Seedlings Started in the Greenhouse

We started seedlings in our greenhouse mid-February, doing a few dozen of them every day.

The process has been to start them under the fluorescent lights with the blue heating mat warming them from below. Then as they germinate and establish their first true leaves, we'll move them to the South shelf which gets only natural sunlight and also has a blue warming mat underneath. Eventually when they get established enough, I'll move them to the upper shelf and remove the fluorescent lights.

We'll try to continue to post pictures as the seedling starting season continues. So far we've started veggies; tomatoes, celery, various melons, gourds, cucumbers and both annuals and perennials; several kinds of petunia, calibrachoa, celosia, coleus, salvia, various marigolds, and portulaca. Each shelf, two on the left (North side) and one on the right (South side) is about 11 feet long and I'm planning on filling them completely with happy little seedlings.

Seedling planting and germinating season moves quickly and we'll do our best to post updated pictures as our new plants emerge and start to grow. Have you started seeds this year? 

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More Late Summer Garden Pictures

We're bearing down on the end of August, then Labor Day and possibly soon the end of summer. Here are some pictures from around the garden in the last week of August. 

This is the Blueberry area, just next to the Petunia Tower in the back yard.  The blueberries are surrounded by some assorted dianthus, sweet alyssum, and more petunias. 

This is the front edging of the garden area on the south side of the driveway.  The plants that aren't blooming are Indian Summer dianthus that I planted this Spring, I expect a great bloom showing next year.  There are also some trailing red verbeena, and the yellow flowers are Helenium autumnale - Sneezeweed. We only bought the sneezeweed because Alycia thought name was cool, but they've bloomed steadily and consistently all summer. I think we'll be adding more sneezeweed next year too.   

More verbeena, sneezeweed, dianthus, and even a lovely pink petunia. 

The Great Wall of Cherry Tomatoes.  These are planted in a raised bed along our garage and face south. Between the all day sunshine they receive and the heat that reflects off the metal siding, the tomatoes are really happy here.  Along the front edge of this raised bed are a few different varieties of marigolds (Inca Gold, Golden Gem and others). 

View of the Great Wall of Tomatoes from the other side of the raised bed.  You can barely make out the celery that we planted at the front corner of the box.  These got a bit overwhelmed, and probably were not my best decision to plant these here. 

Close up of the Golden Gem marigolds. These are one of my favorite marigolds and I either save the seeds every year, or let them go to seed in Fall and spread the seeds around the area where I want them to grow the next year.  Then I let the army of volunteers take over the next Spring, thinning them where it's needed. 

Fall Garden Pictures - Apples and Marigolds

It's Fall here in North Dakota, both the calendar and the weather are attesting to this fact. We have had a long stretch of warm and dry weather, which has extended our growing season a good two to three weeks longer than normal.  It's also been nice that cool temperatures have killed all the mosquitos and made outside work much more pleasant. 

We finally got a hard frost (down to the mid to low 20's) over the last few nights, which means that we had to pull up our tomato and pepper plants.  The more cold hardy beets and onions were able to stay outside for a few more days, but we pulled those as well yesterday and got busy pickling the beets and drying the onions. 

Our zinnias, hostas, Monarda (beebalm), and coneflowers (echinacea) didn't make it through the hard freeze, but the marigolds and petunias are still going strong.  The marigolds look pretty contrasted next to the brown foreground/background of fallen leaves.  The orange flowers on the left are 'Golden Gem' Marigolds, with 'Inca Gold' Marigolds on the right side of the raised bed.  These are regulars in our garden and we plant them in abundance every year.

More 'Inca Gold' Marigolds in front with 'Golden Gem' Marigolds in the back, along with onions and tomatoes and even a 'Paprika' Yarrow way in the back.  We're big believers in flowers and plants that attract beneficial bugs; marigolds, yarrow, sweet alyssum, verbeena, petunias, etc. the list goes on.   We intersperse them with all of our veggies and include them heavily in our annual flowerbed planting.   

These are cherry tomatoes (Sweet 100) which produced prolifically this year. Believe it or not, there are only three tomato plants in that huge mass.   This is probably the perfect location for them, along the garage wall, underneath a bit of the eaves, facing West.  This site was a compost pile last year and has a large amount of well rotted compost and horse manure. 

