Subsistence Pattern

What's Up...

2012-02-27T06:25:00.008-08:00

While the outside world is still covered in snow and ice, inside our little greenhouse celery and onions are beginning to germinate...and oh so slowly do they grow.

On the porch, temporarily under lights, peppers and eggplants have emerged as well. It will be many months before they can be planted outside, but it's a start. Our eventual goal is to expand the length of the greenhouse and install a small wood stove that I have in order to free myself of electric lighting and heat altogether...eventually.

I am using a mix of my own composted soil and sand with a small amount of wood and bone ash mixed in for potting soil again this year. Thyme leaves that were collected and dried last fall are steeped in water, mixed 2 cups per gallon with rain water this concoction helps to stave off the dreaded dampening off disease. As they begin to emerge the plants are sprayed with this for the first couple days to help combat any unfriendly pathogens in the soil...keeping the soil warm also helps prevent these issues. I use rain water because it seems to help the soil stay soft compared to our tap water that, due to it's high mineral content, sometimes causes the soil to form a hard crust.

These plants are growing in cut off milk jugs that have been placed in larger plastic containers to act as a sort of mini solarium under the lights to help hold in the warmth while growing on our much cooler porch.

We are also experimenting with many hard and semi-hardwood cuttings from holly, service berry, hawthorn, cottonwood, climbing hydrangea, various grapes, cherry, plum, mulberry, juniper, black elderberry, and blue elderberry. I have had a lot of success with many of these cuttings in the past, but some new experiments, like hawthorn, are supposed to be somewhat difficult to start from hardwood cuttings...we shall see. More on the results of this later.

...and, I watched and greatly enjoyed the below video this morning. From http://www.nfb.ca/film/my_urban_garden.

NFB's Synopsis:

In this short film, Halifax gardener Carol Bowlby harvests a mouth-watering crop from her small backyard plot. In considering soil quality, lack of space and a short growing season challenges rather than obstacles, she offers a wealth of practical growing tips for urban gardeners. By heeding Bowlby's advice, bountiful organic gardens work equally well on apartment balconies, in small or large city lots or in a rural setting

Pellet Stove Dehydration Unit #2

2012-01-26T05:36:00.000-08:00

Each year a small amount of our food stuff is dehydrated in order to be preserved for the ensuing cold months. Trays of raspberries, strawberries, and other berries can often be found setting atop the barn roof during the hot summer days slowly turning into fruit leather. As the suns rays beam down upon the roof it creates waves of heat that help to wick away the moisture within the mushed fruits, quickly drying them to a storable consistency. Unfortunately, other than berries, most of what we would like to dry is not ready to be harvested until early fall (September and October) at which time the sun no longer shines with the intensity needed to get away with simply plopping a tray down on the barn roof and walking away until it is fully dehydrated.

In previous years we have relied upon an electric dehydrator to dry late season tomatoes, apples, pears, plums, tomatillos, elderberries and other fall crops. When our electric dehydrator broke in 2010 we re-purposed the trays and using a cardboard box as a makeshift air tunnel proceeded to use the hot air blowing out of our pellet stove to finish the task. It worked so good that I built a more permanent device to be used this past fall.

Our pellet stove dehydration unit #2 works on the same principle as the cardboard model. Hot air flows into the wooden box and is routed up through re-purposed dehydrator trays slowly but very effectively drying the foods within. During the months of October, November, and again in the early spring we often prefer to use our pellet stove to heat the house leaving the wood stove for the colder winter months, so it was only logical for us to make better use of the stoves heat by rigging up a way to dry our foods as well.

It's hard to take a decent photo inside our house so bear with me as these pictures are a bit hard to look at. This picture shows the dehydrator butted up against our pellet stove while inside tomatoes are drying. The whole unit sits atop an old barbecue stand that helps bring it to the correct height an makes it easier to roll around.

Here you can see the hole was cut just smaller than the round trays and a line was drawn so I could easily center them properly.

Inside I attached a piece of sheet metal to help direct the airflow up into the trays rather than the corners of the box.

I put bumpers on the outside so the unit would not come into direct contact with the hot pellet stove and also added a drip tray to catch any liquids that might leak out as is prone to happen when drying tomatoes.

Most of our dried goods are stored in glass jars. While tomatoes tend to lose their flavor after six months or so most fruits, corn, hot peppers, and beans will keep for years this way. Have you ever dried a tomatillo? It brings out a surprisingly sweet/tart flavor that we find most appealing, especially as an addition to our salads.

OK then, back to dreaming about spring...

Winter Salads and Ice Skates

2011-12-29T06:08:00.000-08:00

Not much going on around here, took a picture of some salad greens I picked late yesterday afternoon. It never ceases to amaze me how resilient some of these plants can be to the cold weather. The snow has come and gone a couple times now, the weather has been as low as 10°F (-12.22°C) with most of the month's lows being in the 20° and under range yet we are still able to pick fresh salads from the garden on a daily basis. The amazing part is that nothing pictured above was from under our row covers, but from the outside garden. I'm like a little kid in a candy store, even after all these years it still surprises me so much that I show my wife particular greens as I go through and clean them and we marvel at their tenacity.

In other "exciting" news, the grandson is learning to ice skate...or was, it has since warmed and started raining so the 4" of ice is now covered with another of water. That's OK, we noticed a flaw in our plan as the boy obviously is in need of a full hockey mask lest he knock all his front teeth out...after all, two of those teeth are permanent now.:)

Rambling Thoughts and Speculation on Winter Gardening

2011-12-03T05:27:00.000-08:00

"The gardening season officially begins on January 1st, and ends on December 31."- Marie Huston

I like Marie Huston's words. Gardening does not really have to come an abrupt halt as nature ushers in shorter days and colder temperatures but can continue right on through with a little thought towards what is being grown and how to protect it from the harshness of the weather. November going into December sets the stage for our ventures in winter gardening, often bringing with it frost, frozen ground, and snow. While much of the garden area lies dormant this time of year we are fortunate to still have a nice amount of tenacious, nutritious, and absolutely delicious edible plants at our disposal.

Experience has allowed us a better understanding of our ability to have a stable amount of fresh food available from the garden, with any luck, 365 days a year. Over time we have added an excellent selection of plants to our winter gardening portfolio, eventually figuring out that, in our gardens, diversity is the key to success. On any given year the winter weather and temperatures (USDA hardiness zone 5b) can fluctuate quite dramatically, some years are cold and dry others slightly warmer with lots of snow or more often it is a mix of both. In the winter of 2008/09 and 2010/11 we had massive amounts of snowfall while 2009/10 left us with none of this insulating coverage, only rain. All of these weather variances seem to affect individual cold hardy plants differently.

Mixed winter greens in the fall through early winter transition of 2008/09.

As mentioned in previous posts, when subjected to colder conditions some plants are actually able to concentrate or increase their sugar content which in turn serves them as a sort of natural antifreeze, helping them to withstand frosty and freezing conditions for extended periods of time..makes them taste better too. The slower the weather cools off the better the plants are able to acclimatize in this manner. It is not so much the chilly weather that will wear on these plants but all of the other elements combined such as cold, rain, snow, and wind that tends to break them down on a cellular level much faster than the cold alone. A simple protective cover makes a world of difference.

We use plastic covered hoops and cold frames over our slightly raised beds to help protect plants in the garden. This is nothing new, as far back as premedieval Rome (in a world without plastic) it has been rumored that linen cloth was soaked in tallow, resin, or linseed oil causing it to become translucent and thus allowing for both light and protection against the cold for both plants and people. Thin sheets of the mineral mica and Selenite were also used to protect plants in ancient Italy.

"Also, if it be worth the while, little wheels may be put under larger vases, that they may be brought out with less labour, and harboured in the house: but, notwithstanding, they ought to be covered with glasses, that in cold weather also, when the days are clear, they may be safely brought forth to the sun. By this method Tiberius was provided with cucumbers almost the whole year." - L. Junius Moderatus Columella AD 4-AD 70 (my take on the 1745 English Translation of De Re Rustica page 495 & 496.)

Some of this year's young red and green Italian chicory

Listed below are plants that we have found to be very cold hardy. Of course, on any given year some of these plants will thrive while others will fail depending upon the conditions nature provides them. The timing of when to plant is also important, too soon and they might bolt to seed or grow too large to fit under our covered rows and cold frames, planted too late and they will not mature to a desired stature. This particular facet has a lot of trial and error involved as each individual garden and the plants contained therein are so very different.

In our garden the plants are grouped in those direct seeded or transplanted in the spring (April-June), summer (July-August), and late-summer (mid August-early September). We do not have set dates for planting as the weather dictates this for us. For example, if it is extremely hot and dry in mid August I might wait for a few cool, cloudy, rainy days before planting my spinach. Putting the seeds in the fridge a couple weeks in advance also helps greatly with warm weather germination.

More early evidence of lettuce, chicory (succory), and other greens being grown all year round -

"After that the Romans began to devise a means of growing them at all seasons of the year, and even preserving them, for they were used in pottage as well as salads." - Hardwicke's science-gossip: an illustrated medium of interchange and Gossip for Students and Lovers of Nature, Volume 13 page 102

Cold Hardy Greens That We Grow -

Arugula - Including perennial Sylvetta and Grazia. Perennials planted in early spring, annual varieties late summer.

Asian Greens - We used to have good luck keeping Boc Choy well into the winter but have not grown it in recent years. That said, I do hope to focus more on this type of green going forward. Planted mid summer. Kitazawa Seed Company would appear to be a good source for a wide selection of Asian greens...I will be ordering from them for the first time this year.

Beet Greens - Many of the younger beet greens, before the roots ball up, especially those of Bull's Blood beets, are very cold hardy. Planted mid summer.

Blackberry - With leaves remaining green, often throughout the winter, this plant makes for a wonderful tea leaf or medicinal herb...excellent source of easily assimilated calcium.

Borage - Planted in the late summer and used as a salad green this plant holds up surprisingly well to freezing conditions.

Brussel Sprout - While we rarely are able to actually get any decent "sprouts" from our brussels I have noticed that the smaller plants hold up to the cold quite well managing many freeze and thaw cycles...we use them for their greens and early winter chicken food. Planted in the spring.

Cabbage - Savoy cabbage like Melissa are quite cold hardy, easily surviving temperatures in the low 20°'s and well into December in our garden. I'm experimenting with later/mid-summer planting times as I can see the potential for them to survive all the way through the winter. Just yesterday I picked some perfectly fine small headed red Ruby Ball cabbage that were frozen solid just days before. Planted in the late spring.

Calendula - There is (was, it has since melted as the temperatures have warmed) lots of snow on the ground as I write this and we have had numerous 20° something and below nights now...even so there is a calendula blooming under one of our row covers. I should involve them more in our winter garden as the greens are edible and the plant is obviously fairly cold hardy.

Celery - Thinner stalked celery seems to survive the winter under row covers fairly well, we have had luck with Varsity, Giant Red, and Parcel. Last year we kept a whole 4 x 8' row of mostly Giant Red alive all winter under a row cover and some of our Parcel survived with nothing but snow as insulating protection. Transplanted in the spring.

Chard - As with the beet greens we have had lots of luck overwintering younger Swiss Chard plants but not so much with the older/larger ones. Planted mid summer.

Chervil - A wonderful addition to the winter garden, ours get a red hue after a few months of cold but still retain that wonderful liquorice flavor. Planted mid summer.

Chickweed - More than a mere weed this plant is a nice refreshing addition to our winter salads...the chickens like it too. Pretty much plants itself.

Chicory - We have had great luck overwintering Frisée, various radiccio, Belgian and Batavian endive, Italian chicory (Catalogna), and even the common dandelion. For winter greens, Catalogna, Batavian, and Frisée are planted in mid summer all others in the early to late spring.

Collard Greens - The young plants thrive in the winter garden but are, unfortunately, especially attractive to slugs.

Cress- Holds up fairly well if kept under cover. Planted mid summer.

Curly Dock - A fantastic spinach substitute. We are overwintering this for the first time in a covered row this season and have high hopes for it's ability to provide really early spring leaves if protected from the elements.

Herbs - Common household herbs such as thyme, oregano, winter savory, some varieties of sage, lovage for early spring greens, French tarragon (dormant during winter), and many members of the mint family all manage the winter quite well, especially if they are covered.

Hesperis(Dame’s Rocket) - Very hardy plant that we are learning to make much better use of as a winter green. Not to be mistaken for another hardy short lived perennial flowering plant called foxglove "Digitalis" that might, as my grandson says, "kill you to death" if eaten accidentally and in any quantity. Use young plants or pruned older ones. Planted early to mid summer. Read more about this super tenacious plant here.

Kale- Along with turnips this is the plant we count on the most for a steady supply of winter greens. We have had luck with White and Red Russian, Dwarf Curled "Vates", Winterbor, Beedy's Camden, Lacinato (dinosaur), Lacinato Rainbow, and are experimenting with Redbor kale in this winter's garden. We have the best luck with younger smaller/thinner stalked plants. Planted in summer, early to mid July.

Lettuce - Winter hardy varieties like Tango and Winter Density Romaine will often provide greens well into the winter before the leaves are compromised but with any luck many will survive via their roots and come back in the early spring. See Dave's post for more lettuce and Asian green varieties that might be good candidates for the winter garden. We currently use a mix from saved seeds belonging to varieties I no longer keep track of. Planted mid to late summer.

Mache - While we have had mixed results in our garden most people seem to have really good luck overwintering this corn flavored green. Planted late summer.

Mallow- (young plants or pruned older ones) Both pink flowered M. Alcea and shorter stemmed Malva Moschata Alba with white flowers could care less about the cold weather...edible hollyhocks too. Planted early to mid summer.

Mustard - We have mostly grown Red Giant but there are other hardy varieties out there. Planted mid summer.

Nipplewort - (Lapsana communis) Now here is an edible weed that first showed itself in my garden two years ago, at first I fought it, mostly because for the life of me I couldn't figure out what it was, now I know, now we eat it.:) Seems to be very cold hardy and something I will be making much better use of in the future. Here is a recipe for this prolific plant.

Onions/Chives/ Garlic greens - Egyptian, scallions, garlic, and various chives will all provide one with more than a few nice shoots during the winter months. Our chives usually fade away in the winter but are one of the first greens to appear again in early spring. Planted early spring.

Parsley(we use curly leaf) - Very cold hardy well into the winter. Sometimes there are issues with mold but most plants provide us with greens all winter long. Planted early spring.

Pea greens - We have often grown fall planted pea greens to serve as an addition to our salads well into mid December as they can often handle temperatures in the low to mid 20's.

Plantain (various) - Not the tastiest green around but they certainly are hardy and resilient.

Prunella - Still experimenting with this plant but it does seem to be quite indifferent to the cold and is another healthful spinach substitute.

Radish - We can't seem to grow a decent root no matter what we try but the greens will hold out well into winter. Planted late summer.

Rutabaga - Left in the garden, rutabaga will often lose its larger leaves but put out new growth during any warm periods. Some of the roots do rot but others manage the winter quite well. Planted in the spring or summer.

Salad Burnet - Needs nothing but a little snow to protect it. Planted in early spring.

Scorzonera - These perennial plants can be used for the roots or greens and are quite tolerant of the cold. Planted in early spring.

Sorrel - Our knowledge lies with overwintering French and Red Veined sorrel, both of which are extremely cold hardy. Planted in early spring and cut back after flowering or planted mid summer. Sheep and Wood sorrel make for nice spring greens but we have not purposely tried to use them during the winter months, although I would imagine that if planted at the proper time, before they are able to set seed, they would also prove to be useful.

Sowthistle (smooth/annual) - While not for everyone we enjoy the purplish colored leaves of this hardy plant in our early winter and summer salads. Planted mid to late summer.

Spinach - The Bloomingdale variety has done well for us, often providing greens all winter long. Planted mid to late summer depending upon the weather.

Turnip - We grow both Seven Top and Purple Top for their greens but are often surprised with small Purple Top turnips come spring as both these plants have an insatiable will to grow given any period of warmth, even in the depths of winter. Planted late summer.

Violets - I'm not sure about all of them but the wild purple flowered ones and violas that we grow can be picked and plucked for their mucilaginous leaves all winter. They are most efficient at planting themselves.

Common garden sage has no qualms about enduring wintry conditions

Most of our winter gardening experience lies in using plastic covered low tunnels and cold frames to protect the crops. Here are some links on various design tutorials that come to mind. More examples of cold frames, greenhouses, and hoophouses can be found on my sidebar.

Our own simple row covers (zone 5b)

Dan McMurray's row covers (zone 6/7)

Laura's row covers (zone 8b)

Thomas's mini hoop houses (zone 6a)

Herrick Kimball's whizbang row cover hoop system (zone 5a)

Eliot Coleman's quick hoops (zone 5)

Susy's garden hoops (zone 5)

Dave's cold frames (zone 6b)

Susan Robishaw's stackable cold frames (zone 4) - Sue also has a booklet out called "Frost Dancing - Tips from a Northern Gardener" that I have yet to read.

Another convenience of covered rows in a northern garden is access to thawed soil for planting early in the season. We are often able to direct seed or transplant spring greens even with a slow to melt covering of snow still on the ground. After a continuous 122 days below 40°F (4.44 °C) we started to get a bit antsy to get growing in this March 20th 2009 picture, the ground under the row covers remains warm to the touch while the surrounding earth is still partially frozen and covered in dirty white.

Here is a list of interesting reads on the subject of winter or cold climate gardening. Some deal more with cold hardy summer vegetables for northern gardens than actual winter crops but they all impart valuable information. The first three authors are the ones that focus the most on actual winter crops. I would love to hear any other suggestions for books to read on this subject.

Winter Gardening In The Maritime Northwest: Cool Season Crops For The Year-Round Gardener by Binda Colebrook

Four-Season Harvest and The Winter Harvest Handbook by Eliot Coleman - See how Eliot Coleman grows his crops at - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBKr9kPrpzU

The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener: How to Grow Your Own Food 365 Days a Year, No Matter Where You Live by Niki Jabbour - See more of her at - http://yearroundveggiegardener.blogspot.com/

Successful Cold Climate Gardening by Lewis Hill

Building And Using Our Sun-Heated Greenhouse: Grow Vegetables All Year-Round by Helen and Scott Nearing - See them in person at - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czr3iJBY4z0&feature=related

The Solar Greenhouse Book edited by James C McCullagh

The Victorian Kitchen Garden by Jennifer Davis - An inspiring video series on this can be seen at - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXO4mAY8tGI

The New Northern Gardener by Jennifer Bennett

Organic Gardening in Cold Climates by Sandra Perrin

Growing Vegetables West of The Cascades by Steve Solomon - See the author at - http://www.youtube.com/user/Padresolvideos#p/u/20/IzNL2chyId4 and http://www.soilandhealth.org/05steve%27sfolder/05aboutmeindex.html

Greening The Garden A Guide To Sustainable Growing by Dan Jason (I love the philosophical aspect of this book) - There is an excellent video series on him at -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMjGg9GeKPk

We begin setting up our hoops in early October just before the first frosts. This one contains Russian kale.

