Tomatoes

April 2, 2016 Elizabeth Boegel

Maybe I am a tomato dunce.

I am not being dramatic. Because I killed half the tomatoes I transplanted last weekend.

Both Cherokee Purples, dead. Half of my paste tomatoes, dead. And the list goes on. I also killed two peppers and I didn't even transplant those.

I have no idea what I did wrong. Half of the tomatoes survived and are doing well. It must be something with the way I handled them? Or did I not plant them deeply enough? Not give enough water? Oh, screw.

So today I decided to supplement my supply with a few purchased seedlings from the Contra Costa Master Gardeners. They always have a huge selection to choose from, and while I was there, I picked up a pepper that you grow specifically for drying. Our drying experiments never worked well last year, and apparently it's because you need a specific pepper - who knew???

So, now I've got four cherry tomatoes, five slicing tomatoes, and six paste tomatoes, all in half-gallon containers, out in the sunshine (76 today and heading towards the mid-80's later in the week), and man did I water them in well.

Cherry: Mexico Midget, Yellow Pear, and two Black Cherries (all survivors of my killing spree).

Slicing: Nebraska Wedding, Black Krim, Brandywine (survivors), plus two I got today - Mortgage Lifter, and Cherokee Purple.

Paste: Opalka, Federle, Amish Paste (thank goodness one of each of these survived, I knew there was a reason I planted two of everything), and three from the sale - La Roma III (the only determinate variety I have), Rocky, and Pompeii.

I heard a bit of a tomato talk while I was standing in line to pay; one of the Master Gardeners was talking about how they plant tomatoes in 'Our Garden' (their demonstration site). She said they water their tomatoes on drip (like us) four times a week for 40 minutes at a time. This is easily half again as much as we watered last summer. So we'll be adjusting our drip system to match what the MG's do.

She also said our soil is still too cold to put tomatoes in the ground - this is what I thought - so I'll be waiting several weeks. Not like last year!!!

I transplanted the peppers today too. I have the one I bought for drying from the sale - Picante Calabrese - and the ones that survived here- Jalepeno, Maule's Red Hot, Jimmy Nardello, Chocolate Bell, Bull Nose Bell, and Sheepnose Pimento.

Because of this amount of tomatoes and peppers, and seeing how things are coming in the winter garden, I revised my whole plan for the summer garden.

Speaking of the winter garden, both garlic and shallots are starting to look like they might be ready for harvest earlier than I expected. Last year we harvested garlic on April 24 and shallots on June 13. So I must be wrong and they must need more time. The fingerling potatoes are looking good but haven't bloomed yet, so I don't want to take those out anytime soon. The carrots and beets are being harvested now, and there are still turnips though we have eaten all the turnips we want to for a long, long time. Maybe we'll pickle some. Broccoli is going to seed, the cabbage never 'headed' and is being used to feed the chickens; we are harvesting peas daily along with spinach, kale, and chard. The braising greens have gone to seed and are providing flowers for the bees and food for the chickens as well.

Flowers are blooming everywhere. Here is a small sampling.

I can't remember - old-fashioned phlox? Not sure. Charming though.

Galliardia, or Blanket Flower, about to bloom

It's fun to walk around and see things popping up. Like this -

or this -

What's happening in your garden this weekend?

Happy Easter!

March 26, 2016 Elizabeth Boegel

We're having a glorious summer-like Saturday here at Poppy Corners.

To all you Mid-westerners and East-coasters, I'm so sorry - but it's in the high 70's here today. I'm actually a little bit sunburnt after working in the garden today.

I decided to pot up the tomatoes one more time. They've been growing in the cowpots very nicely, and while I like the fact that the cowpots are made out of manure, they tend to let the seedlings dry out quite a bit, which I don't like. Also, I'm not planning to plant these seedlings in the ground until very late April or very early May, to avoid the problem I had last year - an unexpected cold wet week in April.

I bought some black plastic half gallon pots and more potting soil and moved all the tomatoes into them. I also gave them a diluted liquid fish feeding.

You can see how dry the peppers look in those cowpots.

I have one raised bed standing fallow because my Cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts crops failed (possibly due to Joe the dog, digging). So I put the pots there, and put a row cover in place. I'll leave the pots outside overnight, but cover the bed with row cover, which should protect the seedlings and keep the space underneath a few degrees warmer than outside. Now I just have to remember to cover it at night and uncover during the day.

