garden

Spring in California: Saturday is Fascination of Plants Day

pronald — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:33:31 +0000

Spring in California: Saturday is Fascination of Plants Day

On Saturday, May 18, the second international "Fascination of Plants Day" will take place under the umbrella of the European Plant Science Organization (EPSO). Join in to see for yourself how fascinating plant are. Show your support for plant science, which is critical for sustainable food production, biobased medicines, and energy. There are 54 countries participating in the Fascination of Plants Day, with over 650 institutions involved and 950 events planned!

Check out this interactive map that shows all of the participating countries.

Here at the University of California, Davis, the renowned Botanical Conservatory will be open from 10am – 1pm on the 18^th of May to celebrate Fascination of Plants Day 2013. The conservatory is home to the titan, or Amorphophallus titanium, a truly fascinating plant that takes 15 years to bloom, and has only been known to flower about 100 times around the world, including 7 times at UC-Davis!

Two more exciting events are plants in California, one at the Plant Biology Department at the Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford and the other at the Livermore Art Association. At Stanford, middle school students from East Palo Alto will use advanced imaging technologies to observe fluorescence and luminescence in plant materials. Further details about this event can be found here on the Fascination of Plants Day website. At the second event in Livermore, local artists and children will celebrate the impact of plants on our lives by decorating bicycle wheels with creative plant themes. On May 18th the wheels will be displayed by participating businesses in downtown Livermore along the path of the Amgen Tour of California. Details about this event can be found here.

The Fascination of Plants Day has attracted a lot of attention all over the world, with the Ministers of Agriculture in the Czech Republic, Norway and Slovakia officially serving as national patrons. The nearly 1000 events internationally will showcase about 250,000 plant species! Details about the various events and lots of fun facts and information can be found on Twitter.

pronald Thu, 05/16/2013 - 14:33

Tags

biofortified

botany

food

garden

genetics and society

sustainability

The Fascination of Plants Day has attracted a lot of attention all over the world

Spring in California:16 chicks!

pronald — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 13:48:11 +0000

Spring in California:16 chicks!

My most troublesome girl- always getting out of the coop and digging in my garden- shows up this morning with 16 baby chicks! Not such a goof-off afterall. Go girl.

pronald Fri, 06/01/2012 - 09:48

Tags

biofortified

garden

hens

Grats! I want to see a picture.

Spudly

sastyk — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 08:43:42 +0000

Spudly

Probably the biggest loss to last year's flooding in upstate New York was my potato crop. I could have dug them by the end of August, but as the saying goes "shoulda but didnta." It was a warm summer and potatoes stay better in the ground in August here than they do in my house - unless, of course, they are under 3 feet of water.

The big loss wasn't the potatoes I had planned to eat all winter, although that was a pity - I can buy potatoes from farms that weren't flooded, up on higher ground. What I lost were 5 years of saved potato seed, varieties initially purchased and now adapted to my place. Over the years I've tested and tasted more than 30 varieties and selected 9 that were the household favorites, the most productive and the best adapted to my land.

In cold climates, potatoes are one of the most important crops anyone can grow - less chancy that most grains, easier to process and store. They grow well in almost every environment except the hottest ones - tolerating cool weather, wet weather, dry summers - nearly everything except being under 4 feet of water and consistent desert weather. They will grow on rocky, hill ground too poor for most crops (although they'll yield better in better places). They are amenable to pot and tire culture. Some years ago as a test, I threw potato pieces on my gravel driveway, threw an inch of compost over them and lay some hay on top - and harvested quite a respectable yield.

In temperate climates, potatoes are simply a survival crop - and always have been. They were famous for most of history for being less likely to be burned in the field by invading armies and can be eaten by almost everyone. Moreover, potatoes under intensive hand cultivation can out-yield the highest yielding commercial production. They can provide a good supplemental livestock feed for many animals (although they do have to be cooked) including pigs and poultry - and yield more than most grains in most hand cultivation models.

Potatoes, like tomatoes and a few other crops, are one of those things that simply tastes radically different and more wonderful when you grow them yourself. Even if all these other things weren't true, the reason to grow garden-fresh potatoes is that they are wonderful tasting. Potatoes come in strongly different "types" - so good potato salad potatoes and good roasting or good mashing potatoes are really quite different, so you will want to raise a number of varieties. Different soils produce different flavors as well, but the basic type - dry or waxy - doesn't vary that much, so you will want to read descriptions and think about how you use potatoes. That's why we grew 9 varieties ;-).

A lot of books discourage people from saving their own seed potatoes - for example, Steve Solomon in _Gardening When It Counts_ argues that saving seed potatoes isn't worth it, that they are bound to be contaminated by disease. I haven't found that to be true - even the year that late blight was endemic to this area, we were spared, but more importantly, we chose several of our varieties for disease resistance. Potatoes from saved seed will adapt to local conditions and produce more abundantly over time. Seed potatoes are expensive when ordered from a reliable source, and I've found it well worth it to save seed and seed potatoes.

The former is something almost no one does - I save potato seeds. Generally speaking, one plants potatoes from other potatoes, but some potatoes do make seed, and while the seed is always crossbred if you plant more than one variety or have more than one variety grown in your area, potato seed is an important addition of resilience - because seed potatoes last only one winter. If something prevents you from planting one year, or you lose a crop, you've lost everything. Saving potato seed doesn't ensure that you'll get what you planted before, but it can produce some interesting results, and you can do some breeding to get qualities you want if you are attentive.

Check out this site for a general overview on how to save potato seed and potato tuberlets. My saved seed is in the ground for next year. I will, however, also be ordering my favorite varieties in tubers. Green Mountain, Purple Peruvian, La Ratte and others are important to my happiness and a summer full of potato salads and new potatoes, a winter of baking and roasting potatoes.

I mourn the loss of all the adaptation and time I'd put into my potato seed, but if such a loss is going to occur, I'm grateful it came when I can replace my seed potatoes and begin again afresh. I'm also grateful for the lessons - that I should harvest tuberlets and some of the potatoes earlier, that anticipating a storm I should dig my harvest even early. The great thing about hard lessons in comparatively good times is that they save you from other, harder lessons later on.

If you haven't planted potatoes before, check out this video about how to prepare your tubers for planting:

sastyk Thu, 03/15/2012 - 04:43

Tags

temperate agriculture

You do have to watch for signs of disease, but seed potatoes are expensive when ordered from a reliable source, and I've found it well worth it to save seed.

There's also the point that some varieties can be hard to get hold of, and availability can vary from year to year depending on how the commercial seed potato growers have faired. So if you've got a variety you particularly like, it's well worth keeping some tubers aside just in case...

If you did not dig them at all, you might have a few volunteers. It's a longshot, but possible...

Sharon,

We have had an open winter here in northern OK. I found, the last week in January, a few overlooked potatoes. Sprouting.

Here is hoping that you found a few successful stragglers from your own potato patch, surviving from last year.

That could be a life-ending mistake in a survival situation, eh - right up there with having the seed spuds freeze over the winter.

~mike~

Please explain how using seed potatoes (not potato seed) can change inherited genetic traits: "the most productive and the best adapted to my land."

All seed potatoes are clones - that point.

Actually, ET, I didn't quite say they did - in the line you refer to, I was speaking of the VARIETIES best adapted to my land and most productive in my place (in the context of talking about having tested them). Later on in one paragraph I discussed both potato seed and seed potatoes, and I think it could be confusing - apologies for the inclarity. Adaptation, of course, occurs with potato seed. When I refer to "potato seed" I'm referring to actually seeds, rather than seed potatoes, which are true clones.

Sharon

Tom Wagner on Growing and Saving True Potato Seeds

http://bifurcatedcarrots.eu/2009/11/tom-wagner-on-growing-and-saving-tr…

Sorry for the loss of your potatoes!

It seems that no matter how carefully and thoroughly I harvest my spuds, I always have a few "rogues" sprout the next year, and since I always rotate my nightshades, those "rogues" always come up among something else I've planted. I dither about whether to dig out the "rogues" and if I finally do dig them out, they're always very deep -- which probably accounts for why I missed them the year before.

For folks interested in trying out potatoes from true seed (TPS), breeder Tom Wagner is selling seed from a bunch of varieties here: http://newworldcrops.com/wp/2012-potato-seeds/
Ever wanted to try out some funky diploid Peruvian potatoes? Now's your chance!

One advantage of TPS from a self-sufficiency perspective is that you can create your own virus-free seed tubers. The idea is to grow several TPS plants from a variety as an interbreeding "sibling" population. The tubers produced by TPS plants in this first year are likely to be relatively disease free. Then you select the potatoes that perform the best and plant them as seed tubers for 2-3 years before virus levels build up. This system maintains biodiversity and reduces the need to buy lab-propagated, certified virus-free seed tubers.

The linked article about breeding potatoes advocates direct seeding them into the ground. While I think their point about doing early selections against blight is a good one, you're more likely to have success the first time working with TPS by seeding them inside in pots at the same time as tomatoes. The plants, being cool-weather and high-elevation adapted, can go outside fairly quickly and need some direct sunlight. There's two schools of thought about what to do with them at this point. Some people keep them in small pots, which stresses the plants and forces them to produce tiny microtubers. Then they plant the microtubers same as regular seed tubers. The other method is to transplant small TPS seedlings into a bigger pot, give them a few weeks to get up to a few inches tall, then plant into the garden, burying the stem with each transplant much like a tomato seedling. Transplanting alters the root structure of TPS seedlings in such a way that produces a big bushy plant much more like a tuber-grown plant.

All of the above was gleaned from Wagner's discussion forum TaterMaterSeeds.com. It's been loads of fun to learn about potato breeding the past year, I recommend others give it a try. :-)

UMASS Permaculture Garden

sastyk — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 08:34:32 +0000

UMASS Permaculture Garden

I got to see it back in November when I gave a talk to a class at UMASS - next time I go there I'm asking for payment in cuttings ;-).