Some speculation. According to various sources increased potassium levels in the tissue of plant leaves "might" help to protect them during adverse weather conditions. Potassium is said to have a beneficial effect on how a plant assimulates or uses water and also aids in photosynthesis. Since frost damage often results from the dehydration of leaf tissue, increasing potassium could lead to better photosynthesis and acclimatization, thus protecting it from frost to a certain degree. While I have found no conclusive studies to back up this "cold hardiness theory" we do supply our garden, especially the winter crops, with plenty of potassium via wood ash as plants deficient in this mineral certainly would be more prone to cold weather damage.

Row of this year's Dwarf Curly Leaf kale

More speculation. Per a local climatologist that I follow, "Climate researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle recently said that their climate models are predicting increasing precipitation in the next decade in the northern latitudes. This should mean more snowy winter seasons across the Inland Empire and other regions of the U.S. near the Canadian border." Also, "European, Russian, and Japanese scientists are each predicting an increase in global cooling and expanding glaciers worldwide by 2014."

Check out this "cool" global temperature chart.

If this is true, both summer and winter gardening conditions will continue to prove increasingly challenging and having a good grasp on how to grow one's own food under these less than desirable circumstances will be of the utmost importance going forward. The snow in the pictures below has since dissipated as the weather warmed a bit last week, but it has once again started to cool off in the 20° and 30° range...I would have prefered to have kept the insulating coverage of snow but nature does not consult with me on such things.:) It will be interesting to see what the next couple months of winter will be like?

Purple and Seven Top turnips are one of our most important winter greens, some of them are already producing little turnips.

Jasper Hall

2011-11-15T05:51:00.000-08:00

Life on a 42 acre, organic, permaculture inspired eden in Cooper’s Creek Valley, Australia.

(This one's for you Heiko)

http://jasper-hall.com/index.php

Garden In Transition

2011-11-07T18:01:00.000-08:00

The last of the root veggies have been put away and are snug as a bug in a rug.

Carrots are layered in coolers,

parsnips in totes

and endive in pots.

The summer garden has been put to rest, all covered in frosted leaves, weeds, and debris...but the winter gardening season has just begun.

Some Little Sweet Potatoes

2011-11-02T05:37:00.000-07:00

A few days ago we harvested a modest amount of long, skinny, red and white sweet potatoes, they were absolutely beautiful...beauty being in the eye of the beholder of course.:) I can see that my endeavor to produce sizable sweets is going to be an ongoing multi-year challenge.

The potatoes were cultivated under a covered hoop for much of the summer but I believe this season's cold nighttime temperatures greatly limited tuber growth. Not a total failure though as a small 3' x 5' experimental plot still yielded a good 15 pounds of these tantalizing treasures that taste pretty darn amazing when roasted with a little olive oil, rosemary, salt and pepper.

Next Year's Firewood

2011-10-28T05:20:00.000-07:00

This past May we had a tree fall on our house, we were standing right there as it happened...kind of scary. Lucky for us insurance more than covered the repair cost and I was able to fix the roof myself. So this week we took out seven large trees, two of which were totally dead and the other four had dead tops, as a preventative measure. Guess that takes care of next year's firewood...and then some. This will spare us and our poor old truck the challenge of driving winding mountain roads next spring in our annual trek for firewood. Always nice to be one step ahead of the game.

The tree I'm cutting on in this photo is a Grand Fir, Native Americans used the inner bark of this tree for treating colds and fever...interesting.

Potting Up Celery & Little Willie

2011-10-24T06:07:00.000-07:00

Still frost free and our celery is potted up. In a another week or so it will be transferred to the root cellar for the winter, providing us with tasty stalks and leaves throughout the snowy months. Each pot contains 3-4 plants, 1/3 of whose foliage, preferably the less than desirable ones, are removed to compensate for root disturbance during the potting procedure. Only healthy plants that show no sign of bolting (sending up a round central stalk) to seed are chosen for winter storage. Most plants will not only survive the winter in our root cellar where they will continue producing, albeit somewhat more pale in comparison to the ones produced under sunlight, but can be planted back out into the garden in early spring for more fresh greens and eventually seed from chosen plants.

A new variety that we grew this year called Crisp & Tender, thanks to the seedy generosity of the kind soul at Kabun-Malay Kadazan girls blog, was a big hit with us. Unfortunately, we did not place it in the most ideal location as it was the last batch of celery planted this past spring and wound up in a slightly drier and shady location at the end of the row under a fir tree. Even so, the plants provided us with a plethora of slender and surprisingly dark green flavorful stalks...for sure we will be growing this variety again next season. We also grew Ventura, Giant Red, Utah, and a leaf celery called Parcel.

Sweet & Tender celery, all the way from Australia, thrived in our cool shady garden.

Also, meet Willie! This newest member of our family was found in the bushes almost two months ago. Hungry and emaciated the poor little guy took to us without complaint...he was so small. Little Willie has grown a lot, he likes to take dust baths with the chickens, greatly annoy the other cats, play in the garden, eat, eat some more, and sit on my lap while I am on the computer.

Michael Pilarski - Forest Gardens

2011-10-18T06:27:00.000-07:00

Michael Pilarski is a wellspring of knowledge when it comes to creating edible forest gardens.

See more of Michael Pilarski at -

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=michael+pilarski&suggested_categories=27%2C28&page=1

and

http://www.friendsofthetrees.net/

Harvesting Beets & Greens

2011-10-13T07:03:00.000-07:00

Beets were harvested this week and we were quite pleased with the results, about 70% of them filled out nicely, the rest were either damaged by mice or too small to bother with. Pictured in the cooler are some of the better looking greens that were set aside to be blanched and frozen. Interestingly, your average beet is supposed to take 55-80 days from the time it germinates to maturity, mine normally take between 90 and 120 days. The above beets were planted in mid-May and just recently reached a harvestable size.

The mice damage was my own fault, I should have been paying better attention and either hilled dirt around the roots in early September or set out mouse traps as this is often an issue we face in the fall. Near as I can tell the mice will not dig for roots and only snack on the parts remaining above the soil which makes beets, and sometimes carrots, an irresistible target for them. Gonna have to have a little chat with those cats about earning their keep...one of them even lives in our greenhouse during the summer and has apparently not been doing as good a job at rodent control as I had thought.

After harvesting, the tops are trimmed leaving about an inch of stem remaining, keeping some of the stem intact helps to keep them from spoiling. They are then placed into totes and coolers, layered in ever so slightly damp sandy soil, and stored in our root cellar. Beets are one of our longest storing root crops, some remaining in excellent eating condition for well over a year. This year's crop included Detroit Dark Red, Crosby's Egyptian, Lutz, Cylindria, Crapaudine, Boltardy, a few golden beets whose name slips me, and a new to us variety called Red Cloud (hybrid) that performed extremely well this year...wish I would have grown a few more of those.

The Harvest Season Is Upon Us

2011-10-06T06:25:00.000-07:00

All in all the garden has been good to us this year, recent harvests have yielded fairly decent amounts of food for winter storage. My little helper and I were blessed with over 400 lbs of potatoes from five rows totalling 160' in length, this is about a hundred pounds less than I had hoped for but more than enough to see us through the cold months...I just won't be sharing any with the chickens as had originally been planned. Next year we will plant more potatoes.

We track the weight of our tomatoes, potatoes, and onions to help us evaluate production, that coupled with the fact that since these crops are gathered in five gallon buckets it is just too easy not to.

Numerous different potato varieties were planted this season and all but one, Butterfinger , did well. Most of our spuds were small to medium in size...not a lot of big ones this time around. Pictured below are Russian Banana and Red Thumb. Russian Banana normally produces more potatoes per plant than any other variety we grow.

This year's potatoes were planted fairly intensively and yielded around 6-8 tubers per plant. They were planted 12" deep and I did not "hill them up" at all this summer. Because we have chosen to keep our aisle ways so very narrow, practically disappearing by mid-summer, it is difficult for me to hill up potatoes so I have found that deep planting makes up for this in our garden.

In 2012 I hope to experiment with more of a dryland farming technique with some of our potato crop that involves depending upon using only natural occurring rain water, wide spacing, and dirt/dust mulch to help with water retention. This will be done in an area separate from our main garden, we have a 3 acre field that is not cost effective to irrigate and need to start putting it to good use with something besides knapweed. For quite some time now one of my concerns has been that we are far too dependent upon irrigation and I would like to learn more about growing crops with less water and potatoes would seem to be a great dryland crop to experiment with. A fellow blogger , in a somewhat similar climate, has had great success with this type of farming and it would seem to be a much more sustainable manner in which to grow crops allowing us to shed some of our dependence on water pumped to us via electric power.

Our spring planted garlic experiment turned out all right, the cloves are a little on the small side but so is/was most everything else this year. We planted our garlic in the early spring because in previous winters too much snow cover has allowed voles unhindered access to a smorgasbord of fall planted bulbs and too little snow, coupled with lots of rain, has sometimes led to rotten garlic. I think I'll give the spring planting a try again next season and then decide which period of planting works best for us.

2011 was our best harvest ever with a couple hundred pounds of nice sized onions. We grew Stuttgarter, Yellow of Parma, Varsity, Jaune Paille Des Vertus, Utah, and a few Candy onions. I tried growing Walla Walla Sweets from starts again but they all shriveled up and died... probably due to our cold rainy spring weather. This will be the last time I will bother with that particular variety as they have rarely turned out for me.

The tomatoes did better than I had originally expected and should allow for a good amount of canned sauce which we will continue working on as they slowly finish ripening on our porch. Our 2011 tomato crop weighed in at close to 300 lbs, which is almost half of what we produced last year.

Our goal is to get an average yield of 5-10 lbs per plant, some will provide many more fruits some less. We grow a variety called De Tiganesti that provided nearly 20 lbs per plant whereas our Black Krim and Coastal Pride varieties only shared 4-5 tomatoes per plant with us...but their flavor more than made up for the lack of productivity.

We were very pleased with our peppers, especially considering the long cold spring we experienced, and have been freezing and eating them fresh since mid July. I picked the last few of them yesterday and will store them in the below bins until we use them up, if the weather remains cool they should keep just fine for a month or so.

The Grandson was more than happy to help pick apples, some of our trees are finally starting to produce decent amounts of fruit. The tree the boy is picking from is a Cortland. We are using these for storage and picked many pounds of mixed wild apples that were canned up as sauce.

These Spitzenberg apples have become one of my favorites for fresh eating. We were delighted to get around 40 lbs off this 6-7 year old tree.

Next up we will be harvesting beets, carrots, parsnips, cabbage, endive, celery, and so on.

Tomatoes

2011-09-08T05:32:00.000-07:00

With the continuation of warm daytime temperatures and dry weather our tomatoes are finally starting to come into their own. Looks like the plants will produce a little better than I had originally thought if this warm weather holds out for another week or so. With hot days and clear cold nights frost has been showing itself in our bottom field so we will have to be diligent in watching the temperatures and pick all of the tomatoes ripe or not at the last minute as is usual for us this time of the year. Luckily our tomatoes are grown up the hill and under the protection of the trees which gives us a good 3-5°'s of leeway. Here are a few that I noticed on my way out of the garden last night.

Bursztyn is always a favorite with its very sweet yet tangy flavor.

Still waiting for Miracle of the Market to produce a ripe tomato but the fruits are filling out nicely. (Thanks Annie's Granny:)

Persey is another new to us variety (again, thanks to Annie's Granny) that has been performing well...we have been eating quite a few of these the past couple weeks.

Silvery Fir Tree continues to surprise us, the foliage is all but gone while the tomatoes finish ripening. Each plant of this variety I grew produced around 15 - 16 nice tomatoes...not bad for such a shrimpy little plant.

Sweet & Spicy

2011-08-29T05:36:00.000-07:00

Sweet:

Our second crop of strawberries is coming on, not too many yet but they are of nice size and flavor. The ones above ended up in a smoothie...it was good.

Spicy:

I have been busy making our version of kimchi, the latest batch consisted of cucumbers, green beans, carrots, various cabbage, Tuscan kale, kohlrabi, Italian chicory, red amaranth leaves, onions, garlic, chives, green onions, green & black peppers (would have liked to have had some red peppers for color), and was flavored with spicy red pepper powder, paprika powder, plus a few tablespoons of grated ginger.

For every five pounds of processed veggies I added a very light 3 tablespoons of sea salt. The cabbage is mixed with the salt and pounded to release juices. I then included the rest of the veggies and spices, mixed well and packed into a crock, keeping the ingredients weighted down for approximately a week. One cup of water was also used in order to have enough brine to cover everything. Seven days later I transferred the fermented deliciousness into glass jars...15 lbs of veggies made 1 gallon plus a quart.

This can either be kept in a cool root cellar or one's refrigerator. Since I had to make it early this year in order to incorporate fresh green beans and cucumbers into the mix it is being stored in the refrigerator as the root cellar is not quite cold enough yet...last year our kimchi and sauerkraut stored well in the root cellar from October through May at which time I put the remaining jars in our refrigerator. It will easily keep over a year this way, we are still working to finish off last year's kimchi and it tastes just fine.

In looking at these jars I am reminded that a piece of wax paper should be added in order to keep the lids from corroding or rusting...oops.:) Also, after the first week or so in storage we always have to add a little more brine to keep everything covered.

Does anyone else enjoy the bold flavors of kimchi?

The Agro Rebel

2011-08-22T06:57:00.000-07:00

"Nature's book always contains the truth; we must only learn to read it." - Sepp Holzer

I have been following the farming methods of Sepp Holzer for quite a few years now but only recently finished reading his most interesting book titled Sepp Holzer's Permaculture - A practical Guide to Small Scale, Integrative Farming and Gardening. The book is a fascinating account of how Austrian farmer Sepp Holzer has, over the past 40 years, transformed his over 100 acres of steep mountain sides into a virtual paradise filled with fruit trees, vegetables, and free ranging animals like the wooly Mangalitza, endangered Turopolje, and other pigs he uses to help clear and till the land.

Diversity instead of monoculture and working with nature rather than against it has allowed him to build a farm that thrives at altitudes ranging upwards of 5,000 ft above sea level with an average (mean) temperature of 39.5°...similar to the average in Duluth MN but with slightly warmer winters.

It's really quite amazing what he has accomplished in this boreal climate. Over 30,000 fruit trees, including citrus, apricot, peach, eucalyptus, fig, and kiwi fruit varieties, dot the landscape. His cherry harvest extends from June all the way into October because the trees are grown at varying altitudes. The Holzer family also enjoys working with unusual crops like primeval grains, mushrooms, and even raise fish in some 70 plus ponds that Sepp has created over the years...the epitome of permaculture. Take a look at the video below and you will see what I am talking about.

(Ohiofarmgirl - pig tilling can be seen at 40:45 minutes)

The movie can be viewed in a larger format at the below link↓...warning, if your computer is as pitifully slow as mine it might be hard to load.

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

More information can be found at -

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=727825431796194016

http://www.perma-dise.com/download/SeppOffener_English.pdf

http://www.richsoil.com/sepp-holzer/sepp-holzer-permaculture.jsp

And his previous book - The Rebel Farmer

Goings-on

2011-08-13T19:21:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy summer, the food gardens are coming along nicely but I am struggling to find time for this blog...you know, a day late and a dollar short type of thing when it comes to keeping it updated.:) I kind of feel like Old Dan Tucker -

"Get out the way for old Dan Tucker
He's too late to git his supper
Supper's over and dishes washed
Nothing left but a piece of squash"

Right...um...anyway, speaking of squash we are now officially overflowing in the summer variety, gold and green zucchini plus lots of little papaya pear squash.

Picked a couple gallons of Saskatoons and have been eating lots of thimbleberries while out on our morning runs.

The fruits on grandson's Sweetheart cherry tree are ripening and were ready just in time for his return from California.

Frogs too! But as we are not into the practice of eating frog legs we made the boy let this little fellow go.:)

I hacked another a 1600 sq. ft area of garden space out of the bush this spring and everything planted there seems to be thriving. Looking out into the forest I can see many more options for expansion...I'm already working on the next 2,000 square foot section.

Our White Stallions are once again leading the cucumber race, they always do...pickling some today and had a few fresh ones sliced over our salad last night...oh yeah - crisp and delicious.

Carrots are starting to form, much later than last season but I'm not complaining.

Onions are doing well too, slowly forming bulbs. We have two 50 foot rows planted this year and are down to our last basket in the root cellar from the previous season, this is the longest we have been able to store onions...most of the ones left are Jaune Paille Des Vertus, an old European variety that holds up remarkably well in storage.

- and introduced to me from a post on another blog (?) is this wonderful little Silvery Fir Tree tomato, I think we have three of them growing in this year's gardens and all are filling out nicely. I have a couple other standouts in the tomato department but for the most part it does not appear to be a good year for these enchanting fruits. Luckily, last year we canned like Old Dan Tucker with a red hot coal in his shoe and have more than enough sauce for this winter regardless of how the plants produce.

Peas were harvested a couple weeks ago and just yesterday we started pulling the fava beans. All the favas will be used as dry beans...they make the best refries and soup beans I have ever had.

That's me↓ pulling fava beans. After harvesting the plants are tilled right back into the soil, enriching it with nitrogen.

So much to say so little time, that's all for now but I'll be back soon enough with my thoughts on a most wonderful book and video revolving around permaculture I have recently been enjoying.

Photosynthesize yourself!

2011-07-30T11:24:00.000-07:00

I was recently reading that my home state of Idaho has one of the highest number of skin cancer cases in the nation, our neighboring states of Washington and Oregon are right up there too. Could any of this possibly have something to do with poor nutrition and not getting enough sun?

"Not enough" sun?

Doesn't the sun cause skin cancer and what does diet have to do with it? Check out this video for an interesting perspective on this issue.

Pretty convincing wasn't he, now I know that the nutrient dense blue green algae mentioned in the video sounds absolutely delicious, and the powdered supplements...mmm, yummy. But before you run out and purchase those interesting products might I suggest an alternative? All of the wonderful cancer preventing nutrients he talked about readily appear in common garden plants like purslane, kale, chicory, parsley, and many other vegetables, herbs, and weeds that can easily be grown in an ordinary garden. Take a look -

Purslane is said to contain the highest levels of omega 3 of any vegetables (kale has some too) and is an incredibly great source of calcium, magnesium, potassium, phenylalanine, and tryptophan...all of which go hand in hand with a little vitamin D from the sun to help a person feel great. Don't like the taste of purslane, try feeding it to your chickens and eating the eggs instead. I have read that chickens fed on purslane can lay eggs that have up to twenty times more omega-3 than your average egg. A cup of this plant contains all of the vitamin E, calcium, magnesium (one of the best sources), and potassium you need in a day and it also contains good amounts of vitamin C and A.

