Taking Stock

I went out yesterday and it really did feel like spring. Even the daffodils have started to push out of the soil. Which means it was time to start planting as long as the ground was unfrozen. I'll get to that last part tomorrow, but for now I'll go through the state of the perennials and overwintered crops.

First up is the spinach. It had survived well. Many of the older leaves were dead, but the new ones were starting. They looked better than I expected after being buried in 6' of snow (I shovel the path onto their bed and the snow from the solar panels on the roof comes down on top of them, so they get a lot of heavy heavy snow on top of them).

The dwarf curly kale always seems to do well. And they all survived. I don't eat those old leaves, but new ones will start to grow soon. Sadly the mache looks pretty ragged. If it doesn't grow new leaves before it bolts, I won't be eating it.

The Winterbor kale looks pretty sad. It isn't totally dead. Only time will tell if I get anything edible out of it this year.

The garlic has started to come up. The grid looks perfect, so most if not all of the plants survived. Those are the only overwintered plants in the garden. I do have a lot of perennials - mainly herbs in the garden.

Many of my herbs are in the herb circle (chives, oregano, English thyme, garlic chives, savory, and sage). I did a quick clean up of the bed. I used the garlic chives stems to help mulch the ground as otherwise the cats will dig in it. I cut the sage way back. I think this year I need to get a circular support for it. Otherwise it drapes itself over other parts of the circle and kills the herbs there.

The big question every year for me is if my rosemary has survived or not. And I'm really not sure yet. It has faded quite a bit. I'm in zone 6b and rosemary is not hardy here. I use Arp which is a hardier rosemary, but not reliably hardy. I used to have four plants scattered around the yard. This is the only surviving one. To keep it going I really need to scatter more around. And as you can see the sage plant nearby is leaning over it. I have four sage plants scattered around the garden. At the start they would die off often, but I think I've finally gotten them in places they like. Which is good as we go through a lot of sage every year.

The French thyme has survived well here. It wasn't very happy in the herb circle so I took a cutting and put one here. It likes the location because it has winter protection. I prop the garden gate open in the winter and it goes right in front of the thyme. This keeps the wind off of it. Usually French thyme is harder to keep going than English thyme, but it seems a lot healthier than my English thyme in the herb circle. The pots above are my mints. I don't see any growth out of them yet, but I'm sure they are alive. Can you kill a mint?

My tarragon lives next to a current plant. I cleaned up the dead branches and leaves. I see small shoots coming up underneath so they are doing well. I don't use a lot of tarragon in my cooking, but enough that I need to grow it.

And last but not least, my rhubarb is coming up. I'll have to think about what I'm going to do with it this year. I've taken a lot of the sugar out of my diet and you really can't eat rhubarb without sugar. I could make some rhubarb butter for the neighbors again. That was so so good. And I can eat the leftover bits. Yum.

Tomorrow I'll talk about my first plantings. I was so excited to find soil that was unfrozen. Whoohoo! I love spring. Sadly the forecast has three days of dismal cool temps, with highs in the 40s, but the weathermen assure me that it will warm up on Friday and it will even feel like spring. I'll be able to garden in a sunhat instead of a fleece cap and coat. Time to get dirt under my fingernails.

Braiding Onions

Sorting onions

Yesterday after getting the lettuce transplanted and my mache seeded, I noticed that the first Copra onions that I picked were dry. The others aren't far off, but they weren't quite ready yet. The clouds looked threatening, but I figured I could get them braided and inside before it let down.

Braiding Copras

I was wrong on two counts. It never really let down. It just dribbled. And I only got through two braids before I had to go in. Some people make really long braids, but I like short ones with about 10 onions. I think they look nicer and are easier to carry.

Copra top, Ailsa Craig bottom

This morning I went out to finish the job. I got one more Copra braid, but I noticed the Ailsa Craig onions way in the back were ready enough. So I did those too. I've been eating these all through July so there weren't enough for even two braids. I just made one. And kept three onions for the kitchen. If you are interested in a braiding tutorial, I made one years ago.

I still have Copras out there drying. And I noticed that the ones on the far side of the rack weren't getting as dry as the ones closer to the left. So I moved all the onions still on the rack to the left side. The right side has a pallet in front of it and some morning glories growing up it. It really blocks the air flow. Next time I do this I'll have to remove the pallet for better drying.

