The sun is shining!

Today was the first day we could do anything in the garden for SO LOONNGGGG. And, we only had about an hour available to work outside. The seedlings were root bound in their trays and getting leggy and falling over and desperately needed to be planted out. We at least got one tray planted out: 12 white russian kale plants, 10 mustard plants (a mix), 9 Georgia collards, 16 purple peacock broccoli which look strangely like red russian kale (we'll see), and nine experimental crimson forest bunching onions which do not look like they will make it. All this filled one complete bed and half of a small one. We still have the whole tray of lettuces to plant out, and since other activities are on the calendar for tomorrow, it will be Thursday or Friday afternoon before that happens. We think a new project will be to put plastic deer fencing around the entire garden area. It's already fenced, but that fencing is not sufficient to keep the cats out. They just squeeze right through the openings. And they are digging things up, so we do need to keep them out.

We have had a brainstorm with some of our neighbors to do some workdays to make gardening possible for them. One neighbor family would like to have a couple of beds, but need to have some fencing for it. Another wants to put in a bed or two. Here, we want to expand our fencing so we can plant more fruit trees. So we thought we'd schedule some community work days where we go to each others property and offer our labor to help get the work done. And we'll celebrate together with a potluck meal as part of the day! More work gets done, we have fun, we spend time together, we expand our growing capacity. A win for all!

I was going to include one of the recipes I mentioned in a previous blog, but I have just run out of time for today. So, I'll keep promising that they will come some day!

Rain, rain, rain, and wind and snow and.....

Drenched we are, here in the foothills (unless you are higher in the foothills and then you are snowed). There is no working in the garden: cold, pouring rain, sodden and mushy soil. The forecast for the week is more of the same; I haven't seen a mention of sun at all.

So, I just went out in my full rain gear and chopped down all the remaining kale plants. They will become a kale salad for guests tomorrow evening and probably some green soup (if I am energetic, I will offer the recipes below, or maybe next time, or......). Soon I will do the same with all the remaining lettuce plants, but most of those are now just compost. The heads were already past their prime and this weather has done them in.

But, speaking of lettuce, Penny wanted me to add a bit of information on economics. We don't buy grocery store lettuce any more, unless we absolutely can't help it, but she purchases it often when she does shopping for our Monastery neighbors. She came home from the store last week to report that the lettuces she bought them were $2.00 a head. At this moment, we have 60 new lettuce starts in the greenhouse, so at store prices that would be $120. The seed for these plants probably cost us less than 20 cents. Throw in whatever portion of the planting mix went into this one tray, less than a teaspoon of Maxicrop, and a very small amount of labor on our part, and that is true savings!!

We've been enjoying reading about other people's food growing/farming exploitations. My current favorite of these is "A Dirty Life" by Kristin Kimball. It's a story of creating an amazing CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) from the ground up, using draft horses, and a love story to boot. The location is upstate New York. An equally good read from a very different perspective is "Farm City" by Novella Carpenter, who does her farming in a vacant lot in the worst part of Oakland, California - including pigs!! A little bit less fun for me was "Coop" by Michael Perry who launches his farming career in Wisconsin. I enjoyed the story but didn't quite get into it as much. Our favorite chicken book is "Chick Days: An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Raising Chickens from Hatchlings to Laying Hens" by Jenna Woginrich. We just bought another of hers called "Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life." We'll report after we read it!

And, finally, for today.....Our great local organic growers and promoters of sustainability, Eric and Christine Taylor of Outer Aisle Foods, are the recipients of a Sierra Vision Award from the Sierra Business Council. Here's what SBC says about the awards:
"Historically known by many as the Vision 2020 awards, we've renamed this prestigious regional award for leaders and innovators in the region. Some of the greatest things happen under conditions of adversity and at Sierra Business Council we’re committed to solutions that create opportunity from those exact circumstances. Each year, we host an event to recognize and encourage leadership in the Sierra, honoring community members as their work continues to demonstrate community vitality, environmental quality, economic prosperity, and social fairness." Yea, Eric and Christine!!

(Recipes later - Penny knows where they are and she is out in the rain somewhere at the moment.)

Planning and time

Yesterday I sat down with all the seed packets and a few books to see what would be planted when. And I see that it is getting to be that time when things notch up a gear or two! There are a few things we could be planting right now, like starting some successions of radishes. There are a couple of kinds of onion seeds that look like could be started in the greenhouse and be planted out in a timely matter, if it's not already too late. And, all the seedlings in the greenhouse are just about ready to be transplanted to beds. Which means preparing the beds, which means adding some compost, which means getting another pickup load of Diestel compost, which means finding time to do that.

And then there's April, which is truly just about tomorrow! A large proportion of all the summer garden seeds ought to be started in the greenhouse some time in April! This is when we always seem to fall behind. We may actually think "Oh, it's time to plant these," but then before those seeds get planted, it's May and we are late. My hope is that we won't do that this year. I have a list and I have dates!

And yet, we just tried to find a morning or afternoon to get together with friends - in March OR April - and so far haven't found a date that is open for all four of us. And there are taxes to do and we'll be out of town some of April and...... Does having a large, successful, feeding-us-food type of garden require us to change the way we are living? Do we organize our lives around it rather than fitting it in when we find time? If you're reading this, is this the way it works for you or do you have another experience to share? I'm interested!

So, here's what we should plant some time in April: beets and carrots in the ground, another succession of lettuces -greenhouse, tomatoes - greenhouse, winter and summer squash - greenhouse, New Zealand spinach - in the ground later in the month (this is a warm weather spinach). I'll give a report!

And I should post a couple of photos of our lovely little seedlings before they go outside. Next time.....