I have not planted purslane in the garden for years and years, it comes up on it's own and we consider it taboo to weed out this incredible plant even if it does appear in less than desirable places...we work around it. I never did have much luck starting it from seed so I let it do its own thing...and it seems to know what it's doing.:)

We first introduced this Golden Purslane to our garden many years ago and are also blessed to have a dark green variety that grows wild around here.

Chicory and kale are also supposed to be excellent sources of vitamins A, B complex, K, E, C, and both contain significant amounts of potassium, calcium, phosphorus, copper, zinc, and magnesium....iron too. Kale is pack full of certain cartanoids - pigments plants evolved to help protect their tissues against the harmful effects of solar radiation. It is one of the highest sources of the cartnoids lutein and zeaxanthin both of which are believed to help protect us from skin cancer. Chicory with its deep delving roots contains even more minerals, like calcium, than kale does.

This, new to our garden, Red Bore Kale is not only attractive to look at but has surprised us with it's nice flavor.

Mineral rich Italian Chicory is one of our favorite salad ingredients.

Parsley is so amazing I wouldn't even know where to start, let's just say that it contains everything listed above and is one of the very best plant sources of vitamin K and various antioxidants.

The new parsley is coming along nicely while a couple rows down...

the old parsley is flowering and preparing to set seed.

And the herbs and weeds - take that obnoxious little chickweed that loves to take over in a healthy garden bed...it is crying out to be consumed, practically begging for attention, yet most discard it with a curse. Chickweed is long known for its healing properties and more nutritious than many of the vegetables that it shares space with.

What a weed, tastes like corn silk and makes a nice addition to our salads....the chickens like it too.

Hardy herbs like, oregano, sage, thyme and so on all fit nicely into this category being jam packed full of antioxidants. Mr. Shiow Y. Wang says - "Oregano has 42 times more antioxidant activity than apples, 30 times more than potatoes, 12 times more than oranges and four times more than blueberries." and he should know, being a USDA biochemist and all....right?

So if you live in Idaho, or anywhere else for that matter, and believe any of the above information to be true, don't be afraid to get a little sunshine and please consider growing a garden full of these amazing plants...I know we are and will continue to do so. In our colder climate all of the above listed plants with the exception of purslane can be grown 365 days a year or close to it, provided you supply them with a little protection from the elements during the cold months...you know, the cold months pretty much being September through July around these parts.:)

While these thoughts make sense to us given our chosen lifestyle I do realize this may or may not be relevant to others depending upon their particular situation and/or beliefs about nutrition and it's effect on one's health. My intention in writing this post is not to argue the pros and cons of the pharmaceutical industry and the need for the products they sell, such as sunscreen, but instead to simply provide some insight for those like minded people who do wish to take a more holistic approach to these issues. Rather than searching far and wide for nutritional super foods it should be realized that these amazing supplements need not be any farther away than one's own backyard garden, herb bed, and the forests that surround us.

Everbearing Strawberries - The Gift That Keeps On Giving

2011-07-19T19:06:00.000-07:00

Please excuse me while I brag a bit...

We are in strawberry heaven, the tomatoes might be found wanting this year but the strawberries are making up the difference...not that one can really compare the two. We grow an extremely hardy everbearing strawberry plant that provides us with multiple crops of sweet berries and are thrilled with it's ability to set fruit in colder temperatures while at the same time producing numerous runners. Last year we grew one all by itself just to see how many new plants could be produced and by the end of the season counted over 60 babies. Babies begat babies that had begat baby plants...talk about vigorous reproduction. I took a picture of the whole sordid affair but of course I can't find it.

The first berries, while extremely numerous, are not very large but subsequent crops can be quite big, maybe 2-3 times the size of the originals. I will try to post pictures of them later this summer, but only if they really do look 3 times bigger....my wife says I tend to exaggerate a bit - perhaps I'll let you be the judge.:)

Unfortunately, the berries my wife is holding in the above picture were picked after a good rain last Tuesday night, we try to pick them before it rains if at all possible as wet weather tends to bloat the berries and take away some of that sweetness we so desire. Regardless, they still taste plenty fine going into smoothies and other tasty treats...it's raining again this Tuesday but we picked last night and the berries were much better.

These strawberry plants have been growing on our property for many, many years, originally given to us by my Mom who grew them before that...and as such have had adequate time to adapt quite well to our conditions, making them very special to my wife and I. We do love our Fort Laramie everbearing strawberry plants.

Wild Asparagus, Parsley, and Seeds

2011-07-13T06:15:00.000-07:00

I really should post more often about our forays for wild edibles which happen on an almost daily basis...but the camera is never with, or no time to post, or, or, or...I'm full of excuses.:)

So early this past Sunday morning we set out along the local river in search of certain seeds that I have been waiting/wanting to harvest and were delighted to find not only those seeds but fresh asparagus as well. Because the river's water level has been so high the flooded asparagus has been slow to come on and, lucky us, we were able to snag a nice meals worth. Some went into a stir fry dish and the rest a tasty quiche...mmm.

Even better than the above treasures was finding "The King of all Asparagus" roots dangling precariously off the river's bank, unceremoniously ripped from it's home by the rapid currents but still alive and sending up shoots. Rather than leaving it to be washed away we liberated this 5-10 pound (I'm guessing, my wife ended up carrying it for a mile and a half and she said it was at least a 5 pounder) root from it's rocky embrace along the river's edge and have since planted the monstrosity in our gardens...can't wait to see what kind of stalks it produces.

This King of the River Asparagus root truly is much larger than this picture depicts.

Anyway, seeds is what we were out and about for and our timing was right on as we were able to collect both the wild parsley and lupine seeds I have had my eye on since early spring...especially the parsley.

I think it was around April that we noticed a large patch of parsley growing on a hillside meadow up off the river, we picked some for drying and hoped to come back in time for the seeds. We have since noticed three different varieties of this edible plant. I am not 100% positive on the below identifications but am pretty sure I got them right...there are a lot of different varieties of wild parsley out there and many of them look quite similar.

Lomatium macrocarpum - Large Seeded Biscuitroot (Desert parsley)

Lomatium triternatum - Nine - Leaf Biscuitroot (Narrow - Leaved Desert Parsley)
Lomatium grayi - Gray's Biscuitroot (Pungent Desert Parsley) This is the variety we elected to save seeds off of as I liked the way it looked and tasted.

From - http://onlinenevada.org/biscuitroot

"Biscuitroot was used as both a food source and for medicinal purposes by the American Indian tribes in Nevada , specifically the Paiute, Washoe, and Western Shoshone. It is known by several other names, including Cough Root. As a medicine, fernleaf biscuitroot was used for treating multiple illnesses, including chest colds, coughs, bronchitis, influenza, and pneumonia. The roots could be burned, and the smoke inhaled for treating asthma, or steamed and inhaled for treating nasal and chest congestion. As an anti-viral poultice, the boiled, crushed root was applied to open cuts and sores. Tea was made from the leaves and used in the treatment of colds.

As a food, biscuitroot was an important source for Nevada tribes, as they could use the leaves roots and seeds in various ways. Many species of Lomatium have thick, tuberous roots that can be ground into flour and used to make bread-like foods, resulting in the common name “biscuitroot.” The leaves are said to have a strong parsley-like flavor. Young seeds and sprouts were collected to be eaten raw, and the roots could be used dried and ground into a powder to flavor flours and soups, or boiled to make a nutritious drink. The root could be stored in dried form for later use."

For those interested -

“Of the three species of Peucedanum used by the Spokane Indians, the best, in size and flavor of bulbs, is the ‘Chucklusa’ (P. Canbyi, Coulter and Rose) (Lomatium canbyi)." -

http://www.swsbm.com/AJP/AJP_1889_No_11.pdf

In the Garden & Woods

2011-07-07T06:52:00.000-07:00

Strawberries are coming on like gangbusters, we picked upwards of 5 gallons yesterday. Our Fort Laramie everbearing plants come on strong in the spring with smaller berries that gradually increase in size as the season progresses....and they are sooo sweet. The benefit of selling strawberry plants is that there are always a lot of strawberries left for us.

Finally some peas, it took a little longer than usual but our Tacoma Afila peas are looking nice - quick, reliable, and they taste pretty darn good too.

Cabbage and fava beans aren't looking too shabby either.

All our storage onion varieties seem to be on track and the best news is that with a cool spring we are still eating off last season's onion and garlic harvest...still nice and cool in the root cellar.

Foxglove (Digitalis) growing around our fruit trees. It is said of foxglove that it helps to stimulate neighboring plants by making them more disease resistant and improving the storage quality of fruits and vegetables due to gaseous secretions and minute hormones that the plants supposedly emit. (?)

Every morning of late we have been going for an early run, just before sunrise, in the mountains, stopping to pick various herbs as we go along. This week we have been focusing on gathering Prunella (self-heal/heal-all), yellow clover, and elderberry flowers. We also have a patch of Prunella growing in the garden this year from seeds saved from the wild. Fascinating plant.

Soon the native St. John's Wort, now starting to flower, will be abundant enough to harvest.

The sage is flowering, purple.

And the Rowdy dog...just being rowdy. He is not allowed to dig in the yard so he takes every advantage while we are out in the woods.

South Chilco Peak and Stinging Nettles

2011-06-23T06:53:00.001-07:00

Each year, sometime in June, we make our annual pilgrimage to the top of South Chilco Peak. It's always interesting to see how much snow is still up in them thar hills...there was a lot this year. Most of the trail was still under 5-6' of snow which was kind of nice as we were able to make our own route without too much bushwhacking as the dense vegetation and fallen trees were still buried under a dirty white. The little compass in my head was functioning properly so we managed to make it to the top without incident and it was simply a matter of following our own tracks on the way down.

The shaded side of the top was under a good 40' of snow but on the south facing side wildflowers were starting to poke through, some even blooming. The view is spectacular.

At the base of the mountain, off the beaten path, and up a small tributary I found a clearing a few years back that is full of stinging nettles, we returned the next day to fill our bags and the nettles are now drying in the greenhouse. My wife uses them in her tea concoctions. Nettles are a pretty amazing plant.

June 13th Garden Pictures

2011-06-15T19:01:00.000-07:00

Things are looking up in our gardens. Salad bowls are overflowing with green goodness, seeding and re-seeding has taken place, all of the core crops are growing fairly well, and the weeding has been keeping us very busy this past week. All the rain has washed away my wit so pictures will have to replace so many words in this post.

Dave's Spotted Trout Lettuce is growing splendidly, a nice addition to our salad selection.

Red Oak leaf and Black Seeded Simpson I believe.

RedBor kale and more lettuce lines the walkway to our greenhouse. I thought the Redbor would be more frilly leafed?

An intent little brown face in the oregano patch.:) He is thinking "Is that cat supposed to be in our garden?"

I like this mint, I planted it a decade ago and while it doesn't spread very fast it manages to come back every year. The name slips me but my wife suggests perhaps it was "Orange Mint"...doesn't taste very orangy though.

The kale in the foreground of this picture is a bit of an experiment as the seed was a cross between Gigante kohlrabi, White Russian kale, and Blue Curled kale. Time will tell how well this new creation suits our garden and palate, so far so good though as the plants are vigorous and the leaves impart a nice flavor to our salads. I'm hoping most don't bulb up like kohlrabi as it is the greens I am after. Anyway, more about this in another post.

The spinach is liking our extremely rainy spring.

Tomatoes not so much, but they are hanging in there and if it ever warms up for good they should take...might be another "ripen the green tomatoes on the porch" year again.

One of the few plants that thrives directly under our fir trees, once established, is rhubarb. Its impressive tap root allows it to delve deep for water. Notice that black cherry tree to the left, now almost 20' tall and grown from a seed maybe 6 or 7 years ago, it looks to be fruiting for the first time this year and will be the first of my many direct seeded fruit trees to produce.

Potato plants are starting to leaf out...we planted lots and lots of potatoes this year.

Carrots, beets, parsnips, and other direct seeded root veggies will soon need to be thinned.

Hesperis brightens up the garden with its pretty flowers and edible leaves...and I'll leave it at that as I'm at my wits end.:)

Perennial Arugula

2011-05-23T05:16:00.000-07:00

In keeping with our annual tradition of yearly experimentation we have once again planted numerous "new to us" varieties of edible plants this season. Ranging from various herbs and lettuces to bushes and trees, we are looking forward to seeing how they all perform and hopefully I will be able post my thoughts on them as spring and summer begin to unfold.

Anyway, this year's salad and herb garden is starting to take shape, albeit very slowly as the weather has only recently started to moderate a bit. In this section of the garden, nestled in amongst the oregano and lettuce are a couple patches of a plant whose seeds were graciously shared with me back in 2009 or early 2010 I believe...thanks Mavis.

Perennial Wild Grazia arugula (Diplotaxis tenuifolia)

Unlike regular arugula that normally behaves as an annual, often bolting to seed much sooner than the gardener would like, perennial Grazia seems to grow somewhat slower and is apparently much more heat and cold tolerant than common arugula...leastwise that has been our limited experience with this particular variety. The plant has deeply lobed leaves and yellow flowers with a much stronger flavor than its quick growing counterpart and we are excited to continue adding this pungent green to our spring and summer salads as the new growth continues to emerge.

While I did not have much luck collecting seeds from Grazia last fall it nonetheless took matters into it's own hands and readily self-sowed. I was surprised at how long it held in the garden before finally flowering and setting seed on it's woody branches sometime in late August. Unlike lettuce and other greens the mature plants seem to have a sturdy root system and woody stems more in line with certain herbs and small bushes.

There is not a lot of information available online regarding this type of arugula but it would appear that perennial Grazia can be sourced from either Siegers Seed Company in the US or Mr. Fothergills in the UK, neither of whom I have ever purchased seed from. There is also another variety of perennial wild arugula (Diplotaxis muralis) available through Heirloom Seeds.

Anyone else have experience growing perennial arugula?

Ho Ho Ho...

2011-04-26T07:05:00.001-07:00

....and to think I was considering planting potatoes today.

The Tantrums of Spring

2011-04-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

...and this morning (April 22) looks even worse.:)

Just a Few Pictures

2011-04-10T05:59:00.000-07:00

It's been a typically temperamental North Idaho spring so far...snow, rain, more rain, wind, sleet, sun, and repeat. Nonetheless our garden is alive and growing both indoors and out. We awoke to a good inch of snow on Thursday...

...but by mid-afternoon it had dissipated and the sun even managed a brief appearance.

Boy was busy inspecting the remnants of last year's corn as he cut it up into little pieces that will eventually be tilled back into the soil (a chore I didn't quite finish last fall).

These turnip greens have found their way into our salads almost every day since last November...definitely one of our hardiest greens.

Kale is finally staging a nice comeback, it was a rough winter for kale...a few too many freeze and thaw cycles.

In the greenhouse a pot of Hamburg parsley held over from last year puts on new green growth. You are supposed to eat the root but we find ourselves enjoying the greens too.

Onions seedlings are alive and well, growing oh so slowly.

With no room in the house I had to kick the just germinated basil out to the greenhouse...fingers crossed that it survives the cold, so far so good. I must admit to cheating a bit though as I have an oil heater that I turn on when necessary. Even so, I am tempting fate as the heater only graces me with a difference of 6 or 7 degrees, if it falls under 25°F outside my basil will freeze inside.

Comfrey needs to be planted out in the next day or so.

These little spinach and turnip seedlings were planted outside last night, more spinach will be direct seeded into the garden once it warms up a bit more. Normally we plant turnips in the late summer/early fall to avoid root maggots, but I thought I would take another shot at spring turnips this year.

Various other herbs, flowers, and salad greens are alive and well in the greenhouse.

Tomatoes will have to stay in the house for at least another week before we can get around to potting them up at which time the plants in our little arboretum will be set out under a covered row to make room for their less hardy brethren. Hopefully my next post will show us potting up tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants.

Waltz of the Seedlings

2011-03-22T19:31:00.000-07:00

The majority of our tomatoes, tomatillos, ground cherries, herbs, peppers, eggplants, and other seedlings have all germinated and are growing well. The onions, celery, brassicas, lettuce, and other hardy greens have been moved outside to the greenhouse but as the nighttime temperatures are still very cold at times I will be forced to babysit the less hardy plants indoors for some time to come.

Purple Coban Tomatillos (can you see where the cat put her foot just as they were coming up?)

So today, and much to the chagrin of poor Mrs. H, I have classical music playing in the background...for the plants. I have been reading about how musical vibrations might help encourage the growth of plants. There are any number of theories on this ranging anywhere from how stimulating the leaves stomata (microscopic openings or pores found on the plant leaf) helps with the intake of CO2 and absorption of other nutrients to theories on how vibration can positively affect the growth of a plant's roots. Some say limited musical vibrations might even help a plant synthesize the hormone ethylene which in turn speeds up seed germination and helps to create stockier plants. So I figured why not give it a shot. The plants are dancing to the Northstar Chamber Orchestra's renditions of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky for a few hours this evening.:)

These "refashioned" milk jugs make excellent starter containers for our pepper and eggplant seedlings. Thanks for saving them for us Dorothy.:)

An Eccentric Potting Soil

2011-03-01T05:08:00.000-08:00

Last spring I wrote about some of the unusual and frugal ingredients that go into our seed starting mixture and this year's soil is very similar in that it provides our seedlings with a few important necessities. We shoot for a mix of friable soil that will not harden too much and is able to retain enough water that it does not easily dry out, a soil that also furnishes plenty of nutrition to growing seedlings. In a sense, we simply look at the natural soil around us and attempt to copy nature's already perfect medium. This time around we are using a mixture of sand, chicken dirt, and abandoned ant nest debris with a little burnt bone and shell meal thrown in for good measure.

The below ingredients make up our mixture and the percentages are totally guesstimated.

Chicken dirt - (50%) Throughout the winter months I haul wheelbarrows full of dirt that has been gathered from our sod compost pile and the forest floor to our chickens. They of course love this and reward us by removing any insects and weed seeds from the soil, fertilizing it as they work. After a week or so I remove the dirt and bring them some more, eventually ending up with a nice pile of what we call "chicken dirt"...our seedlings seem to like this.

Forest floor debris found in our back woods.

Weed seed and bug control agents hard at work.

Abandoned ant nest debris - (20%) Where we live red ants build large mounds using materials gathered from their surroundings, materials that are largely made up of very small twigs, pieces of dead grass, and other debris that seem to provide excellent soil aeration and water retention to our soil mix. We seek out these dormant ant nests during the summer months so as to be sure we are not plundering active nests, I posted more about this unusual ingredient last February.

Sand - (30%) This year I am also adding a little river sand to the mix having noticed how well wild onion, poppy, flox, and other seed seems to so easily germinate along the river banks.

So far so good as our newly emerging onion seedlings seem to like the added sand.

