Rural Garden/Urban Garden

Honey of a Harvest

Urban Garden:

It has been about five months since we got the bees and we decided should harvest some honey before the cold days set in.  Last week in the early afternoon it got up to about 70 and the sun was out so I put on the gear and decided to see if what was happening.  

We had a lot of meandering comb which made it so we couldn't easily move the bars around, so we didn't know really well what was going on in the hive.  The bottom of the hive is just screening so I was able to take this pretty crummy flash photo of all the comb.  It was hard to tell, even in person, how much comb was filled with honey while crouching under the hive, but we decided to just take one bar to try it out. 

 The first year the hive has to build all the comb from scratch so it is not supposed to be a prolific harvest.  Hopefully next summer when they start out with 15 bars of empty comb it will be a bigger harvest.  We took one bar that was about 1/3 to 1/2 full of honey and ended up getting probably a quart of honey plus a tub of comb we will melt down to wax.  We cut up the honey comb and just put it into jars to use as is.  I haven't quite gotten used to eating the honey, comb and all, but that is how a lot of people do (foodies mostly it seems).  You can also see the little house in the background of the first photo as well as the bee veil that Sarah sewed up using a straw hat from the Goodwill.  I'm hoping to build another hive with an observation window this winter and maybe try to catch another swarm in the spring.  

Learning Curve

Rural Garden:

We learn as we go. What I learned this year is that the south end of the garden is in the shade in from late September. Because tomatoes, peppers and eggplants were on that end of the garden the ripening process slowed due to lack of heat. In addition, the fig tree that I have so diligently nursed along and which is loaded with green figs will not get to a ripe stage. I think we will have to dig it up and move it to a warm, sunny spot. Perhaps in front of the house or even up hill to my brother and sister-in-law's place. It is, afterall, their tree, transplanted from Everett several years ago.

I had planned to expand the garden, bought posts and fencing, then decided I had enough work already. Now, however, I want to try tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and such in a place that gets all day sun. So I am back in the business of building beds, having staked out an 800 sq. ft. addition and begun to turn sod. Turn the sod, hoe it, apply fertilizer, seaweed, maple leaves, and compost and cover it with black plastic to help break everything down. Turning sod is hard work. I have a WWOOFER on the way and this motivates me. I'll have most of it dug by the time he arrives and he can help me set fence posts and nail up the fence. This wasn't even on my project list but as often happens my management goes LIFO.

Signs of Fall

Rural Garden:

There is a big disadvantage being on the water. It's cooler and the growing season seems a bit shorter. Plus we are shaded from the late afternoon sun. A bit of garden expansion to the north to increase late season sun exposure is now on the project list. An advantage of being on the water is unlimited seaweed. I recently read a post on Soil and Health by an Irish farmer who puts tons of seaweed on his fields that crab shells are very helpful in mineralizing the soil. There is also a substance in the crab shell called chitin that will help control predatory nematodes by stimulating the growth of fungi that attacks the insects. Good intuition, I suppose, led me to picking up the molted shells and tossing them into the garden. The fall crop of seaweed has arrived. It is a rich melange of Turkish towel, sea lettuce, kombu and wrack weed. It's so thick on the beach that a two handed scoop picks up a gallon at a time. The bad news is that low tides aren't very low or conveniently timed in October. But today there was a morning low as well as tomorrow. Got 55 gals today and will hope to double that in the morning.

Yesterday I harvested apples from three trees and got almost a wheelbarrow full. There are five different varieties and I can only guess what they are. A couple are obviously scab resistant. Others are not. We plan a pressing party for Saturday and will initiate the new apple press.

End of Summer Garden Tour

Urban Garden:

 

On the left are the monstrously large amish paste tomato plants, which are still ripening fruit.  I'm tired of canning them.  Next to that is the rainbow chard, which was covered with floating row covers for most of the summer and is therefore still very beautiful.  This is the first year we haven't lost most of our greens to leaf miners, thanks to the row covers.  On the right is a row of broccoli and cauliflower for fall.  The cabbage moth caterpillars have done a number on them, because the moths were able to get in under the edges of the row covers, but the plants still seem healthy enough.  

Three kinds of kale for fall, from front to back: white russian, black tuscany and red ursa.
 

On the left is a row of green onions.  In the foreground are six brussels sprout plants.  They're crowded in there but I really wanted more than a couple plants and didn't have any other free spot for them.  The cabbage moth caterpillars have done some damage here too.

 

Baby salad greens, simpson elite loose leaf lettuce, deer tongue and grumolo verde chicory. 

Here is a nice bushy patch of carrots.  To the right and behind them where it appears to be just bare soil are overwintering onions.  I lost a lot of the seedlings to who knows what.  In front, on the left, are a couple mustard greens, and to the right are four tatsoi plants.  The tatsoi is very attractive to something, maybe slugs.  

