Summer, Saturday, and Strawberries!

What an incredible day! I spent the morning in a garden workshop at Gracewood Studio (see my other garden blog for today) and came home to a wonderful quiet afternoon, 75º outside, no wind, and a dozen and a half of fresh-pickable strawberries, not to mention a couple snap peas and the first raspberries of the year.

I rinsed these off and have eaten half of them already, with my supper. For the last few I mixed up an easy instant chocolate sauce (1 Tbsp. nonfat Nancy's yogurt, 1 tsp. cocoa powder, 2 Tbsp. powdered sugar. Adjust quantities for sweetness and thickness), and oh my goodness, what incredible, astonishing flavor. I feel that I am now in a position to HIGHLY recommend Seascape strawberries! They are growing and producing great guns, and throwing runners like it's going out of style, and the berries are so sweet and bright-tasting they practically effervesce. They have exactly the same sprightly bubbliness on your tongue that a perky flute of champagne does. I have no idea how that happens, but it does.

The Liberty apples are growing faster than any of the other apples and pears, about 1.5" in diameter now. The pears have grown, as have the other apples, but they're way behind the Liberties. So far the footies seem to be stretching easily to fit the fruit. I'm wondering if I'll need to go around and partially untwist the footies so they'll stretch more easily. I'm just keeping them under observation for now.

My tuscan kale is so beautifully lumpy! It's also more tender, quicker to cook, and milder than any of the kales I've grown so far. I need to start blanching it because I can't eat it fast enough to keep it under control. It's great with potatoes and vinaigrette.

My bergarten sage in the veggie patch is looking beautiful and blooming more than last year. The other little ones I put out other places are still getting established, but I'm hoping they start looking like this next year. I love the big light blue flowers.

I've learned a bunch about basil this year, trying to grow it for the first time. In mid-may I bought 7 little pots of it and planted them in with my blueberries, and one green one and two purple ones in a pot on the patio. The slugs promptly ate every one I put in the ground, and within a couple weeks the ones in the pot were rotting at the base of their stems and falling over. I told a friend and found that she keeps hers in her greenhouse till June. Two weeks ago, I happened on an herb man at the Oregon City Farmers' Market who told me that basil plants do just fine outside down to 40º, but only after they've been hardened off. My big mistake was buying plants from greenhouses and then setting them out immediately, and not to mention, putting them in the ground without a moat of slug bait around each one. I bought two new green ones from him, and put them outside in the pot with the one living remnant of the purple ones that's still hanging on. I did put a plastic cloche over them when the rain was coming down hard, just to keep them from getting too wet and beat down. July 4th and the dry weather are both coming. The fragrance is fantastic. I pruned the sprout tips tonight and put them in with the potatoes I cooked. Mmmmm. This is turning into a wonderful year.

My apples have footies!

It's been a busy spring, but the veggies and fruits have been doing great without much help from me. But I finally got in with them today, weeded the orchard, put footies on all my apples and pears, and made a first pass on a bird-proof cover for the strawberry bed.

I also took a bunch of pictures. My tuscan kale is really looking great! It definitely is tuscan kale, lumps and all! I took a nibble out of one leaf today, just to see what it tasted like. It was very mild, thick and chewy. It's probably going to take a lot of cooking. I'll be trying some soon.

The broccolis are 18" tall! The potatoes are a foot tall and a couple are starting to bloom. I don't know what happened to the potatoes, but they practically leaped out of the ground. Maybe the soil was warmer? I still haven't put hay on them but I will soon. June is usually the last month of rain, but it's so weird this year, who knows what will happen?

I counted 172 cherries on my Montmorency tree today. Time to get a fruit fly trap on there.

The Seascape strawberry plants are looking really great, and I can't believe the berries!

And here are the footies! Between the Gala, Honeycrisp, and Liberty apples, the Bartlett pear, and the Shinseiki and Chojuro asian pears, I put footies on 53 pieces of fruit today. If they all make it to maturity—which they won't—that will be a lot of fruit! Here's a nicely-twisted footie on a Chojuro baby. I'm prepared for the eventuality that some of them will fall off or blow off. I'll go down with some wire and tie them back on when (if) that happens.

