Garlic!

Oh, it's one of those times I wish you could just scratch 'n sniff the computer screen. It's garlic harvest time!

These HUGE bulbs were a pleasure to pull out of the ground; they came up easily, as though wanting to be released from the dirt. The soil was interspersed with tons of mycelium, threading its way around the garlic roots. It was just a beautiful experience, the smell of the garlic and the soil, the ease with which I pulled up the bulbs, the lovely sight of roots mixed with healthy fungus. We planted these last November.


That's a lot of garlic!

A quick rinse of the roots, then up on top of the chicken coop for drying. The coop is covered first with a layer of hardware cloth, then with a light roof of sun-deflecting panels. The garlic will stay in between layers for a month, to cure. Then they can be braided and hung and used all year!


Now the coop looks like a Tiki hut! Where's my umbrella drink?
The shallots will get the same treatment, but they don't seem ready to be harvested, yet.

The thought of garlic braids hanging, plus any preserving I might want to do (last summer the thought of canning anything just made me tired, but I'm feeling differently this year), made me wonder where to keep preserved food. Our house is tiny, maybe I've mentioned that once or twice or a thousand times before? I kept pumpkins in my bedroom last September, for heaven's sake. Seed potatoes were kept there, too. I need a better solution. 

I have one spare corner in the living room. It's where the dog sleeps, but if I install some sort of hanging rack, it won't usurp his spot. Dad has made Shaker pegboard hanging shelves before, and I think something like this would be ideal for my needs. The garlic can be hung from hooks in the ceiling. It's a cool, dark corner, and filled jars would look pretty there. 


Not my dad's; just some random pic off the internet


Anyway, more on that as it develops.

While barrowing some dirt, I came across this chrysalis, lying on a rock. I think it must have fallen off the oak tree, as we've been having some significant winds. I put it in a more sheltered spot, and hope it hatches. No idea what it is.



Which reminds me to give you a bee update. They have been going through about two cups of simple syrup per day. Yesterday, Tom went back to add more to the feeder, and got stung! So we've both had our stings for the year. I'm sure the bees will understand that we've met our 'sting quota,' and will be careful with us in the future. :)

Today, we opened the hive to see if they've finally figured out how to build straight comb, and everything looked the way it should, yahoo. The bees are bringing in a lot of pollen, which is a good sign that babies are being made, and we also saw capped brood. We don't normally see the queen, but all signs point to her doing her job. 

Here's a picture, just before we closed up the hive. This is taken from the back looking forward, so you can see the last several bars of comb. The comb near the front of the hive is complete, but this comb near the back is still being built, so you can see the layers on each bar. It's a cool shot. We only have ten bars available to the bees just now; we will add more as they continue to build and grow in number.

Capped brood on the third bar in. I love this fresh, white comb.


Walking around the garden today, I saw lots of interesting things. Blue flax has bloomed. I haven't been able to grow this wildflower in years, and I'm delighted. More forget-me-not has bloomed in the pollinator garden, as well as new salvias blooming every day. The tomatoes have gotten bushy and are starting their slow climb to 6-10 feet tall. (Actually it feels like a fast climb!) The potatoes have sprouted, too!

We didn't make this basket heart-shaped on purpose. I just can't seem to get it straight on the seam!
The new pea plants are growing beautifully...


...while the old ones, having served us well, are starting to look tired. Tomorrow, they get composted, and cucumbers planted in their place.

The strawberry wall is doing better than I'd ever hoped!

and, the slugs never seem to climb up here!

