MamaStories

Seed collection before order

Yesterday Amie and I spent hours looking through the seed catalogs and the seeds I have left over. In the end I opted to go just with Fedco. In my defense, I ordered very few seeds last year!

249 – Maxibel Bush Haricots Verts OG ( C=8oz)
298 – Windsor Fava Bean ( B=8oz)
344 – Jacobs Cattle Bean OG ( A=2oz)
732 – Early Frosty Shell Pea ( B=8oz)
788 – Mayfair Shell Pea OG ( B=8oz)
893 – Sugarsnap Snap Pea OG ( B=8oz) 1
1311 – Boothbys Blonde Slicing Cucumber OG ( B=2g)
1382 – Super Zagross Middle Eastern Slicing Cucumber ( B=1/4oz)
1457 – Costata Romanesca Zucchini OG ( B=1/4oz)
1460 – Tromboncino Summer Squash ( B=1/4oz) 1
1539 – Early Summer Yellow Crookneck Summer Squash OG ( B=1/4oz)
1590 – Bennings Green Tint Patty Pan Summer Squash ( B=1/4oz)
2042 – Scarlet Nantes Carrot ( B=1/2oz)
2079 – Scarlet Keeper Carrot OG ( A=1g)
2300 – Takinogawa Burdock ( B=1/2oz)
2306 – Andover Parsnip OG ( A=1/8oz)
2439 – Evergreen Hardy White Scallion ( B=1/8oz)
2449 – New York Early Onion OG ( B=1/8oz)
2489 – Dakota Tears Onion OG ( B=1/8oz)
2490 – Rossa di Milano Onion ( B=1/8oz)
2510 – Space Spinach ( B=1/2oz)
2712 – Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce OG ( B=4g)
2767 – Les Oreilles du Diable Lettuce OG (Devils Ears) ( B=2g)
2791 – Tango Lettuce OG ( B=2g)
2865 – Rouge dHiver Lettuce ( B=4g)
2919 – Pablo Lettuce OG ( A=1g)
3031 – Fordhook Giant Chard ( B=1/8oz)
3036 – Bright Lights Chard ( B=1/8oz)
3049 – Claytonia ( C=2g)
3096 – Good King Henry Chenopodium or Goosefoot ( B=1g)
3102 – Verte de Cambrai Mâche ( C=1/2oz)
3114 – Large-Leaf Round Mâche ( C=1/2oz) 1
3122 – Minutina ( B=1/8oz)
3158 – Gigante dItalia Parsley ( B=1/8oz)
3182 – Golden Purslane OG ( B=1g)
3222 – Tatsoi OG ( B=1/8oz)
3228 – Early Mizuna OG ( B=1/8oz)
3344 – Diablo Brussels Sprouts ( A=0.5g)
3634 – Tango Celery OG ( A=0.1g)
3678 – Applegreen Eggplant OG ( B=0.4g)
3691 – Rosa Bianca Eggplant OG ( B=0.4g)
3706 – King of the North Sweet Pepper OG ( A=0.2g)
3735 – Chocolate Sweet Pepper OG ( A=0.2g)
3810 – New Ace Sweet Pepper ( A=0.2g)
4018 – Glacier Tomato OG ( B=0.4g)
4032 – Ida Gold Tomato OG ( B=0.4g)
4045 – Garden Peach Tomato OG ( A=0.2g)
4059 – Cherokee Purple Tomato OG ( A=0.2g)
4065 – Jubilee Tomato OG ( A=0.2g)
4106 – Honeydrop Cherry Tomato ECO ( A=0.2g)
4115 – Black Cherry Tomato OG ( A=0.2g)
4418 – Genovese Basil ( B=10g)
4470 – Thai Basil ( B=4g)
4517 – Caribe Cilantro OG ( A=1g)
4522 – Cumin ( A=0.5g)

That tube, in the lower left corner of the picture, it has tamarind seeds in it. If anyone is interested, comment and I’ll send you one. Hurry, the supply is quite limited.

I harvested the ginger that I put in in June. I put in 12 ounces and out came exactly 16 ounces! I had to throw out part of the old root (darker brown) because it had gone mushy. The rest of the old root is still firm and spicy. I should have harvested before the frost came, or, better yet, done what I had planned: brought the box inside before the frost, but it slipped my mind. Who knows it would have kept on growing. I must say, though, that harvesting ginger root is as pleasant as harvesting garlic. The smell is divine. This is definitely worth a repeat.

We brought in a little more than 1/3 of a cord of well-dried wood today. We still have a good two and a half cords under cover in the back yard, which should get us through the Winter. The trees that came down this year and that we’re still bucking will make for good dry wood next year.

We also scavenged three boxes of kindling from our property (thanks, Irene!).  Good (small anddry) kindling, I find, is worth as much as the firewood itself for getting a good fire going. Amie helped a lot with that so she wanted to pose with her handiwork.

Hanging above her is the drying sage.

We’ve still only had one night of frost here. Today was another rather balmy day. The tomatoes and peppers in the hoop house (still doorless) keep on growing and ripening.

