Sicilian Sisters Grow Some Food

Making do

2012-01-31T09:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a perfect day for catching up. I transplanted about 100 kale plants into a bed, soon to be known as the Bed O'Kale, or the BLD bed (for breakfast, lunch and dinner, which is how I would eat kale).

It was also (drum roll please) tomato-planting day, and I decided to try something new. I used to have a soil block maker, but I got rid of it for reasons that are unclear to me now. Maybe something having to do with selling my lovely, beloved Diamant grain mill *at a substantial loss, never dreaming how the price would triple. . . Sigh. The decisions we make.

So I wasn't about to let a simple matter of not owning the right equipment stop me -- soil blocks it was going to be.

The first step was to moisten soil. Then I tried using a small drinking cup.

That seemed to work okay initially, but eventually the soil stuck really badly and they fell apart, even though I used my favorite bench scraper to convey them. I had to cast about for a better mold. Ideally, it would have some "eject" feature. Ah ha! Paper cup!A simple hole poked in the bottom would let me push the soil out.

They weren't perfect, by any means, but I figured they'd do okay.

Each one got two tomato seeds, since I was sowing fairly old seed. I'm sure, given my luck, that they'll grow perfectly and abundantly and I'll either feel like a murderer with nail scissors or spend a lot of time pulling them apart and transplanting them, ending up with way more tomatoes than I can handle. I'm trying to learn from experience! I don't want 25 tomatoes. . . 12 is plenty.

Each "block" (really a cone) got a bit of moist soil drizzled on the seeds, then lightly tapped to make contact. I covered the whole thing with a humidity dome and tucked it back under the lights. I have a mist attachment to a hose I could use to water, but it's only one flat; I'll probably use a spray bottle at first and then bottom-water them. They're sitting on a nursery flat, hopefully providing some bottom aeration without letting them completely collapse. It's an adventure, at least.

So if all goes well, we'll have a dozen San Marzano, a half dozen Roma VF, and enough tomato products to make ketchup and spaghetti sauce in addition to the regular canned tomato stuff I generally make. Now I have to keep the additional plantings to only ONE Cherokee Purple and ONE Early Girl.

Oh, and maybe two Principe Borghese. We're running low on dried tomatoes.

Today should be Pepper Day, but I wonder if there's enough room under the lights.

*If anyone is considering grain mill buying, this blog has some lovely and current reviews. I probably wouldn't get another Diamant based on it.

First Hive Checks

2012-01-30T08:37:00.000-08:00

Don't click this link if bees aren't your thing.

Okay . . . I warned you. I hope this works! I couldn't embed the video, so I put it up on Youtube

My buddy Erika and her kids came over this weekend to do a quick hive check with me. With her help, I went quickly through all three hives. One had, in fact, died over the winter, as I suspected, while two were okay. But, bees being bees, one hive was booming, ready for a honey super, and the other one was okay.

This video that was shot by Erika is me going through the booming hive (which was the last one) while Nasir moves from being a little wary to an enthusiastic would-be beekeeper. Erika is going to have to hurry to get a hive for him!

Also, apologies. My neighbors were doing something inside the falling-down shed right behind where we were working, so there are construction noises during much of it.This is in no way a complete hive inspection. It's just a first peek for the spring, just making certain there was a viable queen (Nasir spotted the queen in the hive to the left in the video, when we were going through that one. Sharp eyes! Unfortunately, I didn't have a paint pen to mark her with). I made my assessment based on brood pattern, and looked to find out if they were in need of more space for expansion and swarm prevention.

I hope to figure out the video thing better and feature many more Adventures in the Hives.

Scenes of Winter

2012-01-24T13:34:00.000-08:00

The month was so dry, and so cold. . . some plants persevered. . . some withered under the conditions.

It's difficult to believe that this pepper might pull through. I haven't pruned it back yet, just in case.

But spring can only be waiting to pop out, now that we've had a few good days of rain.

It's a gardener's discipline to let these tender spears alone; but this isn't the year for an asparagus harvest.

Today was a good day to transplant "Viroflay," "Gigante d'Inverno" and "Bloomsdale" spinach. Then, learning my lesson, I went back inside and promptly seeded another flat full.

What are you anticipating?

Apparently it's Annual

2012-01-07T11:42:00.000-08:00

Sarafina says we do this every year, usually before Christmas, but sometimes at different times.

I'll just say that one of the only times I wish we had through-the-door ice on our refrigerator is when four of six of us come down with violent stomach bugs.

Bleah.

New year, new tasks

2012-01-02T16:21:00.000-08:00

I used to wonder why so many farming stories included work on irrigation systems. Apparently, they were all true to life, because they require upkeep -- even our tiny backyard system does. Fortunately, I have competent farm help. Eric fixed the two broken places AND extended the one that no longer reached the reduced bed. Taz helped. A lot.

(Apparently a plumber's job list is never done. I hear him plunging the bathroom sink right now. What a great guy.)

Some of the volunteers I don't even remember planting, like this mustardy thing. I don't like these; they're too spicy for me. Maybe the chickens will.

Nasturtiums are easily the most giving and re-giving plant. Although I asked Ellie not to plant them, because they're invasive, she did. . . and I'm pulling them from the pathway already. And yes, I know they're edible. . . just not high on my list of "yummies."

Red Russian kale volunteers big enough to make up a dinner this week. Terrific. They are so much bigger than the lettuce I actually seeded at about the same time. Just goes to show that when they get to do their own thing, in my yard at least, they're generally very happy.

Cilantro Pathway furnished enough for a pot of Red Lentil and Lime soup this afternoon. Again, when I keep my hands off, things seem to go really well.

Sarafina even put in some time giving the asparagus a haircut. There were already some spear-like shoots. Hopefully this will tell it that it's winter and it should think about a spring resurgence.

Another sign of the times is my children risking their life and limbs to get the Christmas tree in the green bin. I think this picture is after it served as a sled down the front steps a number of times.

All that's left for this week is to draw the garden plan, taking into account where the already-sprouting seedlings will go, and then plant the rest. Fun times.

2011-12-28T14:06:00.000-08:00

Starting seeds makes me feel a bit less like a garden slacker. I know, I should have been doing it all along, but actually doing it counts.

So today, I used my new Haws can

to water in:
Drunken Woman Frizzy Head lettuce
Tom Thumb lettuce
Merlot lettuce
Territorial Seed's Heirloom Blend lettuce
a romaine whose name escapes me
Lacinato kale
Red Russian kale
Breadseed poppy
Indigo
Marigolds
Bloomsdale Long Standing spinach
Monstreux de Viroflay spinach
Hibiscus for tea
Italian flat-leaf parseley
sage.

Seems like a long list for only three flats. The pepper cuttings are hanging in there, so not obviously dead at least.

Before I start any more seeds, I'm going to have to either repair or replace the light fixtures and get new bulbs.

Perpetual Peppers

2011-12-20T21:51:00.000-08:00

I love my Padron pepper. I love the way it yields loads of delicious peppers for frying; I love the way it overwintered so cheerfully, despite really cold weather; I love that every once in a while it throws a really hot little pepper, just to keep the eater on their toes.

Even though it did overwinter, I'm a little leery of assuming that everything is going to be hunky-dory again. We could have a harder freeze, or I could just want more peppers than one (admittedly champion) plant will produce. Friends could want in on the Padron-love.

So I decided to try making more of the very same plant through the magic of cuttings. When I worked as a garden helper on a posh estate, we took cuttings of things all the time. Sometimes they worked, sometimes not, but it was pretty fun all the same.

I tried to get tips that would be both woody enough for self-support and green enough to be sprouty, although it was guesswork on my part. I remembered to cut a diagonal end on the stem, causing more of the rooting layer to be exposed. Unless that only goes for trees. At any rate, these had a diagonal tip.

A simple jar of powdered rooting hormone is supposed to promote root growth. After dipping the cut end, I tapped off any extra powder. No sense wasting it, and there were as many dire warnings on the stuff as you'd imagine. No eye contact, skin contact, breathing it in, ingesting. . . I didn't want to see if I'd sprout roots, so I just didn't touch it or snuffle it up my nose.

I tried to keep as much of the powder on the stem as I put the cutting into its pot of soil. A pencil made holes that were just about the right size. Quite a few of the cuttings came from sideways branches, so they were leaning all akimbo. I figured if the cuttings take, it won't matter how they were leaning.

They're all resting under a plastic dome, for humidity. Because the cuttings don't have any roots (yet) to take up moisture, but have lots of leaves to expire moisture, they are a little sad looking today. I did trim many leaves off, and also cut off any buds. There were a surprising amount of them for cold December weather. Such a great plant! At any rate, if this works, I'll have a dozen new pepper plants, certainly enough to share.

Little houses, big problems

2011-12-19T16:34:00.000-08:00

New house construction is really at a low these days. After acting as my own contractor, I'm thinking I can almost understand why. After my subs ate 1/3 of the building materials*, and we had to use inferior substitutions**, and we had to push back the closing by seven times, well, it's a wonder anything got built at all.

But they did.

And the patches held on the broken spots

So the trip to the home furnishing place means the whole village will soon erupt in seasonal colors.

Next year, we're thinking castles.

* And then threw up repeatedly, all night long. Yay. Not one grabbing and eating, but two.

** Lard, the cheap kind, instead of butter. I like butter too much to do this over and over. Besides, the dogs don't deserve it and I bought good candy for the kids. They have to just not eat the houses themselves.

Rain shadow, rain shadow

2011-12-12T10:55:00.000-08:00

I've been singing since I came in from the garden.

Finally a bit of rain after so much cold, but dry weather. The garden needs it, and I need it since the breakdowns in the irrigation system mean watering isn't a hands-off experience. At least until I get the problems fixed.

I used to live somewhere where it rained almost every night most of the year, and was generally clear during the day. It was nice in that respect. From my current perspective, I didn't appreciate it enough. My sandy soil, even with amendments, drains quickly and the plants prefer consistent watering. So I am always happy to see our rainy season come along when things like carrots are much easier.

Even so, there are pockets of my garden that are not as fortunate as others.

This bed is in the middle of the yard, beside the apricot tree but not under anything. Nice and moist.

Then, there's the Acacia Tree of Doom.

If you were an onion plant or a volunteer Red Russian kale, this would be your skyward view. Personally, I wish this tree would go to the great beyond the way the one in our yard did years ago. I'm not in charge, however, so we content ourselves with cutting back what we can.

It's not quite enough, as you can possibly see:

Really dry under there. The rain has to be excessive or at a slant to get past the tree's umbrella.In addition, I bet some of the roots are underneath it, sucking water up even if it does get to the surface. So I water this bed by hand or carefully plant dry-tolerant crops there.

What kind of microclimates does your yard have?

First Freeze

2011-12-06T09:40:00.001-08:00

Rarely do really hard freezes hit our area. If they do, the citrus growers scramble with smudge pots and gardeners cover up delicate plants. A few years ago, it was easy to see which plants came from tropical places -- black, slimy heaps marked what had been Datura and other softies.

Not until the dogs and I rounded the shady side of the dog park at 7:00 this morning did I realize that we were in for cold weather. Of course, I hadn't taken cuttings from the Padron pepper as I'd planned to. Fortunately, upon inspection it looked okay.

The strawberries should know that blooming in December is a bad idea. Maybe this will convince them?

Hardy parseley, kale, and the other cole crops just looked pretty but not overly put-upon. Garden stalwarts.

Everything else looked pretty okay, and today marked the first time I used warm bath water to water the seedling beds. It's so much easier on my hands than pumping cold rainwater from the barrels. Because of the hole in the pipe, I'm going to be doing some hand watering until I get my act together to fix the irrigation!

Anicca

2011-12-05T10:34:00.001-08:00

I've been mulling this post over all day, which amuses me because it's all about not getting wrapped up in perfection.

Not me -- generally I'm free of this particular issue. I tend more toward the "half-cocked, half-assed" end of the spectrum. Naturally I have a family that in some respects is spectacularly on the other end.

I don't always deal with their issues gracefully. Working on this essay in my head made me feel a little more sympathetic. I jotted notes -- failure, persistence, easing pressure, impermanence, and none of them sang with the clarity I was reaching for. Finally I decided that for me, posted mattered more than perfect. (See Not A Perfectionist, above.)

We've been sitting down as part of our morning and doing a page of handwriting work every day. I know there are homeschoolers who see this as a terrible betrayal of the spirit of the thing -- none of my kids is avidly interested in being able to write legibly, at least not to the extent of wanting to practice. But I'm of the "No kid of mine is going to write like that" camp, and since it's a motor skill, it will get better by practice, just like any of the sports they do. Plus, it's not like our brand of learning is taking up much time -- or it's taking up all of their time, and either way, we win.

Also? Having four kids and homeschooling for years hasn't actually given me more answers than, say, someone who only has one child. Just because something worked on one doesn't mean it would work on another, and as I found out today, I don't even remember all of the tricks I learned in order to try them on another child.

Which brings me to this morning. I've learned that with Cat, I need to be careful about giving her tasks. She tends to dig in deeply, pursuing something like a terrier after a rat. This is a terrific inclination, in that she's going to be able to follow things she's interested in through challenges, but sometimes the challenges are internal. I hoped that by limiting her handwriting to only one page, she could get through it without frustrating herself to tears (and then yelling at me that I "don't understand!").

[Just a note, here. I don't do anything to make her feel as though perfection is the only goal in handwriting. She's not even supposed to be doing it. But you try to tell that to a child who has three older siblings.]

And the letter "r" was it today. "I can't do it!!" she wailed. I tried holding her hand and doing it together. I tried talking, and nothing was working. I was seeing my carefully-calibrated calm morning crumble before the jam was wiped up off of the table.

And then, whatever good angel helps out homeschooling parents whispered to me. "Remember?"

"Wait here!" I said, and rushed into the kitchen.

"Why? What are you doing?"

"Just wait!"

When I got back to the table, I shoved the paper and pencil away from her. "Look," I said, "You can use whatever you want -- the eraser end, your nose, your finger tip, just use this."

She quirked a smile at me. "Just in this?"

"Yes, now try." She tried. I shook to erase.

Over and over and over again, until she said, "I've got it! Look at my 'r'!"

I meant to do one of these

2011-12-02T08:10:00.001-08:00


I still like the copper chicken sculpture. Maybe I should try to make more garden art.

Oddly enough, Tor, Ellie, and I aren't as good at archery as we hoped. The box with a turkey drawn on it remained mostly unscathed, but the irrigation pipe is a goner.

Cilantro can be picky for me -- won't germinate, bolts immediately, etc. But let a plant go to seed, and it's Salsa Pathway! Maybe I'll use the last of the tomatoes and make a batch, after harvesting with nail scissors.

Slo-mo

2011-11-30T16:01:00.001-08:00

I had lots of ideas about posting today -- a story about the first time I rode a motor scooter, a pictorial tour of the vegetables Eric wishes I wouldn't grow, something cute the puppy or the kids did. . . But then I discovered something very cool that my new camera does. (Maybe I should read the manual, no?) And now I'm going to share it with you. Enjoy.

Quiet productivity

2011-11-29T09:01:00.001-08:00

Yesterday afternoon quiet -- all three older kids at practice (have I mentioned how much I love Frisbee?) and dim light throughout the house. Someone had gotten up very early.

So had someone else.

I used the quiet moments and some of the things I had lying about the house and the instructions from Kendra and experimented with our own lotion.

For a little while I thought it wasn't going to work, as the pint jar I was using was terribly full, the water only came up to the middle of the jar, and therefore the wax kept hardening along the top of the jar, but it finally came together.

It's firm, more like a cream than a lotion, but it smells wonderfully of honey. I may try to make more for gifts, although I had hoped to dip candles with the rendered wax. If I go through the rest of the comb carefully over the next couple of weeks, and use Lisa's method of wax rendering, maybe there will be enough for both.

Both coming and going

2011-11-28T15:40:00.001-08:00

It's never "done" outside, right? Not only that I could make things look a little better or work a little more efficiently, it's just that with a living system, there is no "done." One thing could come to an end, but the circle of life rolls right on, over and over and over. Bane and boon to me, and a good thing to remember when I have an overdeveloped sense of my own importance. Some day, I'm going to be compost, too.