I've had two reader questions: One came from a friend who couldn't believe, with the amount of mulch we have, how much I'm having to weed. I guess I don't talk about weeding much. Margaret Roach from Away to Garden says you need to walk each bed, be it flower or veg, every week. I've come to agree with this advice. The main weed villains here are seeds that have sprouted from our trees. Two trees in particular - the Brazilian Pepper and the Chitalpa. Both have a zillion seed pods with two zillion seeds per pod and they turn up everywhere. And now in the North Garden (the new garden which was sheet-mulched last November) there is Bermuda Grass coming up, as well as Jimsonweed (or bindweed). The stuff drives me crazy. It's enough to make you wish for many bottles of RoundUp. I resist the urge and pull by hand. And that means it has to be done frequently. I only wonder how bad the weeds would be if we didn't have this much mulch? And they are easy to pull out, which is some consolation at least.

The second reader question was a request for a panoramic picture of the original, South Garden, since we posted a picture of the North Garden last week. So here you go:


In front are the leftover beets and broccoli (soon to be culled), the right side of that bed is a succession planting of carrots. Behind that I seeded collards (the nasturtiums have a head start), some marigolds, and the potato baskets on the right. Behind that is the end of the kale (still vigorous!) and to the right of that I seeded romaine. Behind that are the peas, and on the right I will be seeding cucumbers tomorrow. On the train shed you can see the strawberry pallet, underneath which are shallots, and the garlic, which is now gone. The right corner is the pollinator garden. I hope to re-create this in the North Garden, but that's a project for next weekend. Over to the left is what's left of the lawn, which has been heavily seeded with red and white clover for the bees. You can just make out the bee hive in the back center of the picture.

In educational news, I've recently signed us up for an online beer making class, through The Kitchn! It starts May 4, promises to get us brewing a gallon in 20 days, for under $100. I don't drink a lot of beer, but I think this will be fun, and Tom's always wanted to do this. (And secretly, once we've brewed some beer, I'm going to use the equipment to make vinegar.) I've also signed up for a fruit tree pruning class in June. I'm really glad to be doing this, because I hack away at our poor trees every year without knowing what I'm doing in the least. Lastly, Tom is going to take a grey-water class in May as well. Education is important and we're glad these sorts of classes are offered!

I'll end this entry with something bittersweet. I've noticed several dead birds both here in our yard and out on the trails lately. I did wonder where all the birds go to die, because we have an awful lot of birds visiting our yard. They have to die somewhere, right? Two photos are posted below, they aren't gross, in fact I'm posting them so we can admire the gorgeous feathers on these little guys, but if you get upset at stuff like this, best to leave now (I won't be offended)!











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Mourning Dove on our porch

Anna's hummingbird in the open space

Three Herb-y Projects, an interesting bee experience, and more Urban Farm Tour information

I mentioned over the weekend that having the herb spiral in the garden is really a boon for my cooking, and today I made two dishes that really highlighted fresh herbs. But first, a project: I made  'Thieves Vinegar." I caught a little bit of a P. Allen Smith program on PBS, where he was visiting a farm that still does things as they would in colonial times. They used this vinegar for cleaning everything - wood included. I thought I'd make some and use it to clean the kitchen and bathroom, and maybe even our wood furniture.

Here's how you make it: Fill a mason jar with any herb that smells good to you. I used lavender, mint, and sorrel - all smell delicious (the sorrel smells of lemon), and all are abundant in my garden.





Really pack the herbs in the jar.

Then, add distilled white vinegar. On the program they said they prefer this kind of vinegar but that you can use apple cider vinegar as well. Fill the jar to the top, completely covering the herbs, and screw on the cap tightly.




Place the jar in the sun, protected from rain (if you get rain where you live, lucky you.).

In the program, they put it everything in a crock (like you'd use for sauerkraut), put a weight on top, then covered with cloth tied on with twine. But they said in modern days a mason jar is just fine! So that's what I've done.

After two weeks, the mixture should be ready to decant into a spray bottle and used to clean your house! I can't wait to try it, and I'll let you know how it works.

This is a project I could never do without my herb garden, because the cost of buying this quantity of herbs would be quite prohibitive.