In the foreground here are a few fall raab plants that are looking a little leggy, probably because they're being shaded by the eggplants.  The eggplants are still trying desperately to ripen more fruit; the oriental one on the left has set a dozen little purple babies.  

Spinach and arugula.  These plants are still small, but we've gotten a couple salads from them already.

Parsley on the left, beets on the right.  The pretty purplish ones are bull's blood, and most of the green ones are chioggia.

Here's a recent harvest: piles of chard and kale, salad greens, mustard greens, some tomatoes and my prize rosa bianca eggplants. 

And finally, eloise's pumpkin.  This plant started off very slowly and we didn't really expect to get anything from it at all.  Then it set this one pumpkin, which grew at an incredible speed and is now pretty big.  It looks like eloise is going to have THE perfect jack o'lantern pumpkin by halloween!  

Et cetera

Rural Garden:

I've started to prepare some beds for planting and have actually planted some stuff—140 cloves of garlic, hoping for a big crop. Garlic is very satisfying on so many different levels. I spread some seaweed and COF then take a digging fork and turn the soil over. I use my long handled hop to break up the clods. It's sort of like being a human rototiller. When I'm done the bed looks like this:

I got behind on harvesting zucchini and ended up with a washtub full. Almost more weight than I could handle by myself. I drove the car down as close to the garden as I could get it and struggled the squash to the car. There was at least sixty pounds of the stuff.

 

We could have composted it but decided to haul it down to Mike and Joan's and feed to their cattle who eat pretty much any vegetation. This turned out to be a good decision because we returned with some corn, beans, onions, leeks and a gallon of tasty, hot kimchi.

Something bad happened to my early cauliflower planting and I never figured out what. We had a couple of nice flowers on the second planting and used it to make flatbread. Cup of flour, cup of lite coconut milk, the cauliflower roated and curried, if you like. A bit of salt. Whisk into a batter and pour into a fry pan liberally oiled then tuck into the oven at 400 until it's all crispy. You can look it up on Mark Bittman's New York Times blog.

The folks across the street cut down a bunch of trees. As a result our Asian pear bore fruit. Very nice pears.

Gleaning Apples

Rural bog:

Our apples aren't quite ready but the ancient apple trees at the land trust property are loaded. These are huge old trees left over from the farm that existed here in the old days. Someone volunteered to prune them and the trees are loaded. We went over and collected a large bucket. Linda says she will make a pie.

Canning Marathon

Rural Blog:

A two day canning marathon is thankfully over. My feet hurt, my back hurts and I am full of admiration for those canners of history who filled cellars and pantries with jar after jar of home grown food made on a wood stove, often with hauled water. I am in awe of my grandmother who kept a farm kitchen going with three meals a day and still managed to can a ton of stuff. And I find it hard to believe that Linda's grandma made so much jam that she wore off half the side of a spoon. We canned a bit last summer for the first time in our lives. We picked up the beat this year with beans, beets, zuchinni relish, lime pickles, bread and butter pickles, blackberry jam, plum chutney and plum jam. Canning is no longer a mystery. Next year we'll figure out ways to add to our repertoire. Clearly, we are pretty well supplied with condiments for the winter months and pleased that we have used a high percentage of the food produced by the garden. 

Early in September

Rural Garden: Lots to do. The seaweed is starting to show up though not in huge quantities. So far, I've hauled about 70 gallons. I use it instead of kelp meal in Steve Solomon's Complete Organic Fertilizer (COF) formula. Next month there should be enough weed to haul fifty gallons in a day which is about as much as I want to deal with at one time. I dumped it and spread it out and am letting the rain rinse it although many sources say there is not enough salt to cause a problem.

We are having a wonderful blackberry season. The berries are big and sweet. The window of opportunity for making jam is closing fast with the heavy rain we got last night. The tides and jam making wait for no man. We jumped on it and have 40 half pints of blackberry jam and 8 half pints of syrup resulting from not enough pectin in the mix. We are using non-sugar pectin and agave syrup as our sweetener and it's quite delicious. We use Linda's grandma's old wooden spoon to stir the mix. It is worn down on one side from hours of making strawberry jam (Ersie didn't like the seeds in blackberries. We don't mind them).

The plums are coming on strong. Not quite ripe enough to eat but just right for making chutney. Chutney making was another new experience for us. Lots and lots of stirring. We finally resorted to pectin to get the sauce to thicken. It's so good we will hide it from ourselves for awhile and I doubt it will appear in too many gift packs. Zucchinis are piling up wanting to be relish, there's another batch of cukes waiting and hundreds of plums to deal with. We are getting a tiny taste of what putting up food is all about.