Neat videos of how it came together:

sastyk Fri, 02/24/2012 - 03:34

Tags

weeeellll. Ok, they have great enthusiasm. I think they're a little out of touch (what! in Massachusetts?) though in thinking how "firsty" they are. For example; my alma mater:

georgejonesfarm (dot ) org

That launched in 1998. 70 acres. Not on campus; but they have on campus stuff, too.

It is, indeed, good to see the renewed enthusiasm for dirty-hands sustainable work. I was talking at the Sustainable Farming Assoc. of MN annual meeting last week, and one of the outstanding features was the considerable number (10ish) of youngsters there who were launching their own small farms. As opposed to zeroish, a few years ago.

... and next time you go, you'll have a place to stay at Amethyst Farm -- our new home partly inspired by your "Finding your Place" class.
http://www.AmethystFarm.org/
-Bernard

Are You a Failure if You Can't Grow Carrots?

sastyk — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:23:40 +0000

Are You a Failure if You Can't Grow Carrots?

Erica at Northwest Edible Life has a great post about her imperfections as a garden, and very relevant, because all of us have our Waterloos in the garden, and it is probably a bad idea to take them too seriously. But we do.

I've imbued my personal Golden Grass Fed Cow of urban homesteading with magical properties and strapped it to my identity one cheerful blog post at a time.

The Punk Gardening Angel of Reasonable Expectations pats me on my shoulder and consoles me: "It's really okay...Carrots are healthy and your kids like to eat them, and you do buy the bulk organic bag, after all, and peel and slice them yourself. Beside, honey, everyone knows that life gets complicated and time gets short. Crops get planted too late or get eaten by maggots and that doesn't mean you don't deserve to eat carrots. Just buy the carrots like normal people and stop worrying about everything so much!"

But then The Nagging Devil of Martyrdom and Perfectionism on my other shoulder says things like, "If you didn't grow enough carrots you should just do without. Figure out ways to substitute beets. You have a lot of them. Don't be a hypocrite - eat what you grow, grow what you eat. You'll have no incentive to figure out how to grow good carrots on a large enough scale ever if you just pussy-out when the growing gets a little tough!"

Your thing might not be carrots. Carrots might sound trivial to you - hell, they sound trivial to me, though what they represent does not. But I'm guessing you have some area where you hold yourself to standards that are just a smidgen unrealistic too.

I have this problem too - a lot of people read my blog, and they conceive a vision of what my life goes like, and imagine because I talk about all the things I grow and make, it all goes smoothly and perfectly, that we never eat anything that we didn't grow ourselves, we never had a crop failure or made a stupid mistake, and that it all looks just perfect. Despite the fact that I try really hard to point up my own failings on the blog on a regular basis (see here, for example, or here or here and I could go on...), I know I'm guilty of making some of y'all feel bad about your garden imperfections - after all, Sharon said you were supposed to be able to do this.

Well, like Erica, there are a bunch of things I don't do all that well in the garden. I don't grow carrots particularly well either - I get most of my carrots from down the hill in the valley most years. I have nothing that was produced after late August in my house that is truly really local, since my crops and everyone else's were washed away by a hurricane or two. And since my book is due in four days, I bought a secret stash of Reeses Peanut Butter cups to get me through 20 hour days at the computer - and I'm pretty sure they are neither local nor organic, much as I would love to pretend they are.

Here's the thing - it is great to keep challenging yourself. it is important to keep pushing your limits and trying to do better. There is a fine line, however, between moving forward and making yourself feel like crap - and it is an important line not to cross.

That's one of the reason that until this past year, I was doing the Independence Days Challenge, and I think I'm going to bring it back. The whole idea was to once a week write down all your accomplishments, take full credit for them and make sure you stop seeing just what's undone and what isn't right and where you've failed, and look at what you succeeded at. It also helped me say "ok, even a little bit matters - rather than convince myself it was only worth preserving if I could dry a truckload or so." It is the little things that add up and make real change.

Erica's point is an important one - it isn't that the carrots don't matter, they do. But having a sense of perspective about how much they matter, and where they fit in the picture is what really counts.

Sharon

sastyk Thu, 12/01/2011 - 06:23

Tags

garden

appreciating accomplishments

gardening

independence days

Same here!!!!! I can do everything but carrots (and parsnips, celeriac and daikon). What IS that?

Steve Solomon's Gardening in hard times or some such name for his book (am bad at that) recommends fluid drilling carrots after soaking the seed a bit to get it primed.

Fluid drilling requires a baggie that you're willing to cut the corner off of and some gelled cornstarch cooled but not chilled so a goo-ey set. Mix with carrot seed and put in baggie. Cut corner and squeeze into your row.

It's a brilliant hack on how the pros do it. I also recommend his book, very readable, I don't agree with everything he says but it has enough useful goodies I really enjoyed it.

I can't seem to do winter squash anymore. Damn squash vine borers and squash bugs just overwhelm them. Carrots defeated me for a while, then suddenly started working. My guess is it's the lasagna mulching that loosened up the soil.

Actually there are a bunch of good lessons to be squeezed out of these observations; The Carrot Parable - could have really good legs. :-)

1) failing at something doesn't make you a failure. (never attempting anything might)
2) everything on the planet - even growing carrots - has a vast amount of critical detail to it. No, the garden is not a video game- you don't get extra lives, or extra hours- if you neglect just one of the critical details - you will harvest nothing. Ralph Nader was not able to get airbags installed in your garden. You crash, you die.
3) You're good at beets? Fabulous! Trade some beets - to your neighbor who is good at carrots. bennies out the wazoo.
4) Tomorrow is another day. Find a way to make your carrot neighbor your teacher.

I definitely like the idea of writing down what I DID accomplish in the past week, rather than just adding to the perpetual to do list. I am a beginning gardener; this is my second year gardening, but I moved last February, so it's my first in this yard. Last year my only harvest was one lonely tomato, which I didn't even plant on purpose-it sprouted in my compost bin and I decided to transplant and nurture it (it was sooo sad looking, like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree). This year, the stink bugs got all of my squash, zucchini, pumpkins, and most of my cucumbers. But, I have managed to eat about 70 green beans (10-20 at a time lol-next year I will plant more!), 2 cucumbers, some basil, thyme, and garlic scapes, and there are 10 cherry tomatoes on my plants. Not enough to sustain a family of 4 (or even just me) but much better than last year! I also learned how to bake bread and make pasta from scratch, and I have gotten braver about trying new recipes. I made country fried steak the other night, first time ever, and my husband loved it!

Erica is awesome! I hope she will be writing her own books soon enough... her writing is insightful, funny, educational and very entertaining.

My 6 year old has readers... the theory is to set the level just under what the kid can do, so they get that positive reinforcement every time they read at home, do well & feel good... they'll keep reading. Alas, my kid is like me, she thrives on the challenge of a higher level & the satisfaction of achieving more than she thought, than someone else thought, she could. I hope, and aim to help her learn, how not to beat herself up for the times she doesn't quite make it... just trying to learn that one myself first!

She's saying I don't need to live on a pumpkin-based diet? That's the only thing I did really well (300#) this year. I've accumulated several pumpkin-intensive recipes for potlucks.

Good to hear you refering to your vegetable garden. Such a nice realistic word, garden.

Carrots defeated me for a while, then suddenly started working. My guess is it's the lasagna mulching that loosened up the soil.

t's a brilliant hack on how the pros do it. I also recommend his book, very readable, I don't agree with everything he says but it has enough useful goodies I really enjoyed it

There is a fine line, however, between moving forward and making yourself feel like crap - and it is an important line not to cross.

So... does that mean you should guide yourself with the carrot and not the stick?

*flees*

Choosing Trees and Shrubs for the Home Orchard

sastyk — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 07:51:29 +0000

Choosing Trees and Shrubs for the Home Orchard

The first "seed" catalogs of the year are always the tree catalogs, and now is a good time to begin siting and planning for next year's tree stock. We try to add trees to our home orchard every single year, sometimes just a couple, sometimes more.

Now with 27 acres, it may seem that our choices are very different than yours, but in fact, with a large herd of goats, the areas that we can ensure are 100% goat-proof are no larger than many people's good-sized yards. Moreover, because of our cold climate, we have to site many of our most sensitive trees and shrubs in an area the smaller than many urban courtyards. While our area has seen -30 more than once (although technically we're in zone 5, our elevation makes it colder), we have a smaller, southfacing area protected on three sides by our house that was Eric's grandparents garden. It has the best soil on the property (it was trucked in ;-)), and some of the best drainage, but most of all, has a dramatically different microclimate than the rest of our property. Here we grow peaches, apricots, quinces and medlars. otherwise much too tender for our place.

In many ways, we are dealing with the same constraints in orchard planning that those on much smaller pieces of property are dealing with - never as much space as we'd like, limitations of climate and soil, etc... still, we are finally, after 10 years, making significant inroads into our family's considerable appetite for fresh and preserved fruit. We've learned a few major lessons in the meantime, that perhaps you can learn from me more quickly, and without as many mistakes ;-).

The five fruit trees - two apricots, two apples and a quince that we planted on one of the first days after we arrived in our new home 10 years ago are all gone, and they revealed with the wisdom of a lesson I knew, but ignored - don't plant fruit trees the minute you arrive in a place. It takes a year of watching land for sun, soil, and water - and sometimes longer to learn what your plans are. We looked at the "zone 5" designation and assumed that everything would survive here if they had the same numbers on it. In fact, that is, as any gardener worth their salt knew, ridiculous (in our defense, this was the very first time we'd lived anywhere we could plant trees and we were very excited). The first two apricots sulked for three years and succumbed to cold and wet. One of the apples and the quince did very well - but were sited on the sunny northwest slope right behind the house - exactly where later, when Eric's grandparents changed their minds about having a small separate house built and wanted to be closer to us, we would build the addition. Neither survived being moved again. The final apple tree was planted at what I thought was a perfectly reasonable distance back from the driveway to keep it safe from the snowplows. It didn't even make it through that first winter ;-).