For dinner tonight, I used another great quantity of fresh herbs. First, I made fresh foccacia from a recipe I also saw on the same P. Allen Smith show. (I don't usually watch his show, because he doesn't garden like I do - first of all, he's on the East coast so the plant choices don't translate, and also I don't like his style, generally. However this particular episode turned out to be a winner!)

Foccacia

 Pour one cup of warm water into a large bowl. Sprinkle one tablespoon of yeast on top of the water. Sprinkle in two tablespoons of sugar and 1/4 cup all-purpose flour. Mix well and let sit five minutes.
Then add 3-1/4 cups all-purpose flour, one teaspoon salt, one tablespoon olive oil, and three tablespoons of chopped fresh herbs. I used rosemary, sage, thyme, and marjoram. Mix thoroughly and knead for five minutes on a floured board. Put back in the bowl, cover with two teaspoons of olive oil, and a moist cloth. Let rise in a warm place for 45 minutes.



(A quick aside: I've never kneaded anything by hand - I've always used the bread attachment on my Kitchen Aid mixer. Kneading this by hand was actually a great thing to do. Five minutes isn't that long, but you start to realize how strong women used to be, and how they had to do this nearly every day, and often for longer than five minutes. You begin to feel pretty badass. Try it and see!)

Scatter two tablespoons of cornmeal on the bottom of a baking pan. (I used a rectangular pan that I often use for brownies.) Press dough into the pan, stretching it out into a rough rectangle. Sprinkle on sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Bake at 450 for 15-20 minutes. It smells heavenly while it's baking and looks lovely when done.


I served this with a mix of chopped tomatoes (not in season, from Mexico, horrors!), fresh mozzarella, a little basil (also not in season!), salt, pepper, and olive oil.

To go with it, I found a recipe for herbed pork tenderloin from The Kitchn. Basically you make a sort of pesto to rub on the pork.

Grilled Herbed Pork Tenderloin

 In a food processor, combine 1/2 cup fine cornmeal, five minced cloves of garlic, one cup of minced parsley, five minced springs of thyme, two minced sprigs of rosemary, and 1/4 cup minced sage. Pulse till mixed.


While food processor is running, add two tablespoons of olive oil. Rub this paste over two pork tenderloins, which you've already salted and peppered. Grill.



We enjoyed these dishes! The bread was soft and savory and delicious with the tomato mixture; pork tenderloin is generally not my favorite cut of meat, but I simply loved this preparation - the cornmeal/herb mixture gave the meat a lovely crust, and it was so yummy. The best part is that there are leftovers for lunch tomorrow! I will definitely make both these dishes again.

Now for the interesting bee experience. This morning I was headed out to the garden early to pick kale, and I noticed a scrub jay by the hive. As I approached, he flew to the top of the train shed, and in his beak was a dead bee! He must have picked it up from the bee graveyard at the foot of the hive. I didn't know jays would eat dead bees! That was pretty neat.

I opened the hive again today to check the comb. The good news is that the bees are making comb very quickly. The bad news is that I had to remove more skewed comb. I was so frustrated with this that I moved bars around, hoping that they'll build on the ones I moved to the front of the hive now and leave the others for later. I imagine the queen is laying brood on the very first bar, which is beautifully straight, but she'll need to lay on all the other bars as well, and I don't want to have to remove comb that has eggs or larvae in it. As it is, I feel terrible, because it's full of nectar and pollen that the bees have painstakingly collected.

Finally, the Urban Farm Tour tickets are on sale! We very much hope to see you at our farm, June 6. Here are all the relevant links:

LINKS

More Spring Planting

What a great weekend, in the 80's temperature-wise, bright and sunny, and two perfect days of accomplishments in the garden!

Corn is in! This is one of my favorite crops each year, and I plan to succession plant this time around, so I get two crops. Nothing tastes as good to me as a fresh ear of corn, smothered with butter and salt. Or right off the stalk! Last year our yield was disappointing, so I'm hoping that having it in two different places will tell us what the corn prefers.