I weighed the onions I braided and hung them in the basement for storage. Though I still have Copras to harvest, the final tally numbers are in for the Ailsa Craig onions. I thought they were a bit smaller than last year, but the numbers don't lie. I got about a pound more this year than last with the same number of plants. So I might have had a few huge ones last year, but they were more consistently large this year.

I'm really thrilled this year is a good onion year. You just never know what is going to do well each year. The celery is pretty sad. I had to harvest three more bunches due to mosaic virus. I ought to just rip the rest out and freeze it. The new variety, Tango, is all pulled up now and the virus took it right down, but my old standby, Ventura is still trying to hold its own. And the beans are getting hit hard by rust. Today I stripped off about half of their leaves to keep the spread down. But it is only a matter of time before they all come down. I found that the Kentucky Wonder beans are really very susceptible to it, but the new bean I tried this year, Golden Gate, isn't hit nearly as hard. Plus it put out a lot of beans before the rust got into the patch as it is an early bean. I might have to grow this one instead of KW from now on. The asparagus beans seem not as badly affected too. Though it is starting to get into them also. So it is a bad beans and celery year, but a good onion and corn year. I think I'm happy with that.

An Empty Bed

After ripping out the onions last week, the bed has just been sitting there. I should have planted the kale right away, but I just didn't get to it. I've been feeling lazy recently. There were weeds in the bed. One of the weeds was some alpine strawberries. So I transplanted those out to the front yard on Monday.

Sadly my laziness also let my kale plants dry out enough to badly wilt. Watering did bring them back, but I know better than to do that. I'm really not good at watering every day.

So I finally got my act in gear yesterday and planted up the kale. Only four of the Winterbor were doing well, so most of it is Scotch Curly Kale. The later tends to survive the winter better here, but the former puts out a lot more kale rapa to eat in the spring. I much prefer to have them half and half.

The bed is not just going to have kale. I sowed some cilantro down the middle for fall harvests. Once I find my mache seed (where did it go?). I'm going to under plant it with that.

And since I've been ignoring my gardening duties, which includes dead heading the coneflowers, I was rewarded with a goldfinch coming to eat the seeds. Sometimes it pays off being a lazy gardener. I had to take the photo through my back window as when I tried to go outside it would always fly off. A Downy Woodpecker visited my sunflower yesterday too. Then the Cardinals came to visit. It is nice seeing some of the other birds besides European sparrows. There are flocks of those in the neighborhood, but not a lot of other variety.

Taking Stock

Spring has finally sprung here at Lee's End Eden (what we affectionately call our lot).

Not that the beds look a lot like it is really spring yet. But it was a beautiful sunny day yesterday with a high in the mid 50Fs. So it was nice to walk around the garden seeing where I stand. Well the beds are not unfrozen yet. But some of the beds are defrosted to 9" deep. They aren't good enough to plant and turn over yet, but it will be just a couple of days now with the weather being warmer. Maybe I can turn over the soil on Friday and get my peas and favas in? I can always hope.

I also checked out my overwintered plants. The kale is looking pretty sad. I'll have to get in there and get rid of the dying leaves. But it has started to perk up already. I won't eat any of those old disgusting leaves. But the new leaves will be good. There isn't a lot of time for them to grow in the spring before they bolt and this year they will have even less time this year with things thawing out late. But hopefully I'll get a good crop.

I've never had the spinach look quite this bad before. But again as it grows it will perk up and I'll only eat the new leaves. At least it has mostly survived the winter.

I have a tiny patch of self sown mache. There really isn't enough for anything like a salad. But once the lettuce starts it will add to my greens. In a really small way.

The garlic has started peeking out from under the soil. It won't be long until they are really growing fast.

One of the plants I worry about every winter is the rosemary. Rosemary is hardy to zone 8 usually. I live in zone 6. So I planted two "hardy" rosemarys when I first came in. The Hill Hardy died the second winter. But the Arp still lives. A year and a half ago I layered the plant by sticking some branches under the soil. Last spring I cut those branches off and planted them around the garden. I now have three Arps. I figure if one dies maybe one in a different spot will live. The plant above is the original plant. I have another that looks much sadder by my rhubarbs. And yet another that looks pretty good by the foundation. The rosemary above always has the same side dead. That is the side that is always into the winter winds. I ought to cover it with some burlap to protect it over the winter. I'm guessing if I did, I wouldn't have much die off.