Our apples are just about ready to pick.  These are Haralson or Haralred apples, I'm not sure.  They can withstand a bit of frost, so we're going to leave them on the tree as long as possible to give them an opportunity to sweeten up a little more. 

That's an update from the homestead in mid-October.  We've been frantically busy around here and posting has been sparse, sorry.  Plus honestly, the dogs just haven't been doing anything cute recently...so there hasn't been much to post about.  

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Paprika Yarrow and Awesome Customer Service from BloomingBulb.com

I wrote about some new plants that we added to the garden last summer in this post and this post last year.  These plants were root divisions that were on (huge) markdown from BloomingBulb.com.  Sadly the Arizona Sun Gallairdia didn't survive the winter, at all.  The Summer Sun Heliopsis, Paprika Yarrow, and Caradonna Salvia are mostly all thriving whilst very few of the Zing Rose Maiden Pink Dianthus made it through the winter.

Here's a photo of the Paprika Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), planted between tomatoes in the raised bed on the left and the apple trees (out of frame) on the right.  Please ignore those weeds.

A few weeks back I e-mailed the customer service department of BloomingBulb.com to tell them that some of the plants didn't live and requested a replacement.  They claim to have a "no questions asked replacement/refund" guarantee.  And do they ever.  I got a credit for the plants they no longer had in stock and a box of Zing Rose Maiden Pink Dianthus was shipped out to my house.

Their customer service was so fast and efficient though that unfortunately the box arrived when we were on vacation and the root divisions looked pretty dicey by the time we got home, so I'm in the unfortunate position of having to request a second replacement.  But BloomingBulbs' customer service was so outstanding, I don't think it'll be an issue.  For that reason they get a full Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes two thumbs up seal of approval.  I'll certainly be buying from them again. 

Birthday Week Celebration

Alycia here. When I was in college, my friends were nice enough to indulge me with an entire birthday week, which for anyone who loves their birthday is much more fun than celebrating on just a single day. I have tried as much as I can to introduce this concept and get John on board with continuing the tradition of birthday weeks, and he is really starting to come around. This makes for an exciting end of May/beginning of June, as John's birthday is just one week before mine, and our Anniversary is smack dab in the middle of the week between our birthdays (I planned this as such).

The birthday week allows the birthday celebrant to be in charge of all sorts of daily household decisions, such as what we will watch on TV at night, and what we will eat for our meals. So while it may not seem like a big deal, I feel that it allows for the feeling of a little extra specialness for an entire week, which is always nice.

For John's actual birthday day, we planned a day trip out to visit some small towns in Minnesota. The first stop was a cafe in Winger, MN that had been recently reviewed by world-renowned local food critic, Marilyn Haggarty of the Grand Forks Herald. The Depot Cafe and Bakery was appropriately located in an old train depot that had been moved and renovated.

There were some nice touches that reminded the customers about the building's history.

The interior was nicely finished with lovely wood paneling and lighting. The food was actually pretty good. John had a very large burger on a homemade bun. I had some of the best egg salad I'd had in a while.

In Marilyn's review, she mentioned a bakery. She made it seem as though it was right next to the cafe, but when we queried the waitress, she said that it was actually in McIntosh, MN, about 10 miles up the road. So after lunch, we headed to the next stop. McIntosh was actually a very lovely town that we will visit again. The bakery had a very large kitchen and appeared to specialize primarily in bread products (duh, it's a bakery), but it had a respectable amount of doughnuts as well.

John was able to pick up a package of sandwich rolls, as well as a couple doughnuts and an apple fritter, which made him happy.

After the bakery stop, we crossed the street to check out the meat market. Why, you ask, would a gluten-free vegetarian support visiting a bakery and a specialty meat store? Well, it was John's birthday and I think it's important to check out all available options for interesting food. Being in the middle of nowhere, beggars can't be choosers when it comes to possible food delicacies. We didn't buy anything at the meat market since there's a pretty good one here in Grand Forks (L&M Meats), but for a town of a couple hundred, it was fairly impressive.