And here's what one of the better-laden branches of the Shinseiki looks like.

Here are two little Honeycrisp babies before I put the footies on. So cute! I'm really hoping some of them make it to harvest because they are sooooooo delicious! There are eleven now so there is a chance.

Whatever happens this year, it's going to be interesting again.

New year, new starts

Broccoli in front, snow peas on the trellis

The garden is awake and growing! The winter months are gone (yay!) and everyone in the garden is back in business. Last month I got my broccoli and snow pea starts and got them in. They didn't get snowed on this year, but did get their quota of overnight freezes. Now we're just two weeks away from our guaranteed frost-free date, and the garden is almost all ready to grow. I still have to buy more companion plants! And my now three-year old purple-sprouting broccoli is still alive, still three feet tall, and fell over again this winter. I need to put up something really sturdy to hold it up. I'll be happy for it to keep staying alive as long as it can, as long as it keeps producing.

I had to do a few maintenance things this year. I had to cut back the hardy oregano planted around the outside and pull out the bits that were invading the garden space. I may be rethinking having them right on the edge, but they really do keep weeds down, and I imagine that they repel critters, being quite unappetizing themselves. Maybe a root barrier is all I need, but that's a lot of barrier and a lot of digging. I might achieve the same aim by just moving them further away. Another nice thing they do is produce a healthy pile of harvestable mulch at the end of the year. They like being sheared down to the ground in late winter when the new shoots get started. One of my friends mows hers a couple times a year, but the good bugs like the flowers, so I let them come in the fall.

Again, there were very few weeds—many fewer than last year—and the winter leaf mulch is in great shape. I used maybe a quarter more leaves than I did last year, to make sure I got better cover. The hay beneath them, from last year's mulching, is half-rotted by now, and I know that's exactly what it's supposed do: feed the soil organisms that feed my plants. As the leaves start to decay and the potatoes start to grow, I'll be piling on more hay and straw. After two years with this garden, I don't see any reason to change the basic approach: lots of mulch means less work, less water, and better soil.

Parsley survivor & garlic

I was surprised to find one of the parsleys I had last year is still alive and looking really healthy. I still have most of the half-quart I froze last year, so I won't buy any more this year. Last year was the first year I actually got my new garlic set out in October, as you're supposed to, and they're looking great already. I'm having one regret now—that I didn't plant any ornamental kale again last fall. Not only are they pretty over the winter, they're blooming now, and when I saw them around town, I realized I'd missed  a great opportunity to attract good bugs to the garden early in the year. So this year, I will plant ornamental kale! I promise! Whenever I say "I will" like that, I think of Whoopi Goldberg in "Ghost", saying it through clenched teeth.

Tuscan kale babies

I decided to try some Tuscan kale this year. I got a six-pak and planted it further down than last year's kale, where it'll get more sun. With all that leaf pigment—and being from Tuscany—I'm guessing it'll want sun, and sun, with more sun on the side. It bothers me that the plants aren't black and lumpy now. I hope they really are Tuscan kale.

Seascape everbearing strawberries

There are new babies this year, and I added a whole new room for them, in the sunniest possible corner of the good dirt—where the artichokes and dying melon plants were last year. I've given up on melons—for now. More technology is required for them. Two dozen new Seascape everbearing strawberries have their own 7'x2.5' raised bed now. I drove 25 miles each way to get cheap cedar 2x8"s and filled it with half my red clay and half mint compost. I had a set of metal corners I got literally ten years ago, so the bed went together easily. I lined the bottom with fiberglass quarter-inch mesh I got at a barn sale a couple years ago, to keep moles and voles out, and stole the garden fencing from one of my compost piles, so the mint compost and the lumber were the only things I had to pay for this year. Nice. I got enough lumber for two beds, but don't have any more corners, so I haven't put the second bed together yet. Maybe next winter when I can get more cheap Seascapes. I bought the plants as soon as the store got them, and planted them the week I got them, so they could get as early a start as possible. Really looking forward to getting lots of strawberries this year.

