Seeds have arrived!

Not much got done here in the garden this past weekend, for two reasons. One, it was raining! Glorious buckets of rain, much needed after a completely dry January. And two, my daughter and I were away at a theater competition in Fullerton (that's in Orange County, down in Southern CA). When I got home late Monday night, the skies had cleared and the seed packets had arrived!

I ordered all my vegetable seeds from Renee's, as usual. Her seeds always do well in my garden, and when I've ordered from other companies, the results are just not as successful. I believe that's because her small company is located quite near where I live, and she grows all these varieties in her test garden. The seeds that she collects from the plants on her property also do well in my climate. That's my theory, anyway.

I also got some flower seeds from the same company. These are all varieties that did well in my garden last year, plus the bees really liked them - and I did too!

I also ordered some more native wildflower seeds from Larner's as I do every year. Judith has a wonderful demonstration garden and her seeds are terrific. When we visited, we saw how they collect and separate them. I do some of that here with my own flowers, but it never hurts to have more.

I'm planning a trip to a new-to-me nursery in San Francisco, Bay Natives. I would like to purchase some larger bushes of manzanita as well as some other native plants in larger form. I see they also have artichokes, so that will fulfill Kate's wish to have an artichoke garden.

I ordered six raspberry canes, six more blueberry bushes, and 100 bare root strawberry plants from Stark Brothers, a business I learned about on Growing a Greener World. It's not a local nursery, but I've never ordered bare root plants before, and I haven't been thrilled with the blueberry bushes and strawberry plants I've gotten from local nurseries. I expect that order to be delivered some time this week.

And of course, I'll get tomatoes and peppers from the Contra Costa Master Gardeners, as I did last year. Here's the info on their sale:

3 Great Tomato Plant Sales In April!
Mark your calendars!
Next week,  our Master Gardeners will startthousands of tomato, pepper, eggplant and tomatillo seeds in anticipation of our 4th Annual Great Tomato Plant Sale.  It's sure to be amazing once again!

More details on the varieties available next month.

Don't miss out -- mark your calendar for these dates!

Our Garden - Walnut Creek

Saturday, April 4, 10 A.M. - 3 P.M. and

Saturday, April 11, 10 A.M - 2 P.M

West County Sale - Adams Crest Farm, Richmond

Saturday, April 11, 10 A.M. - tbd

I really missed working in the garden this weekend. And I was about as far away from nature as you can get, being on a college campus for two days, and then in Disneyland the other two. Although Disney did have quite a few flowers in bloom, and we saw many butterflies and bees working the blossoms. Still, it was more of a 'people' weekend then a 'garden' weekend. Kate's group did very well in the competition, and it was a very interesting time for me, as the children were taught by professionals both at the college and behind the scenes at Disney. Theater was my life for many years, and I would have loved something like this when I was in high school. For Kate, it wasn't so fun. Lots of crowds, much asked of her, intense competition, and so on. Disneyland is overstimulating for the most grounded person, let alone an autistic one! We managed to have a good time for the most part, despite all the challenges.

We got very little sleep, and work was tough today. When I got home, I found a little present on my porch from a neighbor, which brightened my day considerably!

Sweet little eggs from her newly-laying hens! Aren't they beautiful? Soon, we'll have something like this every day at Poppy Corners: We intend to finish the coop this long President's Day weekend.

Urban Farm Tour

The Institute of Urban Homesteading organizes and hosts Urban Farm Tours every year, and this year they will be having one in Oakland (June 13), one in Hayward (Sept 19), and one in Walnut Creek (June 6). Our garden has been selected to be one of those on tour on June 6! We are so excited to share our yard with all those interested, and it's gratifying to be part of a big movement of folks taking a greater interest in growing their own food. We're happy to share anything we've learned in our own process of 'getting back to the land.' Even if it's only a tiny parcel of land. :)
So mark your calendars and join us at Poppy Corners on June 6! We'll be glad to see you. More information to come, as it becomes available.

February arrives!

