Leaves through the frost

The lovely leaves of red romaine lettuce made it through the frost, totally unprotected. Seen above, with some leeks growing nearby.

The collards, below, seem happier than ever with the cool weather. The frost seems to have sweetened the flavor of the leaves some too.

Both plants provide delicious leaves to eat in the winter.

Preparing for a Freeze

We're expecting temperatures in the mid 20s and rain mixed with something called snow. It won't stick, I've read, but it doesn't usually come down to the valley. When we want to see snow, we drive up to the mountains.
Anyway, the citrus plants need to be protected from such cold temperatures, so I went about the garden putting frost protection on the lemons, oranges, and limes. I still have to rig up protection for the mandarin and the kumquats, which I'll do tomorrow.
I thought my lemon tree looked as if it had a visit from Christo and Jeanne-Claude after I wrapped it in its blanket.

Salad season

In late September the weather was so nice and warm I thought summer would never quit. Still, I planted some seeds for the winter garden. Lettuce mainly, and snow peas. I have lots of chard and collards growing here and there already, but those leaves need to be cooked. The late fall and winter weather is the a great time for salad leaves. I forage for tender dandelion leaves, picking only the smallest and most tender (in winter the leaves are not bitter). I pick arugula and lettuces that I've planted in various spots, and pull up a daikon radish and a scallion for good measure. This year I planted red romaine lettuce for a change (I've planted various green lettuces too). The red romaine was brilliant in the sun this morning and could be part of a delicious salad this evening.

Remnants

Temperatures are starting to drop into the low 30s at night.
I found a few green tomatoes, hanging on to withered plants, and glowing in the sun.

Frosty morning

A chilly 36 degrees Fahrenheit this morning.
The orchards across the street were white with frost.
In the garden I found this lovely rose-scented geranium covered with frost.
Now I wish I'd made one more batch of rose-scented geranium syrup before the cold weather came.

Autumn Color

A small maple tree turned red with the cool weather.
So beautiful.

Tomatoes

Frost has yet to visit us, but it is looming, and so I've still been picking tomatoes. The flavor is milder than the tomatoes from the hot months, but it is still pretty good. I picked three tomatoes just today, the others are from throughout the past week or so.

Millet

I'm growing millet, and many other crops, in anticipation of being able to feed the future chickens (eta Spring 2010) with lots of things grown on site. They'll be able to eat lots of fresh greens and bugs too. Pearl Millet is somewhat drought tolerant and the seeds are edible for humans too, but the seed coat needs to be removed first. Birds don't need the seed coat removed before eating the seeds. Millet is sold in bird seed mixes.

Early Autumn in the garden

Maize plants with drying ears.

Some of the husk peeled away to reveal the red kernels of the maize.

Freshly painted chicken house. A second coat of paint will be applied, probably a reddish color, before the rains start. I bought the paint at the paint store, they were contractor returns and were very inexpensive compared with buying regular paint, thus the multiple colors. The door was found at the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store.
Looks like it used to belong on a hot water heater closet.
The house still needs windows and hinged tops for the nesting boxes. A fence, too, needs to be erected. Estimated time to get chicks is spring 2010.

Saving seed - Dry Beans

Today I threshed some of the pole beans. These are the bird egg pole beans I grew on strings and other forms of support (sticks, old wire fencing, sunflowers). I picked the dry pods off the bean plants and then piled them up and crushed the pods to release the beans. Then I sorted the seed from the chaff (winnowed) for later use. The best of these seeds will be planted next year. I'll select for good color and shape. The remainder will be eaten in soup or other meals. The plants are still bearing so this process will continue through the autumn. I prefer to thresh and winnow small batches of beans rather than do them all at once. It is a very meditative process.

Grape Harvest

The grapes on the giant old grape vine, which climbs up into the trees, have become ripe and ready to pick. Last year I made 4 quarts of grape juice concentrate, which I canned and then drank throughout the winter. The year before that I made grape jelly. I haven't decided which way I'll go yet, jelly or juice, but I've harvested a basket of grapes, washed them, removed them from the stems and cooked them. They are currently sitting in cheesecloth inside a strainer to get all the good liquid out. I'll put it in the fridge and decide how to proceed later.

Saving Seed - Black Beans

During the cold weather we like to eat black beans in various recipes. Black bean chili with butternut squash is a staple winter-time meal for us. I've been buying organic black beans from the grocery store for years. I've grown plants for the past few years. This year I got a pretty good yield from a few plants I grew in the front yard. Some of the plants are still maturing but I cut some of them today and gathered a pile of seed pods. Once all the plants mature and the seed pods dry fully I'll thresh and winnow the seeds and maybe I'll get enough for one pot of chili.