Our next stop in town was the McIntosh Country Store. John didn't think we should go in - he thought it would be a feed store for cattle, etc. But I argued with him and said that the sign said they had fresh eggs, of which we needed some. So in we went. It was actually more of a natural foods store, with some random farm animal necessities. They had a whole bunch of gluten free items and bulk foods, as well as vaccines for your animals. In addition, as I was walking through the store, I kept hearing the cheep-cheeps of baby chicks, but I couldn't find them. Eventually I located the chicks, they were in a box under a table. (John here - it's been a while since Alycia's gotten to play with chicks)

It appeared as though the chicks had been mailed to the store, and they were waiting for their owner to pick them up. While I thought it was somewhat inhumane to mail live animals, according to my mother, this is often how its done. The chicks really didn't seem the worse for wear, at least based on my quick peek inside the box.

I also liked that the store had this lovely metal chicken outside.

And across the street from the store, was a plant nursery that the store ran. We picked up some (hopefully) lovely heirloom cherry tomatoes. We've had heirloom regular sized tomatoes before, but the cherries are a new one and I'm looking forward to what they'll produce.

We then headed home for a birthday nap and later had a lovely dinner with my parents at the Brick and Barley here in town. It's a newer brew pub that has a decent selection of rotating beers on tap. John likes to try the different beers; I stick with the always gluten-free ciders. There are very few decent gluten-free beers and I've learned that the ciders are usually a better/safer bet.

Fall Weather and First Snow

It's fall here in Eastern North Dakota.  The breeze has turned stronger and chillier, blowing the falling leaves in showers of autumn colors.  We've been swamped with pulling the last tomatoes, peppers,and eggplant from the garden and getting everything ready for winter.  The hard freeze on Wednesday night did in the last summer crops including the sweet potato vine that I need to wrangle and chop up into compost. 

The apple trees are holding onto their leaves (barely) and the marigolds somehow still look quite vibrant.  That may all change if we get some snow over the weekend.

From the National Weather Service:

THE FIRST ACCUMULATING SNOW OF THE SEASON IS POSSIBLE SATURDAY
NIGHT INTO SUNDAY. THERE COULD BE A BAND OF 1 TO 3 INCHES OF
SNOW ALONG A LINE FROM AROUND DEVILS LAKE TO GRAND FORKS TO
BEMIDJI. THE LOCATION OF THIS SNOW BAND WILL BECOME MORE CERTAIN
ONCE THE EXACT TRACK OF THE LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM IS KNOWN. IT WILL
GET VERY COLD BEHIND THIS ALBERTA CLIPPER...AND NORTHERLY WINDS
WILL INCREASE SUNDAY AND SUNDAY NIGHT. THE UNSEASONABLY COLD
WEATHER WILL CONTINUE NEXT WEEK.

We'll be busy as little beavers putting the rest of the garden to sleep for the winter, raking and chopping leaves and adding them to the raised beds.  As always, there's so much to do and so little time.  Nothing is quite as motivating though as the threat of snow, it's one heck of a deadline. 

Big Melon

I wish I could claim this huge cantaloupe as my own, but it didn't come from my garden. 

Alycia's parents have a friend out in the country who's a retired farmer and grows corn, pumpkins, and some of the biggest cantaloupe I've ever seen. 

It's larger than the bowl of peppers and Japanese eggplant that we picked the day before.   

I couldn't come up with anything in the kitchen that was of standard enough size to be able to compare this monster melon to.  The best thing that I came up with was this egg carton, which seemed more than capable to demonstrate how large this gargantua-melon really is.  

Big melon, circumference larger than my large knife.  It was quite tasty too, even though it wasn't organic.  If I buy fruits and veggies I prefer to purchase organic, but if it's free?  Well, I can't be too choosy. 

It's that time of year when things are coming in fast and furious.  We processed a bunch of tomatoes to turn into pasta sauce. Along with our giant melon, peppers, and eggplant we have a shopping bag full of fresh picked corn and sack of apples. The corn and apples were courtesy of Alycia's parents, they're phenomenal providers of produce. 

Homemade Tomato Cages - Cost Benefit Analysis and Final Thoughts

It's the third year of using our Homemade Tomato Cages and with that experience under my belt, I thought it might be useful to perform a final cost benefit analysis to determine if it was worth it to go through the trouble of making these Homemade Tomato Cages.  There are also a few pros and cons of these tomato cages that I'll pass along in case you're interested in replicating these for your garden. 

In case you missed the previous posts about these tomato cages over the years, you can read the First Post, the Second Post, and the Third Post in chronological order.  These posts offer the full story along with details on how to make some of your own. 