Lettuce seeds are finally, finally poking up. This is terribly blurry, but it's repeating all over a bed. The lettuces I planted from transplants are ready enough to eat tonight, once I figure out what to have for dinner.

The nursery-planted onions are also looking pretty nice, despite being used as a bed by Taz on sunny days. Will the dogs never cease their garden depredations? I hope someday to start enough cipollini from seed to grow jars of pickled baby onions. A girl (or future compost) has to dream, right?

From what I read, asparagus is supposed to be cut back when it dies for the winter. It's my great hope that that yellowing is presaging the winter die-back, because our seasons sometimes trick plants into acting strangely. The Anna apple behind the asparagus, for instance, is putting out a last two or so apples.

Even though it was chilly and overcast when I was out there, a few intrepid bees were flying. I couldn't catch enough with the still camera and didn't even think to use the video! I counted four distinct pollen colors -- bright white (one bee was almost completely covered with white pollen, in addition to her pollen baskets), red, and pale and strong yellow. I hope things are okay in the hives. Unless I see drastic and obvious problems, they're pretty much on their own until spring.

If this predator had been inside the hive, for instance, it would have indicated a weakening of the defense system. I watched for a good while and didn't see anything to lead to the conclusion that the yellow jacket was not scavenging among the dead bees out front. Every hive has some, and it's easy meat. Yellow jackets, the jackals of the skies. . .

Elsewhere, everywhere I looked, seeds I had not planted were leaping into growth. Some were welcomed, like this ruby chard. I don't like it enough really to plant it -- but it's nice enough, and edible, and I'll eat small leaves in salads and stuff the big ones, so up it grows, right by a snow pea.

I'm beginning to believe that some of the missed Italian shelling beans will actually get to produce a green bean or two before it gets too cold. I'd never, ever plant beans in September, but here you go!

Volunteer tomatoes, on the other hand, are going to be pulled no matter what the season.The little kale next to the onion gets to live until I want to eat it.

We're still enjoying the fruits of some of the volunteers. A Kubocha squash I didn't plant under the apple tree nevertheless just came out of the oven, soft and ready to puree for soup (yay for bacon trimmings to fry up) and the heavily cut-back kale is still roaring along. Since the tiny volunteer Red Russians among the onions are yet babies, these make a nice stopgap.

Dealing with sprawl

2011-11-27T11:03:00.001-08:00

One of the things I'm vowing to do differently next year is deal with the tomatoes in a neater, more contained way. I've done the 6x6" wire fencing approach, and that works okay. I tried to stake them this year, and that apparently takes much more effort than I put in. I don't know which approach I'll use next year -- maybe a combination, depending on the type of tomato and whether I mean to pick them a bunch at a time (like paste tomatoes) or singly (like slicing).

No matter which support system I choose, it's going to succeed or not depending on how much effort I put into it, I suspect. Things like proper spacing, clipping blighted leaves, and nipping back overwhelming growth for better air circulation actually count if healthy tomatoes with a neater aspect are desired.

I do know I won't allow any volunteers next year, as they turned out to be mostly uninspired cherry tomatoes. I'm not certain I'll grow cherries, at all. Sungolds are nice, but a little goes a long way, for me. I'm really a cooked tomato kind of gal, caprese salad notwithstanding.

As I was searching for those links, I was surprised to see that I'd put these tomatoes out in April. Can it really be that we have over seven months of tomato growth? Wild. I do grow, however, heartily sick of them, especially when they look as neglected as mine did.

So yesterday was the last day for tomatoes. Ellie and I pulled all the vines (she pulled when my elbow began complaining) and picked through the plants for any leftover tomatoes.

There were a lot:

They got divided into three piles: green, to go to my friend Vera to make into pickles (we ate this year's jar at Thanksgiving and maybe I ate a lot last night while I was doing dishes); a pile of red-maybe-will-ripen-on-the-window for sauce; and a pile of "yuck!" for the chickens.

This guy made me yell out loud, but the chickens will appreciate a tasty snack.

Getting ready

2011-11-24T09:43:00.001-08:00

Don't know about you, but lists rule my life. They help me and hopefully the rest of my family know what's expected. Of course, I can't resist joking on public lists.

Sarafina was so agog at my bad jokes that she took a picture, which launched today's post.

Of course, having a list and expecting everyone to help doesn't magically make children into cooperative little beings. I went downstairs to see how the basement picking up was going. There were some items picked up, but not necessarily in a way to make the room cleaner.

They insisted he wanted to do this. I assume it's true.+

The last bits of Halloween decoration were just hanging around. I certainly couldn't reach them, but that's why we have tall family members. One, two, three, and she did a wonderful job.

With a lot of help from Kevin, Eric, and eventually the children, the list went red. There were even jobs not on the original list which got done (I'm looking at you, front edges of mulch!)

Finally, an overview of the garden. Previous winters actually looked almost as bad, which is reassuring to me. At least a lot of the trash and failing plants are out now, after the work-fest of this week. It's time to pull the tomatoes, and hope that the seeded beds will sprout, rather than be eaten all by birds. And Taz -- well, she's still finding her way in and thinks the back left onion bed is a Very Good place to rest. We may have to up the fence security.

Right now, though, the turkey is in the oven, the last of the morning's four pies is resting on a rack (apple is going in as we're eating today), and I'm taking a quiet moment to sit with Eric in front of a football game. I woke the three younger ones up this morning, asking, "What are you thankful for?" and in a quick rat-a-tat-tat, got "Food!" "Family" "Shelter!"

Those seemed like wonderful places to start, indeed. I am truly grateful.

Maybe I could get a cow with these

2011-11-22T20:32:00.001-08:00

The Fagioli Pavoni ("Peacock beans") grew from a handful of seed beans brought back from a burlap sack in Lucca to a couple of quart jars. Each bean is well over an inch long, and they are pretty tasty. Next year, I'm going to plant the whole bunch that I have left, if I don't eat everything I haven't set aside. And then I'll keep better records of pounds per square foot.

Slow food, slow puppies

2011-11-21T20:47:00.001-08:00

This is for those who don't want to see an endless stream of gardening posts.

The dogs spend lots of time romping around, there are slow moments. But even in sleepy mode, these two play. Taz now weighs 30 pounds and is coming along nicely, although still very much a puppy. I love both the lazy ear nibbles and the cackling cameraperson.

Still kicking

2011-11-20T19:14:00.000-08:00

Can we all just agree that I think about blogging more than I actually blog? On the rare moments I'm in the yard (panic-stricken, lately, generally-speaking), I think about blogging. And why I don't have my camera with me. When I'm doing something with the kids, I think about blogging -- even if I have my camera. When I'm cooking or making shopping lists, I think about blogging.

I think about friends whose blogs have better pictures or nicer layouts than mine. I think about people who post more frequently. I think about all the blogs I wish I were reading and commenting on.

Think, think, think.

But precious little, you know, blogging. Mostly, if I sit down at the computer lately, I feel as though I should be working. This current crop of students is a challenge, and I'm just pleased that I'm halfway through a course.

And generally, this bloglessness is a good barometer of my entire approach to life for the past. . . fourteen months? I'm just not running as smoothly as I am wont to. Feels like sugar in my gas tank, a stuck cylinder, or jogging, veeeery slowly, through cold molasses.

But every once in a while things kind of get better. And I have faith that this is merely a transformative, sort of chrysalid, phase, rather than the New, 100% More Sluglike Me!

One thing that might be still going well, or at least keeping the whole enterprise from tanking, is that I retain some competencies. I may not have the mental energy to accomplish much, but my hands still remember how to do some things. And for that, along with some other things, I'm really grateful.

Competence, even in only a few areas, is still competence. As my children have all suddenly increased their eating - winter? Simultaneous growth spurts? Innate evil? - I'm reacting by baking twice a week, and paying more attention to filling meals.

So I don't only make challah and bread on Tuesday,

I make foccacia and bread on Monday too. Dinners are. . . bigger.

And tonight, after a day that saw me up early, fishing with Tor and Cat, driving Tor to a practice for his Parkour performance, taking the dogs for a walk with the oldest girl, racing back to watch the performance, then taking all the kids out for a photo shoot, I made calzone to use the rest of the lovely sausage I got from our local butcher. Assembly-line style made it easy for Tor to be enticed in to put them together. As we rolled dough and heaped-up filling, then took turns pleating the edges together, I realized that my hands were perfectly at home.

Roll, pat, fill, tweak, over and over. I could stand back and let him do it and give pointers, but only because I knew that I was in the groove with it. I may not make the money I wish I did or have the impact on the world that I'd like to, but I can throw together some serious handmade baking. That has to count for something, no?

That one was one of the "low-filling" ones, with too much dough to filling. Sarafina's (below) was hot, although I don't remember why she was laughing so hard.

By tomorrow I have more work to finish and I never did get that yearbook schedule worked out to email to the parents who are just as overwhelmed with it as I am, but I will, or at least I will do some of it. And tonight Eric will read to me and I'll fall asleep listening to the rain and then it will start again. I'll try to focus harder on the areas that I'm really good at (easy with a food-centric holiday coming up) and overlook the areas that make me feel inept.

Gone to the dogs

2011-10-18T20:27:00.000-07:00

It just dawned on me tonight that I have not only been not posting on my blog, but I have been not reading anyone's blog. I've been feeling a little. . . underwater. Homeschooling has been really busy, even with one less child actively homeschooling. I still read papers and discuss ideas, but the college kid is much more in charge of her learning. And a great visit with my mom and my aunts culminated in taking four seventy-ish ladies camping, one for the first time. That was pretty great. . . and work is busy, and I'm helping out with a couple of groups I'm excited about in the homeschool group, and I actually made it to spinning night tonight, but still.

It's been a year since I felt as though the garden had any purpose other than helping me feel as though there was just One More Thing I Wasn't Doing Well At.

Hmpfh. For something I've loved since I was ten, that's a bad thing. And last night, I had a nightmare about working in the garden with friends who were going to help me whip it into shape, etc. etc., but it all went pear-shaped pretty quickly.

I think it's anxiety because in April, I'm going to be part of a fairly bigdeal kind of garden tour, so knowing that months turn into weeks into days into ohmygoodness it's here! it is time to get everything going again. Starting seedlings, repairing broken irrigation systems, dealing with pests.

Speaking of . . .

Picture of innocence, isn't she? We all know better. In fact, Eric and I are almost as tired as we were with newborns. Broken nights -- and they haven't all been puppy-caused, to be honest -- have really messed me up. I'm even taking naps nowadays, and that's not like me.

Mikey hardly gets any quiet time unless she's in her crate or taking one of the still-baby naps that she's prone to.

Otherwise, they're pretty fond of one another, I think. She seems to be sharing some things with him on occasion,

But mostly it's teeth and paws and barking. She's still short enough to stand directly under him and bite his legs, even when he's trying to get a drink. We had hoped to not get a puppy bold enough to bully him, but bold enough to stand our busy household, but this is what we got.

Good thing she's cute.

But since there really is some activity going on in the garden, her new habit of leaping into beds and digging (sorry, two-inch-tall peas!) had to stop. Bowing to the inevitable truth that I'm not going to train her to stay out of them fast enough to get the fall garden up to speed, the kids did this today:

Parts are short, only the 24" chicken wire, but parts are leftover chicken run fencing. It's big enough right now to keep her out, and we're doing things as we can.

At least a short respite.

Meanwhile, I finally got out and worked out there today and it made me feel much much better about things. It's not where I want it to be, but on five hours of sleep a night, it's better than what has been happening.

Thank you Four Tops

2011-09-12T20:46:00.000-07:00

To the tune of "Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch*" I've been singing all day:

"Rabbit feet, puppy butt. . ."

I could say I'm too tired to blog about the garden, and use the still-wakeful puppy as an excuse, but really, the garden's a mess and so is the house. Oh well. She's still incredibly cute, back and front.

Oh, now she has a name. We're calling her "Taz" for "Tasmania."

*why do we not say, "Honey bunch" any more? I can't imagine hearing someone use that as an endearment.

A little busier now

2011-09-10T20:37:00.000-07:00

We may have lost our minds. There's not a whole lot of spare time hanging around here, but any we have lying about just got taken up.

Out of this seething mass of puppies (three of the litter's ten):

We brought home this as-yet-unnamed little girl.

She's spending a lot of time asleep, but still in that baby period where we all get up multiple times a night. Oh joy. The assumptions are that one, she'll eventually sleep through the night, and two, she and Mikey will become fast friends. They're getting along fine now, it's just hard to play when one of you is ten times the size of the other and the other is wobbly on her pins.

Sweet days. I haven't had a puppy since I was five, and the kids are pretty besotted. Yawn.

Island of Calm

2011-09-08T19:05:00.000-07:00

It's simple, really.

Fill the pot with water, add some salt. As the water's heating, you sift ground cornmeal into the water with one hand, the other hand stirring gently.
Shhhhhhhh goes the cornmeal, round and round and round goes the spoon.
Time passes.
This time, I didn't grab a book. I didn't try to read the paper or check my messages.
I did listen to the girls playing in the living room, older sister making youngest laugh.
Stirring, stirring, round and round and round.
Nothing changes for a long time -- it's just cornmeal and water, a vortex on the stove.
Barely perceptibly, change sneaks up.
The pot is no longer sedimentary, cornmeal heavy on the bottom, water on the top.
All one mass, yellow as a sunflower, the polenta starting to give off lazy "plop" bubbles.
Heat goes down, I keep stirring.
Plop. Plop. Plop.
And then it's done, and the busy sneaks in again.
But dinner's nearly finished.

Proof in the peppers

2011-09-04T19:18:00.000-07:00

My father in law is nursing along his own "Padron" peppers, and I was telling him how well my overwintered pepper plant is doing. He expressed amazement at its height, so I figured I'd actually take pictures just to show how very big it is. I hear that in places where peppers grow naturally, they get much much much bigger, but this one has a stem that's about 1 1/2" in diameter, so it's really put on some growth since last year. I wonder if I can get it through another one?

No worries, though. I bought hormone rooting powder and plan to take and root cuttings to keep indoors for the winter. I'm going to have Padrons coming out my ears next spring. Maybe I should do that with the bell peppers too.

I'm holding a small bowl with one day's pickings at about 12" high. The whole thing is maybe four feet tall? Nice pepper, anyhow.

The rest of the garden is pretty much on the "hell in a handbasket" route. I could be gearing up for four-season gardening, but instead I'm reeling from the beginning of my classes I teach and a ramped-up homeschooling approach. I'm sure that it will all smooth out in the long run. Meanwhile, beds lay fallow.

Almost past August

2011-08-30T21:13:00.000-07:00

I know it's almost the end of summer because the kids in our neighborhood are back in school -- and I cannot convey how happy that makes me. Suffice it to say that I enjoy the quieter time with my own little schoolchildren at home.

The garden is suffering, though. The weather is warmer, I'm still having trouble with the water-retention in the soil (amend, amend, amend), and I'm still not where I'd like to be in terms of succession. We've had trouble with the timer for the lights over the seedlings, so many of them didn't make it.

I think I may be ready to get back in gear, except that I'm working much more than I had been, plus we're aiming for more rigor in our studies and work, so "free" time in the garden has been hard to come by. I am just coasting, waiting for either a free couple of days or just overwhelming inspiration to hit. Then I'll borrow a truck and go get some horse poop!

All is not bad. The final winter crops are giving up just as the summer ones are really hitting their stride (remember I live in a sort of "off" coastal climate. We don't get hot until September). Last night, everything in dinner except the onions and pasta came in from the back about 5 minutes before cooking:

And in a baking frenzy last week with my nephew and Caterina, one of the five breads we turned out was a lemon-glazed soaked lemon poppy seed bread with just-harvested poppy seeds:

And the first ripe Meyer lemon of the season:

Getting good pictures with the little camera is still making me completely insane, but neither a new lens nor a new camera are in the works very soon. We have other priorities right now.