The second lesson we learned is how productive making good use of microclimates can be - we have a sheltered area near our house that is several zones higher than the rest of the property - and by making good use of that, we have been able to not only grow warmer climate fruit, but also to minimize pest and disease issues, because so few people near us grow peaches or apricots, we don't have the same trouble we have with transmitted diseases that we would have in an area where they were more common. Again, this is a watch, wait, learn thing - although we've found that if you have cats, they are invariable identifiers of the warmest spots, inside and out.

On a related note, expanding our horizons fruit-wise had been a good thing for us. Quinces, medlars, the aforementioned peaches and apricots, and unusual fruits like Aronia have tended to do well here, in part probably because so few other people were growing them. It does involve a shift in the way we eat - but mostly a pleasurable one.

Still another lesson has been to think hard about the preservation value of the fruits we've been choosing. - because most families won't eat a couple of trees worth of fruit in the period where it comes ripe, it is worth asking some significant questions. Does it store well as is? Does it come ripe over a long period, or have to be dealt with all at once? Does it ripen at a time when I have the ability to preserve it? How does my family like this preserved? What kinds of preservation might be open to me? Sometimes people write me telling me that they don't eat jam or like sauce, so what can they do with things? There are often other options, but really, if you don't want to preserve something and you don't have a large family or lots of friends to share with, a very few trees, or one or none are going to be enough.

For us, devout apple eaters, getting a full season of apples has been a priority. We want apples as close to all year round as possible, so we emphasize long storing varieties (Mutsu and winesap are our best keepers in the imperfect conditions we can manage, usually lasting into April), as well as early apples that get us started again as early as we can. Other families might be content to enjoy apples only in the fall and early winter. In warmer climates, where citrus produces all winter apples may be an occasional treat.

Filling the early gap between the last winter fruits and the first strawberries has been a priority - we are experimenting with honey berries to see if they are worth the effort, because they produce in late May here, during a season when there's not much but rhubarb.

If you can only fit in a very few trees, or if you need your fruit to be portable, in large barrels, because you may move or don't own, choose what you like best for fresh eating. There's nothing like juice dripping down your chin or the first taste of a ripe fig, so make sure you get that if nothing else. If you can expand into preservation, so much the better, but in many places bulk purchase for preservation or pick-your-owns can fill that gap for those without much space.

We've found that hegelkulture, or mound beds help us with drainage and fertility issues, and that our trees do best when planted in mixed plantings - the exception to this are plums, which seem to pollinate best when planted very close together. Most of our shrubs aren't as fussy.

The most important lesson we've used is to think creatively about hard-to-use spaces. We knew that in terms of organic production, wet areas can be more productive than cultivated farmland in nature - but we wondered if it was possible to begin shifting wet areas that had been turned into (mushy) pasture into vibrant, diverse food, fiber and fuel producing areas that support both wildlife and us, and our early explorations fo this have been quite successful. Coppiced willow hay helps feed our goats all winter in wet areas. Elderberries, cranberry viburnum and blueberries along with swamp white oaks, alders and wetland herbs like marshmallow and blue vervain combine to create diverse and extremely productive areas. We certainly haven't maximized production, but we are seeing the possibilities expand before us.

Learning to do things ourselves has been another lesson - at first we were limited to what trees were available in catalogs, and while there is a wonderful selection out there, it can get expensive. We've learned to do some grafting and much more propagation - layering alone can get you dozens of lovely shrubs. By talking to neighbors and taking cuttings and working with their extras, we've found that it is possible to get more plants than we thought possible.

Over the years we've made better choices, and while we still aren't keeping up with the fruit desires of our voracious herd of little boys, we get closer every year.

Sharon

sastyk Tue, 10/11/2011 - 03:51

Tags

We have apples but they are wormy. What do you do you do to contain the greed of the worms? We don't spray our trees and hope we don't have to resort to that method.

This was a remedy my dad used. He took 2 liter soda bottles,cut out a piece on the side, put (I believe) apple cider vinegar in it and hung it on the tree. I tried it on my plum tree and as I recall, it worked.

would that work on the little weird wormy bugs that I find in my neighbors (unsprayed, generally ignored) cherries here in the D.C. area?

She says I can have all the cherries but they are all full of these bugs so not worth canning....

Help!

I couldn't agree more, Sharon!

The idea of polyculturing pasture and including shrubs increases the yield unbelievably. Just recently, in Small Farm Canada magazine, there was an article on exactly this issue. They've been running tests, and in one case a polyculture (no shrubs, but everything else, up to and including fodder turnip and mangel-wurzels)produced something like 10 tons per acre, if I'm remembering correctly. The problem (?!) was harvest--it was far too coarse for a haying machine, so they put it in silage. Where we are on Vancouver Island (anyone else out there near us?) we're lucky enough that, with rotational grazing, the pasture can feed the animals for the most part of the year. You still need to put up some hay, but we're pretty lucky, from what I gather. Of course, I'm still in the "R&D" phase of anything bigger than poultry! ;)

But I'm gonna ask again, because I'm *really* curious, and because we want goats in the not-too-distant future: What is willow hay? Is a particular kind of willow needed? I've never heard of such a thing!

Cheers!

When it comes to feeding the fruit desires of little boys, you must plant some of the wonderful varieties of mulberry tree available now. Abundant fruit with great, sweet-tart flavor; grow-anywhere, vigorous trees. The best choice...take it from a former little boy.

bugs in fruit- ah, you're going to discover a vast wealth of advice on that topic- it's an ancient favorite for unending discussion and opinion. :-) Best place to start- don't let the wormy fruit lie and rot- feed it to your goats/chickens/pigs. Or compost it, hot.

Sharon- you may like to know that "chestnut hay" was made often by early settlers. They would repeatedly cut the shoots from chestnut trees cut down to clear land; dry it, put it in the barn; good fodder for ruminants.

Sheet Mulching

sastyk — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 09:03:28 +0000

Sheet Mulching

Kate at "Living the Frugal Life" has a great post on the merits and techniques of sheet mulching in the garden. Since this has been the key to soil improvement (and we have dreadful soil) in our garden, I wanted to highlight it.

Significant soil improvement is one of them. This isn't exactly surprising; it's routinely mentioned as the "other" benefit of the technique besides weed control. But knowing intellectually that it would help the soil didn't quite prepare me for the fat earthworms I've been coming across. They're not inordinately long as worms go, but they are rotund. Wider than a pencil by a long shot; embonpoint, even. I hope it's not the case that the obesity epidemic has now spread as far as earthworms. But clearly these worms aren't going hungry. Their presence is both an indicator of healthy soil as well as a guarantee that the soil will be even better over time. Every earthworm is a mobile factory of soil fertility, and I count each sighting as a blessing. I also see, year by year, healthier plants that are better able to withstand the vagaries of stressful growing seasons.

The other benefits of lasagna mulching all have to do with what I believe are leading indications of the changes that global climate weirding are going to bring to my region. More than one model of climate change that I've seen predicts routine summertime drought across much of the US. My immediate region is forecast to escape the worst of this trend, but still the summers could still be drier than they historically have been. The last two summers here certainly have been that way, whether or not they were part of an emerging new pattern. Mulching and good organic content in the topsoil are critically important for plants dealing with water stress. Mulching because it curbs evaporative loss of moisture. And high organic content because organic matter acts like a sponge, soaking up water and releasing it slowly as plants need it. Lasagna mulching provides for both of these.

The flip side of the dry spells predicted under the climate change models is a pattern of more violent storms. This may seem contradictory, but it really isn't when you look at the meteorological explanations. Namely, a more energetic (warmer) atmosphere that is able to carry and move more water vapor. And in any case, whether it makes intuitive sense or not, this is exactly what we saw this year: About ten weeks of rain too insignificant to help the garden crops followed by a hurricane and a tropical storm that washed out roads, flooded farmlands, wiped out crops, and carried topsoil straight into the waterways, not to mention killing a few people and destroying a few homes. Our garden certainly took damage from these storms, and we had standing water in the portion of our backyard that is just barely lower than our garden. But careful inspection of the garden itself proved that we lost no topsoil at all to the heavy rains. Again, I believe credit goes to the lasagna mulching.

Most writers emphasize the merits of deep mulch for water retention, and those are very real. What I like about Kate's post is that it also mentions the rarely-noted quality that sheet mulch makes a huge difference where there is too much water. I don't just mean that it protects the garden from erosion, which it does, but areas that get flooded that are mulched simply do much better. We not only don't lose soil, but we don't lose as many plants to drowning. I'm not sure why - my guess is that the better soil structure makes it less prone to saturation generally, but the difference is quite remarkable.

I do find that have to rake off some of the winter's mulch in early spring for planting here, because it does delay soil warm up, but that is the only negative among many positives (I haven't even seen that we have more slugs and snails in the mulch, although ymmv).

My favorite benefit of all, however, is that sheet mulching permits people to do substantive garden expansions without any equipment at all - and now is the time to do it. Put enough layers of organic material on cardboard or newspaper over the winter and the material will both smother grass and weeds and break down enough to be plantable in spring. No digging, no painful sod removal, no tilling, no bringing huge quantities of weed seeds into the light. What's not to love?

Sheet mulching is even doable on a farm scale, we're finding. Rotting large bales of hay can be moved to our farm, combined with large quantities of goat and chicken manure (composted), brush piles and leaves left in bags on the street (the bags get laid down in long rows to mulch the beds) and while I can't cover acres, I can make signficant spaces for further production. With a bulldozer or a tractor I could do more, of course, a la Sepp Holzer's brush berms, but the results are pretty impressive already.

Sharon

sastyk Thu, 10/06/2011 - 05:03

Tags

"Rotting large bales of hay can be moved to our farm"

eee! Beware beware of weed seed from problems you don't have- yet.

The voice of very painful experience here! In my case- a batch of pig manure spread in the garden- and 3 years later we gave up and moved the garden.