Pruning Raspberries

Rural Garden:

From what I could glean from books, it was time to  prune the raspberries. I pretty much did what this guy said to do:

When I got done they looked like this:

Pickles

Rural Garden:

Twelve quarts (so far) of nice tasting pickles:

Lime Pickles

Rural Garden:

OLD SOUTH CUCUMBER LIME PICKLES 

7 lbs. cucumbers (cut crosswise)
1 c. pickling lime
2 gal. water
8 c. distilled white vinegar, 5% acidity
8 c. sugar
1 tbsp. salt (optional)
2 tsp. mixed pickling spices

Soak clean sliced cucumbers in water and lime mixture in crockery or enamelware for 12 hours or overnight. Do not use aluminum ware. Remove sliced cucumbers from lime water. Discard lime water. Rinse 3 times in fresh cold water. Soak 3 hours in fresh ice water. Combine vinegar, sugar, salt and mixed pickling spices in a large pot. Bring to low boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Remove syrup from heat and add sliced cucumbers. Soak 5 or 6 hours or overnight. Boil slices in the syrup 35 minutes. Fill sterilized jars with hot slices. Pour hot syrup over the slices, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Cap each jar when filled. Process pints 10 minutes, quarts 15 minutes in a boiling water bath canner. Test jars for airtight seals according to manufacturer's instructions. Refrigerate unsealed jars.

Orient Express Cukes

Urban Garden:

Late in Summer

Rural Blog: The garden is past its prime but there is still loads of food—cukes, tomatoes, lettuce, squash, strawberries, broccoli, even a few beans. And this year we have peppers courtesy of the Wall O'Water. Last night we toasted some Shishito peppers in the toaster oven, blistered them and ate the whole thing, seeds and all. We could eat potatoes every night. And they are so creamy and nice I don't think we will tire of them. They're great with pesto sauce. The rabbits were hard on the garden this year. I should have been more diligent with the row covers. They ate lots of beans, pretty much wrecked the later carrots, devoured the cauliflower and generally earned the designation "pest." Some people think they are cute. I do not. I have even fantasized about a dog, looked at beebee guns on the internet and considered using them for .22 target practice. But I suspect I will just manage my row covers better next year. They don't seem to like beets so will have some tonight. Our flowers did well. The sunflowers, sweet peas, nastursiums, straw flowers and marigolds decorated the garden. The prettiest of the flowers are out front of the house. Linda's fancy dahlia's.

Catch of the Day

Rural Garden:

Early Girl tomatoes, cupidon bush beans, Russian banana potatoes, basil.

Harvesting

Rural Garden:

Because of the hot weather the garden seems to be about a month ahead of last year. The pea vines have been torn down. All the potato vines are on the ground. The flowers are about done. Yesterday I picked all the beans I could find and began to pull up the bush beans. Speaking of beans, I had more last year with half  the plants. I don't think they enjoyed the heat. And the rabbits really ate a lot of beans. I'm glad they can't climb the poles. I managed to get enough to pressure can nine quarts which took about four and a half hours. I would have to sell them for fifty dollars a quart. Yesterday on Soil and Health there was a discussion of what it takes to have a subsistence garden. One fellow reported how he did it: "Grew Approx. 400 corn plants...400 ft row of beans...seasonal gardens...raised and harvested olives for oil...raised ... Figs, almonds, apricots, apples, grapes...each day shelled out ears of corn .. soaked for 24 hours .. rinsed for 2-3 days until germination started. Daily meal .... ground wet into masa ... added oil and seasoning (herbs) and mixed by hand into a chapati, or made into various shapes ... cooked over open fire or solar oven along with beans. Ate with salad and/or cooked vegetables. Next day .....repeat." I'm a very long way from a subsistence garden.

Some harvest photos:

 

The potatoes are Russian Bananas and quite creamy and delicious. We've been eating them with pesto sauce.

Planting Ahead

Urban Garden:

I started the following from seed today for fall and winter:
-three kinds of kale
-"tat-soy"
-mustard greens
-fennel
-fall raab
-spinach
-arugula
-lettuce
-chicory
-mache
-more broccoli and brussels sprouts; I started some of these last month and decided I want some more, so I hope it's not too late for them.

I have a new seed starting procedure this fall.  In the spring I was using Steve Solomon's seed starting soil mix, which contains a lot of garden soil and compost, and I kept getting mold on the soil surface.  I've heard the recommendation to use a fan to improve air circulation and avoid mold, but I've also been told that it's important to keep them covered to maintain even soil moisture during germination, which means there isn't any air circulation...  So my latest plan is to use a sterile seed starting mix (the one I made up is 50% Beats Peat, a coconut fiber replacement for peat moss, and 50% sand), and then to transplant them to Steve Solomon's mix after germination.  This is what I did with the fall starts that I started last month and it seemed to work well.  My concern is that an additional transplanting will damage roots and stunt the plants, but hopefully if I move them just after germination I will be able to do it with minimal damage.  

