Update on the farm market

We went to the farm market today to pay our last respects. 

While we were there I talked to the young lady checking us out at the register.  I asked if there had been any developments since Wednesday's meeting.  She wasn't completely up to speed on everything that's going on, but she seemed to think that although they're closing today, there's a chance they may be saved somehow. 

I don't know what's going to happen.  I guess it'll come out through emails and/or Facebook.

Can we save our local farm market?

As I mentioned last week, our local food market (note: different than a grocery store) is closing down in a few days.  Apparently, there had been an outpouring of concern, sadness, and frustration at the news from a number of people in the community besides us.

There was a gathering there Wednesday evening for a brainstorming session to try to figure out a path forward such that we could continue to have healthy largely-organic food in our area.

There were approximately 60 people there including the mayor of the town and county congresspeople there.  We learned that there were two primary reasons it's closing down.

• The owner is burnt out from trying to keep both the farm in the lower part of the county and the market in the northern part both up, running, stocked and staffed.
• By insisting on paying good wages (read: a good bit over minimum), insisting on only stocking largely-organic food from the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and having reasonably high energy costs (no LED lights) the margin of profit has always been slim.  With sales being less this year than last, he was not digging out from his loans.

The owner wants to help continue to make good food available in the northern part of the county even if he's not running his business here any more.  To that end, he's willing to donate all the fixtures, cash registers, refrigerators and freezers to a successor.  Apparently, he's had some conversations with the landlord who is willing to "work with us" to try to maintain a presence there in that storefront.

After a lot of conversation, it sounds like there's a movement to investigate the feasibility of converting the business into a CO-OP.  Based on some inputs from some seemingly-knowledgeable people in the meeting, converting that store into a non-profit provides a number of advantages that the current owner's for-profit business cannot take advantage of.

It'll be interesting to see how things progress going forward.  At least this gives us some hope.

Additional crops for this year - the seed orders are in!

After doing my research for the last few weeks, I just placed my seed orders for this year with Southern Exposure and Baker Creek.

Garden Crops - Southern Exposure - $58.40

• Beans - Dean's Purple Pole Beans
• Beans - Scarlet Runner
• Kale - Lacinato
• Spinach - Long Standing Bloomsdale
• Heat tolerant greens - Jewels of Opar
• Okra - Fife Creek Cow Horn
• Onions - Yellow Potato
• Peanuts - Carwile's Virginia
• Bell Peppers - Napoleon Sweet
• Winter Radish - Black Spanish Round
• Tomato - Old Virginia
• Tomato - San Marzano
• Corn - Black Mexican

Orchard - Baker Creek - $46.50

• Dwarf Everbearing Mulberry
• Hardy Kiwi

The orders totaled about what they have been the last couple of times (about $100), but this total is as high as they are because I ordered a few things that are pricey, but that I shouldn't have to order again.  The Yellow Potato Onions are multipliers (similar my Egyptian Walking Onions) so, in theory, that should keep us in onions for the future.  The Kiwi vines and Mulberry bushes will go in the orchard to produce for the future, as well.  I hope to be able to finally do more seed saving on vegetables besides beans this year.

In addition to what I ordered, I have some leftover seeds from last year's plantings that I intend to put to use again.

• Radish - French Breakfast
• Radish - Cherry Belle
• Carrots - Little Finger
• Carrots - Cosmic Purple
• Carrots - Scarlet Nantes
• Cucumbers - Edmonson
• Tomatillo - Tomate Verde
• Musk Melon - Anne Arundel
• Tomato - Black Vernissage
• Artichoke - Green Globe (from seed)
• Pumpkin  Winter Luxury Pie
• Zucchini - Costata Romanesca
• Brussels Sprouts - Catskill (Long Island Improved)
• Flowers - Marigold (Spanish Brocade)
• Flowers - Carnation (Chabaud Picotee Fantasy)
• Flowers - Chamomile (German)
• Flowers - Sweet William
• Herbs - Hyssop
• Herbs - Basil (Bollo Napoletano)
• Herbs - Calendula (Resina) 

Lastly, I'd like to grow Ginger and Turmeric.  We use a fair amount of Ginger and are starting to use more Turmeric for the passive health benefits (rather than flavor).  I have yet to find a source for those roots.  I need to research whether I can simply buy the roots from the grocery store (similar to what I've done with Garlic) and get them to grow on their own.

Transplanting Bay Laurel Cuttings

While visiting my in-laws this past weekend, I noticed that my wife's aunt and uncle have a nice potted Bay Laurel tree in their dining room standing approximately 4' tall and 2' wide in a 5 gallon pot.  Although I understand it had recently been on death's doorstep from someone over-watering it, it appeared to be bouncing back nicely.

I complimented them on the tree and they asked if I wanted some cuttings.  Given we had a baby Bay Laurel that died this past year, I eagerly accepted.

Yesterday afternoon, I retrieved the two cuttings from the wet paper towels they had been wrapped in.  I wet both stems then dipped them in rooting compound per the instruction.  After tapping off the excess, I put them both in a pot of potting soil and watered the soil a bit.  Because I think our water softener is killing the plants, I obtained the water from one of the dehumidifiers in the basement.

Hopefully, the transplants take.  I would have felt a lot more comfortable if I'd had 3-4 cuttings, but at least 2 is better than none.

I did some reading this morning and saw that Bay Laurels can live outside to hardiness Zone 7 or 8 depending on where the information comes from.  If I have success in getting these cuttings to take root, I'd like to try getting other cuttings to grow and try growing the tree outdoors.  I'm not going to try that with either of these, though.

More Bluebird house info

I talked to my mother-in-law after doing my previous post about setting up Bluebird houses on our property.