I'm so thrilled with the way the vegetable garden is thriving this winter. Part of it is due to the weather; we haven't had nearly as many heavy frosts as we did last year, and it's been sunny and warm for most of January. But part of it is the success of the hoop houses. They've kept the temperature steady in the beds, and also have kept the deer out! I know the deer have been sniffing around, because the peas regularly get a haircut, but nothing else has been eaten.

Speaking of peas, they've finally got some flowers on them. I guess I've decided that peas are not a true winter vegetable for us; they prefer things slightly warmer. They are loving these sunny days.

I opened up the hoop houses this weekend, to let the veg benefit from these gorgeous days. I will definitely be harvesting. I have more greens than we can eat. I'm putting them in everything; I even tried a recipe for meatloaf that included pureed kale. I loved it. Not so sure everyone else did. We are eating greens for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Greens are the new zucchini. If you live near me and you'd like to take some off our hands, come on by and we'll harvest some for you.

The garlic and shallots are looking great.

The blueberries are blooming, and I just saw my first strawberry blossom, as well.

Many of the fruit trees in the neighborhood have started flowering. Yes, it's very early, and I'm glad my apple and peach don't show any signs of that, yet.

Seedlings of native plants are already coming up.

And the narcissus is finished blooming, while daffodils are beginning.

I've seen many interesting things on my hikes, lately.

Who says turkeys can't fly?

Shelf fungus

wild iris, planted by someone long ago

Wild mustard, soon to be ubiquitous, but pretty when new

fallen log with woodpecker holes

a beautiful vista in the Mt Diablo foothills

My dad finished our bed, and we love it. Not only is it gorgeous, our whole bedroom smells woody and wonderful. Here's a picture of one of the pencil posts:

I like the color of the wood, sugar pine

And, coop construction is coming along. Tom finished the roof and the framing for the hen house (inside the run), and together we got the hardware cloth installed and the trench backfilled. Dad came over and helped us with some supplemental bracing, and built the door.

building the door

hardware cloth, bracing, and door installed, trench filled

Next week, we'll start working on the hen house, which will be on the left upper quadrant.

I'm working on my online order for more blueberry bushes, plus some raspberry canes and elderberry bushes. I'm considering a small Meyer lemon. I also need to work on getting artichoke starts in the ground (Kate wants to be in charge of those), and I'm hoping to make a vertical planting wall out of a pallet, for more strawberries. We need to build the new raised beds, plus convert all the sprinklers to drip. Plus, get more ceonothus and manzanita bushes in, and I need to order my veg seeds! Lots of stuff to do, and spring isn't even here yet. I'd like to find some things to grow around the coop, too - some sort of deciduous vines or maybe olive trees. They'll need shade in the summer. Ideas, anyone?

I wanted to let you know about a new online magazine that I find amazing, and I can't wait to see what the next issue is like, as I've already devoured the first one. It's called Craftmanship, and the first issue is all about agriculture. I love their mission and view of the world. I'm excited to see more.

Edible Education

Adam is starting a new, extra-curricular project for school: He wants to change the district lunch program. Just a tiny goal. So I was helping him with some research and we thought of the Edible Schoolyard, the program that Alice Waters (of Chez Panisse fame) set up in Berkeley. While perusing the site, we saw that there is a Monday evening class that runs for several months, which you can watch online. The first class is with Michael Pollan, and there will be several other famous-in-the-food-world speakers, such as Eric Schlosser, Marion Nestle, Mark Bittman, and yes, even Alice. The great part is, you don't have to watch it just at 6:30 when it streams live from the class. You can watch it afterward! I myself am about halfway through the first class, and hope to watch them all in fits and starts through the year. You can find the class here. If you scroll down, you can also find past classes and lectures, plus a reading list.

Another great resource I've found lately is the PBS show Growing a Greener World. Each episode is about gardens, growing food, and sustainability. You can watch GGW here.

I've got a kid with stomach flu home today, so along with fumigating and cleaning everything to a fare-thee-well, I'll take some time to watch some of these. I also plan to get out in the garden and harvest some greens, which we'll have in homemade broth tonight. That should go a long way toward keeping everyone healthy!