Saving Seed - Artichokes

Today I went out and found some of the artichoke plants hunched over and dropping mature seeds on the ground. I cut the dried heads and put them into some white paper bags. I gathered the bag up around the stem and started whacking the thing against the back of a patio chair. I could hear the seeds falling out into the bottom of the bag. When I poured the contents of the bag onto some row cover the seeds came tumbling out along with various insects and spiders. I picked out all the seeds and put them in an envelope. Once I finish collecting seeds from all the artichokes, I'll count the seeds and determine if I have enough to offer through Seed Savers Exchange annual yearbook, which members of SSE are given each year. SSE suggests having enough seed for 10 requests of 25 seeds each, for a plant like artichokes. I could offer as "limited quantity" if I don't have enough for 10.

The recommended number of seeds varies by plant type. For example Maize (corn) should have 200 seeds for the minimum offer since corn needs lots of genetic diversity to avoid inbreeding. Suzanne Ashworth's book Seed to Seed is an excellent source of information on growing plants for saving seed.

I obtained the seeds for my Imperial Star artichokes from the Natural Gardening Company in Petaluma, CA. They offer certified organic seeds and plants. I also got my organic strawberry plants from them.

Wheat

Last fall and winter I grew out some wheat seeds I obtained from a Seed Savers Exchange member who also runs Sourcepoint Seeds, a small seed company offering rare and ancient varieties of food crops.
This wheat variety is Rouge a Bordeaux and, according to growseed.org, is a "winter bread wheat preferred by French artisan bakers."
I started making artisan-type bread last year and thought it would be nice to try a wheat variety that is suited to such an endeavor.
I received a small packet of seeds in 2008 and planted it that fall. I did not have many plants, but the idea of Seed Savers Exchange is to share small amounts of seed and have other gardeners grow them out to make more seed. It helps expand the distribution of heritage seeds.
I harvested the wheat in the late spring, when it was looking dry enough to cut. I cut the shafts long and left them in an uncovered box in my warm, dark office, to dry fully.


Today I finally got around to threshing and winnowing the wheat. It wasn't too big a deal since I had such a small amount. I cut off the long straw so I only had the seed heads, then I rubbed the seed heads together to separate the wheat from the chaff. I then dropped the seed and chaff onto some row-cover fabric that I placed in front of a fan on low speed. The chaff blew away and I scooped up the seed.



I'll plant this seed in the fall and expand my stock further. I'll repeat this until I have enough wheat to grind into enough flour to make bread. Fun no?

Ripeness in Siberia

This tomato variety is called Siberia and has finally started ripening in the last week or so. These are small tomatoes with a nice, sharp tomato flavor (lots of acid). When my other tomato plant —called Cappuchino— starts to ripen, I'll be slicing these Siberias in half and drying them in the solar food dehydrator. Sun dried tomatoes are delicious.

From the Melon patch

I found a promising discovery on a melon plant (Delice de Table).
A nice melon forming under the canopy of leaves. I grew this variety because I liked the Seed Savers Exchange description:

French heirloom listed by Vilmorin in 1885. Translates as “Delight of the Table.” Ribbed fruits have sweet orange flesh and weigh about 1-2 pounds. Very hard-to-find, almost extinct. 85-90 days.


Also under the canopy of leaves, and about a half-gopher length away from the forming melon was a gopher hole.

Seems that gophers like to feed on the fruits of melons. Much to my dismay, another loss to those underground pests.


My permaculture training suggests I don't have too many gophers but too few enemies of gophers. Should I import gopher-snakes to reduce the population? The local cats are not doing their part, and birds of prey have little chance with all the cover my garden offers to gophers.

Too many heartaches from gophers eating my garlic, onions, potatoes, hollyhocks, and pea plants (to name only a few), led me to trapping.

I have kept count of the gophers I trapped. Nineteen gophers in as many months is what I consider an infestation. I still have a few gophers working the garden, but 19 is ridiculous.

In any garden some crop loss is expected—to birds or bugs—but last year gophers took more of my garlic crop than I got and they would have taken it all if I hadn't dug it up. They destroyed an entire fig tree by eating its roots all the way to the trunk, until the tree just wilted and flopped over. They have eaten the roots of mature hollyhocks, have eaten many plants worth of potato tubers, and taken down mature leeks just at their peak.