The cilantro that was sown between the kale died. Which isn't too surprising. It only lived one year and that year was the year without winter. But by the foundation a few cilantro plants have survived. Hopefully more will come up as I love my cilantro.

After last winter all my sage but one had died. So last year I planted three more plants. I never seem to have enough sage. I'm almost out of what I dried from last year. This year all four plants seem to be alive. I'm very happy about that. I need more sage. I'm surprised at how poorly it grows in this garden. At my last house the sage wanted to be a 2'-3' bush. Here I'm lucky when it hits a foot. But since they all lived, maybe they will grow bigger this year.

I also checked on my rhubarb. One of my neighbors wants some rhubarb in their garden. So I'm going to dig one up and split it. I've noticed that it is already coming out of dormancy, but the ground there is still frozen. It is almost thawed though. So I'll keep checking. When it is diggable I'll get that done.

Getting Behind in the Garden

Last week I didn't get too much work done in the garden. I did get a few things, but the garden needed (and still needs) attention. Above is my spring spinach that still hasn't been picked. I need to pick about half of it and freeze it. Or at least give it away. What you see is just the end of an 8.5' long bed.

At least I got to the winter spinach on Monday. Don't you just love how large Winter Giant grows? I think next year it will be my only winter spinach as it is so easy to pick and clean up in the spring. And there was a bit more cleaning needed than normal. Usually I would have done this a week ago, but with company I put it off. The leaf miners show up in mid May. I don't cover my overwintered spinach because by the time the miners show up my protected spring spinach is ready. But the final picking for the winter spinach was a week late so I had to scrape off a few eggs on the back of the leaves. Luckily they are very very easy to spot. The bright white on the back of the dark green leaves are so easy to find.

My SIL who was visiting asked if I washed the spinach before I freeze it. Yes I do. It gets well washed before blanching. Then I vacuum seal it. They do keep a lot better if I vacuum seal them. These have to keep for almost a year. I harvest in May, but I eat them mostly from December until April. There is no way they would keep in your normal freezer that long, but my chest freezer downstairs is very cold and doesn't have an automatic defrost. I now have 16 little packets. All I have to do is heat and serve. All the work has already been done. By the end of summer I will have about 40 1/2 cup packets of spinach and chard (about 10 pounds). I use them in the same way so almost consider them the same.

Next up Monday afternoon was putting in the trellis for the espaliered apple and pear trees. I put in four horizontal wires down the 24' length of the fence. I kept debating on how high they should be and how far apart they should be. In the end I think I put them just a touch too high. Now it will be hard to trip the top wire.

This morning I went out to pick some more harvests. But the biggest harvests are still salad greens. Above is a tuna pasta salad made with cooked kale, raw mizuna, and pickle relish from last year. Then there is the nice mixed green salad. Which finally has something not green from the garden. Radishes! The first of them. This year I covered them since the root maggots got in them last year and destroyed most of them. And I couldn't tell if it was good or not until I cut into it. But so far this year they seem to be all good. My love hate relationship with my row covers continues.

This afternoon it was on to using string. Above is my mache going to seed that was shading out the parsley and getting into the peas. I tied it all up with some bamboo sticks and string. Now hopefully it will stay in its spot.

Then it was onto the peas. I put metal stakes in when I plant the peas, but the strings don't go up until they need them. And I was a bit late. They could have used that first string to grab onto. But at least it is done. I also strung up the cilantro that is going to seed. I have two different ages of cilantro in the garden. What overwintered and is going to seed right now. And what germinated this spring. Currently that is what I'm picking and eating. But the ones in bloom fall over easily and shade out the new ones. So they had to be controlled.

The front yard also needed attention. First on the list was pruning and putting the 16' long trellis for the two figs. These are done in a candelabra or vertical cordon shape. I have two main branchs that follows a pipe a foot off the ground. Each branch going in a different direction. I didn't have the wires up from the pipe to the top of the fence. So I added some small eye screws to the fence cross bar and put them up a foot apart.

Yesterday I was at the nursery and bought a few pots of flowers and 6 packs. I planted the flowers in front of the apple and pear trees to be espaliered. I need to get some more as I want to put a few more flowers in front of the peach trees and maybe at the end of the driveway. I wish the nursery that was close enough to walk to had a larger selection of plants. I suppose I'll just have to experiment with what they have.