Shell, bones, and ash (maybe 1-2%) - A few years ago while way up in the forest gathering firewood we stumbled across a large pile of what I believe to be clam and other sea shells. How they got there so very far away from the ocean will forever remain a mystery. Anyway, we gathered the whole stinky pile up and brought it home to be used in our garden. I add the shells and any bones that we happen across to our fireplace during the winter and after removing am able to easily crush them into a fine powder. My thoughts are that adding a small amount of potassium found in the ash and bone plus shell meal for phosphorus and calcium makes for a beneficial additive.

Ta-da! The final product.

Something to keep in mind when using a non sterile soil mix, especially in cool and/or humid climates, is the issue of dampening off disease. We combat this by boiling a handful of thyme and sometimes chamomile in 2-3 gallons of water and letting set overnight or until the water turns dark. We use this thyme water mixed in a 1:3 ratio with regular water until the seedlings are well established. Thyme, chamomile, cinnamon, and a few other herbs all contain natural fungicides that can help prevent issues with dampening off....adequate airflow is also important. These herbs are a great source of calcium, magnesium, and potassium. Chamomile also contains sulfur and thyme has thymol, these being their potent anti-fungal agents.

On Feeding Oneself...

2011-02-22T16:51:00.000-08:00

I watched these videos linked from the Homestead Revival blog this morning and thought I would share them here as well. While I do not consider myself to be a hard core doomsdayer (well, maybe just a little:) I surely can see some dark clouds gathering on the horizon and found all of the information put forth by Marjory Wildcraft in this presentation on food storage, water supply, and gardening to be very thought provoking to say the least.

For more information on the subject of food preparedness, my friend Lynn has written numerous excellent posts on her blog about food storage of late that include many useful links.

"Let us be in a position so we are able to not only feed ourselves through home production and storage, but others as well" - Ezra Taft Benson, former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture

Red Crapaudine Beet

2011-02-17T13:11:00.000-08:00

Three of the most important things we look for in a vegetable are, adaptability to our climate, flavor, and how easily it can be stored or processed. It is always a pleasant surprise to find a new variety that meets all of these criterion. And so it is that after over four months in storage I can now say that, what was originally grown as a novelty, the Red Crapaudine beet we seeded in early 2010 does indeed seem to easily attain all of these standards.

This is a particularly old variety of beet, possibly one of the oldest beets in existence today...from what I've read, and has rather an unusual thick bark like skin, almost black, that will reportedly help it to over winter right in the garden, even in cooler climates. The Crapaudine also manages to stay under the soil rather than popping up like so many other cylindrical shaped beets tend to do. It will be interesting to put a few to the test this year and see whether or not they really can handle our winter conditions.

Crapaudine's have green foliage and a bright red interior with an earthy sweet essence that I really enjoy both raw and cooked...a very nice all around vegetable. As far as proportion goes they are similar in stature to a medium carrot and the ones we grew last year did vary quite a bit in size, definitely not the biggest beet in town. Because of their shape they would probably grow best in a loose friable soil or anywhere a carrot or parsnip thrives. We are looking forward to growing these old world beets for many more years to come.

So... Let's Eat Some Beets

The Best Laid Plans or Seven Birds and a Cat

2011-02-09T06:59:00.000-08:00

The big difference between Mrs. H and I is that she's a "spur of the moment" kind of gal and I am a "let's take a year to think about it" type of guy. For example, a couple weeks ago she hollered at me from the other room -

"Guess what I found on Craigslist?"

"What?" I shouted back

"Chickens," she called out, walking into the kitchen. "Young ones too, and they're orangish colored."

"Orangish?" I inquired, rolling my eyes. "Hmm, I wonder what breed that could be?"

"It doesn't matter, there's no time because their FREE!" she exclaimed in a slightly elevated tone.

"Why are they free?" was my skeptical counter.

With a slight look of disgust, she replied "Who knows, but if I don't respond right this minute they will be GONE! FREE, did you hear me, they're FREEEEE!!"

And with a deep sigh, I conceded "Yes dear, if it makes you happy we can go look at them" and so she called the phone number, and so we went and looked, and thus it was that we eventually acquired a few new laying hens.

Sometimes it seems that no matter how hard one plans and schemes the Gods of Chaos will prevail. I had it all worked out in my structured little mind and once again she proceeded to challenge my boundaries. The plan was to pick and order new hens from the below listed birds that I had thoroughly researched and decided on. The 6-10 new additions, based on cold hardiness, egg laying abilities, size, temperament, and recommendations from other bloggers who raise chickens in colder climates were to be chosen, if available, out of the following breeds;
Ameraucana
Australorp
Buff Orpington
Chantecler
Delaware
Plymouth Rock
Red Star
Rhode Island Reds
Sussex
Wyandotte
Cochin
Russian Orloff

But no! The word "free" is like a drug to my wife and we have now been gifted with many new additions to our motley crew of laying hens. The newest hens supposedly range in age from 6 months to just over a year old and were offered on Craigslist because the owners could no longer care for them and were willing to part with the birds for free under the conditions that we provide a good home and not use their pets as stewing hens...only two of them were "orangish" colored and there were really 7 hens not 6 as the ad suggested.:) And so now we have;

Two small scrappy white Leghorns that I just adore. I would have never considered this breed but am so happy to have been talked into them as they are the neatest, busy, smartest little birds I ever did see. One of them even laid two eggs the day before yesterday...that was a surprise but apparently possible upon occasion.

A lone Red Star, such a sweet, friendly, very curious little bird, and quite smitten with our dog Rowdy whom she no doubt thinks is a rooster...he is a pretty cocky little fellow after all.

Two Buff Orpingtons, that, like the Red Star, were at least on my original list. They seem to be great birds and immediately honed in on the nest boxes and laid us a couple eggs.

And two more scraggly looking Rhode Island Reds that are as cockeyed crazy as my originals but should be a nice addition to our flock that now numbers 16.

That Mrs. H, she does like her deals and because of it we now have a larger flock that has meshed together without incident allowing us to avoid the challenge of raising baby chicks this spring. Luckily, the new gang of hens has been very submissive to our originals and no serious squabbling has taken place. The new birds are very happy as their old digs left much to be desired. The weather was nice enough the other day that they even ventured outside for a while, their first taste of freedom no doubt. Unfortunately, today's colder weather has somewhat tempered their enthusiasm for the great outdoors.

Oh, and my good wife found this half starved cat in our barn this winter too...it is sitting on my lap begging for attention as I try to type this...Ay yi yi. Meet Nikita Katerina (right), master of her domain and proprietor of the chair pictured below. She was spayed yesterday so everyone is being extra nice to her, even Spooky, our grumpy old orangish colored cat.:)

It's kind of a strange system that Mrs. H has put in place here, and one that always leaves me scratching my head wondering what the heck I just got myself into...and I wouldn't change a thing.:) As they say "Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy.”

Seed Saving Schedule 2011 - 2014

2011-02-05T05:11:00.000-08:00

This is our seed saving schedule for 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. I am posting it here as a reference for myself and am not sure that it will really be relevant to anyone else's seed saving endeavours but it does give an idea of what the core crops we grow in our garden are. While we will be growing many more plants than are listed here, the plants shown below, with the exception of those with ? marks, are the ones we consider to be most important to us and have already had good success growing and saving seed from in previous years. I am going to try to put this on a more easily understandable spreadsheet when time permits and will add the PDF link to this post at that time.

All of the plants with question marks are ones that I am still contemplating saving seed off of for various reasons. For example, basil is an intricate member of our garden but I rarely have any luck getting them to set viable seed in our short season...but will continue to try as basil seed is very expensive. Perhaps by starting them earlier and growing in pots that can be moved into the greenhouse in the fall I will have more success. We will continue to save many other seeds not on this list, but only as time and the need to do so permits.

Alliums - (annually)
Leek
Chives
Yellow of Parma
Stuttgarter - 2012?

Allium divisions and seed - (annually)
Egyptian Walking Onion
Scallions
Red of Florence Bunching Onion

Amaranth - (2 year rotation)
Hopi Red Dye - 2012

Beans - (annually)
Fava
Kentucky Wonder
Painted Lady Runner
Scarlet Emperor Runner

Beets/Chard - (3 year rotation)
Chard, mixed - 2011
Cylindrical - 2011
Crapaudine (red) - 2011
Detroit Dark Red - 2012
Mammoth Red Mangle - 2013
Yellow Eckendorf - 2013?

Broccoli - (3 year rotation)
Note - save seed late in season to avoid crossing with kale
De Ciccio - 2011
Purple Peacock Broccoli - 2012
Umpqua Broccoli - 2013

Cabbage -
Melissa ?
Red Acre?

Carrots - (3 year rotation)
Imperator - 2011
Chantenay - 2012
Danver Half Long - 2013
Nantes?

Celery - (2 year rotation)
Red Giant - 2011
Ventura - 2012
Parcel?

Chicory - (3-4 year rotation)
Italian Dandelion - 2011
Red Belgian Endive - 2012
Green Belgian Endive - 2013
Batavian Endive - 2014?
Escarole - 2014

Corn - (2-3 year rotation)
Painted Mountain - 2011
Blue Jade - 2012

Cucumbers - (2 year rotation)
Boothby's Blond -2011
National Pickling - 2011?
Homemade Pickles - 2012?
White Stallion - 2012

Eggplant - (annually)
Long Purple
Apple green?

Herbs/Flowers - (1-3 year rotation)
Epizote - 2011
Spilanthes - 2011
Nasturtium - 2011
Calendula - 2011
Cilantro - 2011
Dill - 2011
Basil - 2011?
Red/Green Shiso - 2011?

Herb Seed and Root Divisions/Propagation (Annually or as needed)
Hyssop
Echinacea
Various thyme
Various oregano
Various Sage
Lemon Balm
Mint
Spearmint
Nettle

Husk Fruit - (annually)
Ground Cherry
Green Tomatillos
Purple Tomatillos

Kale - (4 year rotation)
Note -save early to avoid crossing with broccoli
Beady's Camden - 2011
Dwarf Vates Blue Curled - 2012
White Russian - 2012
Red Russian - 2013
Lacinato Rainbow - 2013?
Dinosaur - 2014

Kohlrabi ? (see how 2010 seed performs)
Gigante

Lettuce - (2 year rotation)
Arugula - 2011
Golden Purslane - 2011
Boc Choy - 2011
Black Seeded Simpson - 2011
Bloomingsdale Spinach - 2011
Red Mustard - 2011
Oakleaf - 2011
Mache - 2011
(Dave's) Speckled Trout - 2011?
Winter Density Romaine - 2011
Red Romaine - 2012
Winter Density Mix - 2012
Cress - 2012
Salad Burnett - 2012
Chervil - 2012
Mike's Red Lettuce - 2012
French Sorrel - 2013 (every 3rd year)

Parsley - (2 year rotation)
Curled - 2011
Hamburg - 2012?

Parsnip - (annually)
Hollow Crown
Harris Model

Peas - (annually)
Afilia
Alderman
Blue Podded

Peppers - (2 year rotation)
Purple Beauty - 2011
Red/Orange Banana - 2011
Jalapeno - 2011
Yellow/Red Cayenne - 2011
Mini Red Bell - 2012
King of the north Bell?
Marconi?
Sweet Italian?

Salsify/Scorzonera - (2 year rotation)
2012

Squash/Zucchini - (3-4 year rotation)
Sugar Pie Pumpkin (pepo) - 2011
Black Zucchini (pepo) - 2011
(TC) Sweat Meat (maxima) - 2011?
Hubbard - (maxima) - 2012
Papya Pear (pepo) - 2012
Gold Nugget - (maxima) - 2013
Spaghetti (pepo) - 2013

Tomatoes - (annually as needed)
Note - keep cross pollination rate of about 1-4% in mind.

Tubers - (annually)
Dahlia
Potatoes
Sunroots
Garlic Mix

Turnip - (2-3 year rotation)
Purple Top - 2011

Nature's Candy

2011-01-29T05:48:00.000-08:00

It was a beautiful day this past Wednesday and the snow along the river had melted away making it perfect for a late afternoon hike with the dog. One of the nice things about living in the Pacific Northwest is that even in the depths of winter one can secure a few wild edibles from the great outdoors. While our home and gardens are still under a covering of snow, a small drop in elevation and abnormally warm weather allowed us to be free from that for a time.

One of our favorite wild edibles that reaches it's peak only after cold weather has set in is that of the wild rose bushes fruit...rose hips. These little citrusy apple flavored pods are so very sweet this time of year it truly is a form of nature's candy. My wife and I like to collect rose hips in the fall and use them in her teas but my favorite way to consume them, and one that no doubt benefits us the most, is fresh from the bush they grow on. Extremely high in immune system boosting nutrition what could possibly be a better winter snack than this treasure provided from nature at no cost to us other than the time it takes to gather and chew?

The seed itself can be pressed for oil and is being studied for its medicinal properties. The young spring leaves and flowers are also quite edible.

On Storing Seed

2011-01-23T16:11:00.000-08:00

"Alexander Stchukin died at his writing table, holding in his hand a packet of his most prized peanuts that he had hoped to send off for a grow out. The custodian of Vavilov’s many oat collections, Liliya Rodina, died of starvation, as did Dimitry Ivanov, who as his own life failed, stowed away thousands of packets of rice. … There were others as well — Steheglov, Kovalevsky, Leonjevsky, Malygina, Korzun — some who perished by starving, some riddled by sickness, others by shrapnel. Wolf, the herbarium curator, was hit by a missile shell fragment, and bled to death. Gleiber, the archivist of Vavilov’s field notes, died in the midst of those papers rather than leave his post.” ~ Pavlovsk seed and gene bank

Throughout history people have gone to extraordinary lengths to protect and store seed for the future as is depicted in the above comments from the book Where Food Comes From that tracks the footsteps of Russian seed scientist Nikolay Vavilov across five continents, amassing a collection of over 200,000 plant seeds during his lifetime. A true agricultural hero who ironically died of hunger in Siberia's Saratov prison on January 26, 1943.

One of the most important facets of seed saving is the storing of those seeds as a garden's success partially depends on the quality of the seeds that are planted. We have had great success storing our seeds in airtight glass or plastic containers, preferring glass, they are kept in a cool back room of our house. Sometimes people will add silica gel packets, grains of dry rice, or even powdered milk wrapped in a tissue paper to help absorb moisture and prolong the life of these seeds. Fortunately for us our wood heated house has very dry air so we don't normally have to use any of these desiccants.

We love using these old glass salad dressing bottles to store seed.

Temperatures right around 40°F are perfect for retaining stored seeds viability which is why you will hear of keeping seeds in the refrigerator, although I do question this a bit as it would seem to be such a humid environment for long term storage and I would definitely consider using one of the aforementioned desiccants for extended periods of refrigerated storage. Although, some seeds do require a period of cold stratification in order to break dormancy and germinate properly...certain perennial herbs, flowers, and fruit tree seeds would be a good example of this. Also, when removing the seeds from a cold area it is advisable to allow the container to reach normal room temperature before opening to prevent condensation from forming on the inside.

All of our seeds are stored on (or around:) this shelf in a dark, cool, and dry back room.

A fellow blogger also made mention of a very important point in that if you choose to freeze your seeds for long term storage it is advisable to remember that when freezing seeds the moisture content has to be exceptionally low. If there is too much moisture in the seeds they will form ice crystals which will rupture the cells and ruin the seeds. Also, I have read that one should not to use ''frost free'' freezers for seed storage unless you use very airtight containers, ones with gaskets, because they have periodic warming cycles to remove ice build-up that might evaporate the small amount of moisture that a seed does need to survive. I would love to hear others thoughts on the freezing of seeds as it is not something I have much experience with.

Storing seed is relatively easy, high temperatures, large temperature fluctuations, and humidity are the main enemies of seed, too much light, especially direct sunlight, can also be an issue. That said, even seed stored in less than ideal conditions will most likely last for a number of years. There are many different and varying thoughts on how to best store seed, the important thing is to pick the one that works best for your given conditions and go for it.:)

Please consider submitting a new or old post on the Kebun Malay-Kadazan girls blog during this "seed week" that will run from the 22nd~29th of January in which anyone interested participates by blogging about their experiences as they are related to seeds, bulbs, tubers, rhizomes or cuttings including the collecting, propagating, growing, and/or how to keep them in tip top shape. There is a "linky" to link your post to at the bottom of her blog post. Join in on her seed week so we can all learn from each others experiences.:)

This is a picture of our Painted Mountain corn, a variety that we have been growing the past couple years and seems to do well in our climate and shorter growing season. Corn seed will normally have good germination for 2 years and some of ours seems to be fine even after 3 years.

“Everyone who enjoys, thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed. - Herein lies the difference between them that create and them that enjoy.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

Why Save Seeds?

2011-01-21T13:31:00.000-08:00

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” ~ Gandhi

The author of the Kebun Malay-Kadazan girls blog has suggested a "seed week" from the 22nd~29th of January in which anyone interested participates by blogging about their experiences as they are related to seeds, bulbs, tubers, rhizomes or cuttings including the collecting, propagating, growing, and/or how to keep them in tip top shape. You can submit a link to her from an old post or a recent one and this is not limited to one post only. So please join in on her seed week so we can all learn from each others experiences.

My wife and I became seriously involved/obsessed with the saving of our own vegetable seed a few years ago and have experimented with collecting seed from almost every edible plant that we have grown at one time or another, mostly with great success. Because it can be, and has become, such an immense project to save all of our own seeds we have decided to focus the majority of our efforts going forward on the crops that are most important to us, the core crops that we could not live without. Vegetables like beets, parsnips, carrots, potato tubers, turnips, tomatoes, tomatillos, cucurbits, onions, beans, peas, celery, corn, peppers, lettuce and other greens like parsley, kale, and various types of chicory all make the list.

We are working on a plan to continue saving these seeds using a 2-5 year rotation so as not burden ourselves with too much at once, as has been the case the past few years, and to help avoid cross contamination of the many open pollinated varieties like cucurbits and brassicas. While we will continue to save the seed of herbs, flowers, and anything else that catches our fancy it will not be our main focus to do so. Once I finish getting the entire rotation schedule worked out on paper I will try to post it online.

My wife, bagging a Sweet Chocolate pepper flower with a muslin sack to avoid cross pollination as we grow all of our varieties so close to each other.

This chervil seed was ready to be harvested and will be saved every other year as seed older than that seems to have fairly low germination rates.

"Golly Mike, why bother with all of this when the seeds are so readily available via seed catalogues?"

Very simple, my thoughts are that to grow a plant and not know how to save it's seed is a missed opportunity to take part in that plants full life process. More than that I believe it is our right and responsibility to do so or at least, and most importantly, to have some inkling of how to do so in order to maintain our subsistence pattern lifestyle and be able to share the knowledge with future generations. I also have no wish to be under the control of the system. The system being big agribusiness with its rules, regulations and control (GMO), or at the whim of seed companies that may be out of stock, and of course I have some worries over the future availability of non-hybrid seed coupled with the ever increasing expense of it all.