It turns out that my in-laws have a few Bluebird houses on their property, as well.  In talking to her, she confirmed that having the houses about 6' up with the holes facing east/southeast is necessary for protection from wind.  She also mentioned that she wraps them in electrical tape when she cleans them out because in her first year of having them up, a predator (racoon, probably) pried up the front flap and got at the eggs.

Seeing my in-laws' Bluebird houses where they are gives me hope that I don't absolutely have to have them set up in a complete clearing.  Although their property doesn't have a lot of undergrowth, it's also not fully cleared, either.  I think I have more options for where I can place bluebird houses than I initially thought.

Setting up Bluebird houses

When we were looking for our house, Wifey and I envisioned getting property that had a lot of wildlife on it.  Although we have a little over 3 acres, other than stuff living on the ground there doesn't seem to be an abundance of flying critters.  That's something I want to remedy.

A few years ago someone gave us a Bluebird house to mount.  We never did so I've been researching what's involved.

From what I'm reading, it needs to be mounted on a metal pole 5' - 15' above the ground in an open area.  It's recommended to not mount it on a tree so as to not attract predators or competing bird species. 

It's recommended to mount the opening toward the short ground cover so the bird can look for food from inside.  Its also a good idea to have a small shrub or two within 100' so baby birds have somewhere to fly and hide when they first leave the nest.  Having it face generally east is a good idea to help protect the opening from harsh winds.  In our new neighborhood, we have most of our storms either come up the East Coast from the south or from the west.  I'll probably face the bird house toward the east.

The North American Bluebird Society recommends mounting the bluebird house prior to when bluebirds are looking for new homes.  Since they are looking for a home when the weather turns warm in the end of March it's recommended to mount the house in February.

I've read that if you want multiple houses, you want them 125+ yards apart.

I guess I have some thinking to do as far as where I can put the bird house. 

Aronia developments

I’ve heard back from the PhD Botanist and traded a few emails back and forth.

Apparently, Aronia (aka Black Chokeberry) is a relative of apples and pears.  Since those are intolerant of juglone, his supposition was that Aronia would be as well.

In some good news, he offered me a few Aronia plants in March to see if they can/will survive in my orchard before I invest in others.  I will tag up with him then.

The loss of a good market

I learned yesterday that the market I'd hoped/planned on using to sell excess produce will be closing down at the end of December. 

I knew it was a possibility a few weeks ago when we popped in one evening and I talked to the manager there.  I'd wanted to talk to her to learn more about what produce they do and don't have need of for sale.  She confided in me that there was a chance that they would be closing down.  They'd been open for just under 3 years and although business had been good for the first year, sales this past year were half of the previous.

Apparently, the owner had borrowed heavily to buy a farm for the market as well as to rent out the market up in our northern part of the county.

She (the manager) told me that if I wanted to drive to the southern part of the county (35 min one way) that they were certainly willing to sell my produce, but that since it's a bit of a hike, she would understand if I didn't want to.

After looking at the maps, it looks like the drive south would add only another 15 min to the drive.  It's less convenient to do it, but hardly back-breaking.

Regardless of the sales potential, it'll be a loss to not have that store available nearby.  It was always a nice market to go to for locally grown and locally made food products and was colorfully-decorated and a pleasant space to frequent.

Keeping harvested broccoli

Last Friday I wrote that Wifey had done a winter harvest of carrots, broccoli, kale, spinach, and a few peanuts.

Until yesterday, we'd eaten everything she had harvested with the broccoli being the exception.  Given we weren't sure how long it would be before we ate the broccoli, we had wanted to stretch it as long as possible.  Wifey had read that one way to keep broccoli is to trim the base of the stalk then put the stem in a vessel of water to help keep it from rotting.

Having done that, we finally had the broccoli with dinner last night.  It was still in fantastic shape almost a week later and everyone except The Bear (who refuses to eat anything green besides guacamole) liked it.

Happy Solstice!

I realize the Winter Solstice isn’t really a holiday commonly celebrated by many people, but I think it’s notable because it’s the shortest day of the year.

For me, that’s great news.  Days will start getting longer.  We are going to start heading toward warmer weather and the growing seasons that come with that weather.

Adding to the orchard

Although there are a lot of options for permanent plantings of fruit, some are things I don’t see us eating very much of.

Things I definitely want to do:

• Plant some more raspberries in the row. 
• I think two more purple raspberries and a few (< 4) more red raspberries.
• Plant two more blueberry bushes.
• Plant two Asian persimmon trees.
• We like the consistency of the Asian persimmons.  We don't like that you need the American variety to be mushy before they're considered edible.  I don't see us ever needing more than 2 trees of this.

Things under consideration:

• Plant 2 mulberry bushes.
• They're tolerant of Black Walnut (juglone).
• They can get rather tall so they need to be "topped" to maintain the desirable height.
• Since they send suckers, there's no need to plant more than a minimum.
• The fruit helps strengthen eyesight, is loaded in resveratol (excellent vs cancer), good as  brain tonic, has protein, and is generally good for your immune system and digestion.
• Plant 4 Aronia (aka Black Chokeberry) bushes.
• They are a natural understory planting and work well at the edge of the woodland.
• Debatable whether they can be planted near to black walnut -- I have sent an email to a botanist PhD about that.
• Fruit are high in antioxidants as well as vitamins (especially C) and minerals.
• Plant 2-4 Elderberries.
• They're tolerant of Black Walnut (juglone).
• Fragrant, edible flowers along with the fruit.
• Berries contain Vitamin A and B and more vitamin C than oranges, also loaded with antioxidants.  They also have been used to treat respiratory problems as well as cold and flu.
• Need to be two+ varieties to ensure pollination, fruit development.
• Plant kiwi vines.
• Unknown whether they can grow near Black Walnut.
• Commercial growers use two ~6' tall T-shaped structures 15'-25' apart with cables stretched between them.
• You need male and female vines to pollinate.  A single male plant can pollinate up to 6 female plants.  Baker Creek sells packs of 2 female and 1 male plants.  I'd buy two of these sets and plant them on opposing ends of the structure with the idea of growing them toward one another.

