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.