I don't think we have any weed seed problems we don't have yet ;-).

I haven't had much luck with sheet mulching as a way to way to start new beds. It helps suppress seed germination once you get to 8 or 10 inches of mulch, but the grasses and perennial weeds are barely phased. So YMMV. I solarize for 6 weeks, then mulch, then weed daily for a while, and finally Round-Up anything that has managed to survive. (Mostly lirope and violets.)

But vast expanses of mulch is practically my favorite garden thing!

One good way to reduce the weed seed problem is to have at least one really hot phase in your compost cycle. Our compost gets hot enough to be seriously uncomfortable, and we don't use anything in it to really raise the temperature. If you add green manure to the compost once it's partly broken down, the nitrogen kick can get the temperature up to the point where most seeds are sterilized.

I haven't had much luck with sheet mulching as a way to way to start new beds. It helps suppress seed germination once you get to 8 or 10 inches of mulch, but the grasses and perennial weeds are barely phased.

Sounds like you don't have enough "sheet" at the bottom of your sheet mulch - ideally you're looking for at least 3 layers of heavy-duty cardboard (or similar), overlapped a good long way. I've sheet-mulched over some really heavy-duty invasive grasses and perennial weeds with good results. Admittedly the equisetum is now starting to break through, but that stuff will grow through reinforced concrete...

Mike McGroarty (FreePlants.com) claims eight layers of newspaper is what you want; it is as good as landscape cloth for suppressing weeds, and you don't have to drag it out of the soil in later years.

So if you want to use newspaper, I imagine eight sheets thick is the goal, if not the minimum.

I've never found newspaper to be a great sheet mulching material - the sheets are too small to get enough overlap. Better than nothing, but not ideal in my experience.

What I have used to quite good effect is triple layer paper chicken-feed sacks, opened out. Again, you need to overlap them a long way to prevent the more invasive plants from sneaking through between the layers - I usually aim for 3 layers, fully overlapped.

Thanks for the mention, Sharon. Your point about lasagna/sheet mulching being a viable alternative to mechanical tilling is an excellent one that I neglected to mention in my post. Sometimes I get so myopic with my own practices that I forget to step back, think about, and point out all the benefits and reasons behind what I'm doing. Thanks for including that point.

Salvaging My Garden

sastyk — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:19:39 +0000

Salvaging My Garden

Yesterday afternoon we put our work aside and drove down into the Schoharie Valley, at least as far as we could go. We wanted to check on friends in the area, and we had called down to Schoharie Valley Farms to see how they were doing and also ask about the status of the flowers I had ordered for a bar mitzvah this weekend. Despite the fact that just about everything else they had was destroyed, the flowers were unscathed. Moreover, they told us that since no one in the town had power, lights or time to preserve, we could come down and buy anything they had to preserve. So down we went, and came back with a few boxes of tomatoes and peppers and some sweet corn.

This was hardly altruism (although one thing you can do for some flooded out farmers is buy any produce they had picked before the disaster and preserve it, since they often won't have a market in place and need the money!). Most of my garden was destroyed by the flooding - the tomatoes I bought for them may be the last ones I get this year. I know there are other farmers, but I suspect they will be inundated with requests, and most of our sources of additional produce had it worse than we did. If you'd like to make a donation to those flooded out in Schoharie County, please do so - you can go here to donate, and just earmark your donation for flood victims. I suspect they've got other things to do besides update the website, but they are accepting flood donations. (Hat tip to Emma and Deb for pointing this out to me!!!)

The other project for today, besides making roasted yellow tomato salsa and freezing chopped up peppers is salvaging what I can out of my garden, and doing what I can to preserve it. Some of the onions can probably be dried before fungal diseases take them. The squash are hopeless, but there are a few lingering cukes, and the corn can be fed as fodder to the goats at least if I cut the stalks by hand. There are tomatillos still viable, and green tomatoes that can be pickled.

n her superb book _This Organic Life_ writer Joan Dye Gussow talks about making do with flood damaged produce - and why she doesn't just go out and buy fresh, perfect stuff.

"We harvested 37 pounds of onions, but despite my best efforts, some of them cured with soft spots where mold had gotten underneath the outer layers and would work its sway through the whole onion if we didn't stop it. So we had to cut up many onions and freeze the good parts - or cook them. All of which accounts for the fact that a year and a half after we arrived in Piermont, I found myself one morning cutting up a half-rotten onion to salvage, and realized that a year earlier I would have thrown the whole thing away." Gussow, 103

And

"The lesson I take away from the realization that our crops will sometimes be drowned is not that those of us who live in the colder states can't be relatively self-reliant; we can. And although Alan and I would have been wise to choose higher ground, I've seen no sensible agricultural scenario that suggests that anything can be done to insulate food production from the vagaries of nature. If we wish to feed ourselves from our own regions, and allow others to do the same, we will need to try and adjust our choices and our appetites to what Nature will provide in a given year. We need accept the fact that in some years we won't have al the potatoes and onions we want. On the other hand, we will sometimes have more raspberries than we can eat, and the crops that succeed will be both safe and tasty." Gussow, 107-108

Why spend my day out among the rotting vegetables looking for the good ones? Most simply because it is food, and you don't just waste it.

This, I think, is a mindset that is worth getting into early on. It would be easy to say "oh, it was a terrible crop, why bother." Or perhaps to say that the birds can have the last of the sunflower heads - and perhaps they are entitled to a share of the grain as well. Fair enough, but now they've had their share, and I'm taking mine. Even if it is imperfect. Even if it wasn't what I dreamed of.

We live in a world that throws away nearly half of all the food it produces - and a world where we increasingly struggle to feed everyone. There's a connection there - the food I don't salvage is lost, and I buy in the markets. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the markets, but everything I waste, that is lost that doesn't have to be costs us something.

The ability to make something of vegetables caught by frost, flooded, stunted by drought, partially eaten by some creature is one of our gifts - food preservation methods can mean that something that would otherwise have been lost can be saved - onions that won't store well can be dehydrated or frozen, as Gussow points out. Or new recipes arise for green tomato pickles, the outer leaves of cabbage and green pumpkin pie. It is food, and you don't waste it.

Today, in front of the woodstove, my children and I will draw back the husks of what corn survived and hang it up to dry further in the house. Most of the ears are full, some are not, but we will save what we can - because it is our food. When we committed to growing it, we committed to this - that we will regard our food as primary. I've no sorrow in buying to replace a lost crop when needed, but if I grow it, and I possibly can, I will eat what I grow before I rely on other sources.

It is hard to believe how differently people who live through food scarcity regard food - in some cultures, to tread on a piece of dropped bread is a sin, and a deep one. In Elizabeth Erlich's superb memoir _Miriam's Kitchen_ she observes her Holocaust survivor mother-in-law using her thumb to ensure that every drop of egg white was removed from a shell. When she enquires, her mother in law observes that her own father died of starvation - how could she ever waste food? We blur and grey the fact that there is a connection between the food lost to waste and the hunger of others - it is not as direct as "children are starving in India so finish your twinkie" but what you buy and grow and use shapes markets that transform the lives of others.

We are told that the only good and safe and healthy food is perfect - we are lied to and told that perfect looking is the same as tasty, safe and healthy. Up to 20% of all produce in the US is discarded and wasted simply because of cosmetic imperfections. We thus lose the old habits of thrift and care, and the value that says "this is food, we do not let it go to waste."

So out we go, to scavenge in the mud for our food. And then back to the kitchen to transform the muddy, imperfect and nearly lost into the delicious and perfect - the roasted tomatillo sauce, the green tomato pickles, the peach jam and leather, the spiced plum chutney, the roasted corn salsa. There is treasure in the mud, good food for the claiming, and we will not let it go.

Sharon

sastyk Wed, 08/31/2011 - 04:19

Tags

Wishing those in the flooded areas a quick return to drier ground. Thank you for the wake up on not wasting food. Here in very dry South Texas my garden has been barren for weeks, although there are still some figs that may ripen. My fall planting may have to be delayed due to intense heat.

What a wonderful story. It's a great reminder that the pretty-but-bland produce we get in stores is not what we should be eating. And helping those farmers recover quickly makes sure they'll continue to provide for your community in the future.

Just a question: how do you know if food from a flooded garden is safe? I've been reading about sewage, dead animals, and toxins in flooded rivers...

It really depends on knowing what's around you and where the water came from and went through - in my case, it is safe - I know how the water's path went and nothing really troubling is there. For folks dealing, as they are in the valley below me, with sewage backups and spilled diesel fuel, you have to let it go. In general, if it flooded up from a river, you've got more problems than if it flooded as it did on my property, on the way down a hill.

Sharon

Best wishes for rapid (and thorough) recovery.

A quick question on direct recycling - how suitable are these spoilage items for slops/livestock feed? I had a cousin who was a chef, and all of their trimmings/spoilage went either as slops or composting. (P&Gs in New Paltz - don't know if they still operate that way)

A farm I once visited (in South Korea) actually takes a portion of its corn harvest every year and leaves it - cob, husk, and stalk - to ferment until winter. Then, when the weather hits its coldest and the chickens are at their most vulnerable, they feed it to them as a booster for their immune system. I'm not sure if this would work with corn that has already been soaked, but I suppose it's worth a try for anyone with an excess of corn they can't make use of.

Outages force a trip to past
Residents resort to games, candles

Widespread power outages across Massachusetts, which entered their fourth day yesterday, have cast whole neighborhoods back in time to the days of candles and board games, denying families their appliances and electronics and forcing them to lean on friends and their own ingenuity to stay fed, clean, and entertained.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/09/01/7000…

Glad you and your family are fine.
Gleaning and salvaging definitely are an integral part of gardening, no matter where you are. Preach on!