Increasing food prices?

I goofed up my packed lunch today.  I mistakenly thought that a container of leftover Bolognese sauce was chili.  Oops.

On a hunt for something reasonably healthy and inexpensive, I went to a local Subway to grab a sandwich.  A flyer they had on display caught my eye, though.

I'm somewhat skeptical that the prices of tomatoes tripled overnight.  Yes, there have been snowstorms in the midwest already, but I have a hard time believing that tomato prices were teetering on the brink of a price hike but the last snow in Detroit made somebody say,"That's it!  We've had it!  Stop the presses!  We're tripling tomato prices, dad gum it!"

All that being said, if tomato prices really are considerably higher than they were 8 months ago, that's pretty notable.

And it makes me even more determined to get more into seed saving in the future.  If I can keep doing that, I'll be even more independent of external pricing.  Should I be able to grow in excess of what the family needs, then maybe we can take advantage of that.

Updating orchard fruit locations

I've beginning doing some planning for what else we can plant in the orchard.  That made me realize it's been a bit since I've updated the fruit layout.

The last time I updated the fruit layout was October 2, 2016 for the apple trees.  A lot has changed over there since then, namely 6 blueberry bushes, 4 purple raspberry canes, and 6 red raspberry canes.

Below is what we have now.

As with before, the red circles represent the black walnut trees (juglone = bad for some plants) and yellow show the apple trees.  The new additions are for blue are the blueberry bushes, purple are for the purple raspberries, and pink are the red raspberries.

A winter harvest

Today while The Bear was taking his nap, Wifey and The Boy went into the garden to retrieve some kale and spinach.  Our high temps are starting to reliably stay down in the 30s and since I never got around to setting up a cold frame (again....), we were afraid of losing our greens.

What they retrieved was much more than just kale and spinach.

From upper right (clockwise): broccoli, sweet potatoes, peanuts, Scarlet Nantes carrots, Cosmic Purple carrots

Perhaps it was because we've had a few frosts, but both varieties of carrots were amazingly sweet in flavor.  Even Wifey who isn't much of a carrot fan enjoyed snacking on them and asked if we could grow them again.  "They were so much fun to harvest!"

After cleaning the peanuts, Wifey and I roasted them in the oven at 350 degrees with a dusting of salt on them.  We left them overnight on the baking sheet and will try them out. 

In addition to what's in the picture, they also harvested a considerable amount of kale and spinach.  After we cleaned everything and ran it all through the salad spinner to remove excess water, we have two gallon bags each of kale and spinach.  Some will be eaten fresh, some will go in smoothies, and some will likely be frozen.  From what I'm told, there is still some smaller kale and spinach left in the garden.

2017 - Looking back, part 3

This continues the series looking back at our crop-list for 2017.  The first post is found here and the second is here.

Food Production
Unfortunately, we didn't weigh and catalog everything we harvested; there were times when Wifey would harvest something and not get a picture or times we'd get something for a recipe (or fresh eating) and not get a picture.  For example, there have been a number of salads and smoothies made using the spinach, kale, and/or lettuce with no accounting of how much was used.  Looking back, we regret not cataloging what we grew.  It's really nice to have an idea of how much money we saved (or not) vs buying at a market.

We'll have to resume that in the future.


Food Preservation
Tomatoes
Wifey canned 52 quarts of tomatoes as well as 7 quarts and 2 pints of marinara sauce.  There is also a 1/2 gallon of frozen cherry tomatoes.  Lastly, we have 2 quart bags of frozen marinara sauce.

Beans
We have 1 gallon bag as well as 10 quart bags of frozen green beans.  All have been trimmed and blanched to make for easy cooking when we need them.

Nuts
We have a gallon bag of float-tested hickory nuts (in shell) as well as 2 quart bags of shelled hickory nuts.  All the hickory nuts are in one freezer or another.

Apples
Although we didn't harvest any of our own, we made a couple of trips in the fall to Larriland Farm and picked apples there.  We dehydrated two gallon bags of sliced apples for snacking and addition to oatmeal.  The apples also provided for a lot of our breakfasts and lunches over the last two months.  Hopefully, I'll be able to do similar posts referencing our own apples instead.

We received a pretty blanket...

....of snow.

Although it wasn't anywhere as much as predicted, it's enough to put a hush over our area.  I've always found that acoustic dampening during snowfall and shortly afterward to be peaceful.  I hope to expand that feeling to the kids for them to enjoy and appreciate for years to come.

This snow will only last for a few days as the temps are supposed to back up into the upper 40's in the few days but I'll sure enjoy it while we have it.

2017 - Looking back, part 2

This continues the series looking back at our crop-list for 2017.  The first post is found here.

The Weather
This year the weather was interesting.  Not the norm.  I'll quote the intro page of the Southern Exposure Seed Catalog.

It's been another interesting weather year - in Virginia, we had a mild summer, with only a few hot spells.  Then August here was downright cold, staying in the 70s and 80s, and that slowed down our heat-loving crops[.]  Warm early fall weather helped us get some harvests off these crops, but still had is longing for a more "normal" summer next year!

Although we are in Maryland instead of Virginia, we had similar weather with similar results.

Crop List
Peanuts
We purchased a peanut starter for The Boy's part of the garden from a local food market that trends heavily toward organics.  It grew and looked great, but we didn't harvest it until it was too late.  All the peanuts rotted in the ground.  I think it'd be worth trying to grow another in the future.