As an example, something I was talking to a fellow blogger about the other day comes to mind. Every year I am in a panic when it comes to certain vegetables whose seed I have yet to start saving on a regular basis...like onion seed. I often have a real dickens of a time getting my onion seed in a timely manner regardless of how soon I order it and the varieties of storage onions that grow well for us are very limited...there's like three of them. I have started ordering a couple years worth of the seed just in case but onion seed has a pretty short term viability of around 1-2 years after which the germination rate decreases significantly. So I feel the strong need to save my own and relieve myself of this yearly allium hysteria. We want to have seed and food sovereignty.

Biennial salsify and scorzonera flower their 2nd year and one must be diligent in saving the seed lest it all float away on a windy day.

That said, I think it is "very" important to support both small and large trustworthy seed companies that will continue to provide us with all of the seeds that we do not save ourselves. Quality companies like Johnny's Select Seeds (?), Territorial(?), Fedco, Bountiful Gardens, Seed Savers Exchange (?), Ed Hume, Annapolis Valley Heritage, and many others that work so diligently to help to preserve our vegetable and herb seed diversity and availability.

“The garden seeds being dropped from the catalogues are the very best vegetable varieties we will ever see.” ~ Kent Whealy, Seed Savers Exchange

There are numerous other reasons to save your own seed, including the possibility of a plant adapting to ones specific environmental conditions over time. This is something we have experienced in our own gardens and has been especially noticeable with our peas and tomatoes becoming much less prone to disease compared to how they were many years ago, we have had no issues at all the past few seasons.

After they are processed our tomato seeds are placed on screens for a couple days until thoroughly dry. These seeds can easily last over ten years if stored properly - cool, dry, dark environment.

Believe me, I totally understand that many people just do not have the leeway for a garden full of plants bolting to seed as it would take up the entire garden area leaving no room at all for the real food crops. We are very fortunate to have enough extra ground for these projects and this post is simply an expression of my thoughts on what we will be working towards going forward as it relates to the saving of our own seed. Besides, it is very empowering, empowerment that is created by knowing that one can depend upon him or herself for their own food. As they say "He who controls the seed also controls the feed."

Valerian seed can be difficult to save as it also so easily flutters away in the breeze once mature.

These are four popular seed growing and saving books that I have collected over the years and am constantly using as references.

Another seedy book that I have yet to run down is "Saving Seeds As If Our Lives Depended On It" by Dan Jason.

Here are two excellent PDF links that cover, in fairly good detail, how to save the seed off many vegetables that are commonly grown in the average garden. ↓

Saving Vegetable Seeds in an Urban Garden

A Seed Saving Guide For Gardeners and Farmers

To learn even more check out this very informative blog on growing and saving seed called Going to Seed: Growing Organic Seed in Eastern Canada.

On the right hand side of this picture you can see (click picture to enlarge) where I replanted a small patch of cilantro but also left a bunch of the original plants tied to a stake in order to grow and produce more seed thus allowing the plant to come full circle.

This seedy row was devoted to a variety of winter density lettuce that survived the cold months.

Beets are another biennial that we overwinter in the root cellar and then replant for seed purposes. Each of the seed clumps pictured below are actually clusters that contain multiple seeds.

Rhubarb is easy to grow and save seed from but the offspring will probably differ from the parent plant...which is what makes it fun. We grew lots of baby rhubarbs this past year.

It is best to leave your carrot seed production to the professionals.:) The carrot our pro (what a ham) is holding was grown this year from a mix of seed saved in 2009 pictured below.Again, full circle. You can read more about how we save carrot seed here.

Once it is harvested and cleaned most of our seed is then put into boxes, bags, or other containers on our porch to finish drying for a few weeks after which we pack the seed away in jars or bottles and store in a cold dry back room. They say that seeds kept in the freezer may remain viable for over 50 years. We prefer to save our seeds in smaller amounts and replenish them often rather than freezing because the environment changes so quickly that I worry seeds stored for extended periods rather than being rotationally saved and replanted will not "learn" to evolve.

Let us not forget:

Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.

~ Chief Seattle, 1854

Early 2011 Planting Schedule and Notes

2011-01-21T05:23:00.000-08:00

Onions - Sowed in flats on 2/15 (start in January next year).
Transplanted into garden on 4/17. Next year I will plant later or grow under cover for the first month or so...too cold.

Celery - Sowed in flats on 2/23 (Start in January next year). Planted in garden on 5/6.

Peppers, Eggplants - Sowed in flats 3/4 (Start in February next year).

Tomato, Tomatillo, Ground Cherry - Sowed seed in flats on 3/8-3/18. Started re-potting tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, tomatillos, and others on 4/30.

Brassicas, including: Turnips, Kohlrabi, Broccoli, Kale, Cabbage, and Mustard were sowed in flats on 3/13.
Transplanted (test) turnips into garden on 4/9.
Transplanted kale into garden on 4/17.
Transplanted broccoli, kohlrabi, and cabbage on 5/8.

Spinach - Sowed in flats on 3/15. Transplanted to garden on 4/9.
Direct seeded more on 4/18. Direct seeded spinach starting to emerge, 5/5.

Lettuce, including various chicory and arugula - Sowed in flats 3/14.
Transplanted into garden on 4/16.

Herbs - Sowed in flats 3/18. All herbs planted in garden on 5/11.

Garlic - Planted under row cover on 4/2, removed row cover on 4/18.

Parsnips - Direct seeded on 4/10. Starting to germinate on 5/5.

Parsley - Direct seeded 4/15. Germinated on 5/15.

Belgian Endive - Direct seeded 4/15. Noticed germination on 4/29.

Fava Beans planted on 4/20. Starting to germinate 5/5.

Amish Red Gooseberry, Achilles Gooseberry, Gloire de Sablons pink Currant, Black Velvet Gooseberry, Einset Grape, and Crimson Cherry Rhubarb from Raintree nursery planted on 4/20. Crimson Rhubarb arrived in unsatisfactory condition so they sent us 3 more plants and let us keep the originals. Good customer service.:) All the berry bushes had a good root system and shoul do well.

Carrots - Direct seeded on 4/24. Germinating on 5/12.

Beets - Direct seeded on 4/24. Starting to germinate, 5/7.

Hamburg parsley - Direct seeded on 4/25. Germinated on 5/22.

Afilia peas - Direct seeded on 4/25 (and then it started to snow again). Germinated on 5/9.

Minaj Smyriou and Crandall black currants arrived in good shape from Burnt Ridge Nursery on 4/29.

5/2 - The weather finally allowed for the planting of some of our potatoes...unfortunately we were rained out and still have 4 rows left to plant. It's going to be a big potato year for us as we are shooting for 600 lbs...enough for us and the chickens.....and dog.:) Finished planting on 5/3.
Potatoes emerging, 5/15.

Planted Schubert Chokecherry sometimes called Canada Red Cherry and a black cherry tree. Also noticed all of the varieties of cherries we are growing from seed have sprouted, 5/8.

5/29 - Planted Golden Salmon berries and a Logan berry start purchased from local nursery and farmers market.

Secrets of the Soil

2011-01-11T06:05:00.000-08:00

To continue any longer as blind consumers of life, without learning to
be visionary restorers of life, will likely insure an end to both
opportunities—sooner than most of us would like to look at. Yet to
fully look, in search of what is true, must surely be the first step.
—Donald A. Weaver

We did a simple soil test this past summer and I was truly surprised that the results reflected such a neutral pH balance as I had always considered our soil to be slightly on the acidic side due to all of the coniferous vegetation that surrounds our gardens. Apparently the truth of the matter is that while evergreen trees and bushes seem to prefer growing in a more acidic type of soil they do not in themselves contribute as much acidity to the soil as I originally thought and what little they do bring is possibly being neutralized by earthworms and microbes.

Lots of little needles in our garden's soil, mostly from fir trees.

In a healthy ground, earthworms eat their way through the decomposing soil depositing their castings as they go. According to what I have read this material is neutralized by secretions of calcium carbonate from glands near the earthworm's gizzard (similar to gizzards in birds) as it passes through their system helping to render it more neutral as the pH in acidic soils is raised and the pH in alkaline soils is reduced. Fortunately for us, our soil is absolutely loaded with worms so we must be doing something right. Here is an interesting excerpt from a rather unusual book on biodynamic agriculture I just read called "Secrets of the Soil" that relates to the function of earthworms in regards to soil fertility and it' s effect on garden plants.

"You would think, wouldn't you, that a carrot is a carrot - that one is about as good as another as far as nourishment is concerned? But it isn't; one carrot may look and taste like another and yet be lacking in the particular mineral element which our system requires and which carrots are supposed to contain." - Modern Miracle Men

In speaking of worms and their function in the soil as it relates to how they help plants assimilate needed nutrients one of the things I have been studying of late is the importance of minerals or the lack thereof in soil and its effect on the health of our plants, animals, and in turn us. Minerals come from rocks that are broken down over time and many of these minerals are severely lacking in today's foods due to industrial era farming techniques that rely heavily on chemicals to help produce the foods most of the population consumes. This has been an issue for many years as can be seen in this document titled Modern Miracle Men - Senate Document #264 written way back in the mid 1930's.

More recent studies suggest that the loss of nutrition in today's fruits and vegetables has continued to increase by alarming rates as illustrated in this chart that gives a glimpse into the lack on nutrient density in modern day food.

From the above study - "But nutritionists have also begun to understand that the form in which humans consume these nutrients is often more important than the quantity they consume.That is, getting vitamin C or iron or lycopene from a pill doesn’t yield the same benefits to our bodies and health as consuming the same amount of vitamin C or iron or lycopene in the form of a carrot or serving of spinach or sun-dried tomato."

These are some of our favorite Nung Ta tomatoes grown in 2009, hopefully high in lycopene.

Vapor from the sea; rain, snow, and ice on the summits; glaciers and
rivers—these form a wheel that grinds the mountains thin and sharp, sculptures deeply the flanks, and furrows them into ridge and canyon, and crushes the rocks into soils on which the forests and the meadows and gardens and fruitful vine and tree and grain are growing. —John Muir

Something we will be focused on during the coming years is that of continuing to provide our own gardens with enough naturally collected mineral supplements in the form of rock dust, sea & egg shells, ash, manure, "clean" beach sand, and decayed plant matter in order to retain the health and fertility of our soil. Included in this will be the growing of such plants as burdock, endive, dandelion, scorzonera, salsify, or any deep rooted and useful plant that will help to "mine" or draw up minerals from below so they can be assimilated by other shallow rooted veggies. 1/20/11 update - This year we also hope to add comfrey to our gardens. (Thanks for the advice MikeH).

The Survival Of Civilization may depend on all of us making sure this happens with the soil on this planet. Below is an interesting video on how the Thomson family is using rock dust to create healthy, abundant, nutrient dense crops in the harsh landscapes of Scotland.

Yes, "Often the simplest things."

Weather, Beets, and Endive

2011-01-05T05:26:00.000-08:00

Some of my blog posts might seem a little odd at times, perhaps a bit on the rambling side. The reason for this is that, in part, I try to use this blog as a journal of sorts, finding that it helps me/us to keep track of what we have been doing on a monthly basis making for a good reference of past events. That said, our temperatures of late have ranged from pretty darn cold (-9) to not too bad (mid 20's) and the winter has been more than manageable thus far, nothing like the terrible weather some of you have been facing in other parts of the U.S. and world. We have received around 45" of snow thus far but it has not all come at once as it did in 2008/09 and has provided a nice insulating blanket for our winter garden. It is snowing out as I type this, they are predicting over 9o" of snow for this winter...Rowdy sure likes it.↓

It was so cold the other day his brown fur started turning white, our hair did the same thing...made us all look kind of ghostly in the early morning hours.:)

In the root cellar we have been able to maintain an average of between 34-39° the past couple weeks, ideal conditions for our produce. Unfortunately, before our latest cold spell we had a bit of a warming trend that caused some of our stored vegetables to return to life and start sprouting a bit. This is pretty normal but not usually something we have to deal with until early March. So last week I spent a few hours going through 6 totes of beets and gave them all a much needed trim before re-packing. The carrots look fine, but the turnips also needed a shave. This should keep everything in good condition for a couple more months at which point I may or may not have to repeat the process...routine root cellar maintenance. See also trimming carrots and parsnips.

Sometimes we pack a few of these beets into pots that are placed on an upstairs window cell and "Forced" to provide us with a nice bunch of fresh greens.

At the same time I took the opportunity to cut back any dead stalks of celery and water all of the pots well. We want the celery to keep growing and it sucks up a surprising amount of water each week, some of the plants are even starting to send new shoots.

A couple pots of endive were brought upstairs to be used in our salads. We will replace these weekly and give the remaining soil to our chickens to play in...they love it and sometimes even find a few worms. Speaking of chickens, the girls have started laying again and we once again have a plentiful supply of eggs. We are proud to have only had to purchase exactly one carton of eggs in the past 3 years.

Green and red endive along with a few speckled ones that have obviously crossed with each other.

Sunroots in our Salad

2010-12-29T17:17:00.000-08:00

One of the vegetables that we will probably never be found lacking in are sunroots, so we are always looking for new ways in which to use these prolific tubers that spread so readily throughout our gardens...in their designated areas of course. Of late we have been slicing them into thin strips and mixing with a little balsamic vinegar and olive oil or any balsamic dressing we happen to have on hand...Mrs. H is always finding fantastic deals on balsamic dressing and hauls it home by the box full, it must be a black market thing...shame, shame. Anyway, they are then covered and left in the fridge overnight to marinate a bit which helps impart an extra nice flavor when sprinkled atop our daily veggie bowl.

Today's ↑ salad contains various kale, turnip greens, cabbage, grated carrot, squash, turnip (root), beet, topped with red cabbage sauerkraut, sunflower seeds, and a hint of Asiago cheese. Sunroots really add a distinct crunch to the mix, traditionally, when eaten raw, we have simply grated them into the salad but I much prefer this new method.

If you are so inclined, more of my thoughts on how we grow, care for, and store sunroots can be found in the links below.↓ Also, I have been asked why I choose to call them sunroots instead of Jerusalem artichokes, sunchokes, topinambour, girasole, earth apple, or any of the other names they might go by. I do this because, as far as I know, they were first cultivated by Native American and Canadian Indians who called them "sun roots" long before these tuberous plants were whisked off to foreign lands where they underwent a variety of name changes.

Sunroots or Pirate's Booty

Our Ultimate Survival Food

Our Ever Evolving Sunroots (Jerusalem Artichokes)

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-23T06:03:00.000-08:00

Summer's over

Winter's here

Patiently waiting for spring...

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Ambitions and Rambling Thoughts on Chickens

2010-12-19T14:46:00.000-08:00

Sharing Food

Warning -“The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.” - W. H. Auden

The above quote can be considered my disclaimer as I am somewhat of a boob when it comes to discussions on animal husbandry. Give me a potato, tomato, or even a funky climbing trombetta squash to talk about and my confidence level is fairly high...chickens, not so much. That said, we have somehow managed to keep our flock healthy and thriving for a few years and are only now faced with a slow down in egg production forcing us to contemplate a few new additions to the gang.

One of our future goals is to become more self-sustainable when it comes to feeding our fine feathered friends. We think that this objective could either be achieved by once again selling enough eggs to pay for the birds feed and/or growing all of the foods that a small flock might need to meet their nutritional requirements. My plan is to one day soon set aside a small section of land that we will use to grow enough corn and wheat to feed a flock of 15-20 chickens whose diet will also be supplemented with as much garden produce as we can get them to eat. I figure that this might be possible on about 1/4 an acre...we shall see and I shall share.

These carrots, mangles, beets, potatoes, squash, apples, and sunroot tubers are being grated for the chickens.

At this point we are still buying most of the grain products that we feed our flock but do go out of our way to augment their diet with as many home grown food stuffs as possible. This makes a huge difference in the amount of store bought grains they consume. Right now our birds have around one fenced acre of forest and field in which roam about foraging for bugs, grass, and anything else they might find...this also helps with the feed bill.

The flock heading out into the cold...they hate being cooped up even more than they dislike the snow. Their pen is always open during the day so they can come and go as they please.

Every couple days during the winter months we grate and then steam cook a wide variety of vegetables from our root cellar for the chickens. A portion of this is then fed to them late in the afternoon each day to provide enough carbohydrates to help them stay warm at night. In addition to root vegetables the birds are provided with alfalfa hay when they can't forage for grass and weeds due to the snow and I also try to obtain any "less than perfect" greens from the winter garden rows for them while picking our daily salad.

The chickens get a flake of alfalfa hay every 3 days when their free range is covered with snow.

Their eggshells are saved, dried, crushed, and added back to the feed to help provide them with enough calcium for all those eggs we no longer get. Every couple weeks after I have cleaned out the wood stove the "cool" bucket of ash is left in the pen for them to peck at...they really seem to like the ash and it no doubt adds some beneficial minerals to their diet. I do know that the ash contains some calcium because we add all of Rowdy's (the dog) and any other bones we might come upon to the fire. When it is time to clean out the fireplace any ash remaining in the bucket is then spread on the garden and replaced with the new stuff. Wood ash can also be dumped in a pile so the birds can use it for dust bathing purposes during the winter, although we don't do this as their pen has plenty of soil in it. Obviously, we are very careful that nothing other than wood and the occasional bones go into the fireplace.

I built our chicken house so that it could easily accommodate 30-40 birds, although we have never had that many. Their house is built right into the barn and has three adjoining rooms, the one pictured below is where they sleep and lay eggs.

As I've mentioned in a previous post an oil heater and bird bath warmer are ready to use during January when the temperatures sometimes drop into the negative digits for a couple weeks. The heater is surrounded by chicken wire just in case someone decides to try roosting on it...so far that has never happened.

There is nothing better than a nice dust bath on a sunny winter's day...dirty birdies.

Here is an interesting excerpt from Countryside Magazine on feeding animals from one's garden:

"While growing small amounts of grains will be fun and instructive, you'll soon see why farm folk welcomed mechanization. But what about those crops that got left behind in the process?

The leader is probably the mangel, or mangold, or mangle-wurzle or stock beet. These are fun to grow: they'll amaze your friends and neighbors.

The roots reach fantastic proportions. . . two feet long and more. Don't worry: they grow mostly above ground You won't need a backhoe to dig them.

At one time mangels were a staple feed for dairy cattle, even in the U.S. They were displaced because the growing of other feeds was more easily mechanized. . . and because of the research into and improvements in silage. (Some writers maintain that if as much work had gone into root crops as was invested in silage, root crops would be the more common today.)

After harvesting, cut off the tops and store the roots in clamps-rudimentary root cellars. Dig a pit, put the mangels in, and cover with enough straw and soil to keep them from freezing.

We once had a Jersey cow that ate mangles whole, just nibbling on them like people eat apples. But conventional wisdom says cows can choke on these beets, so they must be cut into bite-size pieces. If you want to feed mangels and you're lucky, you might still be able to find a beet-cutter hidden away in an old barn. Failing that, you might study one in a farm museum and replicate it. . . or devise your own. On a small scale, of course, they can be chopped with a large butcher knife or machete.