Glad to hear you are safe. I live in Florida, and when I was a child, my mother would take me and my sister to an elderly neighbor's house every year before the first freeze to pick oranges and lemons. the neighbor had 7 or 8 trees in her yard and was not able to harvest (or eat) all of the fruit. We would go pick it before the cold weather ruined it, and spend a week or 2 juicing citrus. We'd have 5 or 6 electric juicers going at once and ended up with so much juice we would give some away and freeze some.
I moved to the other Florida coast years later, and a friend of mine was raving about some orange juice he bought at a roadside stand. He took me there and as we pulled up, I laughed! It was called Indian River Fruit, and the juice was from oranges grown just down the road from where I grew up!

We're in Day 5 of our vacation from electricity, thanks to Hurricane Irene -- and thankful that I took yours and others advice about storing up for emergencies. The rain barrels and the 30 gallons of potable water I'd gradually stowed away in the basement (in empty seltzer bottles) have come in very, very handy. But I have to say I've been neglecting the garden in favor of eating up what we had in the fridge and freezer. Tonight we're taking the rest of the salvage (black beans, tamales, arepas, bacon, casito and so on) over to friends who have their power back. Feasts, after all, were the original solution to the problem of perishable foods!

Amen, Sharon! I'm thankful to have lost none of my crops, though I prepared as if I would. What I have at present is an abundance (and I'm talking ABUNDANCE) of egg yolks - probably close to 100 of them, from the innards of the stewing hens we butchered today. I'm scrambling for ways to use them - sorry, no pun intended - so they are not wasted. It would just feel wrong, and dishonorable, and disrespectful, to waste them. I'm glad you and yours are ok, even if you did lose crops. And thank goodness indeed that you won't starve for those losses!

Sharon,

Glad you and your family (2 and 4 footed) are all ok.

It has been a few years since our Columbus Day Storm in 1962, but you never forget watching trees snap like matchsticks - often into houses, cars and powerlines and the loss of life (48)and the aftermath flooding and cleanup. You really get to see just how wonderful people can be.... And then there are the politicians. Over the years, I have repeatedly wanted to throttle some of them, but there was an assemblyman from Connecticut, I think, that really takes the cake. He was on the news blaming his local power company because the power is not back on yet. The fact that most of the roads were washed out, trees across power lines and roads and water everywhere never phased him he is grandstanding for the camera. There were reportedly people and trucks from other states who are giving their time, equipment and expertise to assist the people of his town. He didn't even have the class to back up his local utility let alone the wonderful guys and gals who have come to help. He must be married to the whiney woman who was upset because her kids had to suffer without their electronics. Looked to me as if the boys were old enough to be helping neighbors and community out. My husband was a helicoptor pilot who worked forest fires and I got to see first hand how exhausted crews just kept at it until the fires were out. Same with the utility, first responders etc.etc., working the east coast right now. And Joplin and New Orleans and....Shame on you assemblyman, your constituents deserve a lot better. Ok, rant over.

One of our local farmers suggested that we contact the US ag department to support aid to SMALL farmers, say under what, a hundred acres? Heard a figure of 30,000 chicken lost to flooding. I'm leading a fight for backyard hens in my town, and just added a large wire dog carrier to my preparedness list in case I have to evacuate. After I get chickens ok'd, I think ducks are next:)

Blessings,

Sue B

thank blogs post. slimmingdiet34 tahtakale shopsmedincense eminonu. It really depends on knowing what's around you and where the water came from and went through - in my case, it is safe - I know how the water's path went and nothing really troubling is there

What's Going On At Your Place?

sastyk — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 08:25:17 +0000

What's Going On At Your Place?

I have one more crazy week involving travel and lots of other responsibilities, culminating in our final home visit in our foster care certification (as some of you will recall, we had a tough visit our second time with a social worker who was totally appalled by the farm - our social worker's supervisor kindly agreed to come out so that we won't have to deal with shifting standards (our own social worker is totally cool with it) and can be clear what we need to do and what is ok), so there will be little content this week.

So I'm asking y'all to provide content - tell me what you are doing. It is June, we're hitting the transition to summer, there's a lot going on. What are you working on? What's up in your garden? What's your next big summer project? What are you organizing, building, doing now?

In my next post I'll be putting up pictures - a visual account of what we're doing. If you have photos of your big stuff, put in a link - I'd love to see them!

Sharon

sastyk Fri, 06/17/2011 - 04:25

Tags

The squash are blooming but haven't set yet. We're nibbling on a few tomatoes already, along with teeny tiny alpine strawberries. Picked our first plum yesterday. The peppers are growing along with the eggplant.

Big summer projects? Staying out of the heat! Cleaning the house for possible family visit. Losing weight and getting in shape (see my new blog for reports on that). Cleaning out and organizing office to provide workout space at home.

Biggest concern now is for family and friends under mandatory evacuation due to the big, fast-moving Monument fire down south near the border. Hoping they don't lose their homes in today's red flag (HIGH winds, LOW humidity - like 5%) conditions.

Aha, Independence Days!

We have peas, garlic, onions, rhubarb, chard, bok choi, tomatoes, lettuce, kale, beans, runner beans, blueberries, apples, grapes, potatoes, sunchokes, perennial herbs, eggplants, pie cherries, sunflowers, hops, summer squash and winter squash in good shape. The figs are recovering from the last freeze, as are the kiwis, but they are too young to produce, as are the cherries, pears, goumi, aronia, and quinces. The peaches, nectarines and plums, OTOH, have severe leaf disease and I had to firewood the plums and a nectarine. The deer have disappeared for this year and there are suddenly a bazillion starlings, who like to entertain themselves by pulling up corn seedlings. Must replant.

We have already dried and put away a lot of mint, oregano, celery and chives. Plantain is next on the list, there's a lot of it.

A predator is invading the chicken coop in spite of all I can do and that's really taken the wind out of our sails.

We are in the Pacific Northwest and worrying about hot particles on some of our broad-leaved produce and such -- very glad we have a deep well in heavy clay, and we have saved a up lot of pre-2011 food. YMMV on this; I have been called everything from idiotic for worrying (about 95% of "respondents") and idiotic for not running for my life (5%).

Our new neighbors have turned out well and we chat back and forth across the fence. They are third-generation local kids who understand country things. We may have our first 80 degree day next week and I am prepared to continue brooming outbuilding roofs with white roofing compound for higher albedo.

@Chile, :( hope they come through ok.

We picked up our first CSA box this week! Lettuce, strawberries, rhubarb, chard, garlic scapes. I've frozen 1 quart of the strawberries for future use, the rest of this week's loot we plan to eat fresh. Mmmmm!

Like Risa I am in the NW and have some of the same concerns as she (had to look up albedo though :)) Herbs Elecampane and comfrey have gone nuts with all of our rain and the brussels sprouts, peas, broccoli, kale, lettuce etc are loving our weather but the peppers and tomatoes are sulking.
Am giving up and planting corn in the hoop house, trying one of Carol Deppe's (The Resilient Gardener) short season flint corns and peppers. Grumpy as I am about our weather here, when I look at all the fires, tornadoes and floods elsewhere I feel truly blessed. Bumblebees have taken over for the honeybees here and like last year am letting some things go to flower that I wouldn't ordinarily so that they will have plenty.

Our of all the bad news, a bright spot: Just heard yesterday that the Catherine Ferguson school for pregnant and parenting teens in Detroit that was scheduled for permanent closure has be purchased by a charter school and will remain open continuing with the same programs that have resulted in a 90% graduation (& college acceptance) rate for these at risk girls. That in itself is truly remarkable story, but for urban farmers like myself, this story is relevant because a part of the school curriculum is the growing and maintaining of an urban organic garden. In addition, there is a complete orchard, chickens,rabbits and goats. They built & did the solar barn raising themselves and the feed for the animals is grown elsewhere by the science and english teachers and baled by the students. In my mind, this is the way education is supposed to work.

Sue

First harvest of the herbs (all the mints, the oregano, chamomile, chives, and thyme) either tonight (if the rain holds off) or tomorrow (if I don't have to work), a trip to the Farmer's market (ditto if not working), looking forward to next week's CSA basket (I'm on a half share, so I get one every two weeks - made barley and roasted asparagus risotto with the last one - sooooooooooooo good!).

And as always - laundry (love sheets dried on the line!), the car needs a desperate cleaning, the dogs need grooming, the garden needs weeding, I want to start another batch of chive flower vinegar while the flowers last, and to try tarragon vinegar...

Community garage sale on Saturday, to support my nephew's hockey team's trip to Europe next year - hopefully, I'll be able to pick up some canning jars and other glass storage containers!

Lettuce and spinach need harvesting, and the miner-damaged leaves of chard and beets picked off, the squash bed needs fertilizing (thanks to the local alpaca farm, I have some decent manure!), the potatoes need hilling, and I need to look into replacing the lilac transplants that didn't make it (free from my sister's lilac bush, so not a surprise they didn't all live). I have to figure out if the clematis that got mistakenly cut off will live, or if I need another one, and I'm going to look for some large pots at "end of season" sales - might try salad green replants in pots, instead of the main garden.

The lawn needs mowing - now that I've replaced the mower that I killed while cutting the neighbour's lawn - apparently, mowers don't like running over water shut-offs - who knew? (I didn't do it on purpose, just didn't realize it was there!).

Food needs cooking (pasta with spinach, maybe?), the house needs cleaning, and I really want to get rid of the rest of the carpet and complete the kitchen tear-out, so we can do the (hopefully) last big dump run.

Why do I think it won't all get done by Monday??

Happy Summer Solstice to you all! (Well, nearly, eh?)

We just really finished planting the garden and it's near time to start the fall planting. More and more, it's a continuous process. We've planted the biggest garden ever utilizing front yeard, back yard and community garden space. I didn't think we'd be canning anywhre near close to the 500 jars of food again this year but if all those tomatoes produce...

And that's a big if. With a late spring, weeks of pretty steady rain and cold temps, followed by two consecutive days in the 100s, then back to below nromal temps, well, it's been an interesting start to the garden this year. Everyone's saying the same thing, "Weird weather we're having." I help coordinate a community garden and we've lost a number of gardeners to the weather challenges and weeds that thrive in any weather conditions. I'm filling in abandoned spaces with folks who are readily adaptable and encouraging the others to try again next year.