So was it worth it to build these myself versus buying them?  Right off the bat my knee jerk reaction is yes since there just aren't commercially available tomato cages that are this big and this sturdy.  But how much did each tomato cage cost?  Well I purchased the following materials:

5' x 50' Reinforcing Mesh, 10 Gauge -        $29.99
10" End Cutting Pliers (to cut wire mesh) - $19.99
Spool of Wire for securing cages -                 $3.49

2013 Garden Objectives

Even though we're technically a week into Spring, it seems like actual Spring is a long way off.  There's still 3 feet of snow (or more) on the ground and temperatures aren't forecast to get above the freezing mark for at least the next week. It makes it seem like planting-actual-living-things-in-the-ground time is eons away.

But we're going to start our seeds indoors this week and the itch for Spring will turn into an inevitable yearning that will soon enough enable me to work outside.  In the meantime I thought it would be a good exercise to relay my objectives for the upcoming gardening season.  Why?  Well this IS sort of a blog about gardening.  Plus it will be good thought exercise to consider my plans for the upcoming year and there's the bonus that if I know that my list is publicized, there's a better chance I will feel accountable to my reading public and not procrastinate the year away.

Objective Category 1 - Easy Stuff.  These are things that are either easy to accomplish or that I really need to do anyways:

• Add some pieces of re-purposed sidewalk concrete to the area underneath our gate.  In Spring and during rainy weather this small space gets really muddy from the people/dog foot traffic (it's our main exit in/out of the yard).  I'm going to dig in some broken pieces of an old sidewalk that we removed last year from the side of the house in order to make this space less muddy. 
• Plant more perennials.  I love annuals, but they're a lot of work to plant every year and I'd rather have them as extra additions than the main attraction.  We're going to plant some more coneflowers, clematis, monarda (bee balm), milkweed, and sedum. And whatever else strikes my fancy. 
• Plant at least one more honeyberry shrub.  You need two to get berries and we only have one right now.  I did the math on this one all by myself.

• Divide hostas and use them for borders for perennial beds.  
• Lose more lawn space.  Every year I want to take a little more lawn area and convert it to vegetable growing, flowers, or non-lawn space. Less lawn = less weekly mowing work.  If I do this slowly (a few square yards every year), the neighbors are less likely to notice.  I'm sneaky like that.
• Plant milkweed.  Monarch butterflies are disappearing at a rapid rate, I'm hoping that planting some of their favorite food will help a little.  These are also perennials, so this also ties into one of the objectives above.  

Objective Category 2 - Harder Stuff.  These are things that require some thought or multiple days to finish:

• Determine if my leaf mulching plan worked to improve soil quality.  Last Fall we raked up and shredded all our leaves, then put them on top of our raised beds, with some chicken wire to hold the leaves in, and some big bricks to weigh it all down.  This was a lot of work last Fall and I'm hoping that this has all broken down into some quality organic matter that we can work into the soil when we plant the raised beds.   
• Figure out if my blueberry relocation plan worked.  I've been trying to grow blueberries here for three years, despite the warnings from multiple local folks and nursery professionals. The soil is just too alkaline here and simply amending the soil just doesn't work.  My solution?  I dug a big pit (see picture below), filled it with compost and a bunch of peat moss, then brought it up another foot above the ground.  Then I transplanted the six bushes into their new acidic soil wonderland last Fall. This year we find out if it worked.  If not?  We may need to give up the dream of growing blueberries.  That would make me sad.

 

• Come up with some kind of definitive crop rotation system.  Right now my haphazard system of "we planted tomatoes here last year so..." method has left something to be desired.  
• Get a quote and some firm plans on converting our spare garage into a greenhouse.  I've been talking about this for a few years now and I'd really like to have a greenhouse up and running for this winter.  