It's Hot in Portland

Urban Garden:

We've been having almost-record-setting temperatures this week; yesterday was a degree off the all-time high temperature of 107 degrees in Portland.  It has been hard on the animal members of our household; people are sweating, the dog is panting, cats are spread thin, and the chickens are also panting, and holding their wings away from their bodies.  The plants, however, seem pretty happy about it.  Anything that would have bolted is long gone at this point, and the heat-loving summer plants are growing like crazy.  It's hard to keep everything watered; the winter squash and one very sensitive cherry tree particularly tend to wilt.  But everything is setting and ripening fruit at an almost alarming pace.  Even the watermelons appear to be on their way to actually producing edible melons; I wasn't sure if they would make it, but as it turns out this is the summer to try growing melons. 

I've installed a program to use our gray water for watering the garden.  We now have an enameled tub in the kitchen sink and one in the bathtub, and each time they fill up they are emptied into a 7 gallon plastic tub that is on the back stoop; any overflow from that tub goes into any five gallon buckets that are sitting around.  And from there it is used for watering.   It really has been surprising how much water we normally run down the drain, and very satisfying to use it instead.  

This evening we dug up some of the Yukon Gold potatoes, and I was surprised to find way fewer potatoes than expected.  The plants were flopped over and dried out, so I'm sure they were done producing, but what we found was some good size potatoes and some tiny potatoes, about four pounds from three plants.  I don't know if this sorry yield is the result of planting grocery store potatoes rather than certified virus-free seed potatoes, but last year we planted grocery store potatoes that had sprouted in mid-june (rather late) in our plastic recycling bins (which means they didn't have much room), and got at least as much in return.  This year the potatoes were planted as per Steve Solomon's directions.  We have more Yukon Golds to dig, plus a bunch of Russian Blues (also grocery store bought potatoes that had sprouted), and some Burbank Russets that just went into the ground in July (virus-free nursery stock).

Dinner tonight, all from our yard: Yukon Gold potatoes cut into chunks and fried, then mixed with green beans and garlic and topped with a sunny side up egg per person and some chopped basil.  Corn on the cob on the side.  

Putting Food By

Rural Garden:

Yesterday we made and froze lots of pesto. Basil, parmesian cheese, garlic (from the garden), pine nuts, salt and pepper. Made six ice cube trays.

Today we are pickling beets. Vinegar, agave syrup in place of sugar, allspice, cinnamon and salt. Decided to do quarts but are only able to process three quarts at a time. Canning raises lots of questions about use of power and water. I do save the water in the canner and use it over and over as well as the pot full of water for heating jars (I can't figure out the short cycle in our dishwasher). Our canning operation was interrupted when a hummer hit our window. Linda checked the internet to see what to do and when we followed the recs (giving her a bit of sugar water from a straw), the tiny bird died. According to the internets, three quarters of fledging hummers don't make it. There are five times the normal amount of hummingbirds around here this year and lots more goldfinches (the Washington State bird) as well.

Now back to canning beets.

All Garden Dinner

Urban Garden:

Dinner tonight, all from the garden: tomatoes with basil, cucumber, corn on the cob, and zucchini (cooked with our garlic).

Mid Summer

Rural Garden:

The garden has reached maturity. Potato vines are toppling over, the peas have turned yellow, the bush beans too. Weeds are growing slower. It only took thirty minutes with a shuffle hoe this morning to clean things up. Figs are ripening and new little figs are appearing for a second crop. The plum tree seems to be thinning itself and yellow jackets are all over it perhaps eating aphids. My cilantro plant is toppling over and needs some attention. Perhaps I'll strip it and dehydrate it. The garlic is now dry and needs braiding. The giant sun flowers need to be cut down and hung up to dry. (Last year we hung them in the garage and they got all moldy. Not enough air movement. This time I am going to wire them to the fence). The family of rabbits living under the cosmos hardly notices me. They just keep on nibbling. They loved the bush beans and worked them pretty hard. The mobile tomatoes have been bearing fruit for a couple weeks. The tomatoes in the straw bale green house are an explosion of leaves. I would like to take the top off and prune them but am afraid I couldn't get the lid back on. I will let the experiment proceed. My biodynamic compost pile has taken on a lovely crumbly look. Onions are popping out of the ground. Each night for a week or two we've been able to pick two bowls of raspberries and blueberries for dessert. The raspberries are about done but blueberries will be with us for awhile. Young cukes are 3"-6" long. I planted three more zukes to keep the relish production going. We now have 20 pints. We harvested the peas last week and froze about four pounds. Frozen also were several bags of green beans. My succession crop of lettuce is finally coming up. Germination in this hot weather is quite slow. But the heat has goosed the sweet potatoes and they are now making leaves under a row cover. Flowers are blooming profusely and Linda was able to make table settings for last weekend's Boys and Girls Club auction without seemingly making a dent in the garden.