Distracted by Spring

I had a lovely email from a reader this morning, inquiring after our health and wanting to make sure we are okay. This made me realize that I haven’t written since mid-February, so here’s a quick check in just to assure all of you that yes, we are well! Here’s my short report.

School and Work: Incredibly busy right now. Tom’s up to his eyeballs in work and I’m similarly occupied with projects and writing. I am taking a very full load in order to graduate the end of this calendar year (fulfilling a dream I’ve had for my entire adult life!). I’m also having some existential debates over getting a job vs. going on to get a Masters Degree. Meanwhile, I’m very distracted by the weather and the sunshine which is constantly calling me away from my computer, which brings me to…

Health: I know I wrote about our journey to better health and resiliency last December. Tom and I have both prioritized this, which means that much of our free time is spent meeting our activity goals. It’s easy this time of year, with mild temperatures and green hills motivating every step. Soon it will be so hot and dry that we’ll have to make sure we get our exercise in before 9 am, but while it’s so beautiful, we both are getting outside as much as we can.

Kids: It’s crunch time for our daughter Rin, who is a senior in high school and is making big college decisions, so a lot of time is being spent discussing and weighing pros and cons and figuring out next steps. Adam is still safely at Cal Poly, alone in a dorm room, on a computer all day. He’s looking forward to coming home for spring break and cooking!

Garden: We are eating fresh peas, kale, arugula, and asparagus most days of the week. Last night, as we were shelling peas and popping them straight into our greedy mouths, Tom mused that nothing tastes like spring more than fresh peas. I concur! My pepper starts are ready to be planted on, and instead of moving them into 4” pots, I think I’m going to try transplanting them directly into their summer locations and covering them with fleece to keep the birds and the morning chill off of them. It’s a bit cold at night, yet, but I think it might work. I’ll report back. This weekend I will also be starting tomato seeds indoors! Exciting times. The chickens are producing lots of eggs now that the days are longer, and at least one of our meals every week consists of a frittata, which is one of our favorite spring dinners. Tom is also making ice cream several times a week with the beautiful yolks. The bees are extremely busy collecting pollen and raising brood.

Irrepressible energy: One of the biggest benefits from our ongoing health journey is that we feel about twenty years younger, and our moods are super high. Even with all the stress, we are happier than we’ve been in a long time. I usually have some sort of seasonal depression over the winter, which always knocks me sideways. There wasn’t a hint of that this winter.

So, my friends, all is well here, and we hope the same for you and yours. Look for more garden-inspired posts as the weather continues to improve!

(And Juliana, thanks again for checking in with us. You’re so kind!)

Homemade Garlic Powder

2020 had one thing going for it: We had an absolutely perfect garlic crop. I had finally perfected our method of growing garlic and it yielded beautiful, plump garlic bulbs, with juicy, succulent cloves. We’ve enjoyed it fresh ever since we harvested it. But then it did what garlic naturally does after a certain amount of time - it began to bolt and grow. We don’t have a root cellar, so storing garlic in ideal temperatures/humidity is just not possible for us; eventually it’s just going to turn, and there’s nothing to be done about that.

Garlic that has bolted (started sending up new growth) is still safe to eat, as long as the cloves are still firm. However, you need to cut out the growing shoot before using it, as that part will be bitter. Also, inevitably, the shoot will use up all the sugars in the clove, leaving it mushy and tasteless. So it’s a careful dance, knowing when to stop using your garlic harvest.

We knew that we wanted to get ahead of the mushy-clove stage, so this past weekend, we made garlic powder with the remaining bulbs. I cut down all five of the strings of garlic still hanging over the piano. I kept two big bulbs to try another experiment; planting them now, in pots, to see if I can get a fall crop of garlic on top of our already-growing spring crop (planted last October). I’ll let you know how that goes. I also removed the firmest two heads and popped them in the fridge, hoping to halt their growth and allow them to be used in cooking a bit longer. The rest of them were separated into cloves, shaken together in two identically-sized cake tins to remove their skins, and then sliced in half to remove the growing shoots.

Then, the cleaned cloves were put into the food processor in batches and chopped up. We spread the mixture on dehydrator sheets and dried it for about 20 hours. I wish you could have smelled our house while that was happening. Truly, I felt like we were in the middle of some kind of spice factory. At first, it was so strong, it made our eyes water; after a few hours, the scent changed to something sweeter and mellower, but still plenty strong. It’s a really good thing we had already planned on Italian for dinner, as this smell fitted right in!

before drying

after drying for 20 hours

After that, it was just a matter of peeling the dried puree off the sheets and popping it into our dedicated spice grinder. It ground up beautifully into a soft, creamy powder, and yielded an entire pint! That’s enough powdered garlic to see us through a year, at least.