Ellie set out the other day to inspect "her" hive. Caterina suited up as the tour photographer, and I had intended to stay completely out of it. Turns out, though, that unless you're used to it or very very strong, cracking and lifting hive sections is difficult:

So despite the heat -- it was over 80 degrees Fahrenheit, can you imagine? -- I suited up and yanked boxes for her and talked her through it. She made it through nearly everything, before getting hot and discouraged. The bees were cranky, as I'd noticed last time. This time, though, there was an explanation:

At the bottom of a number of frames, we saw broken-open queen cups, some with larvae (sorry! sorry!) some just filled with royal jelly. They're either replacing or raising up a new queen. Doesn't look to me as though they're likely to swarm since there's lots of room, just as though the queen is failing miserably due to the patchy brood we saw. Oh well - what a year for queen troubles it has been.

One thing I have been doing successfully is making a list of next summer's must-dos. Mine looks like this so far:

More dry beans
More bell peppers
More dry corn
More Tristar strawberries
Fewer summer squash
Pumpkins - 2 plants
Pull volunteer tomatoes
Pull volunteer sunflowers
More carefully-planted cut flowers
More straw mulch
More slicing cucumbers
No lemon cucumbers
Stake tomatoes the "old" way
Reinforce where the hoses join the spigots; they're breaking
Keep pathways clearer
More broccoli in late spring

And I'm sure there's others. That's just what I can remember.

What summer resolutions are you making for next year?

I can now get to the old news

2011-08-17T07:40:00.000-07:00

Someone at our house turned six. . . it doesn't seem quite fair that only one person has a summer birthday, so that all of that delicious fruit is available to party with. I guess the rest of us could celebrate halves or quarters.

I might have asked this one if she could, pretty please, stay five. I even might have offered up her three siblings' advancing ages in trade, promising to not fret about them getting older.

I was rebuffed.

Instead, we made fruit faces. This one is Mikey with a raspberry tongue hanging out of his mouth.

While the youngest was doing her best to stop staying young, the eldest was in Minnesota, helping her team win the National title for the Youth Club Championship Ultimate Frisbee, mixed division.

If you don't know about Ultimate, there's a fact sheet here that might convert you. Sarafina sounds a little like Lloyd Dobbler in "Say Anything" talking about "Kick-boxing, sport of the future" when she dreams of a time when Ultimate is an Olympic sport. Watching video of just the winning point doesn't capture the intensity of a whole game, let alone a championship tournament. I only wish I'd been able to go to Minnesota to help out.

And in the garden, one type of the beans brought from Italy had dried and are ready for threshing. The crew bagged them and we'll stomp on them this week, I think.

Tor is pretty well-trained. When in the garden, check for big zucchini. He's a good zucch picker.

The pole beans were big enough to try as shell beans, but I've only seen this kind of thing on favas before. On the left is them fresh out of the pods and boiled; on the right is them with the thick skin slipped off. The very young ones were sweet, kind of like edamame, and the larger ones were more starchy, like favas. Both good. Now I'm wondering what I'll do with the dried ones. Anyone who uses favas for soup have any information? Drying them was my intention.

And thanks to my friend Susan, whom I do not see enough, we have bee suits for all:

I'm getting to the place that I can't lift heavy supers or deeps down easily, not since hurting my shoulder moving that chicken coop. Eric, however, can. He insisted that we get pictures of him helping. I think we look like a family of marauding polar bears.

Even though baby bear had enough pretty early -- the hive was, not exactly agressive, but definitely unhappy-sounding -- the biggest hive was compacted down to two deep boxes and I think three supers, one fresh for filling. This is done by removing the frames that don't have brood in them -- drone brood got fed to the chickens -- and repacking them so that each box has four frames of food and six frames of brood. There were a dozen good brood frames and I'm pleased with the hive's health.

I shouldn't have to mess with the brood nest again this season, except to make certain that they have adequate stores at the very end. I'll keep back some frames of pollen and honey in the freezer just in case they need supplementing.

And while you can't see her, we saw the queen. Ellie managed to get her covered up by Eric's finger, I think. Bad camera, too. It's very frustrating. Edited to add: No, she's right there. Fingertip, bees, space, queen. She has a little white dot on her back. Drrrr.
Anyhow, she still looks pretty good, her tiny dot of paint is still visible, although to my credit, I noticed her by her movements first. That's when you know you're making progress. I also remembered to take out my contacts so I could see eggs close up over the tops of my glasses. That's when you know you're aging.

Yesterday was ridiculous -- two trips to dental professionals so that they could hurt Ellie (who has inherited the same bowlegged-cowboy roots to teeth from her dad as her older sister); two trips to grocery stores in between to get ingredients and soft foods; two batches of jam made with Denise and our friend Erika while the children rolled around the house; two dinners of turkey pot pie assembled and one baked; two online classes to set up and oversee. I was actually a bit tired and I didn't get any of the housecleaning except sweeping and dishes done that I'd hoped to do. Nor buy books for Oldest Child's upcoming semester. Argh. Well, today is another day.

Well, I had some things to say, but

2011-08-16T09:37:00.000-07:00

Busy days here. So much so in fact that I can't even get this post finished. Maybe tomorrow. . .

Late to the party

2011-08-11T21:25:00.000-07:00

Often, something I'm currently interested in or trying is just about to crest. Beekeeping? Check. Urban farming? Check. If someone famous starts homeschooling, you'll know who to blame.

But I'm apparently way behind the curve here, because despite my incredible Kale Love, this morning was the first time I made kale chips. Those leaves in the top picture have been tediously (oh, so tediously) cleaned of aphids and rubbed -- by hand -- with olive oil, then sprinkled with a bit of salt.

Popped into the oven at 300F, in about 12-15 minutes, they looked like this:

And tasted of -- well, I can't describe it. If you like seaweed as a snack, you'd probably like that. I had tea and kale for breakfast, and tea and kale for a lot of lunch. I'm not going to make it frequently, because it's labor-intensive, but if I'm baking anyhow, tossing in a panful wouldn't be too difficult. They're tastier without the ribs, but not as pretty.

A Short History of the Apple

2011-08-09T13:02:00.000-07:00

From The Book of Men, poems by Dorianne Laux:

The crunch is the thing, a certain joy in crashing through
living tissue, a memory of Neanderthal days.
-- EDWARD BUNYARD The Anatomy of Dessert

Teeth at the skin. Anticipation.
Then flesh. Grain on the tongue.
Eve's knees ground in the dirt
of paradise. Newton watching
gravity happen. The history
of appleas in each starry core,
every papery chamber's bright
bitter seed. Woody stem
an infant tree. William Tell
and his lucky arrow. Orchards
of the Fertile Crescent. Bushels.
Fire Blight. Scab and powdery mildew.
Cedar apple rust. The apple endures.
Born of the wild rose, of crab ancestors.
The first pip raised in Kazakhstan.
Snow White with poison on her lips.
The buried blades of Halloween.
Budding and grafting. John Chapman
in his tin pot hat. Oh Westward
Expansion. Apple pie. American
as. Hard cider. Winter banana.
Melt-in-the-mouth made sweet
by hives of Britain's honeybees:
white man's flies. O eat. O eat.

Big and blooming

2011-08-05T21:46:00.000-07:00

A week away in midsummer is always a fraught decision for a gardener. Even though I thought clear instructions were left, and even though I believe my family members to be capable of paying attention, the truth is no one cares about the garden like the gardener. Everyone works hard at their own stuff, but not everyone wants to work hard in the garden if I'm not here to encourage that.

Well, that's not completely true. I came home from a truly restorative week of camping to find that one bunch of girls was just knocking themselves out in the yard:

So I'll ignore the picked too soon winter squash, the overgrown zucchini, which all found happy homes anyway, and the not-quite-done chores and remember that the bees worked every single day while I was away. Head down in sunflowers:

Rolling about wantonly in the poppies -- apparently since they're Papaver somniferum I can't legally grow them. Let's blame the bees:

And yes, that is my smallish, peasant-shaped hand behind the Anna apple there. It was crunchy and not overgrown even at that ridiculous size, believe it or not. I forgot to weigh it but it had to be at least half a pound. The rats had been knocking apples down and just biting bits of them, but we gathered up what was salvageable and one of the girls had applesauce for lunch at the park.

All the volunteer tomatoes appear to be cherries of some relation to the Sungolds I grow. I'm ripping them out at will, but still leaving some to ripen. With the cool, cool summers here, that may be the only way to get any ripe tomatoes. I don't hold the bees responsible for this pollination, since tomatoes are generally self-pollinated, but it's all flower to fruit here in summer.

One junior gardener enchants with her devotion to beauty. When I'm overly product-minded, it's proper to remember not bread alone, not at all.

(I did, actually, talk to her after the video too!)

Microbrew

2011-07-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes jam making is about, well, making jam. Making jam for toast, for the "Mommy, I'm hungry. I want a peanut butter and jam sandwich," times, for thumbprint cookies if you're lucky, and so the larder shelves reflect orderly, jewel-toned preparation for the future.

Then there are times to capture an essence, a moment, or a tiny, perfect harvest. This is the total yield from one day's picking of "Tristar" strawberries, made with Christiane Ferber's three-day Mes Confitures method. Concentrated sunshine, just enough for very special giving.

One bad egg

2011-07-26T20:30:00.000-07:00

Any false move lifting this egg from the nest box and it would have broken wide open. The shell felt like very thin, very brittle leather. If I knew which hen had laid this parchment-shelled egg, I'd know which hen was reaching the true end of her laying life. Then I suppose the cull-or-not-cull decision would have to be made.

But I don't know, and spying on the hens probably isn't going to happen. We're probably just going to wait until all of the hens are showing signs of age. Personally, I'd rather cull the entire flock and start over with new chicks in the future versus pulling out only one hen now. Besides, that way, the flock's balance of personalities can continue to balance one another as well as they do currently.

As I've written about before, deciding to keep backyard poultry inevitably raises questions like this. I know what my decision is already, as I also know that I don't have to cull too soon. The weak-egg layer can coast a bit more. I'll up their oyster shells to help and patiently wait for the younger birds to catch up. Then they'll go on to their next stage, and the chick to hen to egg layer cycle will begin again.

If you look away

2011-07-23T19:13:00.000-07:00

Two things happen: squashes almost as big as the girl, and the little ones grow up too fast!

2011-07-21T23:17:00.000-07:00

I dragged a couple of the kids along with me tonight to the Urban Agricultural Zoning Update for a neighboring city. It was pretty neat, both because we got to see Eric in professional action and also because the interest in urban agriculture was palpable.

In my family we have a joke that whatever I'm interested in will crest in popularity two or three years later. Not so much the vegetable gardening, that's been around forever, but in the whole "Now I call it a farm" approach to growing things in urban areas. Bees, chickens, other livestock, plus extensive gardening I guess. I call it "Zeitgeist surfing," and if I could only figure out a way to cash in on my prescience, well, we'd have a redecorated kitchen and my bedroom would have walls.

So anyhow, familiar faces (Esperanza, Lisa, and the 4-H crew) and new faces but old names (Rachel) were there and that was pretty great. There was such a crowd that I couldn't hear all of the questions being asked in the break-out areas, and the two tables dedicated to livestock questions were getting heated, with some animal-rights folks and evangelical vegans arguing that the city should disallow the rearing and slaughter of meat animals, and some just plain randomness, so I wandered around a bit and overheared folks talking and making connections.

At then end of it, I asked one of Eric's coworkers if she'd like to come and see the garden, and gathered up my by-then cheerfully helping children and toddled back across the water to our town. A good night. The next few council meetings are going to be Very Interesting in that town.

Just Pay Attention

2011-07-20T21:02:00.000-07:00

Tuesday morning started with a wander around the garden. Most mornings, if I'm really lucky, start like that. Everywhere I look, if I pay attention, interesting things peep back at me.

So from thirsty chickens to volunteer pumpkins to pernicious weeds, from galumphing nasturtiums to less-enthusiastic flowers, beans ready to harvest entwined with spontaneous Sour Gherkins, it all ended up with a large box of goods for the community food bank.

Mornings like that give me strength to face my days.

Kale for Harvest Monday - Surprised?

2011-07-18T19:57:00.000-07:00

Almost a pound and a half of Lacinato kale for dinner tonight. I just move through the garden, pulling off two or three leaves from each plant. That's a great method until bolting really hits. Then, if the plant isn't hopelessly bitter, pulling the whole shebang is probably best.

We introduced a couple of neighborhood kids to kale served with caramelized onions and feta cheese tonight (plus wholewheat pasta with garlic and parseley and some bakery bread donated by a neighbor, with just-picked berries for dessert). A very low-cost and high-yummy meal, and there was some left over so I think everyone got enough. There's always enough kale here!

There's lots of harvest shots over at Daphne's Dandelions -- for your

Fascinating days with bees

2011-07-17T20:53:00.000-07:00

Besides the hive in our back yard, I keep an eye on a hive for a friend in her yard. During a routine check yesterday (to ascertain if it was time for another honey box on top of the single super that was there) I made a different kind of discovery. The hive was lousy with bees:

It was also bursting with stores. Honey, pollen, uncured nectar, every frame displaying something. But had not a single egg, larvae or brood. The huge bunches of bees must have been from the capped brood I saw during my last hive inspection, the one that led me to put that honey box on in the first place! Either the queen is dead or ineffective. No queen cells, either. A couple of cups, but not finished ones. Fortunately, it's not all drones, as it was once before. So there's not a laying worker in there.

No probem, thinks I. Time to combine my two smallest hives (the swarm from Esperanza and the feral roof-dwellers) and take a queen from there and put her in the friend's hive. Well, as you can read -- and please do -- over on Lisa's blog, that wasn't such an option as we'd thought. Yesterday's planned hive combination turned into a very different kind of bee work -- less a cut-out than a take-apart. The small hives are okay, but not ready to combine right now.

Plan B. I'd take a single frame of eggs and young brood, along with the attendant nurse bees, from my best hive, and requeen the hive that way. It does push back the development of the hive, because they have to raise a queen (some 15 or so days from today), then she has to fly to mate (20-24 days from today) and then there would be evidence of their success in the week or so following that. This puts us well into the first week of August. My friend may yet get honey from her hive, which I have never successfully managed for her in a few years (!). Bad hive, or bad beekeeper? You decide.

Anyhow, I figured that the big hive was dynamic enough to kill any wax moth on old comb:

So I would exchange this frame for one with teeny eggs and tiny brood on it. Ellie helped smoke the hive before we opened it in search of eggs:

I'm trying out a queen excluder for the first time. I hope with well-drawn frames it won't discourage the bees from storing honey up top. The wires are too close together to allow a fat queen to pass through, but the workers can get up there to put nectar in storage, making it easier for me to gather only honey at the end of the season.

While I was out there, and with such willing help, I checked the small swarm hive. For obvious reasons, we didn't get into it yesterday. It's still quite small; only brood activity on a few frames, but with a laying pattern like this:

it won't be long before the population booms. I may end up combining it with the feral hive, but I'm going to give both of them a chance.

Camera forgotten, I drove off to the neighbor's house with my nurse frame. Leaving my smoker at home made it easy to decide to do a smokeless drop'n'run. One frame has to leave for another to fit, so I pulled a frame of stores from the outside of the top brood box and levered open a spot in the middle of the box, where brood tends to be in hives, for warmth. The new nurse bees should be accepted because they smell of baby bees, and the baby bees should help that hive remember what it needs -- a laying queen. I won't go in and check to make certain there are queen cells, because I'm afraid that I could hurt any one they start. When a new queen should be laying, I'll look for eggs, starting the whole cycle again.

I really really wish I'd had my good camera working (do check out Lisa's blog, because she has great photos). There's always so much good stuff to see, and even though beekeeping is hot, and sweaty, and demanding on my aging back, it's a great way to experience total presence. Even though I feel kind of like the impostor beekeeper (though I've finally found a smoker fuel in burlap that stays lit!), because I'm acutely aware of how little I know about beekeeping, I'm completely absorbed from the first peek to the last "buttoning up" of the hive afterwards.