Objective Category 3 - Big Picture Stuff.  These are things that I need to think about, plan, research, contemplate and probably won't get finished this year, but I at least want to think about them:

• Stump decisions.  We had a large, old box elder tree removed last Fall in the southwest corner of our yard.  It was very old and rotted out in multiple places.  Since it hung over our driveway and power lines we decided it was best that we take it down on our terms, not wait for a thunderstorm to do it for us.  Now we're trying to decide what to do with that space (and the stump that's sitting there now).  When the tree was there it shaded the garden from about 3:00 onward, preventing a full day of sun from reaching the garden, so I don't think we want to replace it with another large, full tree that will shade the garden.  I like birch trees.  They're a bit more sparsely leafed and not quite as tall as some other trees which would allow more dappled sunlight to reach the garden in the afternoon.  More research and discussion and planning is needed.  
• Backyard landscaping.  Inside the fenced in backyard on the west side of the yard, there's a distinct lack of landscaping, it's pretty much just the fence and lawn. This is the one place that we'll always have lawn (ask the dogs why), so we need to have some other landscaping to soften the fence and make the yard look a bit better.  Last year we planted some sedum along one side of the fence and one clematis vine on a trellis.  We need to plant a few more clematis vines on some cool trellises and maybe a few happy little shrubs.  Again more research and thought and planning is needed.

That's all I can think of for now.  What about you gentle reader?  What's on your to-do list this year?  Any ideas or solutions to my myriad garden issues? 

Hmong Cabbage Dish

When I was in college, and for a few years after graduation, I lived with one of my good college friends, Sue, who is Hmong. Now Sue was very smart and a great writer, but she was not much of a cook. Sue's sister, Kauyer, often lived with us during the summers when she was out of school, and she was a fantastic cook. She exposed me to a variety of Hmong cooking recipes and while I can't really recreate them for a variety of reasons (dietary restrictions, kitchen skills, etc.), over time I learned some of the basics.

One of my favorite Hmong dishes that she made for me was a cabbage dish. Now, that alone was a feat, as I don't think I ever ate cabbage growing up. But cabbage can be mighty tasty if you do it right. Kauyer modified the original cabbage dish for me, as it called for hamburger, but since I am vegetarian, she substituted tofu for me. I'm sure that the hamburger version might be even more tasty due to the grease and flavor of the meat.

Since we are growing lovely, small cabbages, I picked two from our front mound and added the few cherry tomatoes that were picked green before our frost and are ripening in the basement.

These are the other things that I put into the dish: tofu, dehydrated/dried tomatoes (since I didn't have enough fresh ones), tamari sauce (the gluten free version of soy sauce), canola oil to fry the garlic in, bullion for some extra sauce flavoring, sweet chili sauce, and spicy chili sauce. Now I'm sure if Kauyer reads this she might be appalled with all the sauces, as Hmong cooking is very light (as compared with the heavier Chinese cooking) and it often calls for fish sauce and oyster sauce - neither of which I had on hand. So this is my North Dakota-ized Hmong dish.

I'm not going to give you a recipe, as I don't really have one. Start with frying up the garlic in the oil, and then add the cabbage and sauces, tofu, etc. Steam it down. Toward the end, add in the tomatoes for extra flavor (and they will add to the sauce juiciness, too).

I served it with brown rice. It's not the most colorful photo, with brown rice and light green cabbage, but it is yummy.

Try it. You might discover that you like cabbage, too.

End of the Week Links & Raspberry Currant Jam Recipe

Our Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes raspberry jam recipe (posted from our marathon-of-deliciousness jam making session last month) got published on The Wisdom of the Gaucho

How to Make Homemade Raspberry Currant Jam

And while you're surfing the web, you should also check out:

• Some awesome (and very timely) Tips on Preserving Tomatoes.
• A fascinating article on the recent Scrabble Cheating Scandal.
• A well crafted plea to keep your garden from encroaching on the sidewalk - Keep Your Garden Out of My Face.

We've got lots going on here and a bunch on cool stuff on the horizon: the puppy's awesome new pool, Shaak Ti's strange habits, the impending start of my new job and photos from garden tours, canning projects, and big yard shindigs.  There's only so many hours in the day, but we manage to fill them all.  Stay tuned (preferably on the edge of your seat) for more great pictures, stories, and videos. 

Changes....A New Job...A New Blog Helper

I know I left everyone in a bit of a blogger version of a dangling cliffhanger ending in our recent More Deaf Dog Antics post in reference to some large life changes.  Well I've been in North Dakota for three years now and the time has finally come for me to get a real job.  Yes, it's true, a real job.