I've left the peppers in their cowpots for now, they are still very small, but I will also leave them out under the row cover.

Tom's been working on getting drip access into the new raised beds, and I've been sowing more wildflower seeds and doing a a lot of weeding in the pollinator beds.

Today was also my annual egg-dying experiment. The last few years, I've been trying out natural dyes. This year, I wanted to try out a new way of coloring the eggs using commercial dye. I saw this in some magazine months ago.

I filled some old recycled containers with different grains - rice, quinoa, popcorn, and grits. Then I added some dye.

I shook the boiled eggs (just white ones from the store, I didn't want to waste eggs from our own chickens) in the dyed grains, and this is how they turned out.

I like them but I don't love them. Next year I'll try something different!

Tom and I had a fun cooking class this past Wednesday with Epicurean Exchange, it was a gift from my mom. This class was all about French Desserts; we made Creme Anglaise, Chocolate Mousse, Chocolate Souffle, Crepes Suzette, a lemon tart with a short crust, and some ice cream. We enjoyed it very much and I came home with three dozen eggshells for my tomato planting in May - that's how many eggs we went through in the class!

I hope you're all having a wonderful Easter weekend. Maybe some of you are even on Spring Break, in which case, enjoy!

Satisfaction

March 20, 2016 Elizabeth Boegel

Sometimes I think all of this homesteading/sustainable stuff is just a little too precious for words. I mean, I just read a review for a restaurant that recently opened in San Francisco that is extremely farm-to-table, and some of it is just so over the top. I mean, using a perennial wheatgrass that is specifically known for its carbon-capturing capabilities for the bread? And I thought grinding my own wheat was crunchy.

And I'm too old to be a hipster. None of the stuff I'm doing is in the name of 'cool.'

But there are times, even whole days, when I derive such an immense sense of satisfaction from doing things this way, I just kind of want to burst with the 'rightness' of it. Today has been one such day.

Tom's brother is here for the day, and it's so fun. He helped Tom put up the hop vine trellis (which involved ladders! yikes, you never know what you'll be asked to do around here) and now they are brewing beer. I knew we'd want to have good meals for him, something from the garden and something from the larder.

Choosing something for dinner was easy, with the new smoker - put a piece of meat on for the day, make some baked beans, and later, biscuits, and we're done. But I wasn't sure about lunch...

Today was bread-baking day, so I already had fresh bread. I had some ricotta left over from the other day - I had made fresh ricotta to go on homemade pizza dough. I also had a couple of tablespoons of pesto left over, which I froze last summer and have been taking out of the freezer when needed (like for pizza). I went out to the old herb garden and cut some chives, marjoram, and oregano. I opened up the last jar of pickled garlic from last summer. I put the ricotta, some olive oil, the pesto, the herbs, and a couple of cloves of garlic in the food processor and blended it all up with some salt and pepper. This gave us an herby cheese spread for the bread.

I sent Tom to the store for prosciutto, and went out in to the garden for carrots, turnips, broccoli, beets, peas, and asparagus. I made a vegetable plate with these items from the garden.

I got out the last jar of pickles, a jar of dilly beans, and the olives and pickled jalepenos from the fridge. All together, these items made such a nice lunch, with a mandarin orange to top it off. And it was just so darn satisfying to have all these items on hand to make a lovely, homemade lunch.

It's been a while since lunch, so soon we'll have an afternoon snack with our coffee - angel food cake and blueberry compote. I had a ton of egg whites left over from projects earlier in the week, so angel food was a great way to use them up. How fabulous to have our own delicious, nutritious, home-grown eggs to use in all these wonderful dishes. How amazing to have all these vegetables in the garden, just ready to eat. How terrific that I thought to put up all these items last summer, so they'd be on the shelf when I needed them. How lovely to have fruit from our own fruit trees, vines, and bushes. It's all just so darn satisfying, I can't think of any other word for it. It has nothing to do with the environment (although it helps there, too) or the water shortage (though it helps there, too), or make us look cooler, but it sure does feel (and taste) pretty good.

New Herb Garden

March 19, 2016 Elizabeth Boegel

Well, the Understory Garden (which I think is really just an herb garden, honestly) is completed! It's taken months to get this project done, from sheet-mulching the weedy grass in this area, to building raised beds, to getting soil delivered, to shoveling and planting and voila!

