Snow- a dusting.

Forget about the El Nino/Climate Change perpetual fallish winter we've been enjoying. It's now Winter. Having never had roosters and winter together before I feel like I've failed miserably and been a crappy animal protector. The Roos both got frostbite. Papi has only had a couple of points on his comb injured, but Mattilda took it bad. Both comb and wattles are significantly burned. I suspect he will lose his points and wattle skin (whatever it is officially called, I have no idea). I would take a picture, but I'm horrified. Hubs and I reinforced the coop by surrounding it with straw bales. The inside of the coop was about 10 degrees warmer than outside temp and no drafts this morn, so I am happy with that. Tonight it is suppose to get down to 5F. Hens are much hardier than Roos. Lesson learned. I've never had a problem with my girls.

Propagation
Not the best pic., but what is in the black plastic pot on the other side of the chicken-fence is a Aristolochia (Dutchman's Pipevine-native) I am tempting to propagate. Fill pot with dirt, rest nodes of vines on top of soil, top with a brick. Hopefully roots will grow from the node and I will have some new plants come spring.

I've really been babying these cuttings along. They are now in a ziplock bag (in this pot). I'm not sure if they will ever root, but they are hanging on. Scarlet Honeysuckle (native)

 Sea Oats/ River Oats collected from yard. Tossed on top of soil in this cat litter container.

Lid isn't completely cut off, creating a mini-greenhouse for

the seedlings. Stored outside for cold-moist stratification. 

 These sweets started to sprout so I potted them up.

Put soil on top. I will use these in the summer garden. 

I haven't bought sweet potato starts in 3 years. These

are Georgia Jet, which seem to do well for me. Growing

in the basement under shop lights.

Projects

Have thought on and off about doing this- bottle edging. It's begun. I guess I'll need to drink more.

Hubs made me some "new" planters from old tires. 

I fell in love with these when I first saw them in

a school garden in South Africa. They had a bunch of different

shapes and sizes- all painted in bright colors.

Made a few trellises from collected sticks & wild grape vine.

Food

What else do you do when winter begins and you're stuck indoors? 

Mile High Blackberry Muffins

Black Raspberry-Lime Muffin Cookies

Eggplant Pad Phet

w/eggplant & peppers (frozen) and chard (fresh)

Hen of the Woods Mushroom Soup

Peaches canned in honey

Spinach salad

This is a must keep peach recipe! 

I thought canned peaches surely would be awful,

but that's just not true! Plus the syrup makes

for a nice cocktail mixer. ; )

Thank you dear chickens for continuing

to give me breakfast throughout this horrible cold. 

Peppers, Onions, Mushrooms.

Final notes

Raised beds have extra blankets and I am leaving them covered on the coldest days. Inside the geohoop all is lovely and green. I'm harvesting corn salad for the ladies. I'm waiting to start picking a lot from the other greens when the days start getting over 10 hours long ~ Jan 24th I believe. Then growth should start picking up. Started 4 kinds of Milkweed in tall pots outside- Showy, Common, Poke and Sullivant's. Pepper seedlings are coming up. I started a few perennials- yarrow, P coneflowers, blanket flower, dianthus- no germination yet. Kale & Bok Choy started in the garage have germinated. The new "Pollinator Palooza" seed mix was sown on 1/14/16 in the new compost/bed. I need to take pics of that and post. 

If things stay this cold there won't be a lot going on outside for me. I don't mind working outside in the cold, but when the ground is frozen, it's cold AND gray or cold and windy- then I am stuck indoors. Cold and sunny or cold and not windy- I'm all good. 

We've been having a lot of wonderful sunrises. I'll just have to enjoy those for now.

The End of the Persephone Days

It seems many bloggers are talking more about the Persephone Days; a term coined by writer and veg farmer Eliot Coleman (after the myth of Persephone's kidnapping and confinement to the underworld for part of the year). The chatter is because many of us are passing beyond the magical line (due to the angle of the Earth) of 10 hours of sunlight. For my garden location, we drop below 10hrs of daylight on November 19th and back over 10hrs on January 23rd. In the time in between those two dates, outdoor plants are dormant and after is when we will begin to see growth and consider it a time when we can plant again. Yay!