Other root crops include the aforementioned turnips and carrots. Turnips have made a recent comeback among some shepherds. Planted in pastures, the sheep can harvest them themselves. (Turnips are said to produce off-flavor milk if fed to cows or goats.)

Carrots require more work to harvest, but if you have good, sandy carrot soil they're certainly worth considering. Store these in clamps, like mangels.

Jerusalem artichokes have also been highly touted as livestock feed by modern homesteaders. This member of the sunflower family produces stalks and leaves that are relished by cows, sheep and goats. Any animal (including humans) will eat the potato-like tubers, but that involves a lot of digging labor for little reward. We have found, however, that pigs enjoy both the labor and the rewards.

And what about potatoes? At first blush it might seem like some kind of a crime of waste to grow potatoes for livestock feed, but why is that any different than growing corn for them? Potatoes were once a common stock food, and culls are still used in potato-growing regions."

The Alternative Kitchen Garden: an A-Z

2010-12-15T06:14:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about reviewing a few of the gardening and self-sufficiency related books that I so dearly enjoy reading. One of the things my wife and I love to do during the winter months is to "try" and catch up on our reading so that we can justify spending a day every so often tooling about the used bookstores in our area in an attempt to uncover more of those hidden gems that are tucked away on dusty shelves just waiting for us to find. Some of my most rewarding accomplishments are those that I have taken from the page of a book and turned into a reality, having an idea manifest from mere words to an actual tangible creation is always an enlightening experience.

That said, I thought it would be fitting to start off with a newer book I just finished reading that, in my mind, truly exemplifies the pure unadulterated joy of gardening, The Alternative Kitchen Garden an A-Z written by Emma Cooper. This young author tends a very diverse garden plot where her and husband Pete can be found enthusiastically growing and experimenting with a wide variety of different vegetables, herbs, fruits, and berries...anything that can possibly be grown in their climate. Emma also keeps plants going in their geodesic dome greenhouse and raises chickens on her property in the UK. I have found that some of my favorite gardening books come from this region as the climate is so very similar to our own in the Pacific Northwest, thus the advice given is most pertinent.

One of the things I like about this particular book is that it's an especially valuable resource for those with small garden plots, showing the limitless possibilities of what can be achieved in a modest area of land. Emma shares her personal thoughts and experiences growing organic food and raising chickens on her small homestead with a refreshingly witty and down to earth sense of humor that sets this read apart from many of the stodgy and strictly serious gardening books out there. I should also mention that all of the information in this book is presented in a very environmentally conscientious manner.

Perhaps what really piqued my interest was the wide diversity of topics and plants that she covered. Do you know what xynophyl is? Want to try growing Achoca? Well, besides covering all of the "normal" garden veggies one of Emma's passions is to try new and unusual varieties in her garden...me too. All in all I thoroughly appreciated this book for the reasons listed above plus the fact that Emma is a fellow blogger whose thought provoking posts about gardening always impart on me a little more knowledge than I started with. So check out her book and blog sometime...you just might like it too.

Emma's gardening blog can be found at http://coopette.com/blog/ and she also produces The Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast (an online radio show).

Gardening in the Snow

2010-12-10T16:22:00.000-08:00

Another dreary, sunless, wet winter afternoon finds me chilled to the bone from hacking away at the snow surrounding our covered garden rows. It has finally warmed up enough that I was able to more easily remove the snowy slop that encompassed them. Up until this point everything has been so frozen solid that I have only bothered to tackle the snow from the ends of each row, thus allowing me limited access to the greens hidden within. So, back inside the warm house with a hot cup of coffee in hand I thought I might take a few minutes to post some pictures and thoughts on gardening in the snow.

During the cold season some plants are actually able to concentrate or increase their sugar content which in turn serves them as a sort of natural antifreeze, helping them to withstand frosty and freezing conditions for extended periods of time. The slower the weather cools off the better the plants are able to acclimatize in this manner. Even people can slowly adjust to cold or heat as our body's make internal adjustments to help compensate...it's really quite fascinating.

Anyway, we are always experimenting with a wide variety of plants that seem to withstand the cold to varying degrees. So far we have a had luck with an amazing amount of different types of greens that we can grow in the cold, often all the way through the frigid months.

Plants like kale, Swiss chard, parsley, boc choy, Bull's Blood beet greens, cress, collard greens, sorrel, various kale, mache, certain mustards, green onions, arugula, oregano, violets, cabbage, purple sprouting broccoli, rutabaga greens, salad burnett, spearmint, spinach, chickweed, turnip, kale-rabi, winter density lettuces, chervil, and many diverse varieties of chicory/endive/radicchio make up the winter garden list.

For this winter we focused on some of the very hardiest of the bunch that always perform well for us and have the majority of our winter rows planted in turnip greens, kale, and parsley. This↓row contains parsley, a nutritional powerhouse that is so very much more than just a silly little garnish to be pushed aside before beginning one's meal. We love it so much that we have a 25' row of it that gets picked at/on most days of the year. Parsley is included in almost every meal that we make, raw or cooked.

After over a month of very cold weather that included more than a few days in the negative digits you can quite clearly see how well the parsley and red sorrel have managed these conditions. It is not so much the chilly weather that will wear on these plants but all of the other elements combined such as cold, rain, snow, and wind that tends to break them down on a cellular level much faster than the cold alone. A simple protective cover makes a world of difference.

Included in this year's winter garden is a small section of red celery that, surprisingly, seem to be holding their own so far. These plants will be encouraged to bolt to seed in the spring in order to provide us with enough seed for the next couple years. Giant red is definitely the hardiest celery we grow. The one drawback is that a capricious percentage always seem to bolt during the summer if conditions are not just right, conditions that are all too often hard to consistently achieve...but I do try and we always end up with enough good plants to make them worthwhile to grow.

This row contains a whole lot of young turnip greens and a small section of winter density lettuces, spinach, and red mustard too. Turnip greens are always the first to put out new growth for us, sometimes even in the middle of winter during brief warm spells.

I am using this makeshift cold frame to help protect and overwinter some of our Swiss chard that, like the celery, will be allowed to provide us with new seed.
As an experiment, I have a mixture of different varieties of beets that didn't make the harvest cut under this row cover just to see how readily they will resume growth in the spring...if at all, they look pretty whipped at this point.

"There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination" - Denis Diderot

Two of this year's winter rows contain nothing but kale, my favorite winter green.

We have Lacinato kale, also called Dinosaur kale because of its bumpy textured leaves.

Our very hardy Lacinato Rainbow kale is a cross between Lacinato and Red Bore kale. I hope to grow the Red Bore (hybrid) variety next year if I can find some affordable seeds...dang they're pricey.

Beedy's Camden Kale hibernating in a bed of leaves.

Red and White kale. I have noticed that the younger Russian kale plants perform much, much better than the larger ones in our winter garden, it seemingly has to do with the thickness of the stem. Many of the larger Russian kales seem to be affected by the cold and begin to rot along the trunk while those with smaller stems manage the weather much better. On the other hand, the larger plants that do survive share many more greens with us in the early spring. Quite often, even the large kales that appear to have died out in the cold are able to regrow if their roots have not been damaged. They will then provide us with a good month or more of nice greens before bolting to seed.

And, in saving the best for last, we have what I now believe is perhaps the all around hardiest variety we grow at this time, Dwarf Blue Curled Vates kale. A very nice kale, not only because it is so darn cold hardy but the shorter stature of this particular variety makes it a perfect fit for our row covers. The Red Bore kale seems to be similar in nature which is why I want to include it next season.

Believe it or not, we are able to "gently" pick all of these greens while frozen solid and if they are allowed to thaw at a temperature around 40°...not too warm, you honestly can barely tell that they did not arrive straight out of a summer garden. Of course the main difference is that there are no bugs on them this time of year and their sugar content makes them taste much sweeter.

Gardening is much more than a warm weather activity for us, we can be found on bended knee tending our plants 365 days each year. I often wonder what my neighbors must think when they see me trudging about our gardens in the snow with a bowl in my hands, perhaps they will inquire one of these days...or more likely not, as they no doubt consider us to be a little touched in the head...and maybe we are at that.:)

"The fair-weather gardener, who will do nothing except when the wind and weather and everything else are favorable, is never master of his craft."--Henry Ellacombe

A Disposition To Preserve

2010-11-28T15:26:00.000-08:00

"Alexandra often said that if her mother were cast upon a desert island, she would thank God for her deliverance, make a garden, and find something to preserve. Preserving was almost a mania with Mrs. Bergson. Stout as she was, she roamed the scrubby banks of Norway Creek looking for fox grapes and goose plums, like a wild creature in search of prey. She made a yellow jam of the insipid ground cherries that grew on the prairie, flavoring it with lemon peel; and she made a sticky dark conserve of garden tomatoes. She had experimented even with the rank buffalo-pea, and she could not see a fine bronze cluster of them without shaking her head and murmuring, 'What a pity!' When there was nothing to preserve, she began to pickle."

You can read this fine story by Willa Cather in it's entirety online - 'O Pioneers!'

Much like Mrs. Bergson we once again foraged, grew, and preserved with a devoted enthusiasm. I would suppose that the success of our garden could, in part, be based upon how much food was put by in the root cellar, canned, or saved through other means of preservation. If we were to judge our gardening endeavours in this manner it would once again be deemed another prosperous season. The cellar contains an embarrassing amount of beets, carrots, potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, parsnips, celery, Belgian endive, root parsley, onions, kohlrabi, cabbage, peppers, and apples. Our warm dry living room is home to members of the cucurbit (squash) clan and yet another cool dry back room contains saved seeds for next year's garden, baskets of garlic, and even a few shallots.

This room is full of carrots, beets, and potatoes (not shown).

We like to keep our onions in baskets as it helps with airflow.

Atop our kitchen refrigerator one can find an assortment of glass gallon jars filled with various dry beans, corn, and fruit leather. The two freezers on our porch are both stuffed beyond capacity with foraged service berries, elderberries, Oregon grapes, huckleberries, cranberries, dried morel mushrooms, and cubes of hawthorn berry syrup. And from our garden - frozen strawberries, grapes, raspberries, black raspberries, blackberries, currants, gooseberries, josta berries, zucchini, broccoli, rhubarb sauce, dried apples, dried pears, dried apricots, more peppers, beet greens, kale greens, peas, stewed and dried plums, dried tomatoes, and herbs like cilantro and basil.

The back pantry contains↓

1 large box full of grown and foraged tea herbs

Tomato sauce - 104 quarts (13 left from last year)

Thick spaghetti/pizza sauce - 52 pints

Various salsa derived from tomatoes, tomatillos, and combinations of both - 82 pints (6 left from last year)

Ketchup - 7 half pints & 10 pints (4 from last year)

Sauerkraut - 5 water bath canned, 9 unprocessed quarts in basement & 6 in the refrigerator

Nasturtium Capers (also called poor man's capers) - 2 half pints

Various whole and sliced pickles - 23 pints & 15 quarts

Green beans (pickled) -6 pints

Apple sauce - 11 quarts & 22 pints

Pear sauce - 6 quarts

Huckleberry Jam - 6 half pints left from last year

Mincemeat - 11 pints & 1 quart

Ginger pear sauce - (we love this on baked squash) 22 half pints & 5 pints

In preparation for next year's gardening adventures we ordered re-usable Tattler canning lids and rings and in doing so will, with any luck, not have to concern ourselves with the availability of store bought lids and rings going forward. Our worries being that the lost art of food preservation might quickly gain relevance due to future economic or other woes that may transpire.

"...steam was generated beyond the power of the canister to endure. As a natural consequence, the canister burst, the dead turkey sprang from his coffin of tinplate and killed the cook forthwith." - News report of an early canning industry accident (1852)

Fortunately, no such bad luck has befallen us and of all the canned food processed this year only two empty jars were lost when the bottoms busted out because I failed to properly heat them before dunking into hot water to be scalded. All in all we are quite content with this year's harvest and are especially glad to be finished with the task of canning all our "green" tomatoes. Out of the estimated 500-600 lbs we harvested this year a remarkable majority of them ripened up nicely indoors. We just finished our last batch the day before Thanksgiving...Ay yi yi !

There will be no more warm jars for Rodger, the fat black cheshire cat, to cuddle up next to.

Our Ever Evolving Sunroots (Jerusalem Artichokes)

2010-11-21T05:20:00.000-08:00

We have been growing Jerusalem artichokes, I prefer to call them sunroots, for more than a few years now and I am always amazed at how they change in size and appearance from year to year depending upon where they have been planted. This year's sunroots grew into a wide variety of shapes and sizes, some were very smooth and oblong while others much more spherical, and then there are the funky monstrosities pictured above. I grew a few of my extras in a brand new location that had Joe Pye Weed growing in it the previous couple years and ended up with huge multi-knobbed tubers. There were about 8-12 tubers per plant compared to the anywhere from 15-50 smaller ones we are normally blessed with. Here is how the majority of them looked the previous fall. Personally I prefer the smaller ones but they do seem to have a mind of their own.

Anyway, I thought perhaps the Joe Pye Weed might have some nitrogen or other soil building qualities that I was unaware of but have been unable to find any evidence to support that theory other than my big rugged tubers. A fellow gardener just did a post on these tubers as well, you can read her thoughts and see how her variety looks at Emma's coopette.com blog.

Yes, this is only one sun root...how on earth am I supposed to eat that? :)
This is a new variety that we are growing this year, the size of these is more to my liking.

A Lazy Fall Harvest

2010-11-15T05:41:00.000-08:00

Nothing too exciting to report from our Northern Idaho garden as the lackadaisical tranquility of autumn slowly takes hold. Surprisingly warm, above freezing, rainy weather has allowed us an extended grace period in which to finish harvesting the few remaining root vegetables. Purple Top turnips planted in late August have turned into nice little egg-shaped orbs that we have stored away for winter fare. My flock of red headed step children seen in the background were beside themselves waiting in eager anticipation for the nutritious tops to be shared.

The rutabagas have also been packed into totes. We only grew a few this year as they always end up wormy but this season we planted them a bit later, sometime in early July I think, and ended up with a smaller sized but mostly blemish free crop. We planted both the turnips and the rutabagas late in order to avoid issues with root maggots that so often haunt our brassicas during the early spring months.

We also potted up about 15 containers of celery, 3-4 plants per pot, to be used for soups, salads, and stir fry during the cold months. They keep surprisingly well in the root cellar as long as they are not allowed to dry out...you would be amazed at what good use we make of celery around here.

We saw this wonderful video, posted as a reminder to myself, on how to make kimchi this morning. I liked the way she prepared it and am looking forward to trying out this method...I love how she dices her carrots. Unfortunately, with a couple gallons already made it will be sometime before we get around to this. I would like to use turnips in place of radishes and I will probably pass on the squid as we don't have any in our lake...as far as I know.:)

Some Cabbage

2010-11-05T18:49:00.000-07:00

“Having a good wife and rich cabbage soup, seek not other things” - Russian Proverb

June 22 cabbage

Same cabbage on October 23

We grew a nice variety of cabbage this season. Red cabbage like Ruby Ball, Red Acre, Tete Noire, Mammoth Red Rock (new to us) for storage, Derby Day and Danish Ballhead for sauerkraut, and savoy type cabbage for kimchi. I never have had any luck growing traditional napa cabbage, if they don't bolt to seed the slugs make a mess of them so we always use savoy for our fermented kimchi instead. This year we grew a cold hardy savoy variety called Melissa and a smaller headed one called Frigga and have been extremely happy with the results.

After much trial and lots of error over the years we have finally found a long term storage method that keeps us in fresh (red) cabbage long into the winter months. Storing cabbage has been one of the weak spots in our root cellar storage system. Every method I have tried has eventually resulted in rotten cabbage. Last year we did something different. I thought that if I could keep the cabbage alive perhaps it would stay fresh longer, so after removing the loose outer leaves we gently pulled the plants up by their roots being careful not to shake too much of the soil off and simply replanted the rooted end into a plastic bag that had a little damp dirt in the bottom and tied it tightly around the cabbage stem. Our cabbage remained in good condition throughout the winter. As you can see in the below picture I will be storing them the same way once again.

Mr. H's Food Dehydration Unit #1

2010-10-31T13:25:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, just as we were beginning to use it, our obnoxiously noisy Nesco brand dehydrator broke...again. The the third one in 4 years = junk. Now I know that many people have lots of luck with the Nesco brand dehydrators but we don't, perhaps they get used and abused too much by us...I really don't know. The other day I read an interesting post on the The Thrifty Garden/Home blog about junk products and how poor quality so many of the appliances we purchase are these days. That post really resonated with me and I have decided to do my best not to replace any more of our junk with more junk but to make do with what we have instead. Goodbye forever microwave, and Mr. Coffee, your turn is next!

So, yesterday I decided to make my own dehydrator, as I refuse to buy another Nesco or afford a more expensive model. In the summer we simply use the roof of our barn to dry things but that doesn't work so well with late crop apples, plums, pears, and tomatoes because there isn't much in the way of sun this time of year...mostly rain. Anyway, I read about building this dehydrator out of an old dorm refrigerator or one like this and they both looked like good possibilities. But, before I could start planning for either model a thought hit me on the head like a ton of bricks. I already have a huge totally functional dehydrator sitting right there in our kitchen, a pellet stove complete with hot air blowers...ha! This stove is used for a few weeks in the fall and early spring when the roof of our house is too dry to safely heat with firewood, the rest of the winter we rely on wood heat for warmth.

All I needed to do was concentrate the warm airflow that comes out of the pellet stoves blowers in a way that would allow for it to circulate around the produce I wished to dry. I used the best part of my Nesco dehydrator, the trays, as drying racks. A cardboard box plus two bricks completed the dryer assembly and 5 minutes later...Voilà! We now have a much more efficient and quieter unit. I set it up just high enough so that the air would flow in and underneath the trays, rising upwards through the racks. I first tested it with tomatoes and 14 hours later had perfectly dry fruits.:) Today, after contemplating the addition of a drip tray to the contraption, I will dry some pears. To think that all of these years what I really needed for indoor food drying was a simple cardboard box and enough brains to realize it.

Click on this link to see how others use to dry food in days gone by - National Geographic (June, 1917)

Note the dryer racks hanging above this old wood cook stove

Red Shiso - A Plant Worth Growing

2010-10-26T05:52:00.000-07:00

Each year we try to grow a few new varieties of edible plants with the hope that we will find something that proves to be a valuable asset to our food garden. We have been surprised at how many of these "experimental" plants have found a permanent, sometimes prominent, place in our gardens. Take tomatillos and amaranth for example, two plants that 10 years ago I did not even know existed and today would not consider being without. Amaranth leaves find their way into stir frys, salads, kimchi, the list goes on. Tomatillos comprise a large portion of the salsa we make each year and are easily canned or frozen for future use. Suffice to say, we have found quite a few useful herbs, berries, and vegetables that seem to thrive in our gardens, all of which at one point in time were very much "new to us."

