Garden Thread

Guys, guys! One of my pineapple plants has a pineapple!

Did the final shut-down of Garden '17 this weekend, and kicked off Garden '18!

With seriously low temperatures predicted on Friday night, I finally got my butt in gear to pick from the last four apple trees -- Burford Red, Northern Spy, Rome Beauty, and White Pearmain.  The Burford yielded a pretty nice basketful, but they are not good for eating fresh off the tree.  It remains to be seen how they taste after sitting in the unheated sunroom for a week or two, as this is its first significant yield for us.  The Northern Spy was partially picked-over last month, and we only had a handful left on there that weren't bug-eaten.  They are red apples that are sweet and scrumptious.  The Rome Beauty is our latest-bearing tree, and has the most picture-perfect, dark red fruits.  They're like the stereotypical "apple for teacher" from some kind of hazy-nostalgia Norman Rockwell past.  Of course, red fruits are the hardest to see through to ripeness, because the bugs like them more; we ended up with about 18 apples total.  But they are truly outstanding.  Finally, the Pearmain, which has green, baking-friendly apples that are relatively pleasing to eat fresh, is our most reliable producer.  I was picking them on Thursday after work, racing against twilight, in a light misting rain.  It was really chilly out.  I managed to accumulate a heaping, overflowing tub-trug full of them before admitting we weren't going to come close to eating that many.  I probably left another tub and a half on the tree.  I wish the Rome Beauty was that productive!  Or better yet, our Cox's Orange Pippin, which has, over the last 10 years, produced about two total apples.  Oh well.  Time to make some applesauce and start baking some cakes with it! 

I also brought in the handful of carrots and row of leeks that were left in the garden.  The leeks were especially impressive, as big around as my wrist.  Both were probably fine to stay out in the cold, but the garden fence swells in the winter, so the gate is hard to open.  It's just as well to close up shop now.

On Saturday we planted garlic for 2018 and it was a disaster.  We bought seed from Seed Savers Exchange, normally an incredibly reliable source, but when we went to break up the heads we discovered many were rotten and moldy.  If I wanted to plant rotten and moldy garlic I could have just used our own, dammit!  I'm really pissed, because seed garlic isn't cheap, but we did manage to salvage enough cloves (not moldy, but still pretty desiccated) to plant a full bed.  I'm not tremendously optimistic, but in our history of gardening at stately Dick n Hisses Manor we've never had the garlic fail.  Perhaps we're due?  Anyway, while planting those I noticed that the bed that had held this past summer's garlic had a few clusters of shoots where I'd lost a couple of heads in the harvest.  Surprise, late-season green garlic FTW!  It was delicious in our dinner on Saturday night.

And now the garden is sealed up, as the perimeter, gates and all, is strung with Christmas lights.  Until 2018, garden, sleep well!

Liz n Dicksgiving and I successfully swapped tomato seeds in charming holiday cards!

I am currently digging up my plot in order to put another cage in. This time I am digging it to the depth I wanted originally (but didn't have time to do before my trip in early 2017). It is taking much longer. Fuck I hate digging you guys. Also there are tree roots I occasionally have to saw up. It is exhausting. The fact that I will need to do this at least once more (and really, twice if I want to do it right) is killing me.

Agreed! Any ideas about how to get rid of dirt, aside from tossing it in a dumpster?

Just got mailers reminding us of early sign-up for 2018 plot renewal. I think the county only allows one plot per family per address, so Wifemate not changing her name continues to pay off.

Shall I combine all the yearly garden threads into one big permanent thread?

Our gardens are going to rock so hard this year!  Thanks again for driving the seed-swapping agenda!!  (And I am keeping the seeds you sent in that awesome card, so come March when we start them I'll have kitteny Thanksgiving greetings waiting for me.)

And man, I do NOT envy you all that infrastructure work.  It's exhausting just thinking about it.  Honestly, what to do with all that dirt is a tough call.  In the long run, yeah, it's great for filling in holes, and will be worn down pretty quickly once it's distributed.  But in the short term, a huge pile of dirt is... exactly that.  Huge and annoying.  This is no help at all to tell you what we did with the dirt from our beds when we installed them, but I'll share anyway.  We just hauled it around the back of the house and left it (including the grass we had to cut and break up) in a heap behind the garage.  And that heap remains today, 11 years later.  Is there a behind-the-garage you can sneak your dirt to? 

I've never ordered from them before, but now that I'm looking at their website I think I should ask them for a paper catalog.  They look awesome!  (This is getting me all excited for early January, when we do the big annual seed order!)

Here are the exotic things I would plant if I had the space and didn't live in the frozen midwest: Longevity Spinach, guava, edamame, rapini, pomegranate, pawpaw, mango melon, quinoa, bronze fennel, tansy...I think I am getting high on catalogue fumes...

moimoi Buon Funerale Amigos Liz n Dicksgiving Damn you all, I've also ordered one. I DON'T NEED MORE SEEDS.

We had so much fun with flowers this last summer that we're getting giddy thinking about planting new ones this year.  But!  We have very limited space under our grow lights.  Or rather, we used to have limited space, because we just purchased a second rack of them.  Now we'll have more than enough room to start everything we could hope for -- tomatoes, peppers, onions, and flowers, flowers, flowers!  This has been something we've needed even before we got on this flower train, so I'm really glad we finally pulled the trigger on it.

And what's on the docket for this week?  SEED ORDERING.  Vacation from gardening is almost over -- it's just about time to start it all up again!

dirtdishesdesign.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/seed-binders-easy-seed-organization-and-storage/

I'm making these for me and Terrible Friend. ORGANIZATION.

They have sprouted!  Our onions are growing!!!  I'm so excited to see little seedlings starting out in this crazy world!  

The varieties we've got going now are:

-- Redwing, a large red onion that has very firm bulbs and is one of the best reds for longer storage.  We grew a ton of these last year and I'm still using them in my cooking.  In January!  I've never had onions keep this long!  (We really don't have a great long-term onion storage facility, so I'm always impressed if I can keep any past November.)

-- Talon, a yellow onion we've never grown before.  The promise is of an average size around two pounds, unparalleled storage qualities, rock-hard bulbs, and a succulent flavor of balanced sweetness and pungency.

-- Whitewing, another new one for us.  These purport to be moderately sized, perfectly round white onions that are harvestable very early.  They won't keep well, but will be fantastic fresh.

-- Patterson, an old friend.  We had enormous success with these last year, getting the most extraordinarily firm, moderately-sized bulbs.  They're a yellow onion, and they store well, but are also marvelous fresh.  I had never encountered onions as hard as these before; chopping into them was like halving an apple.  

We also started some Musselburgh leeks, which promise to be thick and enormous.  And we've got some small spring onions to direct-sow and some weird type of leek that will also be direct-sown and is meant to be harvested kind of like a green onion.

I'm excited for alliums, you guys!

I'm sure you'll be able to trick them into thinking they were planted in the fall, and now they'll have a short winter before being able to bloom like normal in the spring!  (Also, even if you do plant them in the fall, there's no real promise they'll flower their first year.  Who will ever know the difference?)

That seed catalog is awesome!  They are not fooling around with lettuce, are they?  And they've got 13 different types of quinoa and only two types of tomatoes -- I love it!