And last but not least—the potatoes went in the ground on April 2nd, four days earlier than last year. Twenty Purple Majesty starts. I gave up on finding All Blues this year, and I was really happy with the PM's last year. Again, I planted them in exactly the same place I put the last ones. Next year I'll move them around. I did a much more thorough job of harvesting last fall, and have had fewer leftover re-starts this year, at least so far. I've thrown most of those out, but did keep a couple blue ones and one that looks like a fingerling from year before last.

So there it is—Ruth Stout garden 3.0—and it feels pretty good. Soon I'll have pictures of my little orchard in bloom. The Asian pears are blooming now and the apple buds are pink. The Chinese apricot bloomed this year, but just a few flowers. Anyway, that's for next time.

The apples are in!

Well, so much for not hurrying the apples along. The rains really started coming down and when I went down the next morning, one of them had a crack in the skin.

I figured it was from how much water the trees must be soaking up after our three-month dry spell, when the apples really don't want grow any bigger. I thought, if one more gets a crack, I'll bring them all in. That night we got 2.4" of rain, and while it was coming down at 2:30 in the morning, I decided I'd bring them all in as soon as I could get outside in the morning. So I did. There was a bucketful!

There were so many I put them all out on the counter after I washed them so I could count them.

Twenty-one in this batch, plus the five in the fridge and the four I'd already dried—makes thirty! Way more than I thought were on the tree! Wow! Hooray for Liberty apples!

It's apple time!

There's not much left in the garden to harvest besides the potatoes I'm still bringing up every week, but the apples are coming on in the orchard! I went out this morning with a bucket and got 5 that came off in my hand as I touched them. There are still nearly a dozen that say, "No, no!" when I pull on them, and I don't want to hurry them! I've already dried 4 that came down or I knocked off in the last two weeks, and though they're really tart, they're certainly flavorful. I've read you can let them sit in cold storage for up to a month and they'll gradually grow sweeter without losing their crispness, so I may just hold these in the fridge till they're all down. I've always wondered how I'll know when they're ripe, but it's completely obvious once the abscission layer has formed in the stem—the slightest touch dislodges them. It's not a question of pulling on them—it's as if nothing is holding them there. I have to pick with both hands to keep them from falling. I honestly don't know why they didn't come down in the breezes we've had.

And they're so pretty! The flesh is crisp, flawless, and white. I can't wait to taste a fully ripe one! The sunscald spots are just thickened, dried areas, on the very surface, and easy to cut out.

I also dried my three asian pears, which have been sitting in the fridge for several weeks, waiting for me to have enough to dry. The two I pulled off early have a little sweetness, but the last one, probably the only one that actually got ripe, has an amazing nectar-like flavor that really surprised me. Now I can't wait till next year, and I hope I'll get a lot more. Yum!

This is my third year of drying fruit that I've bought, but the first time I've ever dried fruit I've grown. I have to say, there's something really deeply satisfying about slicing up a beautiful—and even the not so perfectly beautiful—piece of fruit that I've known since it was a flower bud. I recommend it highly. It seems more personal than the potatoes, which form underground, and you don't know what you're getting till you dig them up. Being able to see them go from buds to flowers, to itty bitty fruits, then get bigger, change color, and then finally—finally!—come off the tree into your eager hands.

Speaking of apples, I've decided to move the young Gala that I planted up in the back yard 3 years ago to where it will get more sun. It has barely bloomed, let alone fruited, where it is, so I moved an ornamental grass to make room for it on the near side of the barn. There isn't any more room in the orchard, so this will be the best I can do for it, but it will definitely get more light, and lots more direct sun. I also bought it a buddy, whom I've already planted. It turns out that Gala and Honeycrisp are good cross-pollinators, and I found a lovely young Honeycrisp on sale this fall, so I'm hoping they'll hit it off and make lots of pretty little apples once they get established. Neither one is as disease-resistant as the Liberty, but they are two of my favorite eating apples, so why not give them a try?