Corn
We grew a variety of open pollinated sweet corn called Aunt Mary's.  We've never grown corn before.  Although the corn got nice and tall and had a number of well-formed ears, they tasted very starchy.  It never got sweet.

Lettuce, Spinach, and Kale
We grew Black-Seeded Simpson Lettuce, Long Standing Bloomsdale Spinach, Lacinato (Dinosaur) Kale, and Red Malabar Salad Greens (summer spinach).  I would grow all but the Red Malabar again; the leaves tasted like dirt.  I only ate it raw, but really didn't care for it in the least.  Didn't bother trying to cook it.  It's a shame.  I liked the idea of a heat-tolerant spinach variety.  That said, it was pretty.  I liked the purple vines it grew on.

Carrots
We grew Scarlet Nantes and Cosmic Purple carrots.  The Nantes were tasty and grew well in our soil.  Due to my goof in planting -- accidentally mulched over them preventing them from doing anything -- we didn't get any of the Cosmic variety.  I'll try both again.

Sweet Potatoes
Holy cow, did we ever get sweet potatoes.  We had never grown them before and had no idea what to expect.  We weren't sure when to harvest them due to there being varying info available on the internet and in my gardening books.  As a result, we have some huge ones as well as some smaller ones and they are everywhere in the garden.  It would have been even worse if we hadn't cut them way back a few times.

Wifey is convinced we will find them in the asparagus bed and far garden path for years to come.  I have a hard time disagreeing with her.

Others
I'd intended to grow some other things -- brussels sprouts, cantaloupe, zucchini -- but because almost all of our starters died (I think from the water softener), we had to go with what we could get from the food market that we trusted.  Most places we could get plant starters beyond there sell GMO stuff.  Won't do that.

Front Bed
We converted the front planter bed from overgrown juniper bushes and scrubby ornamental pines to a permaculture bed.  We planted a dwarf Kieffer pear tree, four artichoke starters, and a number of herbs.  I'm happy to report that the pear tree did well and produced over a dozen large, tasty pears in its first year.  The artichokes survived and have been mulched to try to help them survive the winter.  Most of the herbs we planted survived with a few perishing.  In the spring, I'll be evaluating what did and didn't make it through the winter and plant more to supplement.

The Kieffer pear sent out a shoot (a sucker, I guess) from the base.  I've removed it, got some fledgling roots to come from it, and planted it in a pot (currently in the garage to overwinter) and am hoping I can get it to survive another year with the idea of planting it elsewhere in the yard in the future.

Others
Nut Trees
We discovered that we have 3-4 pig nut hickory trees in the side yard going to the orchard.  We have harvested, float tested, dried, shelled and consumed the nuts and have been pleasantly surprised by the maple flavor they have.

Peach Tree
Wifey did some reading and found that by thinning the extensive peach growth on the dwarf tree we have in the front year, you will end up encouraging the peaches that are left to grow to an edible size.  Although there appeared to be some merit to that theory, she didn't discover that nugget until later in the summer so the results are still somewhat inconclusive.  We're looking forward to thinning things out considerably earlier this year.

Citrus Plants
Wifey and the kids got me two tiny citrus plants last winter.  Neither survived.  I can't help but wonder if they succumbed to the same water-related issues as my seed starters.  I'd like to try one more plant in the future to see if my theory that watering with the condensed water from the dehumidifier fixes that problem.

Oh, yeahhhhhh....

Wifey's a funny bird.

Upon checking the mail, she said, "After we get the kids inside and showered, I think you're going to need a few moments to yourself."

I was bewildered until I saw what she was holding.

Welcome back, family.

We spent the weekend out of state with the inlaws.  Upon getting back and unpacking the car, we did some yard work.  Among other winterizing tasks, Wifey and I finished putting the deer netting around the apple trees.  That's a load off my mind!

For our hard work, God rewarded us with a beautiful sunset that my picture can't possibly do justice.

Figuring out why our indoor plants die

I've been thinking.  Last year almost all of my plant starters died.  I never had that problem in the townhouse.  We also had two fledgling geraniums, a baby bay laurel, and two citrus plants die.

We don't overwater, occasionally fertilize with organic fertilizer, don't put the plants in direct sunlight (that don't want it), and maintain proper temperatures for them.

I don't know why I think so, but I think it's our water that's causing the problems.  We have hard water at our house which has caused problems with mineral buildup in some of the water lines.  To address this, we had a salt water softener installed.  I've assumed that the tech who did the work calibrated the unit to provide the proper amount of salinity to the water, but I'm not so sure.

To test it going forward, I'm going to solely water our plants with water obtained from the dehumidifiers in the basement.

I'm also going to do some digging into how to control the softener control system.

Oh, it's so on!

While at work yesterday afternoon, I got a text message from Wifey.  It contained a picture and a funny and cheeky message.

She's a funny one, that bride of mine.

It's too early to plant any seeds (unless it's for spring planting), but it's still interesting and a little exciting to get my seed catalogs.  I can't blame her for being bemused with the "kid in the candy shop" mentality I exhibit both as I start perusing the options and once I get close to deciding on what to get and plant.

I generally don't start the seeds until right around the beginning of January.  Regardless, I'll likely be ordering seeds within the next few weeks.

The garden continues producing

While at work this morning I received a text from Wifey.  Apparently she and The Boy were curious about the garden.  They found and pulled a half-dozen carrots from the fall planting. 

When I planted the seeds I never expected to get much.  I figured it was a bit late in the season, but knew odds were decent the seeds wouldn't be much good next year so what was there to lose?

Instead we were blessed with carrots between 3.5" and 5" long and blissfully sweet.