Blooms and scents

It feels like spring in the foothills. The weather is soft these days, some sun and some clouds. The hills are SO green, and things are bursting into bloom. Wednesdays are often a "play day" for us, meaning we do something on foot or bicycle. Today we walked from home to Murphys (4.5 miles one way), had a great brunch at Grounds restaurant, and walked back home. A fine way to spend the morning!

And still have time for a bit of outdoor work in the afternoon. Penny is out on our seemingly endless hillside trimming back a year or so's worth of brush. When it's a bit more dry, she'll be out there with the weed eater, whacking back the winter's growth of grass and weeds.

My contribution was to remove three of our six lavender plants. I love lavender, and so do the bees, BUT.....in our early naivete on our land we planted them over the spetic system leach field. Supposedly they have very aggressive root systems. Sigh. And, we never really harvested the lavender and the bushes had gotten leggy and lazy. So I mangled three of them down as close to the ground as I could. When they are a bit dried out, we may be able to saw the trunks down to the ground. It actually feels good to open up that space, even though I will miss their lovely scent. (It does make working in them a pleasure!) And we are contemplating that this space could provide us with several more raised beds for summer gardening. The location does not work in the winter - no sun whatsoever.

I also took a few photos of our little fruit trees. The plum is especially lovely this year, and at this time. You can see it above and I'll add a close up, too. It smells fantastic!

The pink one is a miniature nectarine that we have had for several years. The ants usually get to eat most of the fruit, but we were able to freeze a couple of small bags of them this year; they are great on pancakes! The two new peach trees are just barely beginning to bloom, and the cherry has no sign of opening its tight little buds.

I can never figure out how, with these photo posts, to put the pictures where I want them in the text. They seem to have a life of their own.

And, the garden plan is still not done....but it was, and is, a great day.

I wanted to work in the garden today!

In the past, I have worked in the garden rather grudgingly....."well, it has to be done." But this morning, the garden is where I wanted to be. It was a sweet, mild, hazily sunny day that felt like early spring, even though more rain is due the rest of this weekend. So I abandoned the cleaning that should have been done in the house and went out at least for a while.

The older lettuce beds are past their prime, so we are gradually harvesting whole heads whenever we want a salad. It is not as tender and sweet as usual, but still better than what we get in the supermarket. There does not seem to be a huge amount of active aphid activity, but there is still some damage from them. I'm glad we have eight young heads in planters and a bunch more lettuce seedlings on their way to growing up. Lettuce is the one thing I really must grow. I can no longer eat what the store sells.

I had recently read in a catalogue that when seedlings have their first true leaves, it is time to give them a boost with some kind of food. And, all of ours now have true leaves. So I mixed up a batch of Maxicrop (a kelp extract) and thoroughly watered all the new seedlings. There was a bunch left so I also fed the cabbage, kale, and chard plants. I know that cabbage is a heavy feeder....and ours have never been fed until today!! My garden planning seems often not to get beyond when to plant seeds, when to transplant, and when to harvest. There seems to be a missing piece as in "how to care for them while they are growing." This is definitely a work in progress.

While I was out, I also pulled up the last of some very overgrown arugula plants. There seemed to be a bunch of good growth left on them, so I rescued what I could for a lunch salad. So both dishes we had for lunch had homegrown greens in them. Mushroom polenta pie used some of our young chard leaves (this was covered in a great red wine tomato sauce!), and arugula and grapefruit salad. The main dish and sauce are both recipes from the Moosewood low-fat cookbook. We've had about four things from it in the last couple of weeks. All of them great!

Penny made bread today, and we are just now sampling some warm slices. She's surprised that it worked because after she already had some of the ingredients mixed up, she discovered there wasn't enough yeast. But it sat around much of the day and eventually seemed to rise so she baked two small loaves and one large one and it is yummy. Fresh homemade bread almost always is.

Saturdays are yummy, too, and even some of the housecleaning got done. The garden planting plan, however, is still not done. Manana. Tonight is for reading by the woodstove with the cats.

Seedling report

Today was to be the day to lay out a plan for all the seeds I outlined in the last post, but as it is already afternoon and some other tasks await it probably will wait until the weekend. The weather has warmed up some, but still basically wet and drizzly. They keep predicting bigger-deal storms that don't materialize. La Nina.


So, I'll enter a report on the progress of the seeds we planted in the greenhouse.


These seeds had 100% germination: purple peacock broccoli, white russian kale, arugula, winter marvel lettuce, and rossimo lettuce. That's twelve plants of each.


We have eleven out of twelve planted for each of these: little gem lettuce, freckles lettuce, and winter density lettuce.


Georgia collards have produced ten out of twelve planted, and mild kingdom mustard mix is 9 out of 12.


It was looking like we would not get a single scallion from the Crimson forest variety, but just in the last few days ten of the eighteen have just barely poked up. So, there may yet be more.

Since several are now getting their first true leaves, we have read that it is time to start feeding them with some kind of organic liquid fertilizer. I don't think we have fed seedlings in trays in the past, except maybe tomatoes, but we might give it a try.

Kale salad from the garden today with our soup!

We are gradually harvesting whole heads of lettuce from the oldest bed. I noticed that today one large head of romaine just totally fell over; I think it was one that got the worst of the aphids. We have eight cute new little heads growing in planter boxes in the greenhouse. These were the ones we cut off at one point and they were determined to regrow themselves! They are great, healthy looking plants. Often our garden thrives in spite of us.....

We are ordering a variety of supples today from Gardener's Supply in Burlington, VT. They have some great items that we haven't seen other places. We usually like to order closer to home, which is why we like Peaceful Valley and Bountiful Gardens. Will post any of these items that proves to be worth the purchase!