The rain chased me in. I'm not sure I needed to go inside yet. The rain didn't last. It keeps threatening but nothing is really falling. I'm going to have to water the garden again this coming week. I'm not happy about that. But I really shouldn't complain about such beautiful weather. We have just had so much beautiful weather. And I have been enjoying it.

More Planting

Today is supposed to be a beautiful day. But we will be getting a cold patch next week. Even a day in the 40Fs. I wanted to get all my hardy plants out before the weekend. And I succeeded. All the smaller Asian greens and kohlrabi are planted in one bed. I didn't have enough plants to fill the whole bed which I expected. So I sowed more baby boc choy seed. This bed needs to be empty on June 1st for my sweet potatoes. They might not get full size by then, but they ought to be close.

I planted all my herbs except the basil. I have a bed where I put my miscellaneous greens. The parsley, winter savory and the sweet marjoram were put there along with the red celery. I had a lot of the bed planted in mache. Most of it was Golden Mache from Michelle ages ago. It grew well, but got way too leaf burned over the winter. So it was just weeded out and composted. But the regular mache (above from Emily) grew well and produced. I'm not picking much as I want the plants you see above to go to seed for next year.

I got a lot of little things done like weeding the spinach bed (finally done). I also spent time standing and staring at one spot along the basement foundation. I'm wondering if I ought to put in a tree to espallier. I've been growing sunflowers along the back. The cilantro is allowed to self seed there in the middle. And I have self seeding sweet alyssum along the front that grows into the brick path. I haven't been happy with the sunflowers of late. So I'm going back and forth right now. Apple tree, sunflowers, apple tree, sunflowers.

Now I just have this partial flat left which is flowers, basil, and a few extras. It has been outside during the day and inside at night. It might have to go back under the lights when the cold hits next week.

Mache

Since I have decided to leave my carrots in longer, I had to transplant the mache to another bed. That way I'll have a place to plant my garlic. I was going to have to transplant it in the spring anyway if I wanted to let it go to seed (I'll see if I like it and it overwinters well). So the work wasn't wasted it was just done this fall instead of next spring.

The first chore was to sift some leaf mold. This bin was filled with leaves two years ago, we barely touched it. I actually fill two bins with leaves in the fall and we need just over one for our carbon additions to the compost during the year. But I like to fill a whole two bins. Last fall I topped it off with leaves again as it has gone down to half its size. Now it is just under half a bin tall and filled with wonderful leaf mold. The reality is that much of the top layer is filled with worm castings. I think it was worm heaven in there this year. Lower down there is a layer that is dried leaves that have turned into powder. I obviously should have added water and turned it, but this is an easy way to get some good organic matter without the work. And occasionally I run into an undecomposed clump of leaves that get screened out.

Leaf mold isn't as nutrient rich as compost, but it is still an excellent addition to the soil, and I don't make nearly enough compost to cover the garden. In fact I might have to buy some this spring, but with the added leaf mold, I think I'll have enough to cover the spring beds. I hope.

The next step was to double dig the bed. Since these beds are fairly new they don't need to be double dug yet. But I figure I don't want a year where I have to double dig all my beds. I like to get air in there occasionally. If I do three half beds a year, it will take me six years to get through the rotation. That seems about right. At my last house the soil was clay and the rocks were atrocious. It always took me hours, well days, to do a bed it was so much work. This bed didn't take long at all. I didn't time it but I wasn't horribly tired after I was done. I'll do another half in November sometime. And one more in the spring. Mostly I do a no till bed, but I find that double digging really helps to keep the soil aerated when you use that style of gardening. And I'm pleased to say that I now have WORMS! Yes my totally worm free garden is finally coming to life. It doesn't have nearly the numbers as my last garden yet, but it is well on its way.

Then it was the easy job of tossing the leaf mold on top of the soil and putting in my transplants. I'm not sure how far apart to put the mache. I put them about 5". I did forget to add fertilizer. Whoops. I sprinkled a little over the top. It wasn't a very heavy application as I don't want to burn the plants and I was too lazy to be careful about sprinkling around the edges. After planting they were covered with cat protection.