A little bit of yardwork

In among all the Thanksgiving-related stuff, I was able to get a little bit done in the yard this weekend.  Yesterday I watered the raspberry canes (both the "new" and the "newer new" ones) and blueberry bushes.  I also got 3 of 6 sets of deer netting hung around the apple trees in the orchard.

Three to go....

Houston: we have a problem

While doing yard cleanup this past weekend, Wifey and I had further realization that we have a tall oak tree that has increasing lean into the yard.  I saw the lean when I was first visiting the house and knew it'd eventually be a problem, but it would appear that "eventually" translates to "soon."

By adding in a web-based protractor into the image, it looks to be around a 17 degree off vertical lean.  I never measured it a year ago, but I don't really feel comfortable letting it persist for too long.

Why am I posting his here?  Because the garden is in danger.  I haven't calculated the height of the tree, but just by calibrated eyeball if it were to fall as it's leaning I'm guessing that around 1/4 to 1/3 of the garden would be hit by the top of the tree.  The crop damage would be left to the strawberries.  The fence posts on the downslope side of the garden would be most likely to be damaged.

We're going to be soliciting quotes to have at least the top 1/2 of the tree dropped professionally.  Considering I like woodworking, I'm salivating at the prospect of getting a chainsaw mill to mill my own lumber.  Given my experience at paying mill fees, milling a good amount of the tree myself would make the chainsaw mill pay for itself right there.

2017 - Looking back, part 1

This will be the first of a multiple-post series looking back at our crop-list for 2017.  I don't know how many posts I'll do in total.

Seed starting
In the townhouse I started most of our veggie, herb, and flower plantings from seeds for each of the last few years we were there.  At the new house, I took the same approach with dismal results.  I don't know that any of our tomato plants survived and none of the tomatillos, flowers, or herbs survived.  Only a few of the peppers made it.

After a bit of thought, I've come to the conclusion that I think they died because of our water.  We have "hard" water at the new house and use a salt system to soften the water.  With that in mind, it would stand to reason that the water I was applying to the plants is a bit salty.  The next question is what that is doing to our bodies, but that's for another forum.

Going forward, I intend to collect and keep the water coming from the basement dehumidifiers to use for watering our started seedlings.

Crop List
Tomatoes
We planted a number of varieties of tomatoes in the garden.  Of those varieties, only the Roma (San Marzano) and Early Girl were ones I would grow again.  Here's the catch: Early Girl is a hybrid and owned by a company under the Monsanto umbrella.  Because the vast majority of my seedlings didn't make it, I purchased seedlings from a store near us and was labeled as non-GMO.

Unfortunately, the "Monsanto" label kills it for me.  Much as I thoroughly enjoyed the plants, I won't grow them again.  And, being a hybrid, I can't start them from seed, anyway.

Peppers
The few pepper starters that survived their salt-water demise didn't produce much.  I keep trying "California Wonder" and never get anything larger than 1.5".  I need to do more reading on why they do what they do.  I did purchase some supplemental peppers that went red and got sweeter with age.  I don't recall the variety, but it doesn't really matter.  They also didn't get all that large, either.

Beans
As with previous years, I grew Kentucky Wonder pole beans and Scarlet Runner beans.  The Wonder did great and we have a number of bags of trimmed/blanched/frozen green beans from them.  The Scarlet Runners didn't do much of anything and didn't produce.  I suspect a large part of that was due to my planting them late due to all the yard rehab we had to do this year.

Potatoes
Wifey and The Boy thoroughly enjoyed harvesting the potatoes (both sweet and regular).  The Yukon Gold Seed Potatoes and Carolina Ruby Sweet Potatoes seem to be winners.  Wifey also planted some variety of purple potatoes, but I can't figure out where she got them.  Not Baker Creek or Southern Exposure according to my records.


Onions and Garlic
The continuation of the Egyptian Walking Onions are doing reasonably well.  I expect there to be even more next year once they're better established.

The garlic did nothing this past year.  I discovered that I had mulched (leaves from the property) too heavily and buried the cloves.  Thankfully, they didn't rot but they also never developed into anything usable for this year.

We planted Yellow Potato Onions in the early fall for next year.  Supposedly these are perennial onions so I look forward to seeing how we can cultivate more for future years.

Asparagus
We planted a number of crowns (3 bags' worth) in raised boxes.  A number of them have come up.  We're following conventional wisdom to leave them alone for a few years to expand to usefulness.

Strawberries
This fall my parents gave us a number of cast-offs from their strawberry patch.  I planted half of them in the downslope side of our garden.  There wasn't room for more without crowding.

The Orchard
Apple Trees
I really goofed up this year by not putting deer netting up around the apple trees until late-spring (or was it early summer?).  As a result, they were decimated by deer.  They all rebounded for the most part, but we didn't harvest any apples; the deer had them all.  I have since removed the deer netting and relocated the supports to provide a larger diameter around the trees.  I will be hanging new netting this weekend.

Blueberries
In addition to the 4 blueberry bushes we had last year, we planted two more in the spring.  I'm tempted to plant two more in 2018.  Yes, they'll get large enough in time to provide for the family, but I just like the idea of having plenty.  Besides: why not?

Raspberries
Raspberry plants were a new addition to the burgeoning homestead this year.  I planted 4 "Royalty" purple raspberry starters in September followed by 6 transplanted red raspberry canes transplanted from my friend's property.  I don't know much about the red raspberry canes other than that she said they produce twice a year.

From the University of Maryland webpage about raspberries and blackberries.