At home, we're amassing wood as last fall's weird weather produced large and late storms that took down many branches and entire trees in some cases. Our back yard is piled high at the moment with wood that still needs to be cut to length and split.

We've added another water barrel to capture rain water and managed to organize and clean the basement. I actually hung a hammock and have even used it a couple of times. (Not without "Curious George" joining me in a sea-storming journey back to Africa as the hammock is re-imagined a boat crossing the ocean but still...I've been in it!)

Homeschool curriculum moves outdoors this time of year.

My only building project for now is entirely recreational... a deck.

My spring crops are played out. It was a good year for strawberries. The garlic is curing and I need to pull the dead pea plants up this weekend and follow both beds with a second set of black beans. I'm picking up a couple of loads of compost this weekend to dress my garden and trees.

The summer garden is mostly just cucumbers and herbs at this point. (Local grass-fed bison burgers topped with fresh basil leaves? Oh yeah.) Blackberries and blueberries will be here within a couple of weeks. Some of my young fruit trees are practicing fruiting, so those fruits need to be bagged soon.

And after a month of nearly 100F days and no rain, we got 1/3". Woo hoo!

Now the bad news...
A very small part of "my" property is a tax delinquent property owned by the state, which I learned at the closing table when I bought this place. No biggie, I thought. Who on earth would want this tiny 0.08 acre landlocked parcel from me? For heavens sake, it's only assessed at $320! I applied to buy the property from over a year ago. I finally got a response today, saying that there was ann application ahead of me in the queue?!

If someone else buys it, I smell a legal fight coming. This state has laws about requiring access to landlocked properties but I am NOT tearing out my orchard so someone can put in a driveway to a tiny plot where they don't have room for septic lines. They would have to compensate me for my orchard, but the trees are young (and technically not worh much) and they can't compensate me for the time lost establishing a new orchard. Nor would it leave me a good place to start new ones.

Nor do I want a scar running through the wooded tract on my larger lot in front of it property. Nor do I want to dig up my walnut trees (on that parcel) and relocate them... to where, I don't know. Grrrr.

But frankly, it is probably it is worth the legal fees I'd incur. And once there's an ugly legal battle, how could we ever be neighbors?

At this point, my only hope is either the other person doesn't buy it, or the other applicant is my neighbor on that side. Or I can manage to make the project so expensive and time consuming for them they give up and sell it to me.

Or rather, NOT worth the legal fees.

This has been a perfect spring and early summer here in eastern-central Illinois -- plenty of rain, and if weren't for the rabbits it would be like gardening Eden. My gardening partner Jeff and I have been harvesting early turnips and carrots, the tomatoes and peppers are flowering, and the green bean patch is burgeoning. The early lettuce and spinach are about done. Basil and Italian flat-leaf parsley are doing well. The soil here on this high bluff by the Mississippi is much superior to the reddish clay I had to deal with over in Missouri.

I wish, wish, wish I could speak of the progress on the homestead. Sadly, we are away from home with lovely neighbors keeping watch, gathering eggs and (hopefully) harvesting. When we left the bull's blood beets, purple-top turnips, and carrots were near ready. The peaches were growing nicely and the cherries had already been harvested. The vetch and winter wheat were already jungle-height and I can only imagine are continuing their reach skyward.

I know my dear neighbor reads this blog. Maybe, just maybe, she can post about the state of the garden and tell us all how it's doing. :)

Risa, as you've probably mentioned to said 5 percent, trouble is, run where?
personally, I'm planning to stay here and stew (mentally, that is). : } .
We have finally finished our greenhouse, which is a wonderful feeling. It looks much bigger in person than it did in my head. Project 2, put in some automatic vent openers. It was cool when I left this morning, and I in a hurry, and forgot to open them, and husband arrived home to find it 120 degrees in there. He says my basil and eggplant starts look fine...
Most vent openers use gas and you have to replace the cylinders every so often, not so good. I did find one that claims to use expanding wax, presumably forever. For a slightly higher fee.
The garden looks lovely. We expanded from three beds to five; poor dogs have much less yard room now. Tomatoes are looking gorgeous (I had a cold frame for the first time, and they took off like rockets), and are starting to bloom. Peas, broccoli and brussels sprouts growing like crazy (I've never grown brussels sprouts before!); kale, chard, peppers, leeks, carrots and cabbages starting a growth spurt, lettuces gorgeous and big enough to start picking, spinach ditto. They may be radioactive, but boy they are pretty.
Basil still tiny, hasn't taken hold yet; thyme and oregano just getting established. Potatoes coming up; I got them in late. Just this morning spotted tiny buds on the Heavenly Blue morning glories. After months of frustration at being far behind schedule, I'm feeling gloriously happy. There are six quinces on my little quince tree -- such a harvest -- but the apples and cherries bloomed and produced very poorly. Maybe next year. Have high-ish hopes for the raspberries and strawberries. Have given away to various friends a number of starts I couldn't manage to cram into the garden. Have dried nearly a gallon of spearmint, and a small amount of lemon balm, peppermint and fir needles but have been too busy with the garden to start much preserving yet. May yet try to find time to make rose water, but the damask isn't producing heavily this year, possibly to being chopped back in mid-spring. Mason bees came and filled in most of the holes in the house we made for them. It hit 75 degrees today, which is, I personally feel, plenty hot enough, but most people around are rejoicing that it's finally warming up. At least maybe my lemon cukes and zukes will consent to sprout.

Weeding, weeding and more weeding. Lots of spinach, lettuce and strawberries. Coming soon - cabbage, brocolli, cauliflower, beets and raspberries. Worst crop of peas ever probably due to crazy weather here in No. Illinois. Cool then hot and dry, then cool... Have developed a bad case of sciatica so everything takes twice as long but that mean the house suffers as gardens and animals come first.

Here in central Virginia, we are eating the last heads of lettuce, and fava beans. A huge pea harvest this year - (mostly snow peas). I am harvesting the last bed soon for drying. I am planning to use these as a cover crop this fall and any extras for pea sprouts. (I planted too many varieties to keep the seed pure for planting.) My plan was to plant as many peas and favas as I could in mid February - primarily as soil builders and then whatever I harvested was extra.

I am harvesting lots of garlic. (I planted 3 beds). I just read that it is good to harvest them while they still have 6 green leaves. It said to cure them slowly (not in the hot sun). I am trying to harvest while the soil is dry, but we are having thunderstorms every day now.

Kale and chard are huge and happy. I am harvesting the purple pod beans that I planted in early April. The beans, tomatoes, peppers and eggplants are happy, flowering, and beginning to fruit. The cowpeas look like they have a virus, but will probably grow fine anyway.

October beans are flowering and soybeans are growing.

I planted rutabagas and parsnips, yesterday before the afternoon thunderstorm.

I am waiting for my order of sweet potato slips to arrive. I hope they come soon!

The potatoes were planted late. We were expanding the garden and it took longer than expected to dig the new beds. They all look fine.

We are still eating sweet potatoes from storage, and finishing up the last quart of tomatoes from the freezer.( I still have about 50 pints in canning jars!) One more pint of peppers in the freezer and a few sprouted potatoes from the root cellar that need to be cooked.

I have been freezing some greens and put some snow peas in the freezer. I might freeze some of the purple podded beans - I think they taste good frozen.

Onlar inÅa ve kendileri ve hayvanlar iÃ§in bilim ve Ä°ngilizce Ã¶Äretmenleri tarafÄ±ndan baÅka bir yerde yetiÅir ve Ã¶Ärenciler tarafÄ±ndan baled besleme yÃ¼kselterek gÃ¼neÅ ahÄ±r yaptÄ±.

Here in Central Texas we're in the midst of an exceptional drought; 3" of rain so far this year and not much last year. Plus it's been over 100 degrees every day in June with hot, dry winds pulling every drop of moisture out of the plants. We're used to hot weather, just not this early. Luckily, I inter-planted sunflowers and melons, corn and sweet potatoes. The taller plants are shading the vines fairly well. Pole beans planted on the west side of the bush bean bed are doing the same. Kale is surviving under floating row cover and tomatoes had a great run and are now waning, somewhat protecting the bell peppers. Normally, melons and sweet potatoes would last until Nov., but I don't know if I want to spend the water. I've been getting by with twice a week so far, but we're about to enter Stage 3 water restrictions which will limit use to once a week. My 9 tree orchard is only two years old and so is still vulnerable. On a more positive note, we're keeping our house comfortable with only 2 hours of AC use per day.

Hello from New Zealand. We are about to head into the coldest part of our winter, July and August.
The blackcurrents, herbs and respberries have been pruned. We will prune the apples, pears and nectarines in another month. Compost from the chicken run has been forked into the vegetable garden. We wait in eager appreciation for the shortest day when we can plant the garlic.
There are tomatoes still ripening in the glasshouse, which is a new record. Last year the tomatoes were finished by the beginning of June.
The chickens have finished their moult and look splendid again.
Come August we will be thinking of sowing seeds in trays for later transplanting.
Our streets informal vegetable gardening group will by September be reformed and ready to blitz gardens of weeds, ending with a pot-luck lunch.
The solar hot water heater is performing well and with the wet-back on the wood fire, we turned the electric water heater off in March. The photo-voltaic array recently installed will provide back up power to the electric water heater and LED lighting.
The electric car my husband made 4 years ago, has 2 batteries which can't hold their charge, so that will be added to the to-do list.
We will go on holiday in November, to the stunning beautiful Golden Bay, before summer when there are never enough hours in the day to get every thing done.