I observe their activity, and will trap when I take too many plant losses in an area. This melon still needed weeks on the vine to ripen, and it takes such a long time to even get fruit on some melon plants. In times like this it is difficult to not get discouraged.

Eliot Coleman, in his latest book The Winter Harvest Handbook, writes about a crop-devestating problem he had with meadow voles, and how the only solution he found was trapping.

Eliot Coleman writes "Although I am a mild-mannered sort and show great kindness and respect to wild creatures in general, I admit to a strong aversion to voles in the winter greenhouse."
"I know from my records that one year I trapped over fifty voles in the vicinity of the greenhouses during August and September, and a neighbor's cat probably got almost that many. Come winter it didn't seem as if we had even made a dent."

Knowing that Eliot Coleman, the organic gardening and farming guru of our time, traps meadow voles made me feel less monstrous in my own trapping efforts.

I hope I am able to grow some of these melons to maturity so that I might taste such an old variety and also that I might participate in saving and sharing the seeds of an amost extinct food.

Basket of produce

Today we picked some conadria figs, lemon cucumbers, a tomato, and yellow peaches.
Also pictured are some red torpedo onions and some other onions that have been curing in a warm, shady spot outside for several weeks.

Olives

I planted three olive trees in January 2008. The first olive fruit came this year and is on a tree that gets the least amount of water and attention.
Olive trees can live many hundreds of years and are evergreen. I planted the olives along the back fence to provide some greenery in the back yard during the winter when other plants have gone dormant. I chose olives because they are drought tolerant, live many years, and can produce a useful fruit. I planted two Maurino and one Taggiasca olives. The fruit is on a Maurino, which is a Tuscan oil type.

Popping beans (aka Garbanzo beans)

I'm growing a type of garbanzo bean (aka chick pea), Cicer arietinum, that produces small brown seeds that are supposed to cook quickly in a small amount of oil and pop, but not like popcorn. Having a bean that cooks quickly saves time and energy. No long soaking required and long simmering times are not needed. I got my seeds from another member of Seed Savers Exchange and I'm growing those out to increase my stock. Most of the seeds I produce this year will go back into next year's crop, but I'm going to try popping a few, since I've never actually done it (only read about it).

I've never even grown garbanzo beans before. Only bought bags of the big pale seeds at the bulk section of the market. The plants very much resemble lentil plants, which I have grown. The pods hang under the foliage, so I've pulled this plant back to show the pods.

Permaculture video - Geoff Lawton, Greening the Desert

Cucurbitaceae - A good family

Went out looking at the cucumber and melon plants today.
I found fruits growing on a lemon cucumber (Cucumis sativus) plant, a white cucumber (Cucumis sativus) plant, and a watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) plant.

White cucumber

Watermelon

Lemon cucumber

Putting up food

Canned white peaches.

Drying white peach slices.

This has been a particularly peachy summer and, as in years past, I decided to can some peaches. I am also trying out the screened, drying rack that my partner made at the end of last summer. I have dried one batch of peaches and have a second batch in there now. I am also drying some apricots from a friend. The climate here is rather hot and dry in summer, so the sliced fruit dries quickly and without the use of electricity. I had tried one of those round, plastic, electric dehydrators one year, and I dried several trays of green beans (which reconstitute okay in soups) and when I had my first batch of tomatoes in there it started to melt the trays and then died. So I returned it and opted for the solar-operated model that has a greater capacity and looks nice too. The racks have food-grade stainless steel mesh (the most expensive part of the system). I'm lucky to live with someone who is handy and willing to build things like this.

Benefits to using the drying rack: no electricity needed, large capacity, will not melt and stop working - or cause a fire due to malfunction, and the dried peach slices are delicious! Canning requires lots of standing over a hot stove (and sugar). With drying I just have to slice the fruit and put the trays in the box, wait a few days until the fruit feels dry enough, and then put the dried slices in clean containers.

I am not sure how the dried peaches will compare to opening a jar of peaches, but I definitely like the lower energy and lower labor aspect to the method.

Hot days of July. The thermometer sits in a shaded breezeway (where the drying rack is located) and was still pushing the needle up into the 100s (almost 40 C) at 3 p.m. Minimum temperature was 64 F (18 C) last night. These hot days and warm nights help the fruit dry quickly, but they offer little relief to the humans in this permaculture system.

Front Yard before and during (when will it be after?)