Red raspberries produce new canes as suckers from the root system, so they are usually grown in a hedgerow. They are the most winter-hardy type of raspberry and may be either of two types:

• Summer-bearing types have the typical biennial life cycle of a bramble. They fruit from late June through July of their second growing season.
• Primocane-bearing types, also known as everbearing raspberries, are an exception to the bramble life cycle. Primocane-bearing types have the ability to fruit in the early fall of their first year on their primocanes. They then fruit a second time, in June, on buds below those which fruited the previous fall. The fall crop, however, is more abundant. Therefore gardeners treat the canes as annuals, rather than biennials, by mowing the canes to the ground in winter after the fall harvest. This keeps the plants more manageable.

With that in mind, I think I have primocane-bearing raspberries.

Harvesting and storing the sweet potatoes

On Friday, Wifey and The Boy harvested most of the sweet potatoes from the garden.  My earlier assertion that sweet potato plants need a frost to sweeten up appears to have been grossly misguided after Wifey did some more reading on the subject.

What to do next is up for debate, though.  Some websites insist that you put them in a warm, dry room and leave them for a while.  Others say you put them in a cool, dry room and leave them for a while.

Since we'd have a harder time providing them with a warm, dry room that is also okay with getting dirty, we went the other route.  I separated them somewhat in some collapsible baskets in the garage, trying to minimize contact between them.

Once that was accomplished, I stacked each basket and then put the residual on a spare ironing board frame that was the victim of a Wifey project back in the spring.

We'll see how they do after a bit.  Some of them are so huge, we have a hard time believing they are edible.

Mulching, mulching, and more mulching

In addition to the work with getting the donated raspberry plants in the ground, we also did a lot of mulching.  With the exception of the purple raspberry bushes we planted in September, I added a bag of mulch for each of the apple trees and the blueberry bushes in the orchard as well as the pear tree, fig trees, and artichokes in the front bed.  The whole idea is to help each of the plants survive the winter, particularly since none of them are what I would call "well established."

I also spread about 6 bags along the pool fence where Wifey wants to plant Four O'Clock seeds.

I would have purchased the mulch in bulk, but it didn't occur to me for some reason.

Raspberries are finally in the ground

The Boy and I planted our red raspberry plants today.  It's nice to finally see them get moving away from the house.

As with all the other permaculture additions, we used a three-part mix of native soil, Leafgro, and shredded mulch.  After a few hours of work, our raspberries are all in a line.  Once that was completed, we watered all the raspberries (roots, not vegetation) and blueberry bushes.

I can't help but feel a level of pessimism, though.  With freezes coming and our just planting the raspberries, there will be next to no depth to the roots to help keep the plants alive this winter.  I did what I could by adding a fair amount of mulch around each plant.

If we make it through the winter with even one of those plants, I'll consider it a "win."

Gratification

This isn't the first garden we've had right at the house.  Back at the townhouse, when we gave up on our first garden plot (the year The Boy was born), we still planted some vegetable plants in the back yard at the townhouse.

That being said, I shouldn't be surprised by what I'm about to say.

I think it's really cool to be able to go out to my garden, harvest some things and immediately eat them.  I'm surprised that I still think it's very novel.

Just a little bit ago, I went out to the garden to harvest a few leaves of the lettuce we're growing.  I brought it in, washed it, then paired it with one of the last Roma tomatoes from the garden to go on a chicken salad sandwich.

I enjoyed every bite.  The fact that some of the ingredients came from my own garden made it even better.

Orchard work

So, the raspberry bushes from my friend are still alive.  Not planted, but still alive.  I dug holes for each of the six plants and have the Leafgro and mulch needed to plant them.  I would have planted them in the orchard today, but they are expecting sub-freezing tonight and tomorrow night.  I want to give the new plants as much of a chance as I can despite their being planted a bit late in the season.

Those six holes are waiting for their new occupants to come in on Sunday.

The Boy and I also removed the deer netting from around the apple trees.  I decided that the barrier is a bit small for each of the trees and need to redo the whole thing.  I'll try to do that tomorrow.  Yes, the deer might have quite a meal overnight, but I don't think I'll get that done this afternoon. 

I also weeded the area around the base of each tree (I left the clover) to make way for mulching.  Again, I want to try to trap moisture and heat for each root ball. Yes, they're a year old, but I wouldn't call them "established" just yet.

Back in the saddle again

I've finally gotten the "green light" to do some lifting again.  With that in mind, The Boy and I removed the rest of the tomato, pepper plants, as well as the basil, petunias, and marigolds this past week.

Yesterday I took a half day off from work and roto-tilled the garden.  This morning I broad-cast some winter wheat seeds over the tilled area to function as a cover crop.

Not much else is left in the garden.  Of course, we're leaving the asparagus and strawberry plants in place.  The sweet potato and peanut (below) are waiting on frost.  Snow peas, lettuce, kale, and spinach are all still all being eaten.

I'm happy to say that we have a few more small broccoli heads coming up in our plants.

A walk to the orchard

Earlier this evening, I took a walk to the orchard to lay out where some new raspberry plants will go.

One of my friends at work has some fruit plants at her property near DC.  She also gardens. 

One day a week or two I shared that we had just planted the purple raspberry starters in the orchard.  She remarked that she had some sort of raspberry bushes that had spread quite a bit.  I gathered that she doesn't often get around to trimming them and the tendrils (branches?) that went to ground ended up taking root.  Anyway, she said she'd dig up some of the new plants.  She needed to clean up that stuff and would be happy to help me in the process.

Sure enough, she had a present of 6 small pots with raspberry plants for me yesterday at work.

I had some "minor" surgery on my back late last week and I can't do any major lifting for two weeks.  That means Wifey will be planting the bushes sometime soon. 

With my trip to the orchard, I marked (with a spray can of marking paint) the location where posts will go to hold up support lines and marked where I intend to plant two more of the purple raspberry bushes that I hope to get in the Spring.  From there I marked off spots for 8 of my friend's raspberry plants.