Ok, let me tell you what you're seeing, because everything is so little and it's going to take a while to fill in. (Gosh, if nothing else, gardening sure teaches you how to be patient!) In the center of the large bed is an Asian Pear (Hosui), it's just a stick at this point. The bushy things are rosemary, which I have elsewhere too but really can't get enough of. All along the paving stones (which I painted, I know they are bright! but they will fade), I planted two each of six different lavenders. These particular lavenders apparently do well in extreme heat and will get to be about 2x2 ft each. On the right side of the pear I planted two rhubarb crowns, and on the left side, two lemon verbenas. Then, filling in, are four groups of each of these herbs: Chives, Thyme, French Thyme, Sage, Parsley, Oregano, Marjoram, and Savory. I started these inside and they've been ready to transplant for weeks, I'm glad to get them in the ground. In two of the little beds I planted seedlings and seeds of dill; in the other two beds, the same of cilantro. I'm hoping to get a nice crop and maybe even some seeds from these before it's time to plant basil. I have four different kinds of basil to put in those little beds in the summer. Oh and around the pear I scattered some marigold seeds.

So basically it's a glorified herb garden, but I'm glad to have a safe, inside-the-fence place for all those herbs that we use so often. These blooming things will help the bees, too, and I already saw one bee checking out the rosemary, though it has no blooms on it at the moment.

In the background you can see how the winter veg is coming on - peas and broccoli are going great guns, as are greens of all types. The cabbage (which you can't see, it's to the right of the shed behind the broccoli) isn't doing so well, and I had a 'meh' year for spinach. In the pollinator garden, seeds are just coming up, but you can see the Western Redbud in full bloom.

The other vegetable garden is doing quite well, with carrots, beets, and turnips being harvested frequently, and garlic, shallots, and potatoes growing up up up.

We opened the hive today and there are now TWO clusters of brood. So our little colony is growing. I'm so proud that they survived the winter and all the weird invasive things and they are coming back strong! It'll take them a while to get back to the full colony that they were last summer. All the new blooming flowers around the neighborhood are helping immensely.

One more interesting thing to show you. When I went to shovel dirt in to the new beds, I found this:

This tiny mushroom was about the size of my pinkie fingertip, and there were hundreds, many even smaller, all over the dirt pile that's been sitting in the driveway since I had it delivered two weeks ago. I'd had it covered with a tarp during the recent rains, and it's like a thousand mushroom spores germinated under there. Beautiful! The pile was also chock full of worms, a good sign indeed.

Hope you're having a wonderful Saturday!

Earwig Experiement, Cutworms, Clematis

March 17, 2016 Elizabeth Boegel

I was sent home from work early today (guess I'm still not well!), so there's been time to check the earwig traps and see what came of them. The results are.... moderate.

Each bowl looks a lot like this. A few earwigs, a few roly-polys (I didn't intend to kill them, and I'm sorry about it), a couple of baby slugs, and quite a few of these grubby/wormy things too. I'm not sure what they are, but I have almost as many of them as earwigs. Anyone have an idea?

It's not the earwig armageddon I was hoping for. But I did find this huge dude in one of the bowls, and this might also provide a clue to the holey lettuce.

I do believe this is a cutworm. If I have these, it's no wonder my leaves are full of holes. The most common type of cutworm cuts the seedlings down completely, but there are types that eat holes in vegetable leaves.

Now I'm wondering if the tiny wormy/grubby things are just small cutworms? Or some other kind of damaging worm? Sigh.

I decided to fill the bowls up even higher and see if I get more creatures tonight. I think because the bowls aren't full, the baddies can simply check out the deadly liquid without getting trapped. I'll let you know what happens.

While I was outside, I noticed the clematis blooming, which led me to to start a whole research thing about what kind of clematis I planted 12 years ago because of course I didn't make a note of it. Turns out I've been pruning these wrong each year. This type of clematis is a 'Montana' variety called 'Mayleen.' It's an early-bloomer, which means it apparently blooms on older wood. Well, every winter I cut this thing back to about four feet tall, because it's grown all the way up the side of our house in two places and it looks terrible when it's dead. That means it has to put out new vines and bloom, all in a season, which is I suppose stresses the plant. So this spring I'll prune it back after it blooms (six months earlier than I usually do it), hopefully it will have time to grow new wood before winter, and it will bloom even more prolifically next spring.

I have to say, it's bloomed beautifully every year even with my pruning hack job. But the point is, don't be like me and plant things without making a record. I do it all the time, completely confident that I will remember. Unfortunately I am deep in to middle age, which means I remember almost nothing these days.