Baking Bread

Guest post from Tom today - all about his recent adventures with sourdough! Enjoy!

I've been making bread off and on for a few years. There are a variety of things I enjoy about bread-making. Yes, it's a long process, but it's not like making risotto where you've got to stand at the stove for a long time. With bread, you work for 15 minutes, then you wait two hours, then you work for another 15 minutes, then another wait... it's a cooking project that fits in well to doing other things around the house (for example, chicken coop construction).

I'd decided recently to get a little more methodical about bread-making -- making a couple of loaves a week seems to work well for our family bread needs, and it's a good weekend project for me. Making bread weekly also meant that it would be plausible to try my hand at sourdough. All of the fuss of making and tending a starter makes no sense when you're making bread once every few months, but if you're going to once a week, that's a different story.

To get a starter going, I turned to this article from The Kitchn. It's a pretty straightforward process -- equal parts of flour and water, mixed together, and let set in a warm spot. It's really probably the wrong time of year to get starter going. The article calls for a 70-75ºF place, and our house isn't getting much about 65ºF. For that reason, it took a few more days for things to start bubbling. I'd tried setting it on top of the refrigerator (the heat from the coils making it warmer), and setting it in the oven with the light on, then I finally resorted to putting the starter on a heating pad set on low with a dishtowel separating it. Per the directions, I added equal amounts of flour and water daily, and eventually I got some good yeast action going.

Let me take a quick side trip to let you know one thing I found in my research about sourdough. You'll read a lot about how this starter process is all about "capturing wild yeasts from the air", which all sounds very exotic and fraught with danger. As it turns out, it's not actually how this works. The microbes involved are actually present on the flour that you get from the store in quantities far greater than what's in the air. What makes sourdough sour is the presence of both yeast and lactobacillus cultures -- those same handy lactic-acid-making bacteria used in making cheese, sauerkraut, and pickles. Sure, there's probably a few local beasties in there, but it's not like I had to air out the house to make sure I had enough wild yeasts to get started.

Armed with some starter, I made the companion basic bread from the Kitchn, and it turned out pretty good. It doesn't rely solely on the starter for leavening -- there's some commercial yeast as well -- and it makes a nice loaf that's just slightly sour:

As I mentioned, I'm in the habit of making bread weekly, so refreshing the starter daily doesn't really make a lot of sense. For now, I've gotten into the habit of pulling out some starter to make the week's bread, refreshing the starter with some flour and water, putting the starter in the fridge for the week, then pulling it out the night before I bake and refreshing it again.

Here's what it the starter looked like this morning after an overnight refreshment and standing out on the counter:

So many bubbles!

Here's this week's bread dough after its first rise:

And here's the final product this week. I tried using half whole wheat flour and half bread flour, and it turned out pretty good. Elizabeth said it's her favorite so far.

I'll be anxious to see how this goes once the weather starts warming up. It'd be nice to get a little more sour in the sourdough, and I'm not quite getting the volume of the second rise (in the loaf pan) that I'd like -- our loaves are a little squat.

Finally, Elizabeth has made a number of book recommendations. If you're geeky like me, you'll dig Ratio. The premise of the book is that you can start with some basic ingredients, and by varying the ratios of those ingredients, you get different results. Mix flour to water in a 5:3 ratio -- you get bread. Mix flour, milk, egg, and butter in a 4:4:2:1 ratio, you get pancakes. (Well, for bread you'll want yeast, and for pancakes some sugar and baking soda, and for both, some salt, but you get the picture).

One of the things that Ratio did for me (besides arming me with an infinitely-flexible homemade pancake recipe) is convince me in the use of a digital kitchen scale for baking. It's so much more precise than measuring by volume, and it's helped me tremendously in getting consistent results. One of the ratios is pie crust (3:2:1 flour:fat:liquid), and I'm no longer fiddling around with ice water and adding it a tablespoon at a time and still getting pie crust that doesn't roll out well. Using a scale, I just mix it all up and it's perfect every time.