This experimenting with different plants is one of the things that helps keep the whole gardening and food self-sufficiency endevour fresh and exciting. One of the new plants that we grew this year was called Red Shiso (perilla). This beautiful maroon colored herb has a multitude of culinary, medicinal, and other uses that you can read all about at http://www.apinchof.com/shiso1119.htm. With its strong cuminesc like flavor I am hoping to use it as a colorful addition to our kimchi next year. I was going to dry the leaves off this year's plants but unfortunately frost took them from us before I had a chance. We did enjoy it's strong flavor in many a stir fry throughout the late summer months though.

This picture was taken in mid August, the leaves turned much darker as the cooler months arrived.

This September 29th photo shows the much darker leaves

A Day In The Slow Life

2010-10-20T06:10:00.000-07:00

I have been invited by Laura, curator of The Modern Victory Garden to participate in a "meme" called A Day In The Slow Life created by Tony over at Backyard Feast. That said, I carefully attempted to record the events of Monday October 18th, a day both my wife and I would be home and able to devote the day to working in our gardens trying to finish up our harvest. As Mrs. H had just returned from a trip to Nevada we wanted to spend a relaxing day working together and enjoying the sunny weather.

As a brief introduction to us and our lifestyle, I first met my wife, a true kindred spirit, while we worked for a now defunct Italian telecommunications company many years ago. Long story short we are now happily married and have over the years slowly and deliberately entrenched our lifestyle into one that revolves around growing and gathering our own foods, truly attempting to live the "slow" life. We have chosen to live this way as it symbolizes our freedom from so many of the things of man that we no longer wish to be part of, choosing instead to live simply and reap the whirlwind of benefits fresh air and healthy foods deliver to us.

The vast majority of the foods we eat come from our gardens where we plant, grow, tend, and harvest on a continuous basis 12 months a year. It is what we enjoy, what drives us to keep moving forward each and every day. To us, it is most empowering endeavour to grow, gather, and consume one's own food. Below is a fairly typical day in our slow but active lives.

5:00 AM, on the dot, Mrs. H's mental alarm goes off and she gets up, starts the coffee, feeds the cats, turns on our oh so slow dinosaur of a computer and then returns to bed for another hour or so of sleep.

5:15 AM I wake up and open our porch door to let the cats and dog outside. We have been keeping this closed as our porch is currently full of tomatoes that we have slowly been bringing inside to ripen and I do not wish either raccoons, skunks, or the cold to damage our produce. During the summer months I leave the door open so the cats can come and go as they wish. With eyes still half shut I manage to find the coffee, stagger over to the computer, and wake up while reading different blogs, articles, and news from the Internet.

6:30 AM finds me bright eyed and bushy tailed after reading all of your fine blogs and drinking a large cup of strong black caffeinated coffee, I holler at Mrs. H to rise and shine as it is another glorious day in Idaho. She hates it when I am all cheery so early in the morning, especially on rainy days...but what can I say, I'm pretty much full of it all of the time.:) Mrs. H, the true highlight of my day, eventually wanders out with coffee in hand and sits down next to me. She squints her eyes and says good morning.

7:00 AM, I leave Mrs. H to finish waking up and head out to with a few scraps from a squash we cooked the other day to feed and release our ravenous flock of red headed chickens with Rowdy the wonder dog glued to my side. Rowdy is supposed to comb the perimeter of the entire chicken run and make sure it is safe from varmints but seems to have once again forgotten his duties preferring to say hi to the girls and join them at breakfast. While the animals are eating I flip the straw and dirt under the chicken roost with a pitchfork and head back in for a shower and more coffee.

It's 8:00 AM, we are dressed and headed outside with cups now full of home brewed tea...time to walk the dog. Mrs. H opens the large outside door to our basement and starts a load of laundry. As our basement/root cellar is also our laundry room we try to run the wash machine in the early mornings this time of year to help keep the temperature at around 40°. It was 46° this morning but 29° outside. When we returned from our walk it was 43°. Our goal is to get it under 40 °and keep it there until spring so that our produce won't start sprouting.

8:10 AM, I grab my daily apple to munch on and we walk Rowdy in the park. He almost always gets to run free and often has the opportunity to play with other dogs during this time..but not today as we were the only ones there. We walked and played frisbee with him for almost an hour before heading home.

9:ish, back from our walk Mrs. H pulls the towels out of the washer and I shut the basement door to keep the cold air in and we proceed to hang the wash on the outside line to dry. As temperatures drop we often have to leave the clothes out overnight, barring any rain in the forecast. Later in the year they will be dried on racks in front of our living room fireplace.

9:30 AM finds us back in the house. Mrs. H feeds the dog while I turn the runner beans that are drying by the fireplace. We were only able to harvest a partial crop this year before the frosts hit. They will dry by the pellet stove for a few days before being shelled and then stored away in gallon jars. We are fortunate to still have an abundance of beans left over from last year and this year's fava bean crop did very well. I hope that next season is a better one for dry beans.

I also take this time to put a few of the potato and Giant Cape Gooseberry seeds that have finished drying into envelopes for future use. If you ever want to save the seed off tomatillos, ground cherries/cape gooseberries, or potato seed just toss a few really ripe ones into your blender (or mash them) with a little water. Give them a whirl and then dump the contents into a small bowl. The good seeds will sink to the bottom and the rest of the pulp can be carefully poured off leaving the seeds.

At 9:45 AM we eat breakfast. We often eat late this time of year skipping any type of lunch altogether, preferring to work outside when it is warm. This morning's entree consisted of leftover squash and cooked kale greens that I made into a stir fry and served with pear sauce & sauerkraut. We always eat breakfast at the computer allowing us to read a few blogs together and discuss the days schedule. We really love it when you post videos so that I don't have to type and eat at the same time. See Laura, we share the same habits as you when it comes to breakfast.:)

10:30 AM, breakfast is over, dishes are washed and put away and I have shut the pellet stove off for the afternoon. I pull out our containers of sauerkraut to check on them. We like to clean the lid/weight and stir everything up every third day in order to prevent any scummy mold from developing...it must work as I have never had any issues with that. While I do this Mrs. H works on putting another mix of tea together for the week. Her tea consists of 15-20 different ingredients many of which we have collected from the wild during the summer months...strange things like gum weed and prunella. I don't question her about these things and simply do as I am told and drink up.

10:45 AM, the sun has almost reached the gardens and I am giving the chickens clean water under their favorite tree for the day. I brought an empty bucket along and having watered the birds headed straight to the salad garden to collect some parsley seed that I keep forgetting about. Speaking of parsley, I also dug up some Hamburg root parsley and put it in pots that will eventually end up in the root cellar. This is the first year I have grown root parsley and I think I might just like it...we shall see how well it overwinters both in storage and the ground outside.

11:15 ish found me uncovering our covered rows so the greens within do not overheat in the sun. I also opened the greenhouse that still houses some of our pepper and tomato plants. Some of our hot peppers are starting to change color...yay!

11:30 AM, Mrs. H and I work in the sun, so nice to have it on our backs this time of year. We dig up, clip the greens off and pack into pots our Belgian endive that will be forced during the winter months to provide us with another source of nutritious greens. While working on the endive roots we hatched plans for harvesting soap wort, we need to do this before the ground freezes...which will be pretty soon. Rowdy assisted by digging up the old potato row next to us in search of voles.

It's around 2:30 PM and we are hauling our filled pots to the root cellar. Keeping track of the time like this is hard...I keep forgetting.:)

3:00 PM For tonight's supper we picked celery, rutabaga, carrot, a small forgotten delicata squash, onion, chicory root, parsley, sorrel, and kale to create a homemade veggie broth. Rows were covered back up and the greenhouse was shut to keep the warmth inside for as long as possible. We only get about 4 hours of sun in the garden this time of year as it sits so low in the sky hiding behind the trees that surround us.

3:45 PM Mrs. H has cleaned up the veggies and started a broth cooking on the stove while I snack on some homemade cabbage salsa that I made the previous night and chatter in her ear about the day's events while re-starting the pellet stove.

4:15 ish, with broth simmering we head out for another walk (spoiled dog). We often let him play in the water but our lake is full of poisonous blue green algae this time of year so Mrs. H and Rowdy checked out the construction going on near the docks and then we played frisbee on the way home. We take our time as it is a relaxing day and we are not in a hurry for a change.

5:00 PM (I'm rounding off all these times by the way, we are not this prompt) We both worked on cleaning and then roasting parsnips, onions, and garlic for tonight's dinner of parsnip and pear soup...hence the vegetable broth we have been working on. Oh, and we fed the dog again. He gets a serving of homemade dog food twice a day and we always keep his dry food bowl full.

5:30 PM Mrs. H made a fabulous apple crisp while I worked on an orange tomato sauce to be canned in the morning. The other day I made lovely black and orange salsa so I thought why not an orange tomato sauce too? The orange and black tomatoes are so sweet and flavorful that I hate to mix them up with the reds. It seems we have worked on a canning project of some sort almost every day for the past two weeks and our pantry is quickly filling up.

6:30 PM and we added the roasted vegetables along with a few pears to the broth, eventually turning into a nice soup. Mrs. H drew a bath and relaxed while I watched the news and worked on bruschetta that will accompany our soup. After a drizzle of olive oil I topped the homemade bread with garlic, onions, pepper, tomato, and cheese. The soup might not look like much but it sure tasted good.

At 7:30 PM we cleaned up the kitchen and while Mrs. H set the table Rowdy and I headed out to count and lock up the chickens. I also gathered the eggs at this time, all three of them. Rowdy confirmed that everyone was in for the night while I scolded the girls and told them a horror story about chicken soup before leaving. I can see stars in the night sky and the moon is starting to fill out again helping to light my way.

8:00 PM found us finally sitting down to eat. We watched "Dancing With the Stars" on one of the two channels that we get since being forced to hook up to government TV. Mrs. H likes this show...I endure it.

9:45 PM and we are too tired to stay up any later, we clean up the table, prepare coffee for the morning, brush teeth, tuck in the dog....good night everyone!

I would like to invite, without any obligation, my friend Heiko all the way from Italy via Path to Self Sufficiency and homemaker/animal husbandry expert extraordinaire Ohiofarmgirl from Ohiofarmgirl's Adventures In The Good Land to consider participating in this meme when time permits...but only if you wish to.

For those of you, like me, who do not know about such things as memes here is a very good explanation given to me by Laura -

"A meme is a way to get a broad group participating in posting about a particular topic - each adding their own take and information to the main topic point - part of the protocol is to do a courtesy link back to the one that invited you to the party and then invite a few more people to participate who you think would be interesting to read their posts about the subject providing a link to their blogs at the time."

You can see Heiko's Day "Day in the Slow Life" here and the Ohiofarmgirl's here. Thanks for participating.:)

Harvesting Beets and Carrots

2010-10-14T17:12:00.000-07:00

The first frost visited us this morning, pretty light though and much later than I thought it would be this season, nothing was damaged. We have been busy picking and packing our beets and carrots for storage before a hard freeze sets in. It was a decent year for most root vegetables and they all seem to be of fairly good size and shape...not too big and not too small, perfect for storage in the root cellar. Most of the unblemished beet greens were picked, blanched, and frozen for later use the day before we pulled the roots.

Our carrots, beets, parsnips, rutabagas, turnips, celeriac, scorzonera, salsify, sunchokes, and root parsley are all layered in between slightly damp soil in totes and coolers. They will remain in good condition for a long time this way. I just gave the remaining few beets from "last years" harvest to our chickens 2 days ago, they were still hard and perfectly edible over 12 months later. The chickens will slowly peck away at them as they begin to soften up.

These are Lutz beets that we grew for the first time this season, they are supposed to be a good storage beet that I learned about on Throwback at Trapper Creek's fine blog. After I took these pictures I also covered the top of these beets and carrots with a couple inches of soil.

This perfectly edible beet has been in storage for just over 12 months.

A Mammoth Red Mangle (beet) from our own saved seed. They are colored like Chioggia beets on the inside.

Bull's Blood beets are the grandson's favorite because they make his teeth look bloody. What can I say, we do what we can to get the lad to eat his veggies.:) He will eat them raw just like an apple. If you hill dirt over the roots of this variety they can be left in the ground to provide greens throughout the winter months.

My wife's favorite Flat of Egypt beets. Peering at us in the background, Gimpy, is back on garden patrol as she has once again injured her leg...or perhaps she is smarter than we think and just faking it.

My favorite Cylindrical beets grow well, taste great, and are easy to work with in the kitchen. They must be picked before a hard frost though as they do tend to stick up out of the ground quite a bit.

Giant Yellow Eckendorf can reportedly weigh up to 20 lbs, fortunately ours never get that big...what would we do with a 20 lb beet? I would only have to grow one or two.:)

Detroit Dark Red is a good all purpose beet that produces my favorite beet greens.

New to us this year, Crapaudine. For what it's worth, Baker Creek says - "In 1885, the French book, The Vegetable Garden stated this is one of the oldest varieties. Today some experts feel this may be the oldest beet still in existence, possibly dating back 1000 years. This unique variety is one of the most flavorful, with carrot-shaped roots that have rough, dark colored skin which looks like tree bark. Inside, the roots are very dark, with almost black flesh that is of superior quality and sought after by chefs who want real flavor. We are proud to offer this rare old selection."

This was one of the best years we have ever had for carrots. Our main storage varieties are Chantenay, Imperator, Danver Half Long, and Nantes.

Imperators are not the very best storage carrot but they always grow well in our loose soil.

We grew a variety of "novelty" purple, white, red, and yellow carrots this year too. The whites bolted, the purples struggled, but the Solar Yellow carrots may become a main crop carrot for us as they did so very well. I will have to see how they hold up in storage. I should mention that I found the reddish colored tops of the purple carrots so interesting that we incorporated them into many of our summer stir fry dishes...yes, you can eat carrot tops.:)

And last but not least here is a picture of some of the carrots I grew from our own seed. They are a cross between three different types that I re-planted and let go to seed last year. We ended up with a variety of shapes and sizes but nothing too special.

The Treasure Seekers

2010-10-08T05:28:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, tempted by the promise of untold riches and after some serious due diligence on my part, we set out by canoe early one dreary October morning in search of a mysterious treasure that we had only heard whispered rumors of. A treasure that we hoped to find on the shores of a small unknown lake nestled in the midst of a large foreboding swamp.

So it was that after many hours of paddling through fields of wild rice followed by a swamp so dense you could almost walk on the surrounding quagmire of mud and becoming lost more than once we finally broke free of the mucky filth and arrived at the fabled lost lake. We were wet, muddy, and our canoe was full of spiders...thousands of little spiders everywhere. Some adventurers have snakes, others leaches, perhaps bats, we always get spiders.

Anyway, to our delight, on the far banks of this little hidden lake nestled in amongst a few beaver lodges a fabulous treasure awaited. A veritable carpeting of the finest ruby red jewels imaginable, millions of them everywhere. Amazingly, the murmurs of a lost treasure had been true after all.

The beaver lodges on the shores of the little lost lake.

My wife basking in the sun while gathering treasure.

Each year we return to refill our larder with these exquisite gems. This year our motley crew consisted of three. Rowdy's first outing in a canoe was a success, no one fell out. Normally we spend many hours trying to push and pull our canoe through the muddy mire until we find spots where the water is deep enough to actually paddle, much like that scene in the movie "African Queen" when they were hopelessly stuck in the marshlands...one of my favorite movies.:) Spiders are everywhere and the stagnate waters can be quite foul smelling on a warm fall day, how I ever talked my wife into searching out this fortune for the first time years ago is beyond me.

Because the water levels were so high this year the going was pretty easy, we did not get stuck once...Rowdy even fell asleep on the trip in.

Behold, the lost treasure of Cranberry Bog Lake!

Real food is our wealth.

All drama aside, freshly picked cranberries can be stored at around 40° for a month or so. We prefer to freeze ours and use them as needed, they will remain good for years in the freezer. When picking cranberries in a bog surrounded by beavers one has to be diligent in washing the berries to avoid "Beaver Fever" or Giardiasis, a nasty infection of the small intestine.

The swamps in this area are surounded by fields of wild rice, we have gathered it in the past but as it was still green this year we left it be for another time.

With the assistance of a third member our party was able to quickly gather enough berries for the entire year.

Harvesting Potatoes

2010-10-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

The weather has been surprisingly nice this past couple weeks, perhaps we will have an extended summer after all. Our potatoes have been harvested and we are quite content with this year's crop. Diversity in the potato patch, seemingly, once again played an important role. Some of the varieties that did great last year not so much this year and vice versa but in the end we were provided another fine harvest.

A fellow gardener talked about a method of planting potatoes that did not involve any hilling. I happily followed suit, planting our potatoes in a similar manner by digging them in deeply atop loose soil in an effort to avoid having to hill the dirt around them as they grew. While the amount harvested was not dramatically different I did notice that for the first time ever we had absolutely no issues with the scab that so often affects our purples and blues. This was perhaps due to the fact that the potatoes received a more adequate water supply, the rows were not nearly as mounded and less water was wasted due to runoff.

Speaking of scab, because we use our own potatoes for seed I am always on the lookout for any buildup of viruses and diseases related to this endeavour...so far so good and we have been doing this for quite a few years now. I am very careful to rotate our potato crop and only select the very best looking spuds for re-seeding purposes. I would imagine that people of old, from the Indians of South America to the settlers of North America, saved their own seed potatoes in a similar manner.

Actually, besides our russet varieties and Yukon Gold that never do that great (but I like the way they taste) the only potatoes that performed poorly were the two new "purchased" varieties that we tried this season. Red Viking and Shepody were both nice looking potatoes but only provided a few spuds per plant.

The potatoes in boxes will be used to plant next year's crop.

Potatoes are pulled in late September early October before it gets too cold and rainy out. Each row has a stake at the beginning with a bunch of tags attached to it with the varieties labeled in the order planted, this way I can keep track of all the different types. For the most part I know what everything is but I do tend to get the red potatoes mixed up in my head sometimes so the tags are of great benefit. Once dug we separate some of the nicest ones to be used for next year's seed. The rest are laid out on a tarp in the root cellar where they will remain until needed and if I am diligent in keeping any spring sprouts cut back they will remain edible and of good quality for a very long time. Below I have included pictures of a few of the many varieties we grew this year.

Some of the purple Peruvians were quite large this year.

This picture depicts two plants worth of Shepody, nice potatoes but not very numerous.

La Ratte has performed well for us the past two years.

Huckleberry is my wife's favorite potato, they are pink inside.

Russian Banana is one of the first "unusual" varieties I ever grew.

We have been growing this variety and saving seed for so long that I call them Mike's purple just to keep them separated from the other purple varieties I grow.

Anna Cheeka Ozette was originally brought from Peru in the 1700's by Spanish explorers to the Makah Indians at Neah Bay on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, where they still grow them today.

Yellow Finn is a nice producer that we have only been growing for a couple years now, they are yellow inside.

