December 2009

It's been a colder than usual December for the most part. We nearly had two weeks straight of temps between 40 and a low on December 18th of 4.4 degrees F.

The gardens took on a whole new look in the beginning of the month with 2 snowstorms that dumped about 8 inches of snow.

I moved my bird feeders down to the bulkhead for the cellar where there happens to be a window in the living room for what I call "Cat TV."

The cats get to be entertained daily from the many birds, squirrels and mice that visit the feeders.

I'm reading a great book right now called

"How to Grow World Record Tomatoes" written by Charles H. Wilber.

It's an entirely new approach to gardening and I can't wait to try out his techniques in 2010. I highly recommend reading this!

:)

November Entry

November was warmer than normal with a high of 67.2 F back on 11/09/09 and an overall mean day temp of 41.5 F. The lowest temp of 23.6 was recorded on 11/18/09. There were only two occasions when I observed any snow – but it was very light flurries.

I was proud to have made my first apple pie with my very own apples this month. It was delicious and came out pretty good in the photo, even if I do say so, myself.

I finished shelling the rest of the Charlevoix Beans and filled a 2nd jar. I know that I have well over 1,000 for next year’s garden. I’m not going to do many tomatoes in 2010. I plan to use the beans to give nutrients to the soil for the garden in 2011 (always thinking ahead).

The California Grey Stripe Sunflowers have been drying on the top shelf inside of the greenhouse. I filled a jar with the seeds to have ready for any requests through Seed Savers Exchange.
The hardest part about saving sunflower seeds is going through them meticulously, one by one, to inspect for insect or worm holes. If anything is still alive inside of the seed, it can exit that one and continue to ruin the rest of the seeds in your jar! I found out that the hard way…

I think I saw a painting that looked like this in some museum back when I was in high school. Some folks would call it modern art, I call it hose-hell… It’s that time of year again to put everything into storage.

I marvel at how a garden can take on a whole different look month to month. The tomato strings need to be removed and I need to add more turnbuckles in between the posts for a tighter, straighter wire. But being the procrastinator that I am, I see that happening sometime in July of 2011…

There’s only one green plant left in the big garden. In fact, there are many of them dotting the bleak, leave-covered rows. These are Pac Choy plants that refuse to go away! They’ve only been planted twice; 2006 and a few in 2007. These cold-hearty greens keep planting themselves year after year. They are tasty, like spinach if cooked in a steamer.

:)

October Entry

I missed an October entry, so this first post in November is actually a synopsis of October, 2009.

This was my first apple harvest back on October 1st. I’m very pleased to have brought these neglected trees back from dormancy. And while they may not look that great cosmetically, they are actually perfectly good apples once cored & pealed. I didn’t spray them at all in 2009 – mostly because it rained literally ever other day spring through summer. I assure you that these apples made for a heavenly tasting apple crisp last weekend, and I plan to make a few pies with the rest up until Thanksgiving.

I also harvested the largest of the California Gray Stripe Sunflowers on October 1st and set them out to dry for 24 hours outside of the greenhouse.

I promptly moved them inside the next day because furry & feathered woodland creatures would surely ravage these in a hurry!

Just to be fair, I harvested the smaller sunflowers and placed them on the back stairs. Needless to say, they were picked clean within a week's time. Last weekend, I swept the steps clean of the million or so sunflower seed shells and set out the first birdseed of the season in the feeders.

The Rhubarb had a notable good run in 2009. I was able to harvest it fresh right through the beginning of September. Now, as of October 10th, the first few frosts have conquered it with ease and I will eagerly await its return early next spring, 2010.

Okay, the early Jalapeno harvest was nothing to brag about – or was it… Out of the 20 or so plants that I set out, only 2 produced any peppers. I had a grand total of 5 harvested. But these 2 were the best and I saved the seeds – which easily yielded over 100 seeds. This means that I have increased my seeds by 5 times! In my seed saving experiences, I’ve learned that seeds harvested from my own gardens always do better & better each year.

One can’t leave out the leaves of October. One of my particular favorites is that of the Stag horn Sumac. They make for great photos, in my opinion.

Finally, the 10 garlic bulbs that I harvested in July have been happily hanging in the rafters of the breezeway until their day of planting which happened to be October 18, 2009.

I broke all 10 bulbs apart and ended up with 47 large cloves. I planted 46 and kept 1 for eating (it was delicious)!
Here again is a great seed saving/math lesson; I started with 10 cloves and got 4.7 times what I started with. I’m hoping for a successful harvest of approximately 170 cloves in July, 2010.

:)

September Harvest Notes

The fall season has arrived. We had our first frost here on 9/20/09 and our second frost on 9/26/09. The Farmer's Almanac calls for a colder than average winter with less than normal amounts of precipitation; we'll see...

The tomato harvest was bleak, but not a total loss. I managed to get 7 new varieties of tomato seeds fermented, cleaned, dried and stored; Blue, Coure De Bue, Delicious, Rose De Berne, Sasha's Altai, Siberian, and Taxi.

I had a remarkably good harvest of Charlevoix Beans considering they were ravaged by "Fat Bastard" - that's my name for one of the local ground hogs... I was amazed to see that the bean plants sprouted new leaves and continued to grow!

Above, the dried beans were shelled for the rosy-red kidney-shaped beans. But believe me, these aren't your ordinary kidney beans. Charlevoix Beans are known for how they create an indescribably fantastic broth in soups.

Here, I set up my work area in the September sunshine and separated & shelled the Charlevoix Beans. The ones that are not quite ready will be place in the greenhouse to dry for a couple more weeks.