Collards are in! This is a wonderful summer crop; it is one of the few greens that can take summer heat. I have it in the South Garden, where it will get six hours of early sun, then afternoon shade. It did great there last year and I hope for the same this year. Young, tender leaves are delicious sautéed in olive oil and eaten just like spinach or kale.

Tom made four more trellises for me, learning a new method of joinery from my father.

In Dad's shop, sawing up the boards

The trellises before chicken wire is added
The trellises are for beans and winter squashes, which are both in! Two kinds of pole beans, green and purple, and two kinds of squash, Delicata and a climbing version of butternut. I'm waiting on pumpkin, as it will go underneath the pole beans, and I need to give the beans a head start before I plant pumpkin seeds. 

I yanked all the spinach, as it was starting to look peaked. I washed a bunch of still-nice leaves for our use, fed a bunch to the chickens, and composted the rest. Spinach was a great crop for us this winter and supplied us from January on.

I added a lot of nasturtiums, calendula, and marigolds to the vegetable beds, mainly for color and interest, but it can't hurt to draw the bees' attention to the crops, as well.

Speaking of bees: We opened the hive Saturday, and the bees are still building herky comb. So we had to remove some spurs, which made them mad, and made us sad. It takes a tremendous amount of calories and energy for the bees to build comb; I hope they don't get discouraged that we keep removing it. 

Here's a picture of some of the comb we removed. There's a lot of nectar stored in it, as well as different colors of pollen. The variety is pretty.



One good thing is that the bees have more comb than they did earlier in the week, so they are building quickly. I'm going to order more natural wax to glue on to the bars, so they have a better 'pattern' to emulate.

I took a look at Dad's hives this weekend, and promptly got stung. I haven't been stung in years! It hurts like the dickens until you take the stinger out, and then it's ok after that, except that the swelling can be uncomfortable. And, it'll be itchy in a couple of days.

Not just the stinger, but part of the bee's body, stuck in there.

Y'all know how to take a stinger out, right? Use a credit card and scrape it out. If you use tweezers, you squeeze the stinger and inject even more poison into the skin. After that, use cortisone cream or toothpaste (paste, not gel) to help with swelling and itching. Baking soda paste works too.

I harvested a bulb of garlic, to see if I need to go ahead and harvest the whole bed. The green stalks are starting to brown, which is supposed to be the indication of readiness; the bulbs are certainly huge! 


We've put it on the mesh above the chicken coop to cure; we'll take a look at it next week, and then decide what to do next. I'm not exactly sure how it's supposed to look, but I think I'll know when I see it. (That may be naive.)

We're still harvesting kale every day, and peas every day - and, a new development - strawberries every day! Yahoo! They really are so much more tasty straight from the garden.


The artichokes are growing and I'm still not sure whether I want to harvest them, or leave them to flower this first year.


Cilantro is growing like crazy, and I need to figure out what to do with it all!


The herb spiral is growing wonderfully and producing plenty of produce for nearly daily use. I have rosemary in pots elsewhere, and basil will go in the beds as soon as it's warmer at night, and I've planted feverfew and chives in other spots as well; meanwhile this mound of herbs is so useful and one of the best things I've done in the garden. I just have to keep a sharp eye on the mint. It's a bully.


In the flower garden, phacelia bloomed this week. This plant is also called 'bee's friend,' as they love the blooms. I have two different kinds. Both are lovely.




The red clover has now bloomed throughout the grassy area we have left in front; the bees love it, and it looks pretty. I just have to figure out how to cut the grass around it, or maybe I'll just mow it all down and watch it grow again!


We have plenty of white clover too, and I've recently seeded some more of that as well. It's just so much more useful than grass. Again, it's a small area, but I'm pretty down on grass right now (as you all know).

The pollinator garden is starting to burst with blooms, mostly poppies, but also hummingbird sage, salvias, and nicotiana. Borage is beginning, too. Plus the coral bells are still blooming. And spirea has begun to bloom.