You can find your own daylength table here.

All of this information makes winter more tolerable and seemingly shorter. Considering the longer days is a shining light. Hope and promise. With this information I sow.

Over December break I started sowing seeds in the basement nursery. Today I planted seeds in pots in the dome.

 Because I have a problem with slugs in the dome I decided to

suspend a tray by hemp to evade them. Slugs particularly love

tender seedlings. The tray on the left was one I planted last fall with varying

winter-hardy seedlings, like California poppies, Snapdragons, Larkspur and Nigella. 

In the right tray I planted Snapdragons (3 kinds), and Fragrant Cloud & Woodland Tobacco. 

Knowing that these seed varieties are often early germinators I thought it was safe to start them in the dome.

The benefits of starting in the dome are no energy need and no hardening off. 

 In the basement nursery- Lovage, Valerian, Parsley & Fennel

(left to right)

Hollyhocks and Blanketflower germinating.

Today I set a flat of spring greens outside for an hour. It's misty, gray and warm enough. I thought they may enjoy it. 

Dome activity

 The state of Chard- regrowth

 Leeks

 Overwintered Hellbores & Russian Sage (was looking promising until recently)

 I think this is a Mizuna. It was in a mixed pack of veggies.

I LOVE it. I nibble on it in the dome. I hope to collect seed from

it as it's a new fav. It is both peppery and earthy.

 Happy Pansy

 Self-sown corn salad (mache)

I finally realized why I don't love this veg.

The name implies the flavor- corn, and I don't love corn that much.

This is also one of the few plants not eaten by slugs. I think that says something.

 The state of collards.

 Resprouting Kale

 Celery made it!

I say that like winter is over. 

Radicchio? 

I'm not a fan.

Attempted Burn

 Needed to get this done as the bulbs are showing

themselves. 1/24/15

Star of Bethlehem

And inside:

One of my favorite fragrances- Fragrant Olive

Good Eats

With the nice Sweet Potato harvest I think we've had sweets at least a dozen different ways this

winter. This recipe was from a recent gifted cookbook. The sweets are cooked in a spice mixture I wouldn't have thought of. Served over spiced polenta (or grits). Yum. 

Happy Gardening makes for Happy Eating!

Mini High Tunnel Hoophouse Project

If it weren't for the damn mosquitoes everything would be perfect to be working on outside projects. They aren't going to stop me however. I'm the perfect candidate for West Nile. While I make cold frames from the same concept each winter I thought I would expand up on the idea after seeing a youtube video on how to raise the hoop concept so that you can get inside of it. The only additional materials I needed to get to the end of the project today was rebar.

Step 1:
This is the site of a former raised bed. I had to enclosed the garden with chicken wire to keep the chickens out since this is being installed in the Orchard, aka Chicken Yard, and because I am not going to enclose this in plastic until the nights get near freezing.  Hoe, weed a bit, remove large sticks and created a very narrow path down the middle.

Step 2:

Placed narrow (6 inch) strip of cardboard down to mark the path. I'll be lucky if I don't fall on my arse with this path. Notice it doesn't go all the way to the end of the bed to maximize planting space. This is a very small hoop house and I'm planting intensively. 

Step 3:

I harvested 2, 5 gallon buckets of compost from the floor of the chicken coop and spread around the planting space. This is all the soil amendment I am adding since the soil was in good organic condition already. 

           

Step 4:

I hammered in 10, 4 ft pieces of rebar about half way into the ground. These will support the conduit hoops. The rebar cost just under $3 a piece and has been my only cost since I had the other items around. 

Next I bent the conduit and stuck it over the rebar on both sides of the bed. 

Some people have a centered length of conduit connecting all of the hoops, but my bed is longer than the length of the conduit and the hoops seem strong enough to not collapse (famous last words?).