Since moving from Southern California three years ago, I've remained an active Senior Financial Consultant (impressive sounding job title huh?) with clients back in San Diego.  Luckily I was able to perform a lot of tasks remotely, frantically e-mailing documents back and forth to various contacts.  But only so much can be done through the computer or cell phone, and I had to physically be at the client site every so often.  Unluckily the times when I needed to be partially physically at the client work site in San Diego was roughly May through November, which is also known as "the months where it's nice to be outside in North Dakota".

When I was working in San Diego I had the best of all possible worlds, family I could stay with for free (significantly reducing my travel expenses), an environment I enjoyed and was familiar with, and a great group of friends to hang out with.  But it just wasn't the same as being at home.  Living out of a suitcase in my Dad's spare bedroom just wasn't the same as being with Alycia, the dogs, the comfy confines of my house, and wondrous garden I was trying to create.

The time that I was here in North Dakota during May to November was spent working to prepare for the next business trip, feverishly getting the garden back in shape from the two weeks that I ignored it, packing in quality time with Alycia and the dogs, and trying to get healthy again and back into my familiar diet and exercise regimen (it's so easy to eat out all the time and ignore physical activity when you're on the road).

Your intrepid blogger on his first trip to North Dakota, more than four years ago. 

For the last three years I missed out on a lot of stuff, especially garden related.  I'd leave for a trip and the tomatoes would be juuuussst almost ripe, and three weeks later I'd get back and Alycia would be sick of them since she'd spent the last two and a half weeks eating, freezing, and canning tomatoes by herself.  I missed garden tours, State Fairs (I still haven't been to one in Minnesota or North Dakota!!), golf outings, volleyball tournaments, and evenings sitting on the porch with a cold beer enjoying the last rays of sun on a warm day. 

While this unusual working arrangement was great in so many ways, it also left Alycia and My schedules totally out of whack.  My busy time (Summer) was her slow time, and her busy time (the school year) was for the most part my slow time.  That left us unable to fully appreciate the dream of an academic lifestyle (aka not doing squat all summer) together.  

I'm also very much a homebody, and being a homebody while working on the road and living away from home just didn't jive with me.  Spending so much time crafting an enjoyable, cozy, beautiful home and garden and then being away from it for most of its period of greatest glory just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

This has turned into a crazy tangent, as most of my posts do. Sorry.

The bottom line is that I have accepted a job teaching accounting at a local community college.  It's going to be a challenge.  I have no teaching experience but a wealth of real world experience and a zest for BS, which I hope will be enough.  One of the courses I'll be teaching is Cost Accounting, and I HATE cost accounting, I'm gonna have to get over that.  It's only a 9 month position so I'll have summers off, which is ideal for slacking. 

Your new blogging team.

I thought all these changes would lead to the slow demise of our magnificent blog, but our newest field reporter (this is her job title for her 6 month probationary period) has really stepped up and prepared some blog postings.  She may be over-embellishing the "you must contribute our I'll shut down the blog" ultimatum she claims (in her post - The GF Girlfriend Emerges) I threw out there, but truth be told I did tell her that I would need her help to keep the blog going.  And thus far she's responded well.  You will see her posts in the coming weeks and months and I think she'll add a slightly different (less cynical) viewpoint.  A big Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes welcome to Alycia, our newest field reporter.

Germinated Seeds Become Seedlings

I thought I'd follow up with my previous post about starting seeds in the basement (see Starting Seeds Indoors) with some pictures about our progress.  We're still a good 2-3 weeks from being able to put plants outside, and even that might be pushing the timetable a bit.  Some of the more cold tolerant plants, like cabbage, might get sent outside shortly once they seem hardy.  I have so many cabbage starts that if I lose a few it wouldn't be a heartbreak. 

Honeydew melons, three kinds of watermelons, and cherry tomatoes.  These are definitely going to wait for warmer weather since they're frost averse and simply won't do anything until the soil and air temps are to their liking. 

Zinnias, hollyhocks, salvias, and coneflowers.  I may divide these up in a week or so and put one plant per pot cavity.  I honestly didn't expect this many seeds to germinate since some were from seed packets that were 4-5 years old

Cabbage starts.  These have a full second set of leaves and have graduated from sitting under the fluorescent light to the West facing basement window.   Now I have to try to keep them from getting too leggy before it's warm enough for them to go outside.

More cabbages (different variety).  I always seem to forget that cabbage, like tomatoes, have a 185% germination rate.  Even though I swore that I only used one seed per space, multiple shoots have sprung up, and EVERY seed that found its way onto the dirt germinated.  Looks like we'll have plenty of cabbage for sauerkraut and for drying/storing.