I planted more flower seeds, plus some seeds for climbing up a trellis I have back by the water feature. These are an heirloom climbing bean that might even bear fruit. The seeds are quite beautiful.


After the we were finished planting and trellising the North Garden, Tom took a picture. It's really shaping up back here.

The rope is for the shade sail, which is over our patio.

So that's the North Garden. The South Garden is where the pollinator garden is, plus peas, kale, carrots, potatoes, romaine, and some leftover broccoli and beets. Soon I'll plant Bibb lettuce as well as basil, and when the peas are done, cucumbers, both slicing and pickling. That planting will probably happen in early May.

I'll leave you with two videos of some birds in our yard. The first are two blackbirds on our back fence; the male is doing a mating dance for the female. We've never seen this in our yard before, in fact we've never seen blackbirds here, though there are plenty in the open space. The second video is of a mother black-capped Chickadee, bringing food through a huge Ribes plant into a nesting box that Adam made a long time ago and nailed against his train shed. You can see the mother bird checking me out, then she flies in, then you can hear the babies peeping, then she flies out again. We love seeing bird activity in our yard!






Separate lives, but just for a few days

I went down to Southern California on personal business this week, while Tom manned the fort here at home. He has lots to tell you about his bee adventures:

On Tuesday I opened the hive, mostly to check on the status of the queen. When we put the bees in the hive on Saturday, the queen was in a cage, separated from the rest of the bees by a candy plug. This gives everyone a chance to meet & mingle before they can really get together. The bees had been going through a fair amount of sugar water, and I was anxious to see how things were progressing inside.

When I opened up the hive on Tuesday, I noticed with some dismay that the bees were building some comb aligned with the top bars, but then other comb was at an angle offset from the bars of the hive. This isn't good for our beekeeping needs, since we need to be able to lift up individual bars and inspect the comb.

It's a little hard to see, but this comb is aligned with
the length of the bar, which is tilted up from the hive.

After a quick consult with Elizabeth on Tuesday afternoon, we decided that the offset comb needed to go. Armed with our new smoker, a hood, gloves, and a long-sleeved shirt, I set to work on Wednesday afternoon. First things first – an inspection of the queen cage showed that she had been released -- yay! Then I had quite an adventure – I had to lift out bars, set them aside, scrape off the bad bee-covered comb into a bowl, and rearrange bars.

You can see two separate lobes of comb,
offset from the axis of the bar.
There was some comb that had fallen to the bottom of the hive, so I needed to temporarily remove a lot of bars so that I could get my hand in there and remove it.

Sometimes, you've just gotta stick your hand in a big patch of bees.
Each of the bars that had offset comb were bars that we had reused from last year. I replaced them with some unused bars from last year, where we had attached a starter strip of wax. The starter strip goes along the length of the bar, and we had good luck last year with the bees developing comb in the appropriate direction.

This is actually a picture of the queen cage from last year's batch of bees,
but you can see the strip of starter comb.
After about 30 minutes of work, I sealed up the hive again, and left the bowl with cut-off, still bee-covered comb to rest on the ground near the entrance of the hive. I had to hope that the now-released queen somehow remained un-squished by me, and inside the hive. The bees buzzed around quite a bit, much like the first day when we installed them, but by evening they'd settled down again, and today they looked like they were resuming work. It's unfortunate that we had to cut away so much comb that they'd built in the last few days. We'll be back in to inspect on Saturday to make sure that all of the new comb is growing in the right direction.

In other animal husbandry news, the chickens are really looking more like chickens now.


Okay, back to Elizabeth:

While Tom was dealing with sideways comb and two kids, a dog, a cat, and six chickens (plus work and cooking and making lunches!), my week was easier, logistically. I spent some time with good friends and family in both Huntington Beach and North Hollywood, and enjoyed the drive down on I-5, as much as possible. It's awfully dry.