Step 5:

Plant! I planted mache, 3 varieties of kale, spinach, arugula and several lettuces and marked their perimeter with sticks. 

How do I get in there to eat that yummy seed?

What I have left to do is cover the high tunnel in plastic and create an entryway. I haven't decided if I want a door or a zipper. I saw that you can buy a tarp zipper and attach it to plastic to act as a door way w/o needing to build a door. I'll probably build a door though. It will go on the east end to limit cold NW winds from entering. I will cover it when it gets colder. Right now I need it to rain on these seeds so I don't have to water in the meantime. 

Dimensions: 11 feet long and 4.5 ft wide. 

It's an experiment. If it works I may even try erecting a propagation bench inside where I can start some seeds next spring. We shall see. I'm kind of excited to have an almost greenhouse. 

Is it too early?

My favorite way to spend Superbowl Sunday is by doing anything but watching the Superbowl. I find it neither a bowl or super. So, let's garden eh?

Is it too early to start my spring garden? Maybe in some years, but after an entire week of 50-60's I find my turnip seeds have germinated in the garden. I have Tronchuda cabbage, Dinosaur Kale and Perpetual Chard basking in the half-sunny sky for the first time since germinating in the basement. What the heck? Let's start the hardening off already.

From upper left to lower right. Two trays of each- Perpetual Chard, Tronchuda Cabbage and Dinosaur Kale.

It was warm enough for the snakes to start sunbathing too.

Other stuff in the garden growing well- Miner's Lettuce. Returns on it's own each year. Can't beat that.

Mache at eating stage. It also reseeds and comes back on its own.

And when you can't garden you consume the fruits of your labor. I've started to dabble in wine-making. Here is the first racking of the Apple, Pomegranate & Orange Wine experiment. It is a very pretty color.

I've also got a bottle of Wild Plum Wine that I made with no added sugar or yeast. The color and taste are amazing. I made it from frozen fruit in November and this is the first rack and separation from fruit. 

Skins and fruit dripping. Wild Plum. 

The other thing that happened this week is the Black Mission Fig started to bud out. I had just given it a good drink and I noticed the buds swelling this morning so I moved it to a window. 

Other stuff I have going- sauerkraut & kimchi making and a loaf of bread. Lots of fermentation in the house! Love it. Happy Sunday whatever you are doing! 

Patchy Frost

After accepting that last night would be the night all is lost we only had patchy frost. Seeing that we are a week into November and we should expect frost by mid-October we've been lucky.

The low parts of the yard and random spots in the garden were touched. 

frost on flowering tobacco

mache and garden mushrooms

I highly recommend growing Mache, also called Corn Salad. It reseeds itself every year so you never have to replant it. It's available for eating in the fall, winter and spring. Just let enough go to seed to assure it's continuance.  

Fall tip: some shops have "decorative pumpkins" or squash available for Halloween. Many of these are great eating winter squash. You won't find most of these at your general grocery store so buy one for show and then roast it and enjoy. Here is one I like:

It has gorgeous orange flesh inside. Those ribs are perfect for cutting slices to be oiled, salted and roasted.

My so-called kumquat tree has 2 fruits. Once they are ready I will know for sure what they are, but they are definitely not looking like kumquats. Maybe a mini-tangerine?

Lastly, if you haven't already saved tomato seeds pick your favorite now. I have 2 cherry tomatoes I can't live without. Both will come back on their own, but I can't tell what they are by the plant alone so instead I am saving their seeds. One is White Currant. It tastes like no tomato you've ever had. It is creamy white and a small cherry type. The other I'm not entirely sure what it is, but it could be a returning Gajo de melon. It is marbled and sweet. Squeeze the seeds out of the tomato. Put them in a jar of water until mold forms on the surface. Scrape this off. Strain them and rub away any extra pulp and then lay on a sheet of newspaper to dry. Store in a cool, dry place. Here is a good indicator that they seed is viable- it sinks. 

Enjoy your fall squirreling projects!