Changing out of my sweaty bee clothes before going out with friends tonight, I realized how very focusing bee work was for me. The entire time I was "doing bee stuff" this bruise from a fall Friday

wasn't bothering me at all. Talk about apitherapy!

House o'Kale

2011-07-15T09:08:00.000-07:00

Somewhere there lurk overview garden pictures, for another day, but last night there was a local gardener's meeting. I raced home afterwards to serve up the lentil soup my eldest had made (talk about wonderful; not only had she made it, but the parmesan rinds she added gave it depth and great savor). I worried a little that it wasn't enough food, but at the foot of the front stairs, guess what lurked:

Sauteed with garlic, this accidental kale made a lovely side dish.

Time for Camera Help

2011-07-09T10:26:00.000-07:00

I spent 20 minutes outside today taking pictures for the blog. Peppers, beans, round zucchini, epazote, cucumbers, strawberries, our new dog (yes you read that right), tomatoes. . . and this is what I came up with.

One lousy picture of the Fagioli Pavoni (I think; maybe Stregoni). Pretty blossoms - they're a light apricot in color, but seriously?

I'm pretty annoyed. There's some disconnect between the big zoom lens and the autofocus, and I just need to replace the lens I used before. I miss my Lumix camera. Sigh.

Bee status

2011-07-08T14:37:00.000-07:00

Quick hive check today. Four hives. One weak, one huge and booming (that one got a queen excluder and a honey super), one all-medium one acting as the wave of the future and not yet needing a super, and one surprise.

The hive I gathered at night last week? My friend had told me that bees had moved in, and I made some assumptions. Today, when I moved it, I noticed it was very light. Pried up the top -- and there were bees in there, yes sirree.

What there wasn't was manmade frames. The bees were making comb attached to the hive cover. Argh.

It's going to need cutting out, but for now I slapped a set of drawn frames under it and have pretty much decided to combine it with the weaker of the three others. That means finding and offing a queen, unfortunately. Too hot and not enough time to do it today, though.

Just needed to make notes to tell me what was what for the next round of hive inspections.

Hide-the-Kale

2011-07-07T11:48:00.000-07:00

For those of you who might want to eat more kale, or somehow manage to make other people eat more kale, but aren't quite ready for a big ol' pan of kale and garlic while it's so warm?

I present -- Disappearing kale!

My kids like smoothies for breakfast and snacks when it's hot. I buy .50c going-brown organic bananas from the local place, peel and chunk them and stick them in the freezer. When it's smoothie time, I throw them in the garage-sale blender with some frozen berries, either home-picked or store bought, some milk, some water (depending on how thick I want it to be), and maybe some flax seeds or psyllium husk if I'm feeling extra-crunchy.

This morning, for speed and blogging purposes, it was a straightforward banana-milk-water-raspberry smoothie to begin with:

Nice and smooth. Then, I stemmed three Lacinato kale leaves. Not many, because this smoothie was a) small and b) blueberry-free. The reason that matters will become clear later on.

Using the power of whirring blades, the kale gets pulled under. Aaaaaiiiieeeee. . . .

And then shows up again as greenish specks. Had this smoothie contained blueberries, the kale wouldn't really show.

The kids tried it, but said they didn't particularly want it, even though it tasted fine. I think looks matter a lot to them. I'm actually enjoying it just fine, and the extra serving of "smug" along with it doesn't hurt a bit.

Crazy for Kale

2011-07-05T21:17:00.000-07:00

It would be so great to always be ready for pictures, to always have my hair just so and maybe the dark circles that lurk under my eyes softened a bit. . . but then I couldn't complain that there were no pictures of me, and anyhow, when your most avid photographer is six, you get what you get.

Kale makes me pretty happy.

I pulled about a pound of Lacinato kale out of the garden today -- it's all threatening to bolt, and I'm trying to gobble it up before that happens. So I'm going to share a "recipe" with you. It's more of a suggested approach, because I'm not actually measuring things. When out at a local restaurant, I had their Kale-Seaweed Salad, and it was so tasty I've been trying to match it ever since. There's still something off about my dressing, but I'm close.

If you want to try it, and you have access to kale and either Arame or Hijiki (Arame is less expensive here, and Hijiki tastes better, in my opinion), you can make it right up.

I lightly steamed about 1/2 pound of stemmed kale leaves, then chiffonaded them. Meanwhile, the seaweed was soaking in some hot water. I drained the seaweed and mixed it with the kale. Into that went some finely minced fresh peeled ginger (you might want to try some ginger preserved in sherry, or some shaved fresh ginger instead). The dressing was rice vinegar, sesame oil, and soy sauce. Sesame seeds on top.

And that's it. I find it really yummy and am always amazed at how much kale cooks down to how little. It tastes best cold, but I have yet to make it far enough ahead to chill it. If anyone has suggestions about punching up the dressing, let me know.

What makes a holiday for you?

2011-07-04T18:06:00.000-07:00

On lazy holiday weekends, apparently my family likes to:

Gather a fourth hive of bees from friends leaving the hobby, at night, using straps to hold the hive together for the drive home.

It's clearly "seat of the pants" beekeeping.

Then we like to celebrate someone's 6th birthday with coffee and breakfast out:

Followed by a really long walk home, necessitating changes of ride:

Then we might eat something from the garden. This is leek, feta, and lemon quiche:

And today, we topped it off by marching in our hometown parade. It's the kind of parade where half the town is in the parade, the other half watching. Fun, and tiring:

We're all a bit tired. Mikey looks like a kitchen rug:

Happy holiday, everyone in this country.

Lush

2011-07-02T13:02:00.000-07:00

I feel guilty for resting on the garden's laurels -- only because I know I should be making the next season happen already. Maybe I'll get some done this evening. It's been warm, after an unseasonable rain storm. The garden has reacted with raging growth:

Except for the pitiful peppers, of course. Every year, it seems that there is one plant which does much better than expected. Last year it was bell peppers. Next year, I'm going to plan them much more carefully -- I loved those peppers. Oh well. Guess I'll haunt half-off sales this summer so we have enough to grill, because I'm not going to harvest enough. But some thought-dead Padrons have greened up, so there will at least be a few of those. Yum.

This year, the unexpected performer was leeks:

I planted them partly as a lark. I love leeks, and hate to buy them. But these puppies really did well. Lisa had some issues with hers this year, so I was afraid that mine must have been bolting. This morning, before the heat hit (how the Victorians dealt with this I do not understand), I was nipping through the garden, eyeing the about-to-bolt-or-get-too-big stuff.

Apparently they weren't bolting. Now I have to sell the family on Vichyssoise as a viable dinner, I think.

The strawberries continue to just crank out berries -- we harvested a pound today with no end in sight. I did nip off runners conscientiously. How do you with strawberry patches deal? Do you transfer the plants via runners and rogueing out the originals? How often? Do you do a Lord of the Flies let 'em rip kind of system? Pull them all and replant new plants? So far, no disease or slug issues, and the birds haven't been bad. In fact, Mikey's been the worst pest so far, and we just watch him now.

The grapes are growing crazily. Some day I'm going to learn how to prune them properly. I hope we get enough for jam again this year. We're running low, and the grape was terrific last time. Reminded me of my pb&j childhood!

In addition to "junglelike growth," this year's theme seems to be "volunteering." My produce isn't bagging itself to give to neighbors and the soup kitchen, but extra bits of plants keep popping up. There's the kale on the brick patio, the squash in the compost and near the chicken coop, and tomatoes everywhere. Tomato alley:

Johnny Jump-ups make me smile. After finally getting some from seed last year, I had hopes of babies this year. They did not disappoint. How many years do you think it will be before I finally preserve some in sugar to put on cupcakes?

This is about how high an elephant's eye is, right? Ellie may actually get some ears of corn this year. Wish we'd planted more!

The Italian soup beans are rampaging. I still feel slightly guilty over not liking green beans enough to grow, pick, and prepare them. Dry beans are more my style. But really, they seem like a crazy use of home gardening space. These earned it by being flown across the Atlantic:

One of the kinds (either Fagioli Stregoni or Pavoni) has luscious apricot flowers.

Other flowers include the ubiquitous (though fortunately less-numerous than last year!) sunflowers, just opening up:

And a few sweet peas. Those fence beds are going to have to be dedicated lettuce beds, I believe. The things there are so far behind for lack of sunlight that it's perfect for a slow-bolt planting of lettuce. Remembering that is key, of course.

Speaking of bolting, I indentured two kids today to prepare and freeze about ten pounds of kale. It's got to get done or the chickens will get it all:

Finally, I assume that either from the planted plants or those multiple volunteers, there will be tomatoes. . . some day.

Sorry about the "everything but the kitchen sink" approach. I'm not blogging regularly and oh how I miss the good camera, but when I do get things photographed, might as well cover as much as possible. Busy times, as you all know.

Two Bee or . . .

2011-06-21T22:44:00.000-07:00

Heat wave has us going to water this week -- a second day at the municipal pool. My niece recovered after being splashed and spent some quality time with her cousins. I can just imagine: "Someday, you, too, will eat salame."

On the way home I got a call -- did I want a swarm? Thanks, Esperanza!

I did, very much, but we had to unload all of the swimmers who were awake, leaving crashed-out Mr. Salame asleep. I gathered my swarm equipment, including a lovely cardboard box, and headed to find them.

Some judicious clipping and shaking moments later, the bulk of the swarm -- really, nearly all -- were boxed up and wrapped in a favorite sheet I inherited from my grandmother. I actually think of her every time I use it. Wrapped swarms always look like presents.

Looks like no one's here. . .

But they are. So I poured them onto the waiting hive box.

One branch came along for the ride.

Nearly all of the bees poured out from the box now.

They spread like buzzing molasses. I even took a video but can't figure out how to get it to upload. Just imagine noise and movement and it will be just like it!

Always a few left in the box.

One good tap and there's a small blob still to go.

I slid the cover nearly closed. As it got later in the day, I figured they'd move inside the hive.

After spinning with my friends at the library, I came back to an empty box

And, presumably, a full hive. The hanger-outers might have concerned me but it is really warm.

Even the established hive has some outdoor activity at 8pm.

Esperanza said she's got another hive I can have if I want to do a cut out. Since three was my likely target (with four as a crazy possibility) it seems as though I'm finally going to have a bee season this year. The cool spring must really have delayed swarm season, as we're easily four months past normal time. Never dull.

Busy Summer

2011-06-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

We're busier than usual right now. That seems to be a hazard of summer. Three days a week, Tor is working on riding:

Both his instructor and Coda are very patient, and he's happiest out there. We have big hopes - see those heels? Now if we could only chase down footwear and breeches I'd rest easy.

In the garden, we're starting to see the effects of a recent heat wave. Things are springing along, and I cooked my first planting of fall seeds. Should have just put them under lights downstairs.

These were all taken with a telephoto lens, so I had trouble getting a good overview. The back kale/lettuce/carrot bed features some bolting chard. We're eating kale all the time (I had a large handful in my smoothie for lunch today - mmmmmm) although I anticipate this planting of Lacinato following the chard into BoltLand soon, I'm really enjoying it.

Before the heat hit, the lettuce was just beautiful. I had already started giving heads away, and last night had an entire salad of bronze romaine.

Unfortunately, there seems to be some kind of blight on the tomatoes. I'm still thinking that there's something wrong with the Target-bought Romas, but currently I'm tearing off the diseased branches to see what happens. We also sprayed soap to see if getting the aphids off helps the tomatoes cheer up. The other varieties seem happier. Plus, there are volunteers everywhere. I let two Cherokee Purples go in the Seascape strawberry bed, just to see what's what, so there should at least be some this summer.

The Anna apple is gracious under its load. Today I disturbed a branch and ate the one that fell. It wasn't ripe, exactly, but it was edible. I'm greatly looking forward to these beauties.

Overview of the right hand side. I'm tickled about the Italian beans on the right side. We'll have soup! In front of the beans in the long vertical bed are the possibly-too-many-plants of squash. Why do nurserymen insist on planting multiple seeds and not thinning? Why don't I notice before transplanting? Peas in the pea bed are almost ready to gather for seed, and then I have to figure out what to put there. Behind the peas are the Tristar strawberries. They taste better, to me, than the Seascape, but they're still unhappier. Smaller plants, smaller berries. We'll see what amendment will do later, although it might be a climate thing. Seascape is supposed to do well here, with the implication that others might not, I suppose.

The front bed is sparsely planted, mostly flowers. We caught the rain perfectly for some seeds and missed the window for others. Again, maybe I'll troll the garden centers for sales once this week's heat breaks.

Left side. From back to front, empty bed, lettuce/kale, Ellie's corn and maybe more corn (must buy seeds. . .) bed, then the Seascape berries, the leeks and garlic and kohlrabi that I just pulled today along with half a dozen garlic heads, and the peppers. Each week as warmer weather has come along, I'm seeing more sprouts on overwintered Padron. Hopefully there will be much good eating. This winter, I think I'm going to try to root some cuttings and overwinter them under lights instead of outside. Much easier!

The lavender out front is doing pretty well, too. I wish I had more gals to enjoy it, but the other day I was out early enough to catch one bee working in lambent light:

Just realized I left a pump running. Ack.

Bee happy

2011-06-17T21:56:00.000-07:00

I finally got my ducks in a row and spent some time over the past few days inspecting hives. On Thursday, I went to the hive at a friend's house in order to see if they were ready for a super. This is a hive which, two or three years ago, was in a top-bar hive. Then I cut out the comb and rubber-banded it into frames for a Langstroth hive.

But. . . then nothing. Last year (?) I found only drones in the hive, so shook everyone out and either requeened or put a swarm in or something. I know, I should really go back to see what I did. But anyhow, we've never gotten more than the odd bit of honey from the hive.

For Thursday's visit, I even brought a full super's worth of drawn frames, reasoning that if they were ready, they could get right on to filling those frames rather than working to make wax. This friend has been so gracious about hosting the hive that I figured she really deserved a good year.

When I cracked the lid, I saw something to cheer the heart of a beekeeper: it was almost fully covered with busy bees. Unfortunately, I had also closed up the hive last fall with only nine frames in it, so right against the wall of the hive there was a perfect frame-sized comb of capped honey. It took my hive tool and a cookie sheet to get that out.

A quick inspection revealed open and capped brood, so I put on a queen excluder and the super. I'll go back and check in a couple of weeks.

And today, at home, Ellie and I suited up to check that swarm I'd hived about three weeks ago. It was still just the two deep boxes, so I cracked the top one off and we started going through the bottom.

Odd, I thought, it's mostly honey. Well, honey and pollen and unevaporated nectar. A tiny bit of brood, but every single one of those were drones. For a bit, I entertained the thought that I had somehow managed to get a queenless bunch, but they seemed awfully calm and pleasant for that to be the case.

It was nice to have Ellie with me, because I told her what we were seeing and sort of talked her through it. We set up the lid of the hive as a stand of sorts for the top box, and began to go through that. First frame, honey. Next frame, some drone and some honey. Frames 3-8? Solid, solid, perfect, textbook worker brood. Boy, oh boy was it pretty.

I practically jumped up and down, and Ellie was pleased and oh so helpful. She ran to get another deep box because I figured I'd give them another place to put brood going up rather than rotating the boxes. I still don't know if that was the right decision. At any rate, I figured I'd concentrate on big hive rather than big honey for now.

But wait. . . who was that I spied between the frames of that brood-heavy box, wandering around on the upturned lid? It was the queen! (Sorry, no pictures. We were busy and the only lens I have functioning is a super telephoto -- good for sports, bad for gardening.)

Back Ellie had to scurry to get the queen marking pen and the tube. She was so resourceful and quick that I didn't even worry about the queen, just carefully lifted the box up and set it on the bottom box, then coaxed the queen into the tube.

It was, alas, a new paint pen, so while Ellie kept the bee down in the tube, I shook and jabbed the pen against the fence until the paint flowed, but not so badly it would overwhelm her. Just a few quick dabs and she had a nice white dot on her back. Without planning, it turns out to be the "right" color for the year.