That ribbon of blue in the middle is the canal, which carries water
from our neck of the woods down through the agricultural valley of CA,
all the way to LA. Looking at this landscape, do YOU think it should be farmed?
Do you know how much of your food comes from central CA?
Once in SoCal, the scenery looked more like this:

And then my head popped off.
But in spite of traffic, I had some time to do this:

Tour the Queen Mary

And this:

Touring the Russian Submarine with my pal O.

And this:

Sit on this cool bench, handmade by my friends, and
enjoy the hummingbirds as they visited the succulents

And this:

Watch my friends record a track in their studio

And this:

Plant a container garden for each of my 'god' children
(they aren't really my godchildren, but that's how I think of them)

By the way, in Southern California, it's like the drought is nonexistent. No one is talking about it (at least not casually), there are no huge billboards like there are at home warning us to use less water, and I saw sprinklers going everywhere. When I asked my friends if they were concerned, they actually said "we don't know much about it." In Northern California, it's the main topic. EVERYONE is talking and worrying about it. Considering how much of our water moves down south, shouldn't the people living there be even MORE worried about it than we are? And even more careful than we are? Sheesh.

On to happier subjects, ones that don't raise my blood pressure! As soon as I came home today, Adam and I had to work on the visual component of his extracurricular project about changing the school lunch program. He decided he wanted to cook a lunch that he would like to eat at school, and that would be do-able for school. He made a very delicious whole wheat pasta primavera with vegetables from the garden and grilled chicken, a spinach salad from the garden with a yogurt Caesar dressing, and a rhubarb and strawberry crumble.

Isn't the boxed milk a nice touch?

He presented his findings and ideas to a member of the school board and the head of the education association, who enjoyed eating all the delicious food he made. In fact, the school board member said to him that she thought they might be able to pilot a program based on Adam's research! This was very exciting, and I'm very proud of him.

Now, I'm looking forward to the weekend, where I can look inside the hive myself, and hang out with the chickens, and get the rest of the summer veg planted. Sounds like heaven!






Weekend Wrap-Up

Well, the bees are settling in to their new home. Most of the forager bees took flights today to orient their internal GPS - figuring out which way is East, laying scent paths to guide them back home, exploring some of the flowers in the yard. Even the drones flew today, drunkenly weaving their way back to the landing board. The mason jar of simple syrup that I put out yesterday at 5 was already empty at 5 again today and had to be refilled, so they're eating! I very much enjoy perching in front of the hive and watching all the activity. It just feels right that there's bees back in the garden. Or, as Tom put it, "The band's back together!"

Tom finally figured out the very last piece of the drip system (yes, little bits still needed working on, I told you this project was tricky!) and now all the veg is being watered, which is a great relief. Not only is everything getting regular water direct to the roots, the drip system also means I can mulch around plants heavily, preventing evaporation. (And helping to dissuade weeds, and keeping the soil from blowing away, etc - you've heard all this before.) I'm using straw for mulch, since I always seem to have a bale on hand lately, and it's easy to move around if necessary.

The chickens are getting quite large, and a friend lent me two fake eggs to place in the nesting boxes, to convince the ladies that it's the best place to lay. I don't expect them to lay for another two months, but it can't hurt to get them thinking straight early.

I planted some romaine and we got the other potato cage made and planted with the second batch of seed potatoes. We also built a bamboo trellis for the raspberry vines (though the deer have found the leaves, which is sad). But that's about all we got done this weekend in the garden. It was Kate's birthday, so we spent our time in other ways.

I'll leave you with a couple things that made me glad today (besides bees and birthdays):

The red clover I seeded in the grass (or what's left of it) has finally begun to bloom! Ain't it pretty?
Can't wait for a carpet of red!

The first strawberries ripened in the pallet wall! These were eaten immediately after I took this photo.

My shy Wood Sorrel bloomed. It's so sweet in the shade of the front porch!
Hope you all have a wonderful week. Happy Gardening!