I will save about 500 seeds for next year's garden and save the rest for warm winter soups in the crock pot.

Next entry will be on saving the seeds from the sunflowers.

:)

Late Blight Strikes Tomatoes

This has been the rainiest summer I can remember. People keep joking "we're finally getting our summer" now that the temps have actually hit 90 degrees in the 2nd week of August. I recorded 8.66 inches of rain in July and it has continued to rain in August ( 2.68 inches as of 8/22/09 ) with Hurricane Bill sweeping by on Saturday.

All of that rain has brought a devastating Late Blight to most every farm & garden in the Northeast. I found an article on the NY Times website:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/dining/29toma.html


I've never seen such healthy tomato plants die off so quickly. These are the tomatoes that are on the outside of the greenhouse. They were green 7 days ago. All I tell myself is 'at least I'm not alone' -this is region wide devastation.
The only tomatoes that were not effected are inside the greenhouse.
Meanwhile...
The Sunflowers are just starting to open up as of August 22. Their lower leaves also seem to be effected by the rains. The photo below is pretty neat in my opinion, of a sunflower on the verge of opening.


This sunflower is an heirloom variety called Ling's Gray Stripe. I hope to save seeds to re-offer in the 2010 SSE yearbook.
One crop is doing great despite the blight; my Purple Broccoli is very happy!

I'm glad I planted a bunch of broccoli & cauliflower this year. Note to self: I need to plant at least 100 Cukes to pickle (I only did 30 plants this year)and I wish I had some yellow summer squash. Why I didn't get to it, I don't know-Silly mistake.

Now onto the orchard. The apples are doing great with the exception of I did not do a critical organic spray during the silver-tip stage in early spring. In fact, with all the rain basically occurring every 2 days, I did not spray at all.

So these apples will be true organic with absolutely no spraying in 2009. Talk about old school.

The blight was bad, but I still managed to get a few tomato varieties saved for seed. They are in the fermentation stage as I type this. Next entry will show photos of this years start of tomato seed saving.

:)

July Happenings

I could have swore that I made a July entry back on July 4th - but I guess that's how summer flies by.

A lot has happened since the tomatoes were set out in June. My main focus has been on the idea I had of a non-staking, tie-up system for the tomatoes. This has occupied much of my time. Digging holes for support posts, running wire through the posts, tying-up tomatoes as I go, and now I'm finishing the whole project with guy wires & turnbuckles to support those supports!

All of my hard work with the supports was well worth it. It's great to have an idea brought into the real world.

Below is a photo of my father standing in the row of the now HUGE tomato plants! I had to do a second winding of each of these plants last weekend (July 19th) because they have grown so fast in the past few weeks.

I must make mention that this has been a very wet, rainy summer so far. In fact, my weather station verified that it rained 15 out of 30 days in June, 2009. As for July, it has rained 15 out of 26 days - total rain for July so far stands at 6.25 inches (but we have thunderstorms in the forcast for tonight, so that number will grow soon).

Once in a while the sun was out and the skies were blue, as in the photo below of my Borage flowers.

The Borage flowers re-seed themselves year after year. I take note of where they appear each season and till around them. The leaves and flowers taste like mild cucumber with the flowers ranging from deep blue to violet and occasionally white. This photo was taken on Sunday, July 12, 2009. That was before all of the trouble began....

The furry bastard is back! If you want a better look at him, check the blog entry from September 22, 2008 for a good close up. I kinda didn't mind the ground hog / wood chuck, in 2008 because he only ate a few things in the gardens like broccoli and some bean plants. But this year he's gotten into everything - even the tomatoes! The tomato photo below is one of about 30 that the ground hog ate the tops off of...

Here's my lovely Borage flowers - nothing but a stump of a stalk. This is what is left of the plant originally pictured above the ground hog. Only good news is that new leaves are appearing and I may get more flowers as long as the fat furry rat doesn't attack it again! He got into my prized Charlevoix Beans too by crawling under the fence I put around them. He got a piece of nearly all of the 300 plants. Amazingly, these too are growing new leaves and there are many white blossoms appearing on the abused plants.

I now have an electric fence defense! Many folks say I should get a .22 and shoot the ground hog, but I couldn't do that. The little bastard has a right to live and eat what ever he can. I've decided to outsmart him, not shoot him. The beans are safe, but the rest of the gardens are still vulnerable. I will eventually fence the entire big garden full of heirloom tomatoes. I'm just happy that he doesn't seem to like garlic plants...

The time was right to harvest the garlic last night (Saturday, July 25, 2009) as the leaves were starting to die-back. I wrote on my calendar that I cut-back the flowering scapes on June 21 so roughly a month goes by until the harvest. Cutting back the scapes (which would otherwise flower and go to seed) gets more energy into the roots for larger bulbs. If I wait too long to harvest the bulbs, they will begin to grow apart and separate underground.

Digging-up garlic is a delicate operation. I use a mini shovel to go around the plant, then dig it up from underneath the bulb. Never pull on the stalk! Garlic bruises easily, so I carefully tap the bulb on the bottom to loosen the surrounding dirt until most of it has fallen off.

It's not a good idea to wash the garlic at this stage, simply tie them together and hang them to dry for 4 to 6 weeks. I have them tied up in the rafters in the breezeway between the garage and the house - and believe me, it smells fantastic!

Final garlic note: These 10 cloves of German Extra Hearty, from SSE were the only ones that survived. The store bought garlic failed miserably! (see original post of October 5th, 2008)

The good news is that those 10 cloves produced wonderfully, meaning if each bulb has at least 6 cloves;

6 x 10 = 60 cloves to replant this fall!

:)