When the paint was dry and the new box rested on the getting-very-tall-now hive, I tipped her out onto it. She looked confused -- I wonder if she was thinking something along the lines of "where'd everybody go?" and then as if on cue, up popped a worker and like a tiny Border Collie, chivvied the queen back down into the hive.

Although I was thoroughly wet through from sweat afterwards (talk about beekeeper's glow), it was a great feeling to have a happy hive. I just wish I'd had more of them.

Just a quick walk

2011-06-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

I went out this morning just to grab some oregano for some spaghetti sauce I was making from the very tail end of last year's tomatoes. That freezer had to be cleaned out to make room for this spring's grassfed beef, and we are enriched by it.

A funny thing happened on the way to the herb bed --

So a quick run down: morning fog, check. Afternoon sun, check. Summer squash, check. Strawberries, both varieties, check. It must be summer!

Two Heads are Better than One

2011-06-04T08:32:00.000-07:00

Gardening out here can sometimes seem like a solitary activity, but it's really not. How could it be in a family of six? There's all the help with hardscape from Eric, and the evenings I force him to walk in the yard with me while I talk about plants, to the kids' various levels of interest and help. So it's always a multi-person effort.

For instance, I only get to see the strawberries so far. Eating seems to be a kid assignment (edited to add that tonight we discovered that the DOG is also eating them -- aaagh):

The flowers that Ellie and I planted together are coming up under the onslaught of more rain than our area has seen in over a hundred years. Sigh. I miss summers. Anyhow, these are blue bread poppies. I'm looking forward to harvesting seeds and then baking:

I thought it was only one, but another of the Padron peppers has decided to return for another year:

Two of the Anna apples are very close to each other. I've never seen this before;

And of course, our prime garden helper also takes seriously the "no empty bed" approach -- to gardening and, er, other things:

He's not alone in his philosophy:

Mystery solved

2011-05-29T18:14:00.000-07:00

I stuck my head up the stairwell and called, "Sarafina, the peas are looking horrible. Can you pick some and see if we can salvage any?" I had wondered, this morning, if there was some sort of disease I should know about that was attacking them.

She went out and then called me -- "You need to come and see this!"

Now we know what was wrong with the peas.

I don't think there is a spray for this.

Back in the Saddle

2011-05-28T11:09:00.000-07:00

I remember pretty clearly the day that I first perceived the beauty of sheer hard work. It's not as though I was raised by slackers, far from it. But lessons presented are not the same as lessons absorbed.

Anyhow, I was newish to my marriage and therefore to my inlaws, and we had gone up to their place for some visit or other. Maybe it was when my sister in law graduated with her PA degree, and we went up to help get ready, or it may just have been an ordinary visit.

What matters to the story, despite my nattering along, is that I watched (and helped, some) my inlaws work. They did yard work, housework, whatever needed doing, and then they took a break and had lunch, cleaned up, and got back to work. Nothing really out of the ordinary. We were all significantly younger then, too.

At any rate, the message finally found a resting place in me -- work, hard work, is in many ways its own reward. Sometimes it's the only reward. On that day, I did one of those "I want to be like them" things and it's never gone away fully.

I don't mean to suggest that I work as hard as they did or do, I'm still myself. But I'm able to dig deeper and find more effort inside me than I used to. So even though I had terrific (though fortunately shared) insomnia last night, today was really productive so far. Eventually I get to go to my nephew's 11th birthday party, so that's a few hours of a different kind of productivity.

But I got up and mixed the sourdough english muffins that were started last night from the sourdough starter, then moved some of the really rich dirt out from the old chicken coop area to a garden bed, although there's much more dirt to move. We decided not to raise meat birds, as I'd planned.

Taking a year off of beekeeping because I had no bees and hadn't gotten any swarms was something I'd seriously considered. I was a discouraged beekeeper. Yesterday, though, Eric reminded me that our vacations are built on honey sales, and then I got a call while I was at the zoo looking at baby otters. A friend's neighbor had a swarm in a tree. Although it took longer than I'd hoped and I wasn't certain I'd gotten all of them, I hived that really big swarm in two nuc boxes. Then Eric and I went back at night and picked them up -- all of the swarm had moved down into the boxes, so we had to borrow an exterior box to transport them all. Good night's work.

This morning then, we really decided to dismantle the would-be meat coop and make that area a bigger apiary. I'm hoping to have at least four hives, and to be a more conscious beekeeper this year. With a late start, I'm going to have to get my act together.

In the midst of muffining, I moved the colony into its hive boxes -- really big swarm, as I noted.

Tomorrow the cement on the metal stand should be firm enough to lift the box up and I'll get set to start admiring the real champions of hard work.

Egging us on

2011-05-10T21:42:00.000-07:00

Eric says I overschedule myself. I think it's just May with lots of kids. The past weekend was the high school Ultimate Frisbee States championship, won by my child's undefeated team. (Yay!)

This weekend, among other events, it's:

Yes, that time of year again! The kids and I have put in a good couple of days cleaning up -- tomorrow we'll be shoveling mulch -- and Eric and now Kevin have really rocked the new, fancy coop. I think everything will be ready by Sunday.

I even made art.

Sunday afternoon, I'll be standing outside, talking to whoever makes the trek around town to view chicken coops. Since I learned a little bit last year, I'm going to make and post directional
and informational signs, recruit helpers so I can get a drink or visit the bathroom at least once, and plan to eat takeout or crock pot food that night.

Being me, however, I have to drive back from a four day homeschooling camping trip to do this. I'm going to need that trip to destress from getting ready for the trip.

The weekend after next is the Middle School Ultimate States tournament. . .

I'm looking forward to June.

Not just to show off

2011-05-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

That is, the new, shiny red chicken coop (which is almost done) is not just for showing off. The old one is pretty much in need of repair, especially the yard area. It's just not very secure nor very sturdy.

Case in point -- the gals made a run for it through a stretched-out place in the wire last week:

Conveniently, the salad garden bed is right in front of their coop.

They made the most of it. I shored up the pen, at least temporarily.

Jailbird.

Astonishing Variety

2011-05-04T21:33:00.000-07:00

Same chickens, different days. Who knows why sometimes it looks as though miniature ostriches live out there and other days it's Lilliputian poultry? Wonderfulness.

This post brought to you by the letter "P"

2011-05-02T15:07:00.000-07:00

Those kids. . . today they woke up to find individual yogurt/granola/fruit parfaits waiting on the table. No whining for pancakes today! I'm able to do things like this when I write a detailed menu before I go to the stores. Today's sandwich bread dough will also have to become burger buns, though, since I forgot to purchase any. Oh well, I was baking anyhow, and this way I can make teensy buns for teensy burgers. Custom cooking!

Other excitement? Well, I believe at least one of the Padron peppers, that tasted so wonderful last year, is going to pull through. I need to get out there and side dress with either some composted chicken poo or compost or something. Peppers are really heavy feeders, in my experience. I'm especially excited about this because I didn't get any started from seed, and I love these peppers.

The Aladdin peas are starting to fill out. Ed Hume says to keep picking so that's what we'll do. With a relatively small pea patch, it feels more tedious to shell, since there are only a handful ready at a time. We do love our frozen peas, though. They have been terrifically self-supporting, as advertised.

Here's Eric working on the Palais de Poulet. I had asked to just move the original coop, to make room for the beehives in a different place, but with the third annual coop tour coming up, Eric decided to pull out all the stops.

When the doors and nest boxes get installed, it will be only a few post holes and wire stretching away. I even think we'll make the deadline.

Pancakes and Pests

2011-05-01T17:58:00.000-07:00

My children would eat pancakes every day, if allowed. Since real maple syrup runs almost $18 for 32 ounces here, we have Pancake Day once a week, on Saturday. (There is also Waffle Wednesday, so I don't think they're too deprived.) And one thing that has made my breakfast sweets-making easier is aerosol oil. Pastry brushes are all well and good, but a quick squirt of oil and the pancakes and waffles are easily released from griddle and maker, respectively.

But that's not all! And thus begins the infomercial.

A couple of years ago, the Anna apple tree became infested with black aphids covered with white fuzz. They made galls on the stems, and I tried all sorts of discouragement, but finally hit on one that worked.

Last week, I found another round of fuzz:

Since this was concentrated on damaged parts of the bark and flower clusters, I assume it's somewhat fungus-related. Still, I'm trying my first line of defense:

That's right -- the ever-versatile spray oil. A quick squirt:

And the white fuzz disappears.

Time will tell if it works as well as it did on the last round of fuzzy menace. If you have a small tree that's infested with anything that oil will smother (aphids and scale come to mind) this is easier than making up a sprayer of horticultural oil.

Promises, Promises

2011-04-17T11:08:00.000-07:00

Although I feel as though I've simply fallen down on the garden this year, several bright spots rewarded close inspection this morning:

Whirled peas, for instance. The stocky, tendril-y plants are holding each other up nicely. Soon we'll be shelling these lovelies.

In just a few weeks it will be tomato sauce time! I can hardly believe that the plants are already thinking of fruiting, but a few warm afternoons have apparently done the trick!

We hope to get at least a few good apples this year. The Anna is setting at least two dozen small fruit, although I saw some wooly aphids on damaged places on the stems. My so far successful management technique for them has been a quick shot with aerosol cooking oil spray. Smothers them and with a small tree, it's easy to get every colony of them. Doesn't damage the tree at all, either, nor is it poisonous. Win-win.

A hard pruning didn't discourage the grape vine. I'm hoping that regular watering and compost amendment will yield at least a few large clusters.

Dutiful attention to the new strawberry beds has meant stoop work as I carefully pluck off all of April's flower buds. I want the plants to push all of their energy into establishing themselves and putting out healthy root systems. Last year's strawberries, though, well, we're letting them go crazy. At least a few early berries might be worth it.

The poor espaliered apple trees are still suffering the effects of last year's blight attack. Only a few beautiful blooms with promises of fruit:

Juicy new growth on the Meyer Lemon has proved irresistible to the green aphids. Oddly, these are a very different aphid from the gray winter aphids blanketing the sickly kale out back.

Yesterday's hard water spray didn't do much to discourage them, and today was pruning day anyhow, so I cut some of the new growth off. Soapy spray seemed like the only possible response besides pruning, but a close look showed that the calvary has arrived! Fingers crossed that this is only the first of many many hungry lady beetles and their larvae.

And I hope that these are lady bug eggs. They're pinker than I expected, but maybe they're near hatching. Any amateur entomologists out there want to hazard a guess?

April Already?

2011-04-11T10:13:00.000-07:00

Well, let's see. Rainstorms? Check. Heat wave? Check. Bee swarm calls (none of which I've gotten as I'm waiting to refurb the chicken run before having resident bees again)? Check. Frisbee season heated up? Check!

Okay, then, it is April.

And downstairs, there are flats of kale I pricked out from their first flats, in order to give them a little more room to grow before getting transplanted. Lacinato:

Red Russian:

Various lettuce mixes -- not yet thinned. They might just not get much coddling, since they should have been 6" high and out in the garden a month ago, you know? I'm just feeling cranky.

Out in the garden, the nursery-bought basil has been chomped on by wee caterpillars, I assume by the damage. Too bad for it. It was hot, now it's cool, the basil is completely bummed anyhow. No easy pesto for me, apparently. And basil-from-seed remains for some reason a pipe dream. When I lived in warmer areas yes, but not here, land of sea breezes.

Pretend that your head is tilted. These are afilia-type peas (thank you, Mr. H for the recommendation). They are relatively happy, but alas, so are the grassy weeds in the bed. That's what happens when one year you plant sweet peas thick, so thick that you can't weed, and therefore the weeds are happy, so happy that they all set seed. Thus the gardener gets to weed well into the future.

The storebought bell peppers (orange and red only) are cheerfully peppering on. I don't know ow many of the old peppers are really going to resprout, but I haven't started any more Padrones, in anticipation of having the old ones bounce back. Perhaps I'm not being smart, but who knows yet?

Tristar strawberries are finally becoming happy in their recently-tilled clover bed:

But it's nothing like the Seascape strawberries, which are throwing a party (again, with the head tilt):

Looking down on a Roma tomato. Instead of the fence system, this year I am trying two stakes each, and pruning suckers out:

This is what the tomato sees:

Mikey romped through the asparagus, and now it has a "fence." I use the word loosely because it's really just a dog-discourager:

The hoops kept the birds away from the transplanted lettuce -- and really, that's nowhere near enough spinach. Argh.

All is not well out in GardenLand, alas. A chicken is eating eggs. Must figure out how to stop that bird. Drat it all.

One experiment which seems to be working okay is the sump pump irrigation system. If I only water a portion of the garden at a time, it moves enough water from the rain totes to keep the garden alive. It's not perfect, and it takes a startling amount of water. One tote is dry already, and unless it rains soon, the others will soon follow. We're back to draining bath tubs.

So in general, enough to keep me moving forward, garden-wise, and there's still lots of room out there.

Maybe this is why it makes me happy

2011-03-27T22:09:00.000-07:00

Even when I was ten, gardening made me really happy. I may not have known why then, but maybe it was more than just a quirk of personality. Maybe it's science. That's right -- the only antidepressant that's hard to clean out from under your fingernails.

Instant garden

2011-03-26T18:11:00.000-07:00

I broke today -- after a morning coffee with the eldest child, I headed for the local nursery to pick up an early birthday present for me. Seedlings! I got two six packs of leeks (with 2-8 leeks per pot), two six packs of lettuce mixes, two six packs of asparagus, and a single potted artichoke. The front yard artichoke was split but the transplanted half thrived and the original half dwindled to almost nothing, so I figured a jump start was in order.

I've been so behind with the seedlings downstairs that I wonder if I'll ever see seed-started lettuce! It's just been a bad winter, garden-wise.

So the jump start seemed to be all I needed. In a break in the rain, I raked smooth the bed infested with potato scab, and put in, with many incantations to the spring goddesses, a dozen feathery asparagus babies.

It strikes me that planting asparagus is a really optimistic gardening move. It says that you're going to be around for at least the next few years, just to coax the plants along. Since these were seedlings, not large crowns, it may be up to four years before I get to eat anything. Oh well, it keeps me busy!

The leeks filled a small bed and half a large bed. Before the lettuce could be sited, the rain opened up again and I headed inside. There a flat waited, so I seeded two kinds of kale and about eight different kinds of lettuce. My version of succession planting -- nursery seedlings AND home-seeded ones! Whatever gets you eating, I suppose.

In distressing news, the garden kale is going to seed, and I didn't succession seed well enough to have more at the right point. So I may end up (gasp) buying kale to eat. Now I wish I'd frozen some!

The Garden Goes On

2011-03-18T21:19:00.000-07:00

Without a lot of work on my part, but with a lot of help from child and friends, the garden might actually amount to something this year. Of course, my recordkeeping has already gone to pot. I've harvested and cheerfully eaten pounds of kale (and perhaps ounces of aphids) without writing a single amount down. We're still listing eggs, pretty much, on the calendar, but that's about it.

Oh, and the garden plan/drawing thing. I'm sketching things in there as they go in. At least I have some record. Mostly what I want is food -- much much more food. Kale is great, but we eat a lot more than kale usually.

And finally, finally, and with the help of the current Junior Farmer, some crops under lights. Tomatoes, a pepper or two (because not all of the overwintered ones are going to make it), some more kale (yay, kale!), and many flowers because families do not thrive on food alone. Well, okay, some of the flowers are things like breadseed poppies, because baked goods are pretty wonderful, but many are just pretty. For instance, we like zinnias a lot.

And both of my hives, it ended up, dwindled until the lives of the queens were at stake. Disease? I don't think so. Pests? Maybe. I think it was probably a combination of bad keeping and harsh weather -- but both queens were rehomed in more congenial hives and then a friend came over and dropped an entire hive on the fancy stand in my yard.

And fifty strawberries, it turns out, is a lot. Fortunately they all went into the ground ahead of torrential rains. I hope they like it. The winter-planted garlic is growing well, thank goodness. I wish I'd planted more, of course. . . And the peas, the peas that were protected by bird netting, they're still doing really well. So even though there's a ton more work to do, I don't feel anymore as though I'm lying when I tell people I have a large garden. It's just that not all of it (rather than none) is in production right this minute. At least there's hope now.

