Last Weekend

Nope, I didn't do anything on the list. It rained like hell, and I stayed inside.

Been in the field in Eastern Washington this week, so there was not St. Patricks Potato Planting either.

Coming up this weekend

Here's an idea: post about what I'm gonna do this weekend, and then check back next week to see if it actually happened.

1. Volunteer at my kid's school garden
2. Dig a hops bed south of the house.
3. Transplant hops from wendell berry garden
4. Consolidate the buttercup and bindweed-contaminated heap
5. Extend the north bed so I can plant potatos on st paddy's day
6. ...maybe that's enough.
7. But I'll at least make an effort to clean up a few things

If I were energetic, I'd put up hops supports, but I don't even have the right poles. Or maybe dig up some front yard. Or prune the hydrangea or rhody, maybe lay waste to the camellia. Or any number of things. If I even finish the numbered list, a nap is in order before taking on more. Seems like I'm caught up enough.

After a couple weeks of sun, we got a little rain yesterday, and may get a bunch on Saturday, but the weather's supposed to be warm. Pretty days are nice, but it's freakish to look at at the un-snowy Olympics, or to think about how little it rained this winter.

First weekend in March

What I'd like to do is complete the fencing this weekend. There's enough willow to cover the back gap, but I need some more in front, and gates on both sides. Hoping I can just get an 8 or 9 foot gate for the north, and hang it on the post that's there. No idea how to transition from willow to gate.

Re. Blueberries: the south line of 7 all came from pots. 6 were about 3-4 year plants in 3 gallon pots since I dug them over a year ago; they were just about to leaf out, and did burst when I planted them. The 7th ans easternmost was in a larger pot, given by neighbors; it seems to be a small variety, maybe a couple of years following being pruned to the ground. In addition, they gave me another one in a large pot, looks like a 2-3 year plant and was already leafed out. I put that one at the house end of the north bed, and it seems fine.

Weather continues to be clear, barely (or not even) freezing at night, 50s or even 60s in the lengthening afternoons. Looks good for St Patty's Day potato planting in the north bed, which I'll probably extend more before planting.

The New Place

Circa March, 2014

I'd pretty much left this blog for dead.

But now, it comes back as a way to keep a garden journal of the newest tabula rasa, as seen in the above abode, wherein I now abide. Instead of .rtf or .doc, klunkily entering dates, I'll ill-advisedly put my trust in the web to preserve this journal. Because it will bother with the entering-of-the-dates.

So anyway, time for some catching up:

• Bought the house last August, and since then the main things I've done are
• Prune deadwood etc. from plum
• Rasa-fy (I guess that would just be "erase") a tabula of raspberries hogging the middle of the yard.
• Just got around to re-planting the best berry canes along the north fence.
• In mid-Feb, chopped down rotten trunk of willow. Since then, I
• Made a willow withe weir across most of the south boundary, but not before
• Chopping Howard's fir branches shading the south central yard.
• Also, some dead branches from my fir.
• I dug out the bed from back porch to deck. 
• I dug out the north strip bed
• Somehow, I made a big pile of dirt on the south strip bed (future site)
• Removed roses
• I raked and corn-glutened the north bed
• I rigged a hops block and
• Planted Fuggles and Bullion and Willcadia hops to climb yon block
• Planted poppies next to the hops after digging out tree-base ivy and holly, not to mention a bunch more cinder bricks 
• What with all the erasing and digging, I created various piles of dirt laden with buttercup and bindweed. I'm trying to segregate and consolidate.
• Established the south-back as compost and brushlandia. Doing a creeping worm heap of scraps-browns-grit, and it seems to be going well. Consolidating and burning the brush where I
• Made a fire-pit. Needs slight expansion and a few more imu stones.
• Exposed brick edging L, basis for the back beds. 
• Inside the L will be th south strip, maybe with a cold frame
• South of the L will be a grass strip
• South of that, in an existing low spot, I just planted 7 blueberry bushes. 
• The current heaps are these: worm-scraps, fine willow, willow-withes, willow stakes, fir foliage, future firewood, various rocks and woods, ...

Maybe (probably) there is more. But that's the main points. Another urgent task is to get hops in south of the house. There's good sun and circulation, but fairly tight space, and the neighbor is planning on a new roof soon.

Well, it's 11:11 now, so I think I'll head to bed. More later.

Foment a Ferment, the Lazy Cider-Punk's Guide

Bubble bubble, no toil, no trouble.

For years, I've wanted to make hard cider, but never have enough apples at once for it to be worthwhile. I always give the tree's owner a good share, and maybe some to friends and neighbors, but basically the girls and I drink it as fast as we make it. Despite a particularly generous neighbor this year, it was the same story.

Once you press the cider, you end up with a "cheese," the wheel of spent pomace, apples chewed by the mill and crushed dry by the press. In the past, this went onto the worm heap, but this time my inner cheapskate devised another step in the cycle.