Austrian Crescent is another fine fingerling.

French Fingerling, one of my all around favorites.

"O Creator! Thou who givest life to all things and hast made men that they may live, and multiply. Multiply also the fruits of the earth, the potatoes and other food that thou hast made, that men may not suffer from hunger and misery." - Inca Prayer

Harvesting Green Tomatoes, Peppers, Corn, and Squash

2010-09-21T05:26:00.000-07:00

The vast majority of this year's tomatoes stubbornly refused to ripen on the vine. I coaxed and pleaded with them, all to no avail. Their fate was set in stone when spring declined her initial invitation and showed up late for the party. If I could have tossed a lasso around the sun and pulled it closer to our garden perhaps that would have helped...but alas I have no such magic.

So, with the rainy cool weather pushing the last of summer aside we made the decision to pick all but our cherry tomatoes rather than risk the possibility of dampness or even frost stealing away our crop in the next couple of days. Most, if not all, of these tomatoes were fully formed and should slowly ripen inside over the next few weeks. We've had to pick our tomatoes green many times in years past but never this many. I am happy though as I was somewhat concerned for a while that we would not even see the fruits fully develop this year.

All the tomatoes were removed from the buckets, wiped clean of water (we picked them in the rain) and placed in cardboard boxes on our porch. We will bring them into the house a few boxes at a time to help speed up the ripening process and slowly convert them into salsa, sauce, and such.

I believe this box contains a few German Strawberry, Kellog's Breakfast, and (hybrid) Margherita's. They all have such a pretty green hue to them don't you think.:)

Yesterday I picked sweet (green) peppers from all but the potted pepper plants which were brought back into the greenhouse, I am hoping that they will ripen up a bit more. We will probably pull the remaining hot pepper plants and hang them upside down, this often helps them to finish ripening and hopefully "heat" up a bit as most are lacking in that department.

My hots aren't hot and the Paprika has no color.:(

While our popping corn is still outside trying to finish forming we were able to harvest our Painted Mountain and Blue Jade corn. We didn't spare much space for corn in the garden this year as there is still an abundance left over from the previous season. Once the kernels have shriveled enough to be removed from the cob they will be put on a screen in front of our wood or pellet stove to finish hardening because they have a propensity to become moldy if they are not cured properly in a warm dry environment. We do the same with our sunflower seeds. All of our corn is dried, stored in gallon jars, and will be ground into cornmeal as needed.

I love the color variance that we get with these varieties of corn.

And then there is the squash. A dismal harvest, perhaps our worst ever. I left many squashes outside on the vine to finish growing but with this cold rainy weather I hold little hope for them unless a couple more weeks of warm dry weather shows itself. Thank goodness for large hubbards, sugar pie pumkins, and gold nuggets. All three of which struggled mightily but at least gave us a few mature specimens to be used sparingly throughout the winter.

Normally at this time of year the vines have begun to die back and the rind has hardened to the point that it can no longer be easily pierced by a thumbnail. I leave a couple inches of stem on the squash as they perspire through their stems, any without may begin to rot. Those that lack stems or have soft spots are always used first and are usually the ones we steam and freeze to be used as soup or in mashed squash dishes. Unblemished squash is allowed to cure on our porch for a couple weeks or until the temperature drops below 50° at which point it is brought inside and kept cool and dry, right around 50-65°

All of that said, I am very excited to harvest our root veggies as I think they will be our summer's shining star. We hope to begin harvesting beets, carrots, potatoes, and parsnips as soon as we are afforded a couple of dry days in which to work.

Onion Harvest

2010-09-16T05:06:00.000-07:00

Spring came, summer went, fall and winter are quickly approaching. The change in seasons finds us scurrying to procure all that we can from the gardens. Timing is key. If we wait too long the cold and wet will take its toll, too soon and the produce will not store well.

Recently we pulled most of our storage onions as a few days of wet weather is soon to be upon us and with the cooler nights I don't want them to succumb to rot. They were close to being ready, not as close as I would have liked under better conditions but they should cure up good enough nonetheless. While not as big as they could have been given a longer gardening year they were not too bad, not bad at all. I planted Borettana, Juane Paille de Vertus, and my favorite Yellow of Parma. All of the mentioned varieties grow well from seed and store for a long time for us...although I did struggle to get our Borettana's to germinate properly this spring. Anyway, once pulled I laid the onions out on our porch -

and patio to finish drying before removing the stalks about an inch from the bulb.
In a normal year I would have waited to pull these Yellow of Parma↓ until after the green stalks had withered away and then laid them out on the porch to cure for a few weeks before putting them in airy baskets for storage in a cool dry area...our basement works good for this.

We also had a fairly good garlic harvest this season. Again, the cloves were a bit on the small side but numerous...bring forth the fidlyness.:) I had to replace quite a few this spring because they had rotted in the ground over winter as we had almost no snow for protection...a first for us, we normally have plenty of snow cover. The spring planted replacements were just as large as those garlics planted the previous fall so, in the end, other than the wasted garlic, it really made no difference.

These garlics are for eating and the ones with tags on them in the second picture will be replanted for next years crop ~ and so continues the cycle...

An Apple A Day

2010-09-04T06:11:00.000-07:00

Yellow Transparent ↑ “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” ~ Martin Luther

Well it has been a long time coming but after planting some of our first 3-4 year old semi-dwarf apple trees a few years back we are just now finally reaping the rewards of our first real apple harvest. It will be so nice to use some of our very own apples rather than having to rely on foraging the wild forgotten orchards for them...although we will be doing that again this year too.

We started planting apple trees in 2007 and every year thereafter have added more trees to our collection, all told we now have 18 different varieties of the semi dwarf, of which four produced fruits for us this year, and many other standard varieties that I have grown from seed.

If I could go back in time the very first thing I would do before even thinking of starting any type of garden is to first focus on the planting of fruit & nut trees and berry bushes as many of them take so very long to begin producing.

Akane - An excellent tart flavored dessert and juice apple that is supposed to store well.

Spitzenburg (I think, we might have mixed this one up with our Wagener apple?) - Very sweet, and a good eating apple. Some of these were falling off the tree ripe so we picked a few ripe and unripe ones and I canned up some deliciously tart apple sauce...and Mrs. H baked a few turnovers of course.:)

Someday, as and old man, perhaps good fortune will find me sitting under one of these same trees drinking a pint of hard cider and fondly reminiscing about the adventures of my youth.:)

Jack's Back!

2010-08-28T05:46:00.000-07:00

Our little grandson Hunter William, aka Jack, has recently found his way back down the beanstalk all the way from California where he spent the summer getting reacquainted with his "birth mom." Anyway, he is back just in time to help with the harvest, of course all he wants to do is go fishing, and fishing, and fishing...he likes fishing. He is also the missing link in our garden photos as a small boy makes everything in the garden look much bigger.

Surprisingly, after being on a slightly (much different) diet than what we eat around here, the lad was ready to get back on track with a wide variety of wholesome foods from the gardens without complaint. He returned to us with a craving for fresh eggs, anything berry, and will eat as many cucumbers as we give him....pickled or fresh. I was sure that we would have to retrain those taste buds of his. Welcome back little man.:)

While he is really of Polish, Japanese, English, and other descent, he seems to have acquired my jovial Irish nature.:)

Don't let those little green eyes fool you, what you're really looking at is 100% pure mischief.

Saying hello to the girls on the other side of the runner bean patch

Cucurbits, Flowers, and Pickles

2010-08-23T05:16:00.000-07:00

While this gardening year was off to a very slow start we are quickly making up time heading toward the finish line. The above picture depicts one of our first (Janice Brown) daylilies sent to us from a friend in Virginia...they are beautiful.:)

Not only are some of our flowers "finally" starting to bloom but we have also been harvesting ample amounts of zucchini for a couple weeks now. This has also been a trial of patience for me. Of course, where there is one there is a dozen all ripening at the same time. I guess I know what we will be incorporating into every meal possible for the next month or so. I am very grateful though because we do love cooking with zucchini and I am glad that it is such a steady producer as we have been waiting a long time for them. Just the other morning I put on a pot of rice while we took the dog for a walk and upon returning threw together a nice stir fry full of garden veggies, including summer squash, for breakfast.

Our squash, planted in various locations, is coming along fairly well. Yesterday I noticed a few pumpkins, spaghetti, hubbard, and others of notable size. Not a lot of fruits yet, but I do see some. The papaya pear summer squash are also looking good even though they lost their shape many years ago, perhaps a sorted affair with a crookneck or, heaven forbid, a zucchini.

Sugar Pie pumpkin

My favorite golden nugget plants do not appear to have had any of the pollination issues that have been worrying me and are loading up with little ones. They are such a nice compact plant taking up no more room than a zucchini, early to fruit, and they store well too.

I am growing these two golden nugget plants separately from any other squash to assure that I retain pure seed.

The cucumbers have started to produce steadily and we have been canning them in small batches as they come on. I know that it is not considered safe according to the USDA but I would be very interested to hear from any rebels that can their pickles in the oven and what they think of that method especially from a pickle crunchiness standpoint. I am aware that refrigerator and lacto-fermented pickles hold their crunch but am curious about any methods that will allow me to have a longer term storage option.

Now here is an interesting blunder on my part. I thought it would be a neat trick to grow a few rattlesnake beans on the same fence as some of our tomatillos. My thoughts being that the beans would help tie the tomatillos to the fence, that aspect of it all seems to be working like a charm. Unfortunately, I also planted a few squash in the same area and miscalculated how much room our hubbards and pumpkins would consume, forgetting to diligently trail the vines in the other direction. So now I am faced with a few issues when it comes time to gather beans and tomatillos, both of which will be ready before the squash...oops, no room for me.:) Looks like I might even have to pick a couple squash off the barn roof this year.

Hiking With Dog and a Bit About Prunella

2010-08-18T04:58:00.000-07:00

We spent a day this past weekend alone in the mountains hiking to one of our favorite mountain lakes, we did not hear or see another soul all day other than the moose that we spooked...a perfect day. While the weather below was very warm the mountains remained cool and refreshing, perfect conditions for our puppy's first all day hike and he did great. What a wonderful little dog and terrific hiking companion he has turned out to be.

My wife and Rowdy taking turns peaking through our favorite holey tree.

Rowdy gazing around Snow Lake keeping an eye out for bears.:)

Lunch break, cheese sandwiches for everyone. Really, she even makes sandwiches for the dog...he loves our bread.

One of the many wild edible plants we came across while hiking was prunella or self-heal. A beautiful little plant with vibrant purple flowers, prunella is a perennial member of the mint family that has long been used in herbal medicine (note - some have white flowers). The root was supposedly used in a tea by Native Americans in ceremonies to help hone their senses before going hunting, perhaps it will help me to notice the bears before they notice us.

We dry this herb for tea and also eat the leaves fresh as often as we can in order to obtain the possible benefits of its reported anti-microbial, anti-viral, anti-oxidant, and immune system boosting properties. Once thought to be a gift from God the list of this herbs uses is incredibly extensive so we figure that it would be foolish of us not to make good use of it especially considering prunella grows wild all over our area and the entire plant is edible. I have been saving seeds and with any luck this herb will be a part of our garden next year. I would like nothing more than to blather on and on about prunella but I think I will leave it at that.

I'll leave you with a short snippet of our Huckleberry hound enjoying a healthy snack.

Harvesting Fava Beans

2010-08-14T19:39:00.000-07:00

We harvested a few rows of fava beans and are quite happy with how well they filled out this season. For the most part we use these as dried beans in soups, bean dishes, and their subtle flavor makes them great for re-fried beans. After shelling they are placed on racks in the sun to dry, once dried they are stored away in glass gallon jars until needed. Of course a bucket of the nicest looking pods are always shelled separately for next year's seed. Because of their extremely cold hardy nature they are our absolute favorite bean to grow and the remaining debris are an excellent amendment for the soil in our gardens.

Jostaberry

2010-08-08T05:41:00.000-07:00

I picked and froze the last of our jostaberries the other day, jostaberries being a cross between a black currant and gooseberry. Our oldest bush and the parent plant of numerous others is now around 4-5 years old and starting to produce fairly well. I think we picked almost gallon off it this year. We have many more "starts" ranging from 5 months to 3 years old and are excited at the prospects of reaping ever increasing harvests going forward.

Perhaps my favorite thing about this plant when compared to our gooseberries and currants is that the fruits, in our garden, ripen much later helping us to avoid any problems with currant flys that so often plague the latter two. The flavor can best be described as sweet and tart, I have a feeling we will enjoy using it in various recipes in the future. It is not as tasty as a goosberry but if you take into consideration it's lack of pest issues the flavor gap becomes less noticable. One other thing I like about this particular plant is that the fruits do not fall off everytime the wind blows like our currants tend to do. The berries are firmly attached, almost too firmly.

Gooseberry >

Jostaberry >

What is a Weed?

2010-08-04T16:00:00.000-07:00

But a weed is simply a plant that wants to grow where people want something else. In blaming nature, people mistake the culprit. Weeds are people's idea, not nature's. ~Author Unknown

One of the many challenges we face in growing our own food is in that of competing with the plants (weeds) native to this area. In our gardens we have chosen to "try" and view our weeds as an asset to the garden rather than a hindrance, working with them rather than against them as much as possible and using them as a valuable source of nutrients for our vegetables. Lambs quarter, pigweed, wild sorrel, mallow, chickweed, wild mint, dandelions, plantain, and various clovers make up the majority of common weeds that inhabit our gardens.

In the videos below you will hear the thoughts of Hellen Atthowe of BioDesign Farm and see how she, in her small produce farm in Stevensville Montana, focuses on working with her weeds and clover cover crops, using them to not only nourish but also help create a more natural and beneficial system for her amazing peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants. I found these videos to be most informative, especially in regards to Hellen's ideas on some of these weeds, "self-established" mallow in particular, being an surprisingly excellent additional source of slow release nitrogen in conjunction with her more commonly used nitrogen fixing leguminous cover crops.

Our rows are kept very narrow, practically disappearing around this time of year, allowing us to not only use every inch of space available but also more easily manage the weeds.

We have been trying to apply, on a much smaller scale, somewhat similar methods of weed control in our own gardens. Instead of a tractor we use a hoe, shovel, and push mower, but in the end the results are the same. The weeds are allowed to grow in our isles but not go to seed or take over in the actual rows, they are then chopped up and eventually worked back into the vegetable rows as we weed and hoe and mow, thus, over time, comprising a large part of our soil's fertility. As I have mentioned in a previous post this also applies to our fall crop residue;

"I am once again focused on enriching our soil through a form of sheet mulching. Before winter I pulled up all of the remaining plant materials and broke them up a bit to be distributed amongst the garden rows. According to Emilia Hazelip plants synthesize from light and only receive a small portion of their mass from the soil. The rest comes from air and light and if left in the garden to decompose will give back much more to the soil then they take out."

I would add that living plants such as mallow, dandelions, strawberry spinach, plantains, sorrel, chicory and so forth with their deep root systems are supposedly able to "mine" nutrients from farther down helping to bring them to the surface where they will be more available to our shallow rooted garden vegetables. One of the things that I have been working on over the past couple years is growing out certain plants that I know will easily re-seed themselves and actually become "weeds" in the garden. In doing so I am, in a sense, at least partially in charge of what weeds we do and don't have. For instance, last year I overwintered and let go to seed a large amount of biennial Belgian endive and kale, sprinkling some of the seeds throughout our gardens in the fall. These plants are now growing in little clumps anywhere that I allowed them to but are also easily removed from where I do not, if I am diligent in doing so before the roots take hold.

Note the kale growing in one of our tomato rows, by the time I need to pick tomatoes this kale will have been harvested.

This year I am doing the same with a row of Italian chicory, I received a few seeds from a friend some time ago and have now established an entire row that will be allowed to re-seed itself.

Many of these so called weeds are also a valuable source of nutrition for farm animals, chickens in our case. As an example, extremely hardy chickweed and the various forms of chicory/endive help us provide the birds with green food all year around while lambs quarter fills in some of our hot weather gaps when certain greens are not as readily available to them. And where do some of the vitamins and minerals from these weeds end up but in the eggs that we eat and the compost that is spread throughout the garden. Not only that, but we eat them as well. Almost daily a few of these unsung super foods find their way into our salads.

Perhaps our garden walkways will only look pretty a couple days after I hoe them but in my mind it is much less work to use the weeds to our advantage rather than trying to constantly remove, suppress, or exterminate them which, where I live, is a losing battle anyway as they thrive in the woods around our gardens constantly spewing forth seed with reckless abandon.

Another alternative method for providing soil fertility and controlling the weeds is through the use of heavy mulch such as leaves or hay. This is something that we do in certain areas of the food garden but as our garden is fairly large we have yet to find a practical source for the amounts needed. That, and there is always the issue with it providing a nice place for voles to hide out. You can read a fellow gardeners interesting post on mulching your garden beds here.

Speaking of mulch, in the second video you will notice that Hellen discusses the use of a black plastic mulch that helps her to achieve such early and prolifically fruiting peppers in a colder climate. I will be trying this in my own garden next year with a couple of my pepper rows. You can see from my pictures below how much better some of my potted peppers planted in a black containers look when compared to the same peppers planted directly into the ground. All of my peppers are growing in a similar manner this year, the ones in pots far outpacing those in the ground even though the potted plants were started a couple weeks later after I realized the possible consequences a cold dreary spring would have upon these heat loving plants. Hope you enjoy the videos, I did.:)

Jalapeno →
Red Belgian →

A Few Rambling Thoughts on Wild Edible Herbs and Berries

2010-07-28T16:00:00.000-07:00

This past weekend we took a drive up into the mountains to see how the huckleberries were progressing this year...not so great. Berries were few and far between possibly due to the lengthy rainy weather this spring affecting their ability to pollinate properly, so we only picked a few to be used fresh this week. Hopefully we will have better luck higher up in the mountains later this summer in a few of our favorite spots. All was not lost though as we quickly switched gears and focused instead on gathering elderberry blossoms and the flowers of St. Johns Wort that were growing wild nearby.

Thanks to a couple of wonderful posts here and here from Diane over at Peaceful Acres we recently and inadvertently discovered that St. John's Wort grows wild all around our area. It can be fairly easily identified via the purplish dots that appear to perforate the leaves and flowers which is where this plant gets it's name Hypericum perforatum. So after reading her posts we are now happily following suite and making our own herbal salve.

We have also been picking and drying clover, violet flowers, chamomile, and even a few huckleberry leaves that we use fresh or dried in various potions and teas.

A light and refreshing sun tea in the works comprised of clover, huckleberry leaves, rose petals, mint, and lemon balm.

Various herbs drying in the greenhouse.

Drying North Idaho tea plant (huckleberry) leaves for winter use.:)

We recently identified this plant as Split-Lip Hemp Nettle (?), a member of the mint family, growing in our area. Not sure what we will be using it for as of yet...might be poisonous.(?)