While on my way back I enjoyed watching a few bats dart and swoop erratically as they collected their evening's meal.  The soundtrack on my way back to the front door was a few insects, the odd jet flying over, and the slap of my flip flops on the road.

I love living in the country.

Final pear harvest for the year

The pear tree has been a success this year.  Although we only harvested a total of about a dozen pears, I'm happy given it's the first year.  It also beats the apple tree harvest where they suffered greatly from deer and Japanese beetle damage.

Below is a picture of the main harvest (the others came in ones and twos) from earlier today.  I sliced everything up to go in the food dehydrator a little bit ago.

Making some beefaroni for lunches

I won't post the recipe right now (otherwise occupied), but I wanted to post that we are still harvesting herbs around the property.

I got some still-great-looking basil from the garden (companion planting!) and some fresh oregano from the front permaculture bed to go in my batch of beefaroni.

I also used one of Wifey's quarts of canned tomatoes (seen below before adding the herbs).

I hope to be able to do a similar post next year that would include home-grown onions, peppers, and garlic.  Unfortunately, none of that stuff did very well this year.

Harvest - tomatoes

In what will surely be one of the last summer harvests this year, I picked a number of tomatoes this afternoon and a few snow peas.

In working on this post, I'm also realizing that I need to scrub down the kids' plastic basket.  Yuck.

Drying out beans

Yesterday afternoon Wifey and the big kids picked a bunch of the dried bean pods from the pole bean runners with the idea of reusing them for next year's crop.  Unfortunately, we've had some rain lately and the pods (and the beans inside) were a little damp still.

I husked the beans and put them in the oven at 120 degrees for about 20 minutes to dry them out somewhat.

I doubt it was long enough to actually damage the beans.  It's sure better for them than rotting in a bag between now and early May.

Somebody got to the hickory nuts

Something happened with the nuts.  At first, I thought thought the squirrels got to them, but on second thought, I have serious doubts that they would have done such a complete job of removing the nuts from the husks.

In retrospect, I think The Boy got bored.

More walnuts and hickory nuts

After work today the big kids and I took a bit of a walk across the property.  We made a game out of finding walnuts and hickory nuts. 

The kids were pretty successful, I'd say.

Shelling the Hickory Nuts

I realize this is an iterative process, but I wanted to show some progress we're making with shelling the hickory nuts.  Wifey and I spent about an hour in the kitchen wading through them as we sat and chatted about a variety of things and listened to some jazz singers on Pandora.  It was a really nice way to unwind after the kids were in bed.

Much more to come.

It's time to harvest your potatoes

Yesterday while I was at work Wifey recruited The Boy to help harvest the potatoes.  Although the sweet potatoes are still doing their best Audrey 2 impersonation, the regular potatoes were clearly ready to come up.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of what the bed looked like ahead of time.  I can say, though, that what vines hadn't been eaten by deer in the last few days were turning a sickly shade of yellow/green.

The good news is that Wifey's potatoes are in fantastic shape.  Not too shabby considering we've never grown potatoes before and this was what was in a 7'x3' box.

We're talking about what to do for next year since this worked out so well.  Perhaps we'll try experimenting with a Potato Tower.

Royalty purple raspberries are in the ground

This evening The Boy and I planted the four Royalty purple raspberries over in the holes I dug the other day.  As with the apples, blueberries, figs, and pear tree we used a 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 mix of native soil, Leafgro, and shredded mulch.  I mixed everything in pretty well then added each plant and gently roughed-up the roots to help encourage them to spread out.  Once all was in their holes, we mulched around the plants and watered them.

Thankfully, we had some rain throughout the morning and early afternoon so things weren't as dry as before.  As with the plantings last year, I need to be sure to give each a good amount of water each week.

A few more hickory nuts

While mowing the lawn yesterday, I couldn't help but notice a few more hickory nuts on the ground.  Once I was finished mowing, I returned to see how many I could track down.

As you can see in the picture above, the nuts are in varying stages of ripeness.  I put these nuts along with the ones we collected a few days ago.  We let them dry out (husks open at this time) and will do another float test on the "new" nuts in another week or two.

Later in the afternoon, the family took a walk to see if we could find some black walnuts and found a few more.  Didn't think it was worthy of a picture, though. 

More hickory nuts, what they look like

The Bear is a tough kid to manage when outside.  Come to think of it, it's a challenge when he's inside, too.  He is a kid's kid; always running, climbing, and running off exploring.  Although, he's tough to keep up with, it's a joy to see him on the move.

While managing one of his expeditions across the front yard to the orchard, I noticed there seemed to be some more hickory nuts on the ground.  I had The Boy and The Girl help harvest what they could find.  It was a pretty nice haul.

Also, for those who aren't quite sure what to look for, here are a few examples of what a fallen hickory nut may look like.

From bottom left: grossly under-ripe hickory nut in husk, somewhat under-ripe nut in husk, nut in husk and ready to come out, hickory nut.

We have snow peas!

Nothing super notable, but it's nice to see that we have some snow peas developing.  Technically, they're sugar snap peas.  Still, nice to see that some fall crops are starting to produce.

Sifting through the hickory nuts

As I mentioned a few posts ago, we obtained some hickory nuts both from the in-laws as well as some on our property.

Yesterday afternoon, we did what is called "a float test" on the hickory nuts.  It's called that because you fill a vessel (a large bucket or trough) with water and toss in a bunch of hickory nuts.  Those that sink are denser than the water so you know they're loaded with nutty goodness.  Those that float may be bad.  The floaters need to be paid more attention -- a worm could have gotten in or the nut may have rotted inside the shell.  Some floaters are still good, though.  You don't know until you crack it open.

After doing the float test, we found some that passed.

A lot of them failed the test.  We were surprised by the large proportion.  We suspect that we shouldn't have left the nuts out to dry as long as we did.