Celery, Zucchini, and Rosemary

This week I've been working on the last of the things to preserve for the winter. Yesterday I spent part of the day redesigning next year's garden. You wouldn't think they were related, but they are. I had it worked out in my head where things were going, but I ran into a snag. I really want to keep the fall carrots in the ground longer, maybe a couple more weeks. The garlic really needs to get planted this week. But I had the garlic following my fall carrots. My biggest problem is the mache that I willy nilly just tossed into the garden. It was old seed I wasn't willing to throw out. I really didn't think it would germinate. But germinate it did. The only other place to put the garlic is where the mache is growing right now. If I want to keep those carrots in the ground a little longer to size up more (and they could use sizing up a bit more), then I'll have to transplant the mache. Darn. It is what I get for not thinking about where I put things and not thinking of my rotations in the garden.

But carrots are for future preservation this fall. This week I froze the celery harvest. I'm not a huge fan of fresh celery, but I do love it in soups. So I froze batches of celery in 3/4 cup packets. Before I've frozen it on a cookie sheet and then put it into a ziplock. But by the time spring rolls around the bag is mostly ice crystals. I decided I wanted slightly better quality, which means individually packaging them. I used my new FoodSaver vacuum sealer. It works so much better than my last one. It really can suck out the air.

But when I tried to do the zucchini, the vacuum was so strong it sucked the juice out of them. So one got frozen like that. And the other two zucchini packets were frozen first and sealed after. I guess there is a flaw with a really strong vacuum. Ah well. I used to freeze the zucchini first anyway before packaging it up.

In more attempts to use up my zucchini pile, I had a zucchini frittata for lunch that was delicious. I can now say my zucchini problem is solved. I have exactly one 3" long zucchini left. I was worried that they would start to rot before I used them up, but freezing really helps. I just wasn't willing to freeze the little tiny zucchini.

I had an epiphany while eating my lunch. I love three bean salad. While this is a take off of three bean salad (notice I used zucchini in this too) and not the pure form, it is still bean salad. And what is bean salad but pickled beans? I ought to be able to can them shouldn't I? I always look for good ways to preserve things. I do freeze some beans, but I don't like them nearly as much as fresh and usually just eat them in soups. I hate canned beans. But I might just love pickled beans. I did dilly beans, but three bean salad would be so much better. Next year I have to make enough for a jar every month. Yum. And just so you know, every item in this lunch had something from the garden. The salmon salad was made with leftover salmon and some of my canned relish - on a homemade sesame seed bun. The soup was leftovers too. You saw the first bowl last week. It has my Chinese cabbage and squash in it. The bean salad itself was totally garden filled with black beans, green beans, carrots, onions, zucchini, and garlic from the garden. Yummy. And can you tell I eat a lot of leftovers for lunch?

And I almost forgot I dehydrated some rosemary. I had used half of what I'd dehydrated earlier in the year and I figured I ought to top off the jar before winter hits. In the summer I use a dehydrator, but since the heat came on in the house, the air is dry enough to dehydrate it by hanging it up. It takes longer, but is less work that way. I think today it will be dry enough to put into jars.

Since Robin is away on vacation, Jody is doing Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard so head on over to his blog, Spring Garden Acre.

State of the Garden

Over the last two days we have had pouring rain. Last night was particularly bad as the winds were gusting to about 60mph. I kept hearing branches hit my roof. The oak trees in the back yard stretch their branches out over the house which is great for shade in the summer, but not so good in a wind storm. Anyway the rain washed most of our snow away. It seemed a good time to go out and see how things are growing.

The first thing I noticed was the first little shoots of garlic poking up. This variety, an unknown from the store, is always the first to come up. As you can see by the acorn the shoot is still short but it is very thick.

The mache has a couple of clumps that look the same as they did in the fall. So far it seems quite hardy here without protection. I didn't get much germination last fall. Maybe more will come up this spring. You can tell how small they are by the little seeds that lie next to them. Those are dill seeds that scatter themselves around the garden.

Then I saw something Thomas is familiar with. I have a little vole or mouse hole in my garden. I often get these and occasionally see them during the summer. Usually they are voles. Unlike Thomas I've never noticed any damage in the garden. So I wondered. How was my spinach under the row cover faring?

It seems untouched by voles and has over wintered well. Now I wouldn't eat that spinach, but it will be putting on new growth soon. In about three weeks I'll be sowing my spring spinach which will be eaten in May, but I'm hoping this patch will give me an early crop.

I also left in a couple of bunching onions to see if they would overwinter this year. Some years they do fine. They still seem to be alive. Their outer leaves are mush, but the inner ones look alive. The kale seems ragged, but not dead. Maybe it will put on new growth in the spring too. I can always hope.