Right there, behind the sunchokes

What with the flurry of activity/activism around here, the garden has been neglected somewhat. On top of that, the deer decided to cross from backyard where they usually hang out (an extensive wildlife corridor runs behind our property) to the front. In the front yard they ate the weeds and strawberry plants. Then they started browsing my veg garden, first defoliating the sweet potatoes, then finishing off the green beans and swish chard and trampling the carrots.

Trying to chase it away. It couldn’t be bothered!

Still, we had some harvests.

It was mainly green beans, peppers and eggplants. Tomatoes did extremely poorly this season.

the sweet potato bed once the deer were done with it

sweet potatoes, freshly dug

sweet potatoes, curing. Once washed it was obvious that there is a lot of vole damage on them.

deer-grazed chard

deer-grazed green beans (the end of our green beans)

Remember that beautiful elecampane? It grew enormous. All those flowers have now set seed – billions of seeds, some of which I harvested.

And then there is all that wood that came down in Spring. The pile originally looked like this:

I believe we’ve bucked half of that now. Our property is lined with sawed logs, waiting to be split (we’ll rent a splitter). Amie is very much into counting and tallying these days. She counted 157 of these! In the picture she’s wearing ear protection because DH was running the chain saw.

I harvested the last potatoes yesterday and got two surprises. First, when I pulled the straw away, there was this:

The first time  I noticed this dark, crumbly soil, I thought there was something wrong with it. Did some sort of cement get into it? What insect does this? Is it good? Then I realized. A few days later I told a friend who used to be a farmer and she said: “You’ve arrived!”

Yes. It’s worm poop! A half inch deep layer over the entire 4×8′ bed! Here’s a closer look:

M-mm!

Then I started digging up the potatoes – all the Keuka Golds I had left in because they were unaffected by the brown spot. I had high hopes because the plants were healthy and the only of my potatoes that actually flowered.  Well, plant after plant came out but I found hardly any potatoes! It was only when I reached the other side of the bed that I discovered what had happened. I plunged in my potato fork and eek! I had speared a fat, loudly squeaking vole! Startled, I shook it off my fork over the fence. Later I came across two more voles and took a picture of them.

Funny creatures. Unfortunately for me and for that one very unlucky one, we both like potatoes!

Bought 15 pints of Local (Wayland Farmers Market) blueberries:

Made it into 27 8oz jars of blueberry jam:

Picked off 7 Tomato Hornworms:

Harvested all 28 heads of garlic:

Harvested and stored 16 lbs. of potatoes:

Helping 10 flats of seedlings along (lettuce, spinach, chard, broccoli, collards, kale):

Chives

Many of the biennials and perennials are done making seed, the second-year broccoli, kale  and lettuce, and the chives too. Time to harvest the future!

Kale seed pods with spider

Kale seeds from one plant, enough for at least an acre of kale

Well, I had sworn not to grow potatoes again after the Blight Year of 2009 – my first year gardening. It wasn’t just blight that ruined that year’s potatoes (the tomatoes didn’t suffer too much). I also tried the potato tower method and it was Spudtacularly Disappointing.

But I love potatoes. I love them so, so much…

Behold, Ladies and Gentlemen, is Brown Spot:

It’s a form of Potato Leaf Blight, caused by the fungus Alternaria alternata. Luckily it’s less aggressive than its cousin Alternaria solani (the Early Blight fungus). You can read more about it, and its difference from Early Blight, here.

I’m thinking it’s not Early Blight because of this:

Tubers affected by Early Blight don’t look like this at all. This looks like Black Pit, the tuber phase of Brown Spot. Don’t they just sound like two brothers, one kind of sweet, like a cudly dog, the other kinda mean, like a devil? Mm, I can’t find a picture of it through Google (this site says Brown Spot and Black Pit are less well known potato diseases), so I can’t say for sure.

Thus, in order to save the tubers and to rid my garden of these blight infected plants, I harvest most of my potatoes – all of them but the Keuka Gold were affected. In the end, seed potato to yield ratio-wise, I didn’t do as badly as my first year of potato growing. Some potatoes were even fully grown. These are the yields:

• 14 lbs 10 oz of Dark Red Norland / seed potato to yield ratio: 5:15 = 1:3 – not too bad
• 2 lb 12 oz  of Banana Fingerlings / 3:2.75  - Yikes!

So… Fingerlings were a bust, but the Dark Red Norland did okay. I have good hopes for the Keuka Gold, which had the best yield in 2009 and which held our loner – the roller coaster of heat and rain was hard on the plants, but no sign of this disease at least. I’ll harvest those once my present stash of potatoes is finished.

Anyways, I’ll be planting three beds with more green beans, new carrots and greens, maybe even some more cukes. And we’ll be eating lots of baby potatoes over the next couple of days. I have no objections to that.

Bon appetit!

It’s up and working (those cells cannot be turned off), but we’re not harvesting yet. First, some more paperwork…

We’re harvesting other things, though: herbs and greens, green beans, celery, garlic, parsley, basil, and… potatoes!

Much more, soon!