My pineapple sage came through as promised with these scarlet red flowers. It was one of the plants I was struggling to keep watered during the seemingly endless drying winds we had before the rain finally came, because the flower stalks were just forming then and I didn't want to lose them. Next year I plan to get a half-dozen more of these for other places in the garden, and pinch them back a bit so I'll get more flowers. They're a great shot of color for so late in the season.

I still haven't moved my rhubarb plants out of the garden. I've been sidelined for two weeks with a pulled shoulder and I'm still not quite ready to get out and dig holes. I hope I can get them out before the ground gets too cold, but if I have to wait till next spring—oh, well.

I still have several weeks' worth of potatoes waiting to come out, and have a few comments. I was really underwhelmed by the Russian Bananas. They taste fine—mild—but I really didn't get many. Maybe fingerings in general need more richness in the soil? If I didn't such nice clumps from the blues, I'd take it personally. It probably is something I'm doing wrong, but I don't know what. So far I haven't been impressed by any of the fingerlings I've planted. The blues and the red skins, including the Cherry Reds I planted this year, give me  a nice haul of big fat taters, and both blues this year have such outstanding flavor compared to the others, I may just stick to them. I am really impressed with Purple Majesty. I can't say I like them any less than the All Blues, and that's saying a lot. I don't think I could tell them apart except for the white layer under the skin on the All Blues.

Oh, Purple Majesty!

I don't want anyone to think that All Blue isn't my favorite potato, but coming in a close second is Purple Majesty, the one I bought this winter when I wasn't sure I would be able to get any All Blue sets this year. The other day I dug up my second Purple Majesty plant, and got these beauties:

Basketful of Purple Majesty

My soil sifter works great for collecting them, and for hosing the dirt off them, too. They looked so cute, each one a different size, like The Potato Family, I cleaned them up for an official portrait:

Lucky thirteen

They're very like All Blue in yummy flavor and texture; the only way I can tell them apart is the white layer of flesh just under the skin on the All Blues.

My artichokes were something of a disappointment. First, once the buds got over a couple inches I had to go down every day and hose the aphids off them, and I still ended up with several ants nestled in the one I cooked. At one point I gave up and started using an organic soap to try to keep them off, but when I found out I had to apply that every day, too, I went back to just plain water. Then I noticed how angular and thin the buds were compared to the photos of really round Green Globes. I eventually found a post that explained that a consistent percentage of Green Globe seedlings make this shape artichoke—it must be a recessive form that no one's bothered to clean out of the strain. Since you can't tell until they do make buds, which plants have this trait, it probably isn't worth the trouble to try to do that. When I read that, I gave up on them entirely for this year, and maybe forever. I did find another blog that talked about the ant problem and said that in the second and subsequent years, in an organic garden, predators for the aphids at that particular time will be abundant enough to control them. In any case, I really dislike having aphids and ants in the food on my plate, so I'm not sure whether I'll try again. So I've just been enjoying the flowers I'm getting now:

The bees love artichoke flowers

Remember the giant purple broccoli that took 3 seasons to flower? Well, look what its two little sprouts did this year:

Son of a broccoli

I think it got big enough this year to give me flowers again next spring! I think I'll give it a good dose of chicken poop over the winter, and maybe I'll get more than teeny ones. It also got severely attacked by aphids at the same late-summer time that its parent did, and I'm hosing them off. No ants on the broccoli. Maybe if I could cross a broccoli with an artichoke...hmmm...that flavor could be pretty horrible. Never mind.

I'm impatiently waiting for the fruit in my orchard to get ripe. The three asian pears on my Shinseiki have turned yellow, but so far refuse to let go of their branches. One has a blemish, but the other two are perfectly round and larger than I expected. I don't think they're going to get much yellower, but I do hope they let me pull them off the branches at some point. Unlike European pears, they don't ripen any further once they come off the tree, so I don't want to jump the gun.