The front yard (above in winter 2007) was basic lawn with overgrown foundation shrubs before any work was started.
Now (below in July 2009) there is still plenty of lawn (it takes lots and lots of shoveling to dig up lawn) but also plenty of other plants. The foundation shrubs are still here and overgrown, though they offer shade from the late summer sun, so not totally useless. A mature gardenia is located outside the bedroom window, and since we don't use A/C our windows are open often at night allowing the heady fragrance to drift in.

Along the front walk

Chipping away at the lawn started along the front walk, near the front door of the house. First a hollyhock, then some lavender and some heuchera, then a kumquat.
The area got expanded and now hosts bush beans, purple basil, and a cucumber. All just a few steps from the front door. I go out for basil almost daily now.

Lawn transformation

Berm and basin by the road used to be lawn. I dug it up and planted it to shrubs and other various plants (see older post for more info). Late spring found the place overrun with gopher activity. They ate the roots of mature hollyhocks & lavateras (both in the mallow family), and then wrecked havoc by tunneling and disturbing various plants. For a while the area looked rather unattractive. I seeded with daikon radish, squash, sunflowers, melons, and other seeds. It took a while to recover, but now the area is high with sunflowers, daikons are growing as are other the other plants. It is lush and lovely with a variety of textures, colors, and plants.


The back side of the berm/basin is still lawn, but this trombetta squash is making a run for it.

Humulus lupulus in bloom

The Hops are starting to flower.
Depending upon how many hop cones the plant produces, they might be used in a brew later this year. Humulus lupulus is a member of the Cannabaceae family.

Bean trellis, squash, alliums

Pole beans are finally heading up the strings and the squash beneath has taken off and provided us with some delicious, young summer squash. The squash is taking over the scattering of alliums that grew there from seed I sprinkled from leeks that went to seed last year. At least, I think they are from leeks. Some of the plants I pulled from there had garlic-like bulbs, so perhaps some crossing has occurred. At this point I am more into abundance than purity of type, so I'll keep growing these out and maybe I'll find something interesting. Last year some of the volunteer squash produced some flavorful flesh. The squash in the photo is a volunteer that seems to have butternut parentage (I grew a lot of butternut squash last year).
The young ones were of two colors, a dark and a ligther skin. The flesh was very pale yellow, like young butternuts.
The pole beans are a dry bean variety. They are grown for the dry seeds rather than the green pods, though one can eat the young pods. The beans have mottled pods with reddish coloring. I believe they are called Bird Egg pole beans. I got the seeds from someone who got them from the National Plant Germplasm System.
A grape vine and a pomegranate are beyond the beans.

Hops

Humulus lupulus 'Nugget' on the hops trellis. It is sending out side branches from which the flowers will form. The rhizome came from Nichols Garden Nursery in Corvallis, Oregon. We also ordered Kent Golding rhizomes, and they're not performing as vigorously. They'll probably get moved to a new location once they go dormant. Hops is a thirsty plant and it gets lots of deep watering and likes a good, deep mulch.

Fig - Conadria

Ficus carica - edible fig - Conadria puts out an early (breba) crop and a late crop. The breba crop has been ripening over the last week or so, a few at a time. Sweet fresh figs, right from the tree, are one of my favorite things to eat.
Figs are drought tolerant after being established. Conadria starts out with green figs, then they start to droop a little, then more, and finally turn yellow. When the fig pulls easily from the tree they are ripe and sweet. Conadria can be dried too, but I haven't tried that yet.

Other fig varieties in the garden include: Verdal Longue, Celestial, Brown Turkey Improved, and Panache Tiger. They are all young trees and it looks like the Brown Turkey Improved will fruit in the summer, and possibly the Panache Tiger.

Siberia 8 days later

Eight days later the Siberia tomato has put on quite a bit of growth.

Siberia Tomato and Top-setting onions

This little tomato plant is a variety called Siberia. It is allegedly able to keep setting fruit in cool temperatures (down to 38 ˙F).



Top-setting onions make little onion bulbils at the top of a long stem. These are just like little tiny onions and can be used to grow more onions or they can be eaten.

Progressions

Artichoke

This lovely artichoke is starting to bloom.
Just a hint of hairy purple has started to peek out of the center of the flower bud.

Garlic and coreopsis.

I left the garlic in the ground for as long as I could stand it. Gophers have recently made their entrance into the garden and garlic roots are first on their preferred menu. I lost enough bulbs to justify digging them all. The plants would have done better with a week or two more, but I lost so many garlic plants last year I couldn't stand the thought of a repeat. The garlic is curing in a dark place, and then I'll trim and clean the bulbs. This garlic area has been sown with seeds of tomato and lemon cucumber now. The coreopsis is still blooming away.