Last of the first days of spring

2011-02-12T22:10:00.000-08:00

One of the impressive things this weekend was how much Eric got done with his finger like this:

Just kind of hurts looking at it. But not as much as our excitement on Wednesday, when he accidentally removed the pin holding the tip of his digit in place. Whoo-ee, that was something. Fortunately he had an appointment at the hand surgeon on Thursday, and instead of re-pinning the joint, the good Dr. just had a splint ready for it. Apparently banging the hard plastic splint hurts a lot less than banging a large needle holding your joint still. Go figure.

Eric also finished stapling chicken wire to the tractor, and added a little in-out flap for the top. That should be a lot easier than dropping the box over them!

Another task Eric took on was bringing some order to the storage sheds under the deck. I've asked for this for a while, and I'm pleased with the ingenious kinds of storage. I can think of more hooks and things that would customize it even more -- this is actually going to be a pretty fun project.

Some garlic is definitely doing well so far. The leeks and onions I thought I'd planted next to it are much less robust. Drat it all. They really have to be started indoors, and I'll try to remember to do that next year.

I meant to do this digging over the course of the week, but oddly enough life got in the way, so it wasn't done. Today I got to one of the small fence-side beds, I did the dig a trench, toss it in semi double dig method of mixing in the horse poo and bedding and some blood meal. The bedding is the bulk of this stuff. If I'd done it sooner, I would have kept some more of the goodness in, instead of letting it all evaporate as ammonia, but we do what we can.

I was impressed at how lovely the soil is. Every year, it's showing improvement. And now, after being raked smooth, that part of the bed is ready to go. Into what, I'm not sure. More sunflowers? They sure were happy last year.

Whenever we work outside, at least one member of the family is happy to just hang out. Here, he was chewing an old bone, but generally he'll chew on anything available. A fruit tree, a pepper stem, the edge of a bed, a boot. . . He really enjoys cold, so being outside on the ground is better even than being on the couch inside. Although he'll do that if it's the only option for Being With The People.

So, the update on the bees is as follows. I was quite afraid of what I would find when I went back into the hives. Did I in fact kill my best queen by slopping too much paint on her (talk about feeling terrible, in fact so badly I didn't detail it on my blog), or did the feeding help the hives at all? Did I attract more bothersome ants to my smaller hive? What was going on?

So, today's warm afternoon meant a trip to buy more sugar to mix syrup for them, and I made a new cover, hopefully one that would allow me to cover the hive securely and allow room for a gallon plastic bag of syrup.

The weaker hive was still there -- this time, two frames covered by bees. This was an improvement. I got out a non-warped cardboard nuc box, and shrank the hive down into it. There were three good bee frames, with babies and nurse bees, and the nicely-marked queen, and a couple of frames of capped honey. On top of all of it I placed a nice full bag of syrup. The cover has enough room so I think the bees can get to it and also be covered. I may have to double-check. Being me, sometimes I overslash the bag and it drowns bees, sometimes I manage to keep them out of it entirely, wasting the whole effort. It works pretty well, when operator error isn't factored in.

The "good" hive was also doing very well. They're filling frames with syrup, and maybe nectar too. I saw brood, and then I saw the queen -- overly marked, sure, but walking around as though nothing was amiss. Oh, what a relief!

The top is not really going to work, at least not with a full bag of syrup. I had to tilt it and then block the opening with a large piece of bamboo. That worked for the two sides, but the front and back are open. If they're too open, the hive is vulnerable to robbing by other bees. I think a 2" tall "extension" around the hive would work best, with the top separate from that. If it were warm enough, I'd put an empty super on top, and then put the top on that. But that's 6 vertical inches of empty space to lose heat to, from the bees' perspective. I don't want to stress them any more than I have to. Back to the drawing board!

I wish we were having more weather like this for them. Unfortunately, it's a week of cold and rain predicted ahead. Oddly enough, the apricot tree, which is covered with blooms and directly in front of the hives, was deserted when I was stalking bees late in the afternoon. The Anna apple, 20' away, was just buzzing with them. Go figure.

Of lack and increase

2011-02-07T18:27:00.000-08:00

Four full days of over 70 degrees meant a lot of garden time this weekend. It also meant that fellow beekeepers were reporting lots of capped drone brood, queen cells, generally hives ready to split. I figured I had better get out there and give the girls a look.

Hello?

Anybody home?

This hive, my "dark" hive, didn't look great. They've been bothered by ants for some time, despite my best efforts to banish the pests. I opened it up, and here's a nice frame of pollen:

But this was the edge of the brood nest. Deserted, and with a weird pattern:

Looking closely at the caps, you can see perforations:

That's the bee way of dealing with dead or diseased or pest-ridden larvae.

Looking at the bees that were in the cells, I saw a lot of tongues sticking out. I think these starved to death. . . although I just realized I forgot to do the tip/look for frass tests for Varroa.

The few remaining bees were yumming up the honey -- not much in the hive, either.

I guess you could call easy queen sighting an upside of a terribly dwindled hive.

And I had my marking kit, but not the right year color -- I decreed that red would be easiest to see, even though this year's color is white.

Being me, I managed to drop her (of course) although she seemed none the worse for the drop. I can see why keeping weeds down around hives is a great idea.

Deeper in the brood nest, they were eating larvae. This hive is either starving or reacting to a pest. Either way, it's unsustainable.

Hungry and dead:

My "better hive" was also looking a little thin:

At least there were two or three frames that looked like this:

The queen must have been on this frame for me to take the picture, but I couldn't find it in the editing program. Go figure.

I did find her -- the golden one. Then I dropped her, caught her again, then marked her with red. I hope I didn't get too much paint on her, because killing her by marking her would be so stupid as to be unforgivable. Tomorrow, both hives need compressing into one box and feeding with bags of sugar syrup. Obviously I'm not making any splits any time soon. I'll be lucky to nurse even one of these hives into survival, I'm afraid. Bummer.

But little by little, I'm climbing out of my months-long slump. Eric has been unusually helpful in the garden, despite his partial amputation via table saw. His finger is hanging in there (har har) and he helped me hoop and bird net two beds much more securely than I would have been able to do on my own:

Just like that. The sides lift up; the ends are capped with their own flat piece of the nasty plastic netting. I planted "Tacoma" peas, an afilia type, and some flowers in that bed. I also put out some iron snail bait, since they are the #2 pest in my garden for seedlings.

I also found a flat of seeds I'd sown had started sprouting, so I moved them under a wad of bird netting.

And then spent the rest of the weekend wheelbarrowing horse manure and stable sweepings back into the too-low beds.

Those are still awaiting hose lifting, blood meal applications, and general tilling, but a small bed got all three:

No birds are going to get that tiny lettuce bed, at least not until I take the Reemay off.

I planted thickly in rows, figuring I'd eat them small until they were spaced correctly, or maybe I'll transplant. It feels good to at least be making headway. I'd thought I was possibly not going to have a garden this year.

We may have apples, though. The Anna tree is looking exceptionally lovely:

And the Katy apricot is blooming almost all over. A few bees wandered over, but I'm worried about having another outbreak of brown rot. I hope the dry weather helps.

Assuming, of course, it holds. Well, always an adventure.

Golden lady

2011-01-21T15:04:00.000-08:00

The weather out here reminds me of how I feel about naturally curly hair: of course everyone wants it, but making a big deal of it is terribly boastful. Just appreciate it and deal with any inner-smug yourself. It's just beautiful -- sunny and not too warm, but nothing like Chicago's -21! It feels like spring. Spring means bees. So finally, I made time to get into the beehive today! No smoke, since it was a quick "Hi, howareya?" visit. For my own happiness, the first hive was my boomer.02 hive, or the one which has a queen who's the daughter of my best queen ever. They're such nice, mellow bees I figured they'd be a nice start to the year's beekeeping. They're still in some shade, but were foraging as though their lives depended on it. At first, all I saw was capped honey -- not too much, but enough so that I'm confident that they made it through the winter just fine.

After I lifted a few frames, I saw brood. A good sign, that, because without a queen you don't get babies. "It would be funny," I thought, "if I saw the queen." I neither had my marking pen nor my camera, so I figured it would be par for the course.

Next frame?

There she is, bold as brass. I kept this frame out for a long time because I ended up yelling for Ellie to find my pen and the camera. Pen was nowhere to be seen, alas (this will teach me the perils of disorganization -- or not) but the kids brought the camera out. My nephew even got a look at her majesty.

That wasn't the only wonder of the day, though. As I kept watching her walking around, seemingly unconcerned, she was the total opposite of what's called a "running queen." She just kept going about her business. Here she is sticking her head in a cell:

And then, if I'm not mistaken, laying an egg!

I could hardly believe my luck! I never thought I'd see that. Whoopie! In celebration, I dusted the hive with powdered sugar to help them fight any Varroa destructor mites just like Kristin does. I didn't see any mites, but then, I didn't do a count either. I know there were ants bothering the second hive, so I was being preventative.

Then, on to the next bunch. Here's a side by side comparison. There are definite differences between the two. Both are feral stock, but the left hand one (the first hive) has to have a queen with primarily Italian strains. They're golden, mellow, and make a lot of babies and a lot of honey. The right hand ones are probably primarily Russian or German. More black than the Italians, they're supposed to be cold hardy and mite-resistant. Since I'm not worried about cold, and I'm not thrilled with their slight grumpiness and low numbers, my plan is to eventually find and depose that queen and replace her with a new one from the first hive. I may just have to raise up new queens from that first hive in general. I'd like three hives again this summer, and I do like that first queen.

This hive had fewer bees on top, also. The population just isn't as robust, even though they have the sunnier spot. They're also more bothered with ants. Just a weaker hive overall.

They do have a functioning queen, though, so that's good.

Not that I saw her (that would be quite a day) but the evidence is clear, with those lovely brood floating in jelly. They got a sugar dusting too, plus ant-stopping sticky stuff on the stand. I'll just end up splitting that hive and importing new eggs and larvae from the good hive to raise up queens. Maybe next month!

Just thinking

2011-01-18T20:59:00.000-08:00

When I told my Counseling Psychology PhD supervisor that I was dropping out of graduate school to be a farmer, she said, "You'll be bored." I found that insulting, and I knew much less then about farming than I do now. The arrogant dismissal of something based, I assume, on ignorance, seemed very counter to what I was being taught as a counseling professional. You see, most academics look down on people who use any other part of their body beyond the gray matter to make a living, in my experience. And farming? Dirty, low-paid work.

Although my farm is tiny, hardly a farm at all, it's still a microcosm of what it means to help the soil and all of the systems in a garden work to bring food out of the ground. I open a beehive, and the whole story of that colony is laid out in front of me, although I have yet to learn how to observe carefully enough to see it all.

I'm not bored.

Frustrated, yes, anxious, sometimes, but not ever bored. In fact, one psychological concept I learned about in graduate school, "flow" by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi, best describes what I experience out there.

It is, however, dirty and relatively low-paid.

Brrrrrr

2011-01-06T08:52:00.001-08:00

Should have known right away something was up when I went out to check the chickens this morning.

It hadn't seemed too cold when I went out front to get the paper and wave goodbye to Eric as he pedaled to work.

But the frost fairies had been hard at work -- only in the beds in more open areas. The back ones get some kind of shadow from the neighbor's trees, and those closest to the house are in a temperature shadow from it, apparently.

The peppers in the front bed (which I somehow forgot to cover) appear so far to have come through unscathed. It's almost time to cut them back, I think, although they're still bearing very slowly. The "fog" in front of them is clouds of steam from Mikey's breath. He loves cold weather, and sadly for him, I don't. Since he loves me most, he's inside more than his pelt would choose. He is, however, a very happy gardening companion.

Beauty as a reward for braving a cold nose:

Four eggs today, bringing the year's total to nine.

Marmaladies

2011-01-05T21:21:00.000-08:00

Every single time I walked past my wonderful, abundant, takes-what's-dished-out-and-keeps-producing lime tree for the past month, I've felt guilty. "Got to make marmalade," I'd mutter to myself, and then not do it.

Thank goodness for friends with agendas. I have one, and marmalade was on her agenda. She brought blood oranges, enthusiasm, sugar, and a willingness to do a fast dish turnaround. I brought limes and canning kettles.

We only made something like 7 or 8 pints of each type and didn't reduce lime mountain

too much.

If you look close, there's an intrepid mountaineer:

I'm going to have to give some limes away. I'm not preserving many, I don't think, although I might make another batch or two of the marmalade. I like it, although I'm not eating any sugar right now, it would make dynamite gifts (or cookie filling).

Denise came over with her little one. Remember newborn fuzzy ears? She is certainly as delicious as any marmalade.

The price of direct-seeding

2011-01-04T20:59:00.000-08:00

Growing from transplants is generally agreed to be not as cost-effective as starting your own.

That's not, alas, true for me this year.

That's right -- the birds. The birds are eating everything intentionally planted in my near-wasteland garden. Between the rain and the birds and the cold, I have just grumpily harvested the preexisting kale and ignored everything else, including my carrot bed which is either not germinating because it's cold or the birds have also pulled every teensy carrot I saw right out. I'm going with option two because I actually saw teensy carrots. And now. . . nothing.

So last weekend I hied me to the hardware store and bought a package of my most loathed outdoor product -- plastic bird netting. I figured I'd engineer a nice pvc box for each garden bed, zip-tie the netting down, and have something I could reuse year after year.

Unfortunately, I'm the Queen of the Jury-Rigged. The repurposed pvc is just curvy enough that the corners keep springing loose:

Although I was confident enough in that one to replant some carrots the other day.

I tried another box style in bamboo, and am not yet happy enough with it to drape netting over it.

But today, I found the least material-intensive design so far:

White tip is NOT a skunk; it's Mikey's tail. He had been lounging in that bed before I chased him off of it and then capped it with netting. If both he and the birds stay away, maybe I'll get some peas, spinach, and tat soi.

If it's warm enough.

Yesterday's harvest? 9 1/2 ounces of red kale and 1 pound 10 oz of Yukon Gold potatoes. The bed they came out of has a scab-type disease in it. No more grocery store potatoes; no more in that bed!

And check out the eggs! Three normal ones; one as though a chicken was channeling a hummingbird. We don't have a light in the coop, and I know we'd be getting a lot more eggs if we did! Maybe bigger ones, too. I should have taken a close-up of that wee egg, but I was tired.

Today, 14 pounds of Bearss limes which will be lime shred marmalade tomorrow. Only one egg today, but normal chicken-sized.

Maybe tomorrow I will weed!

Back on the Bandwagon

2011-01-02T17:08:00.001-08:00

Last year I just quit keeping track of what I got from the garden. It was, believe me, only a symptom of the general falling-apart I suffered. Nothing serious, thank goodness, just what it was.

This year I figured I'd keep track here. So here's the tally this far for 2011:

Eleven eggs and just shy of six pounds of uncleaned honey mushrooms. They ought to clean out to about five pounds. Pilaf for dinner!

(Let's all hope Denise doesn't email me tomorrow and say, "No!! Those arent honey mushrooms! You'll dieeeeee.")

Giving the Garden

2010-12-19T14:59:00.001-08:00

I'm going to a holiday gathering today that's a teensy bit high-pressure. I'm wearing my go-to boots, checking my eye makeup before leaving, and practicing asking interesting questions so I can talk to people I don't know.

One thing I'm not worrying about is hostess gifts. The nocino really worked out well, and who wouldn't like little teensy pickles? Handspun yarn, repurposed manila folders, and there you have it -- something no one else could give.

For all the ups and downs, gardening lessens my stress overall.

December sprout - now pictured!

2010-12-17T21:49:00.001-08:00

She was born yesterday, at 3:30 or so in the afternoon. A beautiful home birth, with her whole family gathered around.

This beats pulling Bermuda grass all hollow, in this aunt's opinion.

No cure, I'm afraid

2010-12-10T16:17:00.001-08:00

I've been writing this post in my head for a week, but couldn't find the pictures. Then they were found, while I was doing something for homeschooling records. I've been meaning to cure my own olives for some time, and after my cousins in Sicily told me that it was really easy (at least, that's what I think they said; my Italian is questionable), I was even more determined to do so.