I dumped some pomace into a bin, and filled it with water, on the theory that I could coax forth more sugar and get a ferment going that would yield some vinegar. Just a plain plastic bin, sprayed out with a hose, duct tape over two openings that the fruit flies would have entered. Snap on the lid and walk away.

Being shiftless and lazy, I did not keep notes, but fuzzy recollection tells me that fermentation set in quickly, and it was not long until it was frothy. Yeast was gobbling sugar and pumping out alcohol. I shut the lid and walked away for another undetermined amount of time, checking progress intermittently, satisfied that the fermentation gases were escaping, but fruit flies were not getting in.

At some point, the fermentation slowed, and I decided to jettison the fruit. I strained out the liquid and then put the pulp into a canning kettle, pushing it down with the circular wooden plunger from the cider press to squeeze out the last liquid. Then, finally, I let go of the pomace and the fruit flies and worms got their feast on.

This liquid was then covered for the final ferment, turning alcohol into vinegar. Because I'd just let the wild microbes do what they wanted, and maybe also because this was a second pressing, I doubt the liquid was ever really what you would call hard cider. The vinegar smell was present early on, as the Acetobacteria drank alcohol and pissed vinegar. By this time, I had not only apple, but also pear and plum batches a-brewing.

The pear juice was thick and viscous, a syrupy consistency that I hoped translated to sugar. There was more than half a bin of this as I snapped the lid shut and walked away. The times between lifting the lid and checking grew longer, and between stirring even longer. There were some more bubbles, but not as many, as fermentation mellowed and aging began. Meanwhile, the bin sat just under the eaves of the house, getting afternoon sun when it shone, getting cold at night, pretty much neglected. The whole process, I figured, was a very low-stakes gamble. Rather than invest time and effort, what would happen if I let nature take it's course?

Good things, it turns out. A little more than two months after putting the batches in dark places to do their thing, I pulled the bacterial mat off the surface to reveal liquid that was less cloudy than before and much less viscous. It smelled like vinegar, and tasted like it.

Now, I have a quart of plum vinegar, which seems really fine, but I am continuing to age in the fridge. There's a gallon or so of apple, which seems to be fairly weak and clear; I have not tasted it yet, but even if it's not flavorific, I can use it for the 1001 non-food functions of acetic acid. Finally, I have several gallons of pear vinegar, which is pretty good. I pasteurized some (150 degrees for 35 minutes) and bottled it in re-used beer bottles that I boiled for 10 minutes. I just used the regular crown caps like beer, but will seal it with wax if I get around to it. It will be interesting to see how these age. The live stuff is in a big jug out in the garage and a few half-gallon growlers (again, thank you, beer containers) in the fridge.

Already, some of the vinegar has been put to use. Some went to scrubbing down a moldy molding (acetic acid kills mold without killing me), and some went into salad dressing that adorned the last lettuce of the year. Next Summer, I should be able to make pickles using my own vinegar. The frugal, off-the-grid, lazy, and independent parts of me rejoice. Wringing vinegar from spent cider-fruit adds another spoke to the re-cycle.

Alliums, Yummy Allies

Gene, holding Shallots.

Real life has once again intervened with posting here, and all I have is old news.

Last fall, I planted some red onions and vari-colored garlicks, and in the spring I transplanted and new-planted more of their kin. Throughout the seasons, my right finger would poke dirt so the left hand could deposit a slippery stub, bulbish-headed root-end of a scallion stir-fried or otherwise-et the day before, it's promise of free food affording it a place in the garden as I made my way compost-ward with the dross-veg. I cannot swear when I planted the Shalits, except that it may have been later than the Orthodox Fall-Planting school and earlier than the Rebel Spring-Planting outpost. Or maybe not.

It was what this immigrant thinks of as maybe a typical 20th Century Spring and Summer here in the South Sound, and all alliums seemed to thrive. True, the scallions do nothing but grow into gianter, tougher scallions, and the red onions succumbed to neglect (including the outright abuse of a summertime transplant), and of course there was the sheer scapelessness of the 2013 Summer. But the scallions did get ginormous and  the shallits [yes, I'm doing the Lewis-and-Clark thing of spelling a word diffrintly all-the-damn Time] grew fast and strong.

Cogniscenti gardeners will see from the photo that I scooped up the shallottes a bit early--shoulda let the tops die back more--but the haul was good. Same with garlic. See?

Garlic, Me.

Anyway, it was a good year for alliums. I have enough garlic to keep me happy for another year, and a pretty good haul of shallots.

One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, More

2013 was the first year I really made an effort to grow potatoes, and it paid off...or I was lucky. Now that I've harvested 2 of 3 varieties (I grew Ozettes by choice, as well as some Redskins and Yukon Golds because I didn't eat them in time), the experience is ripe enough to jot down some lessons. I've already posted about taters over at Mocavore, but here's where the gardening info will show.

