Fruits of Our Labors

Today is Valentine's Day. I have some sweets for my Valentine and fruit of our garden. I have made two sweet potato pies this afternoon.

Yesterday we harvested the first of the micro greens and the first Shiitake mushroom. I have also been using some of the over wintering onions that I planted almost a year ago and look a lot like leeks but are really a mild almost scallion like flavor to our food. I almost forgot fig jam for breakfast this morning.

I am very anxious to plant seeds in the garden but with the late cold snap and possibly even a dusting of snow I just need to hold off for a few more days.

Frozen Blueberry

I thought that this weekend would be the weekend that I would plant the first of my spring garden. It was this weekend last year that I planted Sugar Snaps, carrots, onions; I was going to add some fava beans this year. However, winter has thrown a curve my way with several inches of snow during the day. Tonight with the temperature below freezing there is still 3-4 inches of snow on the ground. Although the almanac says I should put seeds in the ground this weekend I think I will wait a week see what the weather will bring.

I have been watching my blueberry bushes each day as I pull into to park my car. The buds have began to swell and some of the smaller branches have visibly lengthened. Today when I come home the blueberry bushes were a thing of beauty with a frosting of snow.

Microgreens

One of the things I am trying to grow is microgreens. In the supermarket you can buy what is basically baby mixed lettuce that is ready to eat having been pre-washed. The cost can be pretty high at about $1 an ounce. An ounce however is a pretty big pile of these baby leaves. It looks like to me that they are picking the whole plant once it has 2-3 true leaves. When the lettuce sprouts there are two cotyledons(leaves that unfold from the seed) that are shaped much like the seed. From the middle of this there will be true leaves that will sprout that will look like the real plant such as red oak-leaf lettuce or squash or tomatoes. I have some micro greens ready to pick this weekend. This is about 18 days after planting and the cost is the packet of seeds and the light set and electricity. The packet of seeds should give me 10 or more crops if I keep the cycle growing and I don't know how much the light is costing but florescent should not be that much. This weekend I will start to harvest and set up a new batch. I think I can do this better since I did let the box dry once and this set me back so I am optimistic that I can get it down to 14 days from sprouting.

Rototiller/Rotokiller

This little Mantis tiller is my current machine. I have had it for a few years since my mom gave hers to me. One of the first things I bought for myself when I started making some money after residency and fellowship was a Sears behemoth of a rototiller. I probably had that machine for nearly 20 years and I will admit I did not take very good care of it. It could really beat you up and jump around particularly when you were tilling rocky or compacted soil. My son called it the Rotokiller and adamantly refused to use it. The Mantis tiller is certainly a much more light weight machine and I have taken better care of her. This year I got her going on my own and this last weekend I was able to till the oldest of my three gardens. Right now it is cold but the almanac says that sugar snap peas need to go in the ground in the next two weeks.



I don't think i have a picture of my old beast of a tiller. When I got the mantis tiller I dragged the rattletrap machine to the street. Someone suggested I put a sign up saying "free broken tiller". In a more optimistic mood I put a sign up that said "free repairable tiller" and within a few hours someone took that tiller home.

A Strawberry Pot

This is a pot that I bought at an estate sale for about $5. These kind of terra cotta pots can go for $40-50 at the store and although I thought they might be nice to have, I did not think that they would be worth paying full price. I hope this pot will allow us to get some better strawberries this year. As you can see there are openings all around the jug and with plants in the top you can have about 15 strawberry plants planted in the openings.
I have grown strawberries successfully before but they are not easy. For one thing the plants seem to bear best in the second year. The first year the plants are putting a lot of energy into the leaves and roots and not so much into the fruit. The second year can be your big strawberry season, but then if left to their own design they form such a thicket of plants that no one plant gets the nutrients it needs to make proper berries. I have a thicket now in the flower bed and I plan to clean it up in the next few days. I will keep some of the healthier looking plants and then replant them with a nice bed of clean pine straw.
The other problems you have with strawberries are that the individual plant itself is so low that the berry often rest directly on the ground. A berry may look good from above but when you pick it the part on the ground can be almost gone. This is the reason they are called strawberries since a good loose mound of straw can hold the berry up off the ground and away from the slugs. Also being close to the ground chipmunks and other critters have easy access and the red of the ripe berry is very attractive to birds. So my pot will help with overcrowding and keeping berries from the slugs but not much help to keep the prize away from birds and chipmunks.
The pipe and astrolabe are other things I picked up a yard sale and I think add to my garden sculpture. Others have voiced the unasked-for opinion that the combination is gauche. Your vote might determine the fate of the ornaments.

RAIN BARREL ALERT: No leaks in the barrel holding water level for 48 hours.

Rain Barrels

It is raining again here tonight. However we have had some pretty bad droughts recently and I have heard a lot about the advantages of collecting rain water from the roof. When you look into a water collection system there are the really expensive barrels you can buy and when you look at the DYI videos on the internet you see some cheap, sketchy systems people have rigged up. I thought I was going to get the best of both worlds when my wife found some rain barrels at an estate sale. The last day of the sale the barrels were down to $25 and so I snagged one. No hassle trying to build my own and the barrel looked like it cost as much as $175 on the internet new.
However, my fun was just beginning. The barrel leaked the first time we put it up. So I brought it in and my son tried to help me repair it. Still leaked, so I tried sealing it with cement and the hole was plugged but then a new leak sprung around the overflow drain. So two months, 3 trips to Lowe's and at least $25 more, The barrel is out collecting water but it is too early to know if I have all the leaks plugged.
Collecting your own water and using it in the garden: great idea. But ready made systems are expensive and do-it-yourselfing doesn't seem to work. This would be a good industrial design project, someone needs to put together a DIY kit so more gardeners can take advantage of this free, eco-friendly water source.

Home Grown Mushrooms

My oldest daughter sent me a unusual Christmas gift that has just arrived this week. The gift is a "mushroom block". This is a compressed block of wood chips that is "seeded" with fungus strands that can then grow into mushrooms. My block is a Shitaki Mushroom block. The block came wrapped in a plastic bag, and since there were not any small mushrooms visible on the block I was instructed to place it in the refrigerator for 4 days to mimic winter. Then I soaked the block for 24 hours, which mimics spring rain and snow melt. Now the block is sitting on my grow light table and I am supposed to mist frequently and wait. In a couple of weeks I should have my first crop of mushrooms! After I harvest them, we repeat the process and the block could last up to 6 months. I will show you some pictures of mushrooms when they start to grow.