I made my eldest child help me pick "a jarful" of olives across from the most populated shopping center in town. She really appreciated that.

This is how most of my new projects are designed: jump right in but use the wonders of the internet to figure out how to follow through.

There are lots of recipes for olives here, and I chose just a straight brine cure. A quick slit in each olive, to let the brine in, and I figured I was on my way. They weren't very big.

I poured a cup of salt on them and topped it off with I think two cups of water. I weighed them down with a plastic bag full of water, so they'd stay under the brine.

Then all that was left was to wait a bit, check the olives, and proceed.

Alas, I do not have pictures of the next part of the process, but the next day I looked in the jar, and the water had started to discolor, which was great, but there were also small, grub-looking things suspended in the water underneath the floating olives. What could they be? Could I (ick) eat the olives anyhow?

Back to the computer. I discovered what my nemeses were. . . olive flies. And no, I could not just go ahead and eat them, or not with a lot of enjoyment. And control seems like a pain, also, so I was at least glad that I found them before putting a lot more effort into them. I had also planned to plant two trees! Now I have space, rather than difficult trees.

Maybe I can find someone around here in a non-infested area to get me some uncured olives, or maybe there is simply no cure for me.

The sound of stealing

2010-12-06T14:19:00.000-08:00

It's a gorgeous day here - sunny and relatively warm. I've been whining about the gray, so this is a nice change. I trotted out back with the dog and heard something. Something wrong. The boxes out to be cleaned by the bees had a lot of bees flying around them, and the sound could have been just the increased activity (nice weather=more bees flying), but I didn't think so. A glance out in the bee yard suggested that I should probably worry.

One of the hives is slightly weaker than the other -- always has been. Different queens, different hives. That's the one that had the ants on it, and today they were better. One grass stalk was leaning onto the hive, and the ants had redirected traffic onto that, but it was easy to fix. It didn't sound much better, though. Angry humming, or irritated humming, not the happy bee sounds one wants.

It turns out that old coffee bags are terrific smoker fuel, and an 8" square is just about enough to last though a quick hive inspection. Since I'm a failure at keeping my smoker lit, this was good news.

Yay, smoke!

It's a little difficult to see in this picture, but underneath the questionable hive, there was a pile of little wax bits.

In addition, the front of the hive was showing a lot of activity, but it didn't look like a plain old active hive, in which lots of bees fly in and out. There was a fair bit of hovering which could be newly hatched bees going on orientation flights, or something more sinister. I assumed sinister.

So I reduced the entrance with a convenient stick. If, as I assumed, the hive was being robbed by interlopers, having a smaller opening to defend would help them.
Once I got the hive open, my assumptions were confirmed. See the little ragged openings? Bee jaws. They cut them open and eat the honey.

That's where the carpet of wax bits underneath had come from. On the frames, there were mobs like this:

What are they after?

Yep, they're eating the tiny bits of honey. Yum.

Some frames were like this:

After I pulled off those honey boxes I'd put on for cleaning, I took a quick peek down in the brood box, and there was evidence that at least recently, there was an active queen. I saw open brood (the little white grubby things in the top middle of that picture) and capped brood (under the bees) but didn't look through the hive enough to either confirm eggs or their lack.

Once I found that the hive wasn't actively dying, and the empty honey boxes were off and free of bees (much shaking and wrapping in sheets took care of that), I buttoned up the hive again and replaced the temporary entrance reducer with a stick that would actually fit:

With the ants gone, and the robbing either completed or stopped, this hive should cheer up a bit.

The stronger hive just got its honey boxes removed and shaken. True to form, they'd begun filling them with nectar from whatever's blooming out there. I figured I'll just store it and they can deal with it next spring. Now, dry ice and bags are on my shopping list. After the sun goes down tonight I'm going to bring in all of the other boxes. I know that having a source like that can stimulate robbing, as I'd worried about earlier, and it seems as though that's true. No sense prolonging it.

Maybe tomorrow I'll actually garden some, and more easily with fewer bees flying around.

Housekeeping

2010-12-04T20:48:00.001-08:00

Hi there. I used to garden and blog about it. I used to do lots of things!

Maybe it's the shorter hours of daylight, maybe it's stress, maybe it's some personal failing, but I'm not the bundle of energy I usually find myself. I'm certainly not blogging as I used to, nor knitting, nor reading and commenting on blogs, nor weighing and recording any garden output. It's all mostly gone to circling the inner wagons and painting trim in the dining room.

This week, however, a few bits and bobs got done. All of the honey has been harvested, bottled, and sold. We're going to go to the snow after Christmas, since my "honey money" is earmarked for family outings. Hooray for the bees.

All of that may be done, but the aftermath isn't quite finished. I had stacks and stacks of boxes to clean, harvest, and clean again. Organized beekeepers get the boxes off the hives, harvest the honey, return the "empty" frames to the bees for 24 hours to get the residue off, then pull the boxes off again and store them carefully against insects and damage, until the spring, when we start the whole delightful round again.

That's organized beeks, as noted. Guess which kind lives here? Yes, the four boxes which were efficiently harvested the first day off the hives were also efficiently returned to the hives for cleaning -- a month ago. I couldn't really put the many other harvested boxes back on for cleaning without taking the first off, and the earlier nice weather has mostly given way to actual cool, rainy weather. Also, I have a mix of sinking feelings and elation because the bees were actively foraging for that month. There's probably another 60 pounds of honey waiting for me out there.

Whether there is or not, those boxes awaiting cleaning had to be attended to, and the parents of the book club kids were going to need the basement to sit in during book club. Out the bee stuff had to go.

Instead of berating myself for my poor planning, I chose to look at it as an opportunity to get the frames cleaned without opening the hives to expose any brood to a chill. The bees could come and get the honey if I set the boxes out to be foraged from, far enough from the hives to not stimulate robbing. At least that's the hope.

The bees were pretty happy about it, at least in between rain showers:

Setting my precious drawn comb out to be foraged and rained on (probably Very Bad for the wooden frames -- I hope they dry out okay after tomorrow, when I pull them back in ) wasn't the only beekeeping activity managed this week.

While out putting scraps in the chicken coop last evening, I dropped by the hives and listened. Even without going in, you can learn a lot by watching a hive from the outside and listening to it. I'd noticed earlier that day that one hive had a bit less activity than the other, and that it had some ants in it. The grass had grown right up against it, and an ant highway coupled with a weak hive adds up to real trouble.

When I listened, the "good" hive (the one I usually call my boomer hive because they do everything more than every other hive) was quiet. Pretty much what you want once it's dark and cold. The other hive? Buzzing angrily. I wouldn't want to open a hive that sounded like that in perfect weather, let alone questionable. Something is wrong in there.

Today I fixed the one thing I could fix completely externally -- manage those ants! A good dollop of Tree Tanglefoot on each bit of hive support, plus some judicious grass pulling, meant no more ants could get in:

I'm going to check it again tomorrow. That hive needs attention inside, too, like Kristin gave her bees recently. It's just time to manage hives. If the weather would cooperate, I'd manage. You do what you can, beewise.

Despite having almost no gardening mojo, I managed to get a bit done out back. Some of it was due to my eldest's nearly enthusiastic help as I pulled out that forest of tomato vines last week.

Days after those beds were clear, compost got dumped and a mix of cleaned-from-the-coop chicken droppings and humusy soil got top-dressed. The ones with the rocket-fuel manure dressing would probably be too hot for most crops, and I'm not quite ready to commit to growing anything. Told you I've been feeling weird.

Cover crops to the rescue. A mix of legumes, clover, and grains like oats and buckwheat were scatter-sown to wait the coming rain:

In the pole-and-bush-bean bed, I tried a different tack. Pulling the poles and beans out, I left the crop residue right on the bed. From the outside, I began digging ditches and laying semi-chopped bean plants in the ditches, covering them with dirt. I wore out as the middle jungle approached. I'm going to get to it, just not right this minute.

Then there's the really minimal work areas. Some beds just got weeded. The back corner now has three perennial herbs, so I work around them. I'll get to that end of the garden before the end of the year, I hope. Maybe by the end of January. I'm thinking another trip to the stable for a load of manure would probably be a really good idea.

Maybe Denise and Kevin can find a lot of free time to help! (Just kidding -- their little sprout is almost due.)

One bed that's been just left alone is the pepper bed. I'm still getting some Padron peppers -- enough for a small side dish each week. Maybe they will overwinter. There's a bale of straw to mulch them with waiting in the dry. Between a good mulching, some feeding and an eventual trim, I'm expecting a good pepper year next year.

One other thing that has been taking up some time is our new baby. He's a handful, and we're all still getting used to each other. Meet Mikey:

He turned one on November 1st, and we've had him since I think the second or third of that month. He's about 100 pounds, and partially trained, since he is essentially a show-ring reject, not reared as a pet. He does love his mum. I'm looking forward to hours of hanging out in the garden together, once he learns to stay on the paths even if he's Very Excited.

I hope everyone is much more on top of things than I am.

Dispatch from the fallen behinds

2010-11-03T20:40:00.000-07:00

I could post a few pictures of what's going on here, but I'd have to take them first. I did shoot a nice little video but can't quite figure out how to post it -- can't let EG have all the fun, right?

Anyhow, over the past three or four days, I've been late to or missed four appointments, still haven't gotten the house clean or my laundry put away, fallen down on both homeschooling and stretching my muscles, and generally feel as though I'm coming down with a cold.

With the help of a fellow beekeeper and the generous loan of a good strainer from another beekeeper, the honey boxes are off the hives. Last night I extracted four boxes, filling a five gallon bucket, and today put those four boxes back on the hives for cleaning. That's a real accomplishment.

Or it would feel more like one if there weren't about five more boxes to be extracted (and rotated through the hives, and covered with plastic and dry ice for storage) waiting down there. And if that basement room wasn't needed tomorrow morning for parents of the book club kids to sit in during book club. And if I were ready to lead book club.

I do have fun news, but I'm going to save it because we have visitors coming. Maybe by the time they get here I'll have painted the dining room trim and moved the cleared vegetation out of the back yard into the green bin for the city.

And maybe not.

While the cat's away

2010-10-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

In my case, mice the size of elephants might just be playing.

As Heiko, over at Path to Self Sufficiency has noted, I'm not home. I haven't been home for a long, long time. That's part of why I've been out of touch too. I bored my family by pressing my nose against train windows, saying, "Looook, look at the kale, look at the gardens!" Fortunately I was able to walk through a cousin's garden, and Ellie was able to actually pick up a hoe and work. I satisfied myself with surreptitious weeding.

Even without being home, I have had good help left back at home -- Esperanza's sister has been keeping the lid on at chez Stefani for me, and Denise's partner Kevin actually visited and sent me pictures of what's shaking in the garden. I've been a little surprised at the longings I felt for that small yard, and I'm looking forward to discovering in person the story these pictures are telling. One other nice thing was an article that was interviewed for at the height of the summer -- when Eric found it, I got to remember that there was a time when I was deeply involved in it and would be again.

Same mess waits in the wheelbarrow. I didn't get everything cleaned up before heading out:

It looks to me as though I might get to overwinter some peppers after all.

The tomatoes look actually a little bit frightening. Maybe there will be more left than I expected.

The giant squash has run on unimpeded

And these beans? I don't know what's up with that.

Looks like the squirrels have continued to ignore the sunflowers. Wonder if any of them are fat enough to eat inside?

Heiko and Susan shared their chestnuts with us, and even opened and shared a fresh pine kernel. Eric was good enough to serve as my honey importer, so I had more to share as I visited with various people all over.

Speaking of honey, one of the first things, relatively speaking, that I'll need to do is to harvest honey. A beekeeping friend managed my hives for me while I was gone, and he reported that only two hives had active queens, so he combined them for me. That's terrific; I wanted to go into the winter with only two hives. On the other hand, he also reported nine full boxes of honey. At approximately 30 pounds (a little over 13 kilos) of honey, that's going to be a day and a half of work, easily.

Oh well, one of the things that being a tourist keeps reminding me is of the value of Something To Do. Just one of the lessons learned, I suppose.

Berry Obsessed

2010-09-13T18:36:00.000-07:00

It's been a crummy year for blackberries. Not enough heat, maybe, or then too much. On the up side, the huckleberries have been amazing this year. Sorry for the picture quality, but this was taken with my cell phone.

Huckleberries usually range from about 1/8 to 1/4 inch long, but these are the size of small blackberries. I've been picking every time we get out into the areas these berries grow. Last Thursday I even gave up my weekly allotment of talking to grownups to go and pick a couple of quarts.

Then there's the tedious picking of every. single. stem. I like my berries clean, clean and frozen. A good handful on my morning oatmeal is a great way to start the day. I even have enough to contemplate huckleberry jam, but I think not. I'm pretty excited about the whole thing, though. A really bright spot in my season.

At home, the tomatoes are cranking out. There's even a crock pot full of oven-roasted sauce reducing on the counter. Good times in and out of the garden.

End of summer garden

2010-09-03T18:35:00.000-07:00

Or for us, weatherwise, it's the beginning of hotter weather. Even though this has been a ridiculously cool summer, the hours were long. It always seems to confuse the plants a little when it's hot but daylight hours are waning. Or maybe it's just me who's confused.

I always think these pictures seem utterly chaotic, but they are clickable to enlarge. In the first one, the more western side of the yard, you can't see the dying Elephant Heart plum tree, but you can see the grape vine (time to harvest!), and the mostly-dug potato bed, and the bursting-with-bells pepper bed, and the foolishly large sunflowers. What you can't see is the kale behind the sunflowers, and the used to be carrot bed. One day when I let the chickens out and forgot about them was enough to undo the painstaking sprouting I'd managed for them. So I'm torn. It's too hot really to try to get them to sprout now. Do I leave it or work to find another substitute? I'm dealing with this all over now.

This one has, believe it or not, even taller sunflowers. They're epically silly, and the only one the squirrels have found is an ornamental one. I'm willing to give up one or two! In this bed, from the back, pole beans and bush beans just coming along now, with a bed of Yukon Gold potatoes from the store behind them, an emptyish bed with clover and younger sunflowers in it, the paste tomatoes, the Early Girls and basil, and the dying summer squash/winter squash in back -- the butternuts look great, but not as productive as I would have wished! -- and there's a bed of teensy direct-seeded lettuce behind the sunflowers, along the fence. I'm giving it lots of TLC with bathtub water and hope they'll make salads soon. Visually behind the tomatoes and to the left of the sunflowers is a new seeding of onions. I checked Golden Gate Gardening and she said August would be okay, so we'll see. I'm not sure they're going to sprout, though.

I think the volunteer is a triamble squash, or maybe a Marina di Chioggia. Something big. I'll let it go because it's a lot of food if they set fruit.

I've never gone without food, and the garden really fills in most of our produce needs, but I have now encountered two people with not enough food to feed their children in my town. Both, unsurprisingly, were/are women going through divorce. I don't know the details of their financial situations, but I'm really glad I have extra food outside and put up to share. So that's why I'm letting any winter squash go right ahead and make more food.

I feel productive, too. But not as productive as these girls. They're loving the sunflowers from early morning to late evening. I'll have to squeeze in another honey harvest within the next two weeks.

But I do have troubling open spots in the garden. Too hot to start seeds, possibly too hot even for buckwheat or other cover crops. I'm torn between trying to get seeds started, even though it's almost a fool's errand to try to keep them wet enough, or just forking some compost over the tops and throwing some sort of mulch on there. I have some finished compost and more bunny poop. What do you think? I don't like bare ground; I have some time I'm not going to be gardening, but when I get back to it in mid-October, I don't want it to be all death out there. Any ideas for odd-season bare ground?

The Beginning and The End

2010-08-31T20:43:00.001-07:00

Tea with my newspaper in the morning is a must-do for me, one of those "without which" I feel slightly off-kilter.