Instead of buying seed potatoes this year, I just grew surplus food. The Ozettes came from Rising River Farm at the Olympia Farmers Market; I bought them in late fall and stored them in a shoebox in the garage. The others were probably from the supermarket, and I planted them because they were getting soft and sprouty at the right time. Lesson: As long as you keep an eye out for blight, you don't need to buy something labeled "seed potato."

In Olympia as in much of the country, St. Patrick's Day is a good time to plant potatoes, and I did put in the bulk of the crop around them. I tried some in February, tucked up against the sunrise side of the house, but it did not result in a head start on harvest. They're still in the ground, which I think is pretty poor to begin with and was negelected in terms of both fertilizer (none) and water (under the eaves, so not much rain, and I didn't really water). Lesson: Starting early may not hurt, but it doesn't seem to help, either.

The soil here is a sandy loam, which makes it easy to work, it drains well enough that the tubers won't rot, and there are not a bunch of rocks to get in the way and deform the potatoes. On the other hand, it's not very rich in nutrients, so I augmented it a bit. When I dug the bed and prepped it in January, I added bone and blood meal (didn't record the amounts, but less than 2 pounds on a 25-foot by 3-foot bed, as well as wood ash. How much this had to do with the rampant growth that followed I cannot say, this being my first crop on this ground (which was lawn for decades before). Lesson: Sandy soil may be great as a growing medium, but it probably needs some food; adding fertilizer a month or two before planting seems to have helped.

So yeah, growth took off  like crazy, but the plants didn't get too leggy, except for the Yukons, which were planted in a much shadier spot, and which at this point have vines nearly 6 feet long, sprawling all over the place. I hilled everything a couple of times, but contrary to mythology I've heard time and again, but at harvest time it appeared that a second hilling did not create a second round of tuber formation. Even when the plants were growing, and I still harbored the belief that another round of hilling would produce another round of potatoes, I held off on a third attempt, deciding to let the plants focus on fattening up the existing tubers. Lesson: You do need to give your tubers some protection and room to grow, but continuing to hill them up does not seem to give you a bigger crop, and only makes the potatoes harder to get at.

By July, the main potato row was yellowing a bit, and the rapid growth had stopped. Based on pretty much nothing more than a hunch, I figured that potatoes are a little like taro in this respect, with the rate of vegetative growth following something like a bell curve--a slow start, a vigorous middle age, and then decline. Working from little more than superstition, I like to let the decline take its course, as if the strength of the stems and leaves is draining back down and collecting in the tubers. At the end of July, with the tops partially drained, but not yet dessicated skeletons, I started harvest. Having controlled by urge to graffle, I got the whole crop at once. From a 25-foot row, roughly 2/3 in Ozettes and the rest in Redskins, I got a half bushel of the former and maybe 2 pecks of the latter. Looked at another way, each potato I planted turned into several pounds of potatoes that I can eat. Lesson: One row is only a long-term supply if you are on a low-carb diet, but it's a pretty good return on the minimal investment. Also, one of the things that makes gardening fun is that it give me an excuse to use what are otherwise archaic units of measurements--I can hear my grandparents saying those words.

Somewhere along the line, I've heard that you should let potatoes dry out for a little while without washing off the dirt (it being so sandy, not much stuck on anyway), and since this approach appeals both to my love of loam and loathing of extra work, that's what I did. In fact, a couple of weeks later, the Ozettes are sitting in my archaeology screens, which consist of a 4-inch deep frame with 1/4 or 1/8-inch mesh. They're plenty dried off now, and I suppose it's about time to put them in the dark, or maybe hang them up in one of those coffee shipping bags I've been saving. Lesson: Being an archaeologist has its advantages when it comes to harvest time.

The earliest Ozettes and most of the Yukon Golds are still in the ground, and I'm inclined to leave them there for as long as I can. Sandy soil is good storage, and until winter rains saturate the ground, they'll be fine. A holdout Russet from the previous tenant's garden did this, and put out it's own surprise crop this year, maybe a half peck from one plant. Lesson: No need to harvest everything at once; it's more work, and just creates storage issues. In fact, maybe with the remaining ones, I'll just graffle all but a few, and see if they produce and even lower-labor crop next year.

That exeriment will take a while to play out, but looking back at this year, I'm pretty happy. At $2/pound for good varieties of organic potatoes at the Farmers Market, it's not like I've saved a huge amount of money, but I did get enough for a bunch of meals. Being able to put them in in March and pull them a month or so after the Solstice also means that I can grow a Fall crop in their place, and in fact there are already radishes, beets, carrots and kale coming up where the potatoes came out. Because they start fairly early, and hilling happens later on, potatoes work well with the approach of having beds that expand as the season progresses (as in the Tidal Beds post). Lesson: The tater has a place in my garden.