Seems like most people posting have big gardens, and have been at it for a while. Here in Queens, NYC, I am sort of new at this. My landlords let me dig up a bit of the lawn, so I'm growing herbs, to supplement our CSA share. We've started to get low-temp pasteurized milk from a local dairy, and I'm making yogurt using the slow-cooker (a hit with my 14-month-old). We are the only household I know in the area who don't use an air conditioner (or a TV for that matter), and we're adjusting to the heat and humidity quite nicely. I've gotten some water into storage and am hoping to get some more food storage going soon -- our biggest challenge is limited space in our tiny kitchen, but it's doable. My most recent change-up is to close my accounts with Bank of America and put my money in a local savings bank -- better that it goes back to the community than god knows what projects BOA invests in. A goal is to learn to knit socks . . . anybody have suggestions for simple patterns?

Here in the St. Louis, MO area, I'm trying to finish planting our vegetable garden in between heavy rains. We've had almost 4" of rain in the last 2 1/2 days and the soil is saturated. This has been the gardening story since April ... just to get the spring crops and then the tomatoes/peppers/zucchini into the garden has been a triumph. I got a bed of black-eyed peas planted just before the last rains. Will have to wait on the rest of the beans, the winter squash, and the corn for a few days till things dry out a bit. We're 8" over normal rainfall for the year.

We're harvesting lettuce, bok choy, and other greens out of the veggie garden, and blueberries and raspberries whenever the birds miss one.

Our yard was one of 11 gardens featured on the first-ever Spanish Lake Garden Tour this year. Everyone who came liked what we've done. I even had the veggie garden beds I'd planted weeded. This year's new tool is a collinear hoe and I love it!

Enjoying lots of rhubarb. First radishes. Beans are up and looking good. Ditto lettuce and kale and whatever other green I planted in old cherry lugs. Straw bale sections of the garden hold different kinds of squash, cucumber, tomato, pepper and eggplant, and they're doing well, too. Pushing the tomato trellises into the straw this morning was much easier than pushing them into the ground in past years.

http://www.mindseyeyarns.com/resources/patterns/toe_up_sock.htm

This is a great pattern for knitting socks. It's not conventional as they are knitted on one circular needle but this way has several advantages to my mind.

A circular needle means you don't drop a whole needle of stitches when working with four or five needles and a needle just slides out.

Working two socks at the same time means you don't have the psychological hiccup of having to start all over again on the second sock.

AS you knit one sock from the inside of the ball and the other from the outside you always have two matching socks and not the fear of running out just as you are finishing the second sock.

There is no way I would go back to a top down, one sock at a time way of working.

And no, I don't know the web site owners.

http://www.mindseyeyarns.com/resources/patterns/toe_up_sock.htm

That's a reply for Anna at 18.

We are now in our Summer mode, since it is hot and HUMID. Since sweating doesn't seem to keep us cool right now, we are taking things slowly out of doors and going in for rests and cool drinks. At least it wasn't in the upper 90s. We are grateful to have power right now, since many areas around us lost it, due to overnight storms.
I have been doing lots of gardening on my Saturdays. Though it was late, I planted sweet potato slips yesterday. You can check out my Independence Days post on my web site http://www.plannedresilience.net/.

Re: radioactivity on the West coast. We're in Portland and get milk and dairy products from a small family-based producer, and they were so concerned about hot particles concentrating in the milk of their pastured cows that they had the milk tested. The amount of radioactive cesium and iodine turned out to be the same in a pastured cow vs one fed hay brought in from back east. I don't know if that will be reassuring for anyone, but it's one independent data point that Fukushima radiation levels in our area are probably pretty minimal.

In our garden, there's a bit of a lull right now for planting. The summer crops have been planted and most of the overwintering crops won't be put in until July or August. Our spring was so cold that everything's late this year: Strawberries are just now coming on, and also the peas which I planted back in February (!). Roses just opened up last week, irises maybe three weeks ago. All the basil is looking sad and abused from so many cloudy, 60-degree days. Blueberries are coming along nicely, so they may be reasonably on time. Failures this year: carrots (yet again) failed to germinate or are eaten fast, many radishes didn't bulb up, runner beans and melons may as well be slug bait, and 3 out of 4 winter squash wish I'd waited an extra three weeks to put them out and are sulking. Spring favas, early squash, cukes, tomatillos and tomatoes are all flowering, giving hope that some vegetables will be ready in the next few weeks.

It has been really hot in central Florida. Like 104 in the shade on my porch at 2 in the afternoon. Instead of rain, we get thunder-dust-storms. Not normal Florida weather. My tomatoes are not doing well. They have blossomed, but no fruit, and I think I have aphids. I need to buy some ladybugs. I also have wasps and banana spiders (maybe eating the aphids, but not enough and yuck!). My summer squash blossomed, but no fruit yet, either. Watermelon is also looking sad. The pineapple looks the best out of all the plants, but it will probably be another year or two before it gives me fruit. I'm thinking about buying a banana tree.
I have gotten pretty good at baking bread, and my family loves it when I take half the dough and make a deep dish pizza out of it. I made fresh lasagna and decided to keep buying dried, but I'm glad I know how in case of TEOTWAWKI.I recently learned that you cannot make a pie crust in an 80 degree kitchen. The lard will not 'cut' into the flour. Instead, it melts into a paste (and I keep my lard and flour in the freezer).
Still working on setting up the new homestead. The land part is taken care of, but there is no water or electric (or house) yet. We have a fence! I am going to start sheet mulching for the fall garden next week. Luckily my property backs up to my brother in law's humus farm-all the free organic soil I can use! I will probably start on the chicken coop next month. Same brother in law is donating a bunch of building supplies as well as knowledge-he raised chickens as a kid.

Thank you Margaret! I appreciate it and will give it a try.

My little first time garden in England is doing quite well given the odd weather, though it does feel like one giant bird feeder smorgasbord at the moment. Still in mortal fear of doing something utterly wrong as all first time gardeners are..and worrying what the neighbours think.

I'm wondering how much of a section of the grassy bit i can get away with not mowing, for the natural look (honest!).

...and weeding. I tell you, if I could eat most weeds, i'd be completely food self-sufficient now.

As it is, only the cabbages, kale and lettuces are really ready to eat. Still it's early days.

Sharon,
We have a ten member CSA this year. We have things growing everywhere! It is gratifying to see all the changes. My farmer and I were discussing just yesterday the visual changes in the place since we started. We ripped out bushes in the garden bed next to the garage and planted grape vines, comfrey, Nasturtiums, and Morning Glories and also a small patch of bamboo. We have been mulching the front apple trees after a major shaping this spring. Did much shaping to the plum trees too. Animals abound also - a new flock of chickens and a new calf. Just started milking the cow this morning.
I will try to post pics soon.

@Sandy, #25: Can you make biscuit dough in your 80-degree kitchen? If so, maybe that's where (and why!) peach cobblers and apple betties and blueberry slumps originated. :-)

http://myfreedompath.blogspot.com/2011/06/community-garden-success.html
A Community Garden for my new hometown. I'm helping on the board for the first couple of years. :-)

Everyone is so ambitious! I decided earlier this year that I wanted more free time, so I am scaling back on food preservation and gardening. I still did the raised bed gardens and the herbs on the deck, but nothing more.

Everything is growing. I took down part of the caution tape that keeps the dogs out. I've actually clipped off some tomato and pepper blossoms to give the plants more time to grow before producing fruit.

The chard is nearly big enough to start using. I've been using the mint, thyme, basil & parlsey already. The salvia is bringing in some bees, but I don't know if it will be enough to pollinate the squash blossoms when they open. The trumpet vine has a bunch of buds though so that might start bringing more around.

The garden picture is at the bottom of this post:
http://dogear6.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/week-of-vacation-so-much-fun/

All the garden comments make me a bit hesitant to move the conversation to a slightly different direction, but here goes.

Much of our energy this season will be on cultivating leadership skills in the young folks we employ. We're modeling hive mind, "barn-raising" shared/collaborative work projects, relational face-to-face, not face to screen communication, etc. A pivotal part of our effort is to also knit multi-generations together in manner that elevates elders as mentors and skill sharers.

We're showing gifting practices, bartering behavior, DIY and the joy of connection to nature.

Our harvest will be in the garden and the world as these young 20 somethings make their way back to school, their home communities and their more expansive worlds.

Our hope is that this is our best investment in the seed bank of a resilient future...

Hello from New Zealand again.
What is a CSA basket?

Here in Canberra it's the depths of winter, but I'm drying apples and making jelly out of purloined medlars. I just finished making a new cardigan out of locally grown wool, and I'm working on a huge mending pile. AND I've just got a copy of Depletion and Abundance so I'm working my way through that with equal parts of terror and joy.

I recently took a wild herbs for health class. I have been able to make a jewel weed salve for my husband's poison ivy. I am collecting strawberry leaf and red clover flowers.

The garden is finally planted and now I have time to finish the fence around it. We recently moved to a new home which is more secluded and a little wilder. Something has nibbled the fava beens but no major damage yet.

Strawberry fields are almost ready for picking. I hope to get out this weekend and start picking. This year a friend and I are going to get together to can jam.

We are going to get some new chickens this summer, now that we are settled. So we will be building chicken tractor for some meat birds and a coop for layers. I hope to find some ducks too:)

Finally, a local brew supply store sells mozzarella cheese making kits so I hope to start making cheese.

We eat well:)

@#33 -- CSA = Community Supported Agriculture.

Essentially, this is a subscription to a farm. For a set amount of money for a specified period of time, you agree to pay the farmer (or even pay them in advance) for a share of whatever they have available weekly, bi-weekly, or however else defined. You share the risks as well as the harvest -- if they have a bad year, you don't get as much for your money, and vice versa.

When I didn't have room for a garden, getting my CSA box was like Christmas every week. I never knew what was going to be in the box or how much of it.

The greens in the garden are ready to start eating; last year we didn't get a single meal's worth. Tomatoes got planted a bit late, so only the cherry toms have flowers yet. Couldn't find tomatillos this year (my favorite farm to buy from went belly-up this year), but did find cape gooseberries, which also got a late start. We've enjoyed a week of strawberries (having killed the chipmunks last year); the raspberries are progressing nicely, and the blueberries ... will probably need another year or two. This may be the first year for any apples whatsoever (last year a late frost killed any hope of that); following advice, I have checked my greed and am limiting the young trees to just two apples this year. The herbs are only so-so, with the exception of the volunteer cilantro, which I am the only one in the family who eats. The weeds, however, are doing quite well. I think I will harvest some of them today (last year, decided that Lamb's Quarter quiche was delicious). The family overruled my wish to set up a beehive, so I may just set up some mason bee homes.