We started cracking into the hickory nuts.  Of the ones we got into, maybe 1/5 of the total were bad for one reason or another.

We are keeping the hickory shells for now.  We've read that they are a very pleasant addition to a wood fire.

We are also experimenting with different methodologies of breaking them open.  Wifey used a nutcracker while I used a pair of channel-locks.  I tried the nutcracker first, before trying the channel-locks.  I felt like I had more control over the channel-locks, could impart more force on the nut thanks to the longer lever arms, and could grip the nuts better thanks to the teeth on the wrench.

We're still working on the approach.  As you can tell from the picture above, there is some wasted nut meat that we left inside the shell.  We decided it wasn't worth spending a ton of time trying to get every little bit out, especially, when some had been tainted by shell shards in the meat.  We'd rather abandon some of the nut meat than take a chance in feeding shell to someone.

The walnut bits that we did keep are in the freezer until we get cracking, again.

Expanding the Orchard: Adding Raspberry Plants

Since inception, I've wanted to convert the far field into an orchard.  Since moving in, we've struggled with having enough time to work on it, tried to work around when it's best to plant things, and had a big drain on the wallet for a variety of reasons. 

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I ordered some Royalty purple raspberry plants.  They arrived just in time for us to go out of town to visit Wifey's parents so my parents have held onto them until I could retrieve them.

I took the day off so The Bear could get tubes put in his ears.  Once all that was successfully accomplished, I dug four holes in the orchard to accommodate the four Royalty plants.  The Boy and The Girl provided copious amounts of moral support.

Some details about the hole-digging:

According to the Maryland cooperative extension, purple raspberry plants need to be a minimum of 3' between plants with a minimum of 8' between rows.  To be on the safe side, I dug each hole such that the center is 4' apart with 10' between the base of the blueberries and the center of each hole.

I've seen how much space some of the blueberry bushes take up from many trips to Larriland Farm and I've seen how large some of the raspberry plants can get on their guide lines.  Although my tendency is to try to maximize the number of plants in a given area, I think encouraging airflow is necessary.  Also necessary is the ability to allow the plants to stretch out their growth.  Thus: 4' and 10' distances.

Other useful info:

The botanical name is Rubus strigosus 'Royalty'.  According to the cooperative extension, a "bramble" type is any species belonging to the Rubus genus.

Cleaning up the garden for fall crops, part 5

More garden cleanup.

Upon unpacking the car, we all tackled harvesting beans and tomatoes.  Not much to report on there.

While The Girl played in the yard, Wifey, The Boy, and I removed a number of tomato plants and The Boy's watermelons.  It looks a good bit better now.  More to go, but it's better.

The fall cleanup series of posts began on August 29.

Wifey helps a Monarch

Sure, it might actually be a Viceroy, but we'll call it a Monarch.

Yesterday afternoon, Wifey saw a Monarch butterfly fitting about in the side yard.  It seemed to be having a hard time getting aloft.  She had it land on her hand so we decided to take it to the wildflowers growing by the orchard.

It ended up flying off on our way over to the flowers.  Perhaps it just came out of its chrysalis?

Further reason for us to work toward putting in the wildflower gardens in the spring.

Oh. So we have hickory trees. What in the world do we do now?

Please bear with me, this is going to be a long one.  If you know me, you aren't surprised.

A few weeks ago, Wifey handed me a nut while we were driving down the road.  I said, "that's lovely.  Why are you handing me this nut?"  She replied that the kids (The Big Two) had collected a bucket of them from the side yard and hulled them themselves.  She also told me she was pretty sure it was a type of hickory tree.  She's much smarter than I am with that sort of thing so I believed her.

Husband Pro Tip: If she's better than you at something, compliment her every chance you get.  Also, try to learn from her so you don't keep using such awesome vocabulary like, "thingy."

Or in my case, "You know......that tree over there that isn't the pawpaw, oak, pine, or maple.  No, not that one.  THAT one."

Fast forward to last Thursday.  I recruited The Big Two to collect more of the nuts while I was mowing the lawn.  Once I finished, I helped them and enjoyed it immensely.

Last weekend, Wifey and I relayed what we had done and my mother-in-law (she's awesome, too, by the way) replied, "well, you know we have hickory trees here, too.  The Girl and I spent a few hours collecting nuts off the ground shortly thereafter.

Wifey did some research and, apparently, Buckeyes look similar to Hickory nuts and are inedible.  She (and her mom) have determined that my in-laws' trees aren't Buckeyes by comparing the leaves of the trees.  My in-laws have three Shag Bark trees and a Pignut Hickory.

Once all was done, we sorted the hulled nuts from those that need to dry out.

There were also some that were able to come out of the hulls (outer skins).  The Boy and I were able to remove some of the hulls from the nuts.  As the nuts dry, it's supposed to be much easier to do the removal as the hull shrinks away from the sides of the nut making it easier to try it apart.  Also, the four "petals" of the hull spread out making it easier to open.

Since we'd collected a number of the nuts, we cracked them open to try the nut meat ourselves.  After reading a number of suggestions online, we hit the nuts about 1/3 of the way down from the tip with a hammer against a brick.  It wasn't foolproof.  We will be trying other ways to open them.

We really enjoyed the nuts.  In general, they had a mild flavor with a hint of a maple-like undertone.  From what we've read, they can be used as a substitute for pecans or walnuts in baking.  We did find, though, that the hickory nuts that came from the green hulls had a little bit more of a bite to them and weren't as mild in flavor.

After getting back home, I spread the un-hulled nuts out on a piece of scrap plywood to dry in the sun.  From what I've read, it's recommended to leave them to dry for a few weeks.

I also took the hulled nuts and put them in a basket to dry out some as well.