Shinseiki

After the first hot spell we had I found bruise-like places on almost half of the Liberty apples, just as big as their red-pigmented areas. Web research pointed to sunscald as the problem, due to tissue damage in dark-pigmented areas at a time when the concentration of ascorbic acid is relatively low in the fruit. Ascorbic acid levels are high in early summer, but decline in late summer until they rise again when the fruit starts getting ripe. I was hoping a bit of shade might prevent any further damage so I clipped a piece of row cover fabric so it protected the apples from direct sunlight.

Shade tent

I don't expect these apples to ripen until late october. After I read about sunscald, I remembered how many dozens of times I bit into a store-bought red delicious apple only to find a big brown mushy spot that I thought was a bruise.

I also hung a fruit fly trap in the tree after I saw a couple fruit flies hanging around it in late July. I'm happy to say that it only caught a few flies. I don't know if they're a real problem in apples, but I'm no fan of fly larvae in my food, either.

 I'm really happy with how all the orchard trees came through the dryness and heat this summer. While last year I had to water once or twice a week to keep most of them from wilting, I've only watered them three or four times all year. They're still pretty well mulched with horse poop and the hay from last year, and I bet that helped.

Summer yellows

A great year for veggies

The veggie patch, right center

It not only looks like summer in the garden—it tastes like it, too. I've really neglected this blog this year, but at least I haven't neglected my veggie patch. It's really been producing for me this year. I've been getting snap peas for supper two or three times a week for the last month, I've almost finished off the broccolis—except for the bits the slugs got first—and even got a couple of little beets! I even harvested several servings of potatoes, both from this year's All Blues and from a couple of volunteers I missed harvesting last year.

The hay is working better than ever, one light initial weeding is all I've had to do. And I'm happy to say that when I pull it back to sneak some taters, I see ground beetles and earthworms and little millipedes, all hard at work. I definitely still have slug issues, and probably wouldn't have gotten any broccoli, kale or parsley at all, if I wasn't regularly sprinkling Sluggo around. I am watering earlier than I did last year, but not too much because there's still a lot of moisture in the soil. But the potatoes I've pulled up have been beautiful and shiny with no sign of scabbing. They're also a bit bigger than last year, even this early, because all the new sets got planted in the really good soil.

My garlic is bigger this year, but still not full-sized by any means. I'm going to pull it up on time though, let it dry out, and replant the cloves in October, as I'm supposed to. Maybe I'll get full-sized plants next year.

I harvested an artichoke this afternoon! It's only 3" long but it was starting to look like it might be opening, so I jumped the gun and took it. It had many ants on it, which I hope I knocked off, and I wonder if I picked either really early in the morning or late in the evening, if they wouldn't have gone home? I remember from my very first garden, which was full of ant colonies, that they always seemed to disappear in the evening. Hmmmm. Next time. I probably don't get up early enough in the morning to beat them these days, though. I'm retired—they're not.

I love the companion flowers I planted, and the air is always full of zippy little buzzers visiting them, and (I hope) eating bad bugs. I probably shouldn't say this out loud, but I haven't seen an aphid yet this year. Don't tell anybody.

Yellow calendulas and flowering bolted kale

My Bergarten sage surprised me with some really pretty, light blue, typical sage-type flowers. It's growing so well in this corner that when I found several on sale at the local Bi-Mart, I bought 4 more of them to put some other places where I need robust, sun-proof ground cover. It's lovely, classy-looking, and tastes great.

Bergarten sage in bloom

 I finally got around to planting some zucchini seed, the soil and the air temps should be warm enough now for them to do well. And just in case we do have a long warm summer, I put out a hill of cantaloupe seed and one of honeydew. They're not up yet, but I'm keeping an eye on them. I'm so happy with the veggie garden this year, it's unbelievably great to go down and pick supper. And besides the veggies I've gotten strawberries, raspberries, and my two dozen pie cherries. I'll try to get more pictures up here now that I'm almost done planting for the season.