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.

Looking at the new heating season, DH and I were looking at two tasks.

1. Clean the wood stove chimney. It had been two years, so we felt it was time. Instead of hiring a chimney sweep ($150 a visit) we bought a chimney brush with rods ($165). DH climbed up (our house has only one storey), I fed him the brush and the rods, and the job was done in 15 minutes.  We’ll add these tools to the Transition Wayland Tool Pool (chimney sweep not included).

2. All of last year, whenever the furnace would come on, the house would fill with an exhaust smell. Not enough to set off our carbon monoxide alarms, but unpleasant. We diagnosed the problem as a crack in the old chimney flue. We asked for an estimate and it came back at $1200 (materials and labor). But when the woodstove was installed and we had the other flue lined, it didn’t look like rocket science. So we bought the metal liner, the connectors and the chimney top online and the high temperature caulk and silicone ($400 total ), and with the help of two friends installed it in an hour or so.

It was pretty warm out today, 50F, so both chimney flues were unused until around 6 pm. I even opened the windows wide. I emptied the rain barrels for storage, reattached the gutters, put the hoses away. I am eager t0 clear the downed limbs from the garden beds so I can plant my garlic. I’ve got 4 pounds of seed garlic and plan to put some in every bed to “sanitize” the soil. I need to fix the hoop house (only one tear from the fallen branch). And I want to get some horse manure from my neighbor and start spreading it all over. Also, I need to get me 5 bales of straw from  the feed mill…

All that will depend on Amie. Her school is canceled a second day because the building still doesn’t have electricity, but she is ill, anyway, and will probably be home tomorrow as well.

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.

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!

I have been thinking for a while now to grow Ginger (Zingiber officinalis).  I finally had two pieces of root that seemed like good candidates. They were quite old and had already sprouted in several places.

I cut them up, making sure each part had two or three buds or eyes, and into the dark, rich soil they went, inside an old wine case (I figured the rhizomes grow horizontally, so a container that is wide and not too deep seems ideal). I drilled holes in the bottom.

Ginger, being a tropical plant, likes shelter, filtered sunlight and warm, moist, rich soil. It can’t stand frost, so I’ll have to bring it inside to overwinter.

I reserved another such wine box for a turmeric root, which I’ll pick up from the Indian store today.

I made a page inventorizing the herbal medicines in my apothecary, and I thought I should  also have a page with all the herbs growing in the garden. Of course I first have to identify them! I’ve succeeded (I think) with these:

Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium or Chrysanthemum parthenium)

Fleabane (Erigeron)

Golden Chamomile (Anthemis tinctoria)

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

Amie and friends pick strawberries

We harvested our first strawberries yesterday, a whole pound of them. I’ve started a new little harvest booklet, which I keep next to my scale in the kitchen and in which I record everything that comes in. “Don’t eat that yet! I haven’t weighed it!” The berries are scrumptious: sweet and tart and juicy. They’re Honeoye (anyone know how to pronounce that?).  Today we went back for another picking: half a pound! It’s not going to last, of course. I have only 25  plants there and they’re not ever-bearing.

It’s a seasonal harvest. Once they’re done, we’ll move on to the next variety of food, just like we moved on to the strawberries when we got sick of eating the rhubarb. And if they happen to overlap, there will be rhubarb-strawberry pie.

It has been really hot of late. The mercury reached 95F today. My 5 rain barrels are almost empty. I’ll have enough to water the veg garden tomorrow, but not to irrigate the perennials the day after. One rain storm and they’ll fill up, though. Those sudden downpours aren’t good for irrigating the fields, because the soil can’t absorb that much water in such a short time and so most of it runs off. But if you have a rain water catchment system…

I still need to transplant the peppers and eggplants. I’ve been busy with Transition. We had a booth at the Whole Foods Local Day on Sunday. Amie came along for four hours and was mostly happy. She went from one booth to another, chatted with the representatives, and collected their documentation – each and every piece of documentation. And she (wo)manned the table!

Under threat of thunder and hail, a bear and a tornado.

Schematic overview (green = planted)