Imagine my glee this morning when I read in one of my favorite columnists, a threnody for our woeful summertime. In fact, just because clicking on a link is sometimes more than one can ask of friends, I want to copy the whole darn thing here:

We have known the sadness. We have known the walking up and down the streets and shaking our heads and saying, "No, no, no, no" in a low but semi-hysterical voice. (Try that some time; it's not easy.) Some of us have wept in our closets, so as not to alarm the children.

Oh, we were smug. We were residents of the Bay Area, and we know something about resisting the smug. But we can't always do it. Things are just too good. Not that we wish any ill to our friends and relatives east of the Sierra; quite the contrary. We love these people as though they were our own children, as they often are.

So when they had a heat wave and we had a cold wave, and by any objective measure their heat wave was a lot worse than our cold wave, we did not experience schadenfreude. (OK, maybe a tiny bit. We are only human, and smug. It's not a lovely character trait, but really hard to avoid here in the best place on earth. I mean no disrespect to Fiji.)

But for every up side, there is a down side. Usually, at this time of year, we would be living almost entirely on tomato sandwiches, with maybe a little tomato and mozzarella salad mixed in for variety. Because we are locavores (which is a relatively new coinage meaning "people who eat crazy stuff") and because anyway the best tomatoes are always found at farmers' markets.

Right now, we would be eating 'Early Girls' like anything and rejoicing in the first appearance of the Dirty Girl brand of 'Early Girls.' We're still eating the tomatoes, but we are not happy. Our foggy weather was too foggy. Even a tomato conditioned for cooler climates likes a little sun now and then. Drizzle is not its best friend. And so, so far, the tomatoes are not at their finest.

Not even close.

Oh, and where are the 'Green Zebras' and the 'Brandywines'? We see them, yes we do, but we do not taste the essence of same. They still look really weird, but looking weird is not enough - unless you're in the music business. Maybe that's why there is no music business anymore.

What will September be like? Will we be back to root vegetables already? Oh, look, darling, we could have a rutabaga sandwich with whatever kind of cheese goes well with rutabagas, which is, like, none of them.

Ah, but what of our heat wave, those two days of hell we had last week? Because we are really secure, smug people, we can laugh at how much complaining we did for 48 hours. People were pulling out their white lightweight garments and walking around like bedouins. People were remarking on the ambient temperature in various buildings.

We were silly people. We enjoy being silly people because it hides our steely determination to rule the rest of California. I bragged about my eaves, as I always do. Eaves help a house stay cooler. I felt sad for the eaveless people, and not in a smug way.

And anyway, perhaps it meant new hope for the 2010 tomato crop. Did this two-day blast of heat help the tomatoes? Did it plump up those 'Early Girls' and inject them with that last soupcon of flavor that's the difference between a transcendent experience and a nice red salad ingredient?

I tried looking up tomatoes in California Crop Weather Report. It did mention warmer-than-usual temperatures, but what is "usual" these days? It also said: "Tomatoes are being treated for stinkbugs." Great - all we need; some bioengineered super stinkbug. Not that it mentioned that; I am being alarmist. Will I never taste a truly fine tomato for less than $12 a pound?

Well, I had to look. Stinkbugs, members of the family Pentatomidae (from the Greek meaning "five sections," which refers to their antennae), emit a foul-smelling substance when disturbed. Smells like cyanide, say experts.

Just what I needed to hear. I shake my fist at the unhearing heavens and cry out, "When will I ever taste a tomato of quality, and not one of those supermarket gassed-up cardboard things? Is it too much to ask for someone who has, well, pretty much everything, but that's not the point?" The heavens, being unhearing (see above), do not answer.

Oh, well. There are some good Frog Hollow peaches out there. In which we cry out to the uncaring heavens, asking only for flavor and a little salt.

Made me guffaw right into my Earl Grey. Especially the line about living in the Bay Area requiring constant practice at resisting the smug, as though it's some special yoga brand. Ah well, I indulge myself.

Really, though, for those of you having counters groaning under pounds and pounds of tomatoes to be made into sauce, and salsa, and paste, and other good things, look. Here is the near sum total of my backyard planting of as near as I can tell, about two dozen tomato plants:

Notice that many have bug bites, or sun scald, and some of them are bright green? That one, at least, was an accident. Cherokee Purple, the occasional sulky Early Girl, and the Romas and San Marzanos that are sort of vying between ripening/rotting/being eaten by sowbugs as they lie on the ground. They don't even taste that great this year. Sure, feta and olive oil and red wine vinegar don't hurt, but I like tomatoes a lot. . . and these aren't worth it.

This was Not The Plan for this summer. To be fair, neither was a terrible flea infestation or family upheaval, but hey, I can't control the weather. My father in law suggested that I could buy tomatoes by the bushel and can them. I could. . . but last year when I did that they were $2 a pound, and I'm not up for that. I could perhaps drive 40 minutes away and get them for .60c a pound -- if they're available from the farm that's advertising on Craigslist.

We shall see. If I have a free day next week, maybe I can arrange a drive down there. Wonder if they'd let me glean for free? Or if not, I'll just look for a sale on canned organic tomatoes and stock up for the year.

And why, you might ask, why not wait for the warmer weather that you call "fall" in your expensive-but-lovely-weather-area? Well, because I don't think we have time:

That vine is collapsing like the old-fashioned paper straws that only lasted for about a third of your milkshake. Some blight -- not the vaunted late blight, I don't think - but some blight is crawling up the vines all across the garden. I won't be composting these babies this year. Short of broadcasting kale or cover crop seeds (or kale AS a cover crop) I'm not sure that I'm not going to be facing an awful lot of empty real estate in the garden soon.

The End, then, probably the End of the tomatoes. Except for the Sungold, rot their bright little hearts. The Sungolds will produce no matter what, for months. That isn't as cheering as I might think, alas.

A Day Late. . .

2010-08-28T14:05:00.000-07:00

And a few queens short.

Yes, it's another bee post!!

My oldest hive has a queen I call "The Bomber Queen." I think she's about three, if the hive hasn't replaced her without my noticing, and the hive is everything you'd want in a beehive. Calm, productive both of brood and honey, just lovely.

See the abundance of stores? See the worker showing up with little suitcase legs of bright orange pollen? I love this hive.

I have a beekeeping friend who is very interested in breeding feral queen stock; reasoning, I believe rightly, that it's better to have a mixed gene pool and feral bees are probably more adapted to life here than queens imported from somewhere like Hawaii or Ohio.

In the past couple of weeks, we've been doing things to the Bomber Hive -- splitting it into smaller sub-hives, in hopes that by using one of his fancy "make a queen" kit thingies, we could raise up a whole generations of daughters that would at least have one rocking parent. Oddly enough, even though we put two sets of eyes, adding up to over 85 years of seeing experience, to work, we managed to miss the queen as we went through the hive.

So she went to Berkeley.

No problem, we decided -- we can raise queens there too. Here, the leftover bees will just raise up some queens all on their own. Bees manage to make a new queen when they're in need. For bees "in need" can easily mean "the people took the queen to Berkeley," so they just needed some early larvae to lavish royal jelly on and hey, presto, new queens.

Queens?

Yes, because it's always not a good idea to put all of your hope on any one larvae making a strong, healthy queen, the bees will just sort of make a few spare ones, too. I don't know -- maybe there are competing committees or something.

At any rate, we decided, hey, we can also try the method of putting queen cells off of frames into smaller breeding nucleus hives made from Stefani's other hive that specializes in bees and not honey!

Seemed easy, and yet. . . there are some things for which timing is fairly important. Comedy, for one, and probably juggling, and it turns out, queen rearing.

The little heat wave we experienced might have sped up the hatching for these new queens, or it could be that the two days, Wednesday and Thursday, that might have been good days for me to get in there and move some frames with capped queen cells were so busy I didn't get in until yesterday, but:

That cell, the one in the middle pointing down, the one with the nice large chewed opening in the end? Yeah, that's where the young queen was. She had gotten out. I didn't see her, but I wasn't surprised.

I did see evidence that she'd been around the hive, though:

See the nice, round-ended queen cell hanging down? See how it doesn't have an opening at the bottom, but a ragged hole on the side? Can you say "regicide"? Or in this case, I suppose it's state-sanctioned assassination, as the first or strongest queen to emerge will fight to the death other young queens emerging, and if she can get to some that aren't yet hatched, she'll take care of that little problem right away.

Sigh.

At least five total queen cells or former queen cells. It would have been nice to have gotten more, but now all I can do is wait until this queen manages to fly, mate, and begin laying eggs. In about 20 days I should know. It's been exciting, anyhow.

Since the beehives are right by the chickens, I managed to finally identify the tomatoes that volunteered in the chicken coop area:

Principe Borghese, the kind I wasn't going to grow this year, because I have so many awaiting foccaccia or sun dried tomato bread in the freezer.

It's probably appropriate that they're growing there, because they look like little monochrome elf eggs. Eggs and hatching, pretty much, all the time here.

Collateral Damage

2010-08-27T11:48:00.000-07:00

It's been a rough year here for tomatoes. Record cool temperatures, a bizarre two-day heat wave, rampant cherry tomatoes I can't get through to pick thoroughly. . . just not the abundant, lots-of-canning year I'd hoped for. One bright spot was the volunteer tomato out front. Sheltered in a warm corner, it bloomed early, set fruit early, and was the first to ripen anything. Even it's not doing all that well, really.

The other day I came home from a camping trip and found some weird problem with the fruit:

I thought it was maybe birds, or squirrels. . . turns out, my second guess was closer. When I looked carefully at the pumpkin I'd been babying along for Halloween, I found my culprits:

See the yellow spots? There are a couple of boys living across and down the street who are at that awkward adolescent age -- young enough so it's difficult to find them real work of any kind to do, old enough to start getting into bigger kinds of trouble. This summer, they've been exploring beebee gun wars, with plastic beebees. Everyone wears eye protection; they're pretty good about following the rules, but that didn't help these innocent bystanders.

Sigh. They need big farm animals or a flood to dig ditches for or something to explore -- anything but this coddled city life with very few big men in their lives.

I asked them not to shoot toward our house and showed them why. We'll see how it goes. Now if I can keep my kids from making bows and arrows out of sticks and string and shooting the sunflowers, we'll be on our way.

Cukes worth knowing

2010-08-20T15:43:00.000-07:00

By now, although lemon cucumbers are still listed as specialties in some catalogs I get, I count them as "regular" cucumbers. They're all over the farmer's market in our town, so that makes them mainstream in my eyes. And I never managed to start a single Marketmore nor purchase one. I think I expected Denise to take care of that, then the pickling cucumber thing happened and it all got away from me.

However, two fun new cucumbers that hover on the edge of novelty did make it through the early spring, and deserve some mention here.

First is "Rocky," a fingering cucumber, perfect for kids, or so the Territorial catalog said. I have seen some of the other homeschooled kids munching on slender baby Persian-style cucumbers, and decided to give this one a try.

Getting them started was a bit of a stretch. Small, touchy, easily killed, I ended up starting them in two rounds. Ultimately, I only ended up with two plants, and those aren't what I'd call overly vigorous. In their defense, they were behind the jungle of pickling cucumbers until last week. I think they are at about 24" tall right now.

Apparently I'm picking them a tad late, since they are supposed to be best at 2-3" and I'm usually hitting 3-4". The little cucumber eater isn't complaining, though, as she yells, "Rockyyyy!" and eats them whenever I point them out.

Next year, more plants, more babying earlier, and more sun. Then I'll have enough to make the other kids eat them for snacks, too.

More on the novelty end are the Mexican Sour Gherkins I first heard about from Mr. H. They have been a lot of fun, and are the perfect treat to offer garden visitors. I say, "Would you like an elf watermelon?" and then explain that they taste like a slightly citrus cucumber before they bite them and are disappointed in not getting a sweet melon!

The vines are delicate in appearance, and I think the fruits are most beautiful when they're teensy:

They aren't enough to make a meal of, and I do have one experimental jar of them on the pickled shelf to try eventually, but six or eight plants, started in February, have kept up a small but steady stream of fun. And that seems like plenty to ask of any vegetable.

Have you tried any "novelty" vegetables? Did you like them?

Against the grain

2010-08-17T12:41:00.000-07:00

Healthy, growing plants, covered with fruit and the promise of more to come.

Generally, that's what gardeners work hard for. I know I do. So it's doing what I don't want to do at a visceral level to tear 'em out. But these lovely Ohio Pickling Cucumbers, from seed at least ten years old, were very productive. Very.

I grew them because Eldest Child had told me that she loved pickles. And I thought, "Why am I paying $2.50 a jar when I have a garden?" Thus, the cucumber patch. At first I thought that I wasn't going to get enough cucumbers. Experiment gone awry! I foresaw myself sneaking into the grocery store, hiding jars of pickles in raincoats to get them into the house undetected.

So imagine my surprise when they started bearing. And bearing, and bearing. . . I made jars and jars of pickles. Hooray! Friends said they tasted good, and I saw, in the soft focus future cinema of my brain, my child hugging me and saying, "You're the best mom in the world! I love them! Give me more pickles!"

Except that's not what she said. She actually said, "I think you overestimated my pickle wants. A temporary pickle eating stage doesn't necessarily mean it will endure for months and months."

Well. I made some more batches, just because I'd stripped dill seeds from the heads outside. And I kept piling up cukes for future pickles. But when a crop becomes a serious burden, and you're pretty sure that you've got enough to last at least into next year plus give away to the nice friends who bring you bags of rabbit poop, and there's 3 gallons still in the kitchen to pickle, it's time.

Out they came, and are now the top layer of the working compost heap. I put some rabbit poop and mixed up the soil -- it's ready for the next thing. The cucumbers left more behind, though:

I'll be making pickles after blackberry jam this evening.

It also struck me that the garden overview pictures don't really do justice to how huge the sunflowers are. I'm 5'6", and granted the sunflowers are 10-12" above the ground in the box, but lookie:

Pretty big.

A harvest day, anyway

2010-08-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

Lots of bloggers participate in Harvest Monday, hosted by Daphne over at Daphne's Dandelions. I try. . . and this is a bit of it. It's less than I hoped, it turns out, because blogger ate some of my pictures and I'm too tired to go back and try to fix them. Maybe later.

As a chilly August follows a chilly July, the garden seems verdant. Loaded with fruits, the tomatoes and peppers bend under heavy potential, but I wonder if they're ever really going to ripen, or slowly wander towards autumn in lovely shades of green. The sunflowers (check out the monsters in back) are starting to bloom, but many are leaning perilously over. Note to self: sunflowers don't generally make good supports for pole beans. It's just too hit and miss. So that's what an overview in the gloaming light of Sunday looks like:

In fact, most of this harvest was Sunday's. I wandered outside after getting home from a day out with Denise and just had to grab the camera and do some picking and shooting. As I picked, I composed dinner in my head. Boiled small potatoes and cherry tomatoes:

Followed by those hidden beans with garlic. The chickens got a feast -- there was one pickling cucumber that was easily 7" long. I didn't even try, just broke it open and tossed it to the girls. I'd already visited them with treats and gotten the eggs, but it was only a small bushwhack past the beans and sunflowers again to deliver a monster.

The other bed of pole beans -- supported on poles because I'm one of those speedy learners, you know? -- reminded me strongly of kudzu. Maybe it was that I was already musing on Faulkner, given the way the light baptized the yard, or something, but I'm glad these are just beans.

On the other hand, I wish just beans were just easier to see. Even the yellow ones can be hard to trace. Mostly, I look into the bean patch and see this:

Just a jungle of bean "stuff." To be fair, I think this particular shot didn't have many/any beans in it, but it's a psychological reality for me. Someone needs to breed in a heat-destroyed fluorescent enzyme, so beans and cucumbers are easier to see.

It's fun to bring non-gardeners into my back yard, because I can usually count on some exclamation. Of course, no one is famous to their own family, and my kids tend to be pretty blase about what I do. I coax them to plant with me, or to harvest, but generally it doesn't move them. The two younger girls are pretty aware of their own garden beds, and try new things in them. Today, one young gardener was justifiably proud of her own sunflower accomplishment. I think these are Lemon Queen and Autumn Beauty:

Here's hoping it's harvests better than the weather deserves, all 'round.