to a piece of hardware cloth in order to keep them straight and evenly spaced in the soil. This cable is 36′ long, using 126 watts of power. The energy usage is definitely a consideration and I plan to unplug the coils as soon as the other beds in the greenhouse catch up temperature-wise. This is merely at attempt to jump-start the season given the terrible weather.

Planting the hot bed

Planting the hot bed

After getting the hardware cloth and heating cables in place, I installed the tomato cages, making sure they did not push into the heating cables. Then, I began planting the tomatoes. I have to admit, this was a pain to do with the tomato towers already in place.

Tomatoes, growing in the hot bed for one week

Tomatoes, growing in the hot bed for one week

The tomatoes have now been in the hot bed for a week and they are doing really well. I’m seeing lots of new growth and the color of the plants looks wonderful.

To offset the electrical usage, Derek and I have been discussing installing a solar panel on the greenhouse. This could be a good way for us to get started with solar, something that continues to be part of our long-term plan. I must acknowledge it does strike me as a bit funny to use a solar panel to create electricity to warm the soil in what is already a passive solar greenhouse, but gardening in the cool Pacific Northwest brings with it many challenges.

I fully understand that this kind of set up is not for everyone. Most gardeners do not have a greenhouse and those who do probably don’t have electricity available in their greenhouse. Even so, I wanted to give it a try and it will be a fun experiment to see if this set up makes any measurable difference in my tomato harvests this year.

Sandy

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