This project took a lot of time, but we are so glad we were able to use up the rest of our beautiful garlic harvest in a sustainable way. It feels right, and honors the time, money, and effort it took to grow the crop in the first place. Nothing is as rewarding to grow as a staple like garlic, which is used so often in our cooking.

Have you ever dried your garlic crop? Have you ever planting sprouting cloves in the spring for a fall crop? If so, I’d like to know how your efforts turned out!

I've become THAT lady

Yep, I’ve become the person on the block who sets up a hidden fairy garden, hoping to amuse the kids that are passing by on their daily walks.

Tom and I were touched by a story we watched on CBS’ Sunday Morning, a few months back now. It chronicled a 20-something woman and her relationship with a child on her street. Wait, here it is - you can watch it for yourself.

Awesome, right? It made me think more about the space below our Little Free Library, which is already a popular item in the neighborhood. The space below was covered by plants, yes, but those were easily trimmed back, and a lovely little glen cleared. And then I made a fairy garden.

I have no idea if anyone has even found it yet, or if it will be well-received. But I do know that our street has been filled with small children, zipping back and forth on their bikes, or being pushed in their strollers, or just running ahead of their parents. The pandemic (and our long shelter-in-place mandates) have made our local streets even more precious, a place to get some exercise and say hello to neighbors, while giving us something new for our eyes to focus on. Our next door neighbors have their two Silkie chickens right next to the sidewalk, which also provides great entertainment for anyone who walks by. And now that we’ve had some rain, and some early spring sun, the garden is starting to pop - delightful flowers are starting to appear as if by magic. Bulbs, like narcissus, anenomes, and daffodils, and early spring bloomers like flowering currants and the charming blue of forget-me-nots, and curious vegetables like fava beans and shell peas. The bumblebee queens have left their dens and are foraging in the native manzanitas. There’s plenty of magic all around, if only one looks for it.

Wind

Tom built our tomato trellises to last. They were heavy, balanced, braced. But they were no match for our current wind event.

We usually have these wind events in late summer and early fall. I’m not sure we’ve ever had anything like this in January before.

The National Weather Service warned us that it was coming, but we never even imagined it would take down our trellises. Many folks are out of power. Mt. Diablo, just a few miles to our east, saw wind gusts of 82 mph last night. Dozens of fires have begun and been put out. Some have developed into larger fires. We’ve had basically no rain, and the humidity is in the basement, leaving us with extremely dry conditions.

This is from Fire.gov right now.

The wind should abate by tonight. As soon as it does, we’ll have some cleanup and rebuilding to do.

It's Time to Start Pepper Seeds (at least here in California)

I learned just in the last couple of years that it’s best to start pepper seeds long before starting tomato seeds. Tomatoes germinate and grow quickly, so if you sow them in March, they’ll be ready to plant out late April to early May. Peppers take a much longer time to germinate, especially, and their growth is also quite a bit slower. Last winter was the first time I started peppers in January, and we were eating our first ripe red ones by the end of June, early July. Which, in my opinion, is excellent.

My seeding trays fit 50 2x2 inch soil blocks, and I sow two seeds per block, to insure that I’ll get at least one viable seedling of each variety. In about a month, these will probably need to be potted up to 4” containers, and then in March it will be warm enough to take them outside to the greenhouse. That will leave my seeding table empty and available for tomatoes.

*** By the way, I have a ton of seeds left over, some from each year since 2018. If you’d like to grow your own peppers this year, please let me know and I’m happy to give you some seeds. The Johnny’s hybrid seeds, in particular, are a bit pricey, and I would rather have them be used than go to waste.

My seeding setup is quite simple: A table, a towel, a heat mat (for under the tray, to keep things warm for the germination process), and a light - that’s it. The seeds don’t need light until they germinate, but they need heat the entire time. Usually I set this up in our bedroom, but that’s where Tom’s “office” is this year, so I guess the living room will have to do.

We’ve had temperatures a full 20 degrees higher than normal this time of year, and there have already been wildfire starts in southern California, so it’s going to be a doozy of a year. No rain in sight, either. This weather does make us want to be outdoors all the time, so we’ve indulged that craving - getting compost dug and plants side dressed, brewing beer, pruning trees, and of course the ever-present chore of weeding. I used organic rice straw to mulch everything last year, and that was a mistake - I have rice germinating all over the place. However, I also have winter garden seeds germinating too! So that’s a nice side effect of this weather.