Thank you Nicole for your explaination of CSA. sounds a good scheme.

Hey Sharon,
Is there any chance we could get some more information on what happened with the social worker? We're looking into this ourselves, and I'm awfully curious as to what is allowed and what is isn't, and also what you meant by shifting standards.
Thanks.

Another idea for #18:

See if your library has Ann Budd's book entitled Knitting Socks. It goes through all of the basic elements and gives a number of patterns as well as adaptations for the yarn you may already have on hand.

I don't usually make New Year's resolutions, but I made one this year: to learn how to knit socks. I took a class. It was wonderful! Not only did I learn a skill, the class connected me with some interesting women.

About the harvest: I am not a farmer or much of a gardener but I have been a CSA subscriber for many years. We are past lettuce and peas in the sizzling south and have been enjoying tomatoes, even some corn.

I picked a gallon of blueberries this week, as well as a slightly smaller quantity of blackberries. (One of the local farms has several U-picks throughout the season.) My husband is a bear who can gorge on the blues this time of year. I'll pick more blueberries next week for jam and dehydrating. This week I shared with the neighbors and the local bird rehabber. I also made a huge pan of whole wheat/oatmeal blackberry bars which made the rounds at my husband's place of employment. I froze the rest of the blackberries for cobblers or fruit bars in the winter.

Another thing that I'd like to do this year is make ketchup. I regularly give gifts of jam. I was thinking that a jar of homemade ketchup might be well received. Has anyone done that?

Java Jane,
I made ketchup for the first time a couple of years ago, and was surprised by how good it was. We have given some away, mostly my husband to his friends. He said the recipients were quite happy, one or two said, we don't eat ketchup, and then later said they'd really enjoyed it.
I give away jam too, and sometimes find it a nice change for people to include some savory things; tomatillo salsa, roasted red pepper spread, etc.

Thanks NM for your comment on ketchup and savories. Do you have a ketchup recipe that you could link? Also, did you preserve your roasted red pepper spread? This sounds like something my husband would love.

Up here in the North Country of NY I have finally gotten the garden in. The bought plants got in a few weeks ago and the seeds just made it into the ground last week (I know, that's a backwards way of doing it!). Hopefully my garden will be the usual uncontrolled jungle and everything will grow and be happy.
The goat kids are getting ready to go to new homes. I am starting to bug people to be prepared that they may come home to a goat kid on their front porch come July 1st. I love the kids but after 12 weeks, I am ready to see them go off to new homes.
The Angora goat is getting along well. He is a nice boy and a total experiment on my part. I wanted a sheep but without it actually being a sheep. So I settled for an Angora. I haven't decided what to do with his fleece yet (me being a non-knitting, non-crocheting type of gal) but hopefully some inspiration will hit before it comes shearing time.
All is well. I love reading about what others are doing!

Yes, the pepper spread was canned. I got both it and the ketchup out of the Ball Blue Book, which is one of my favorite preserving books.
The Ball website is www.freshpreserving.com, and they have the roasted red pepper spread under specialty condiments and gourmet goodies. The ketchup is under tomatoes and tomato juices.

Basil still tiny, hasn't taken hold yet; thyme and oregano just getting established. Potatoes coming up; I got them in late. Just this morning spotted tiny buds on the Heavenly Blue morning glories. After months of frustration at being far behind schedule, I'm feeling gloriously happy. There are six quinces on my little quince tree -- such a harvest -- but the apples and cherries bloomed and produced very poorly.

Too Many Little Brown Goats, and Other Consquences of Spring

sastyk — Fri, 06 May 2011 07:30:10 +0000

Too Many Little Brown Goats, and Other Consquences of Spring

It has been kind of quiet here, because well, it is spring, and that means that all my primary focus has shifted outside the house. The period from May 1 to June 15 is the busiest, craziest, wildest period of the year, and the shoulder season, ie, the month of April, its biggest rival.

We have six baby goats on the ground right now, with two more does due this weekend and five more due in July. I'll be posting the "goats for sale" list very soon - we'll have a 1 year old buck (Goldenrod), at least one senior milking doe and at least one baby, and later in the season, we'll have two doelings and a first freshener, as well as probably some wethers, so if you are looking for goats, here's your place.

This is particularly true if you are looking for little brown goats. The LBGs are pretty thick on the ground this year - in previous years it hasn't been hard to tell the babies apart, but this year, everyone (except Calliope, Bast's daughter) is an LBG. They are different, and you can tell - if they stop bouncing long enough to differentiate. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen very often at this stage, and so you are often fruitlessly trying to count little heads as they move at high speed around you. So we spend a lot of time bewildered and counting fruitlessly.

We are also rapidly approaching delivery dates for the plant CSA, and our open farm day, in which we'll have garden plants galore for sale. That's at our farm on Sunday, May 22 - hoping to see those of you who live in this general area there. We've got lots of fun stuff planned for that day.

Besides the goat-related cuteness, we also have ducklings, chicks and one baby rabbit adding to the overall impression of acute cuteness. And green - finally, finally, finally green. The tulips are in bloom, the bloodroot and lungwort are flowering, the ramps, sorrel and asparagus are ready for harvest and life is GOOD. We missed a hard frost last night, so the peaches and apricots and cherries are blooming.

It is a busy, crazy season here - every plant has to go into the ground now, yesterday or at the latest, tomorrow. Everything needs shovelling, cutting, trimming, planting, transplanting or moving. Add to that the fact that we are expecting more kids in our family right soon, and, well, the blogs get a lick and a promise and my best wishes.

Eric will be picking up his bees on Sunday, and that's got a hold of his mind. He's fascinated by the beekeeping and still a little worried about driving in the car with 10,000 stinging insects. My comment that this would be a bad day to get in an accident didn't seem to help much . Lavish hive painting by my children is underway too - I'm assuming the hives will be quite the sight!

Still, there is some stuff going on. My 13 Ways of Looking at the Future book of essays will come out sometime in June, I'm told, and will be winging its way on to you soon. If you've emailed to enquire about postage outside the US, I promise to get back to you on Monday. If you haven't heard about this - I'll be publishing this directly both electronically and in paper form, and sending a copy to anyone who donates $10 or more for it. I'll put the button up ASAP.

Second, don't forget about the open farm day on May 22 at Gleanings Farm 43 Crow Hill Road Delanson, NY 12053. There will be animals for the kids to pet, scything, snacks, milking and goat care demos, a book signing, garden tours and other good stuff. And don't forget baby goats!

Third, our family is looking for a couple of summer farm interns - if you'd like to spend a *working* week on our farm, email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com and let me know what weeks you would be interested in. You get room, board and experience, we get extra hands and new friends - it is a win-win situation.

Finally, I'm going to be offering my Food Preservation and Storage Class starting May 24, and running until the end of June - this six week, online, asynchronous (ie, you don't have to be online at any particular time) will help you get ready for the preserving season, and also help with beginning or building up and organizing a food reserve so that you are secure in tough times. Cost of the class is $150 and there are scholarships available to low income folks as well. Please email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com to reserve a space or with any questions.

Ok, back to spring - the green is calling me! I hope it is calling you too! How is Spring at your place?

Sharon

sastyk Fri, 05/06/2011 - 03:30

Tags

classes

garden

Gleanings Farm

13 Ways of Looking at the Future

Our place? The average last frost date for us in Arkansas falls in early April -- older folks say not to plant tomatoes before tax day. But this year, we had a heavy snowfall and freeze in early February. . . and then no more freezing temperatures and no frosts at all. Weird. The lettuce is starting to bolt, the onions and garlic should be ready in a month, the last of the radishes has bolted, and I planted so many spring crops that I have no idea where I'm going to put most of my tomatoes, peppers, and squash. They'll probably end up going into the ground quite a bit later than usual.

Oh, and the weed crop is shaping up to be another bumper harvest. I can't keep sage happy, but I've got a really ridiculous amount of ground ivy. I know it's medicinal -- but I think I have enough to cure the 82nd Airborne.

Spring here has been freakily early and dry: I think I've lost a rose-bush, and I've had to irrigate sage, lavender, and Dianthus deltoides among others. I dug a test-pit yesterday, and got down two foot before giving up, without hitting damp soil (in rather heavy clay-based loam, overlying clay). The drought finally broke last night, with some heavy showers, but it's back to sunny today.

Also, this post needs blurry pictures of little brown bouncy blobs.

"if they stop bouncing long enough to differentiate"

Is that the goat version of "Don't drink and derive" ???

Ben, most of my front yard and field aka orchard-in-progress is covered with what we call creeping charlie here. (Alehoof, ground ivy... same thing.) I encourage it. If it would just finish choking out the pesky bits of grass in front, I could stop mowing there. I'm still trying to convince the home brewer up the street to try it in place of hops -- he won't even use the hops he grows.

It's been strangely wet this year here. Not much wetter than normal, but it's the first year I've been in Alabama that hasn't been in awful drought. No late frosts but plenty of cool nights and days for the early spring crops, which are always hit or miss this time of year; they do better in the fall. I'm having a gangbuster gardening year and my baby trees are doing wonderfully. We're moving into the dry season, but my garden is irrigated and I have rainwater tubs full to the brim to help those baby trees get established.

It's about time we had a good weather year.

Hi i want to get more goats my dad used to have them when he was growing up how can i reach you for more information on what kind and how much they cost?
Thanks

Kelly, I'd do some googling around and find out what breeds you might be interested in - it depends on what you want them for. Meat, dairy, fiber? Cost is a huge range, depending on what you are looking for and how common they are near you.

Sharon