Starting Seeds Indoors

The warm weather and Spring-like atmosphere has made me antsy to get gardening, but since it's only March, I'll have to settle with starting some seeds indoors.  It might be too early to start seeds, but I think that it might be warm enough to set out some of these transplants when they're ready in a month or so.  It might be pushing the envelope, but I like living on the edge.

I started four large trays with about two dozen six packs of pots I've saved from former nursery purchases.  It's super easy to just fill them with fresh potting soil and pop in the seeds.

All of the seeds are on the counter down in the basement with a large shop light on a timer so that seeds get plenty of light and (hopefully) germinate like champs.

These have some of our veggies (tomatoes, squash, honeydew melons, watermelons, eggplant and cabbages).

These are some annual and perennial flowers (zinnias, coneflowers, salvias, hollyhock, lavender, and clematis).  I'll be sure to show updates if/when things start to germinate and are ready to put out into the garden.  It's easier for me to be slightly more aggressive putting the flowers out sooner, when there's still a danger of frost, if they get frozen there's no big loss.  If I lose one of my delicious Sun Cherry Tomato plants though, I might be a bit of a sad panda, so I'll wait to put those out. 

This is only a fraction of the veggies and flowers that we plant.  We will still make our annual May pilgrimage to a nursery in Fertile, Minnesota, the fantastic Bergeson Nursery and buy other plants from local nurseries and hardware stores.

Garden Recap - Part 2, The Failures

I delineated some of our garden successes in Part 1 (see Garden Recap - Part 1, The Successes).  Now on to the fun stuff, the mistakes I made and lessons learned during the last year on the urban homestead. 

Failures:
Strawberry Jam.  You can read all about our strawberry jam making in the Strawberry Jam Insanity post.  The jam is delicious, but more like a runny, gooey, jam-esque substance than actual jam.  It's still a great topping for pancakes, waffles, ice cream, and gluten free yellow cake but it doesn't have the consistency of proper jam.  The problem was I got a little too big for my britches and thought I could modify the jam recipe.  The lesson learned?  If you want your jam to set properly you need to follow the recipe precisely.     

Onions.  The one set of onions that we tried to plant in the raised bed of strawberries?  They hung around for a week or so, then they just disappeared, totally overwhelmed by the strawberries.  Since we had no place for the onions, this seemed like a good idea, in retrospect this was an idea that was doomed to fail.  Lesson learned?  We're going to make some space for rows of onions and give them plenty of space to do their thing.

Apple Trees.  We lost a couple of apple trees (one each of two varieties) over the winter out of the eight that we planted.  It's hard to tell if it's because they were still vulnerable in their first full year, if I planted them poorly, or if it was just a super hard/cold winter (which it was). We're going to replace them this year with a couple more hardier "North Dakota approved" varieties that should fare better.

Garden Recap - Part 1, The Successes

Even though it's cold and marginally snowy outside, it doesn't mean I'm not thinking about the garden, thunderstorms, fresh tomatoes, warm summer evenings, and what plants to grow next year.  Alycia and I usually spend several weeks every winter flipping through the various seed catalogs that are mailed to the house, debating what new tomatoes we want to try, which onions grew best, and if we should stubbornly keep trying to grow things that didn't do so well the prior year.  We're right in the midst of whittling down our seed catalog choices to a semi manageable number of veggies and flowers since Spring is (hopefully) right around the corner.

This exercise always leads to the very helpful analysis of what worked and what failed last year.  So here's a list of things we learned, success we had, and failures we experienced last year in the garden and around the homestead and how that'll change what we try this year.  So for Part 1 of our garden recap, here are the things that did well and we considered successes last year.

Successes:
Cucumbers.  I can't decide if we did really well with these or if the weather and environmental factors just lent themselves to a good cucumber yield.  Multiple people I talked to mentioned that their cucumbers were going gangbusters last year, and the same was true for us.  The pickling cucumbers, Armenian cucumbers, and regular cucumbers all produced prodigiously.

Pickles.  The unexpected number of cucumbers was sort of a surprise, but my plan was to make/can pickles last year.  This is all part of my plan to try a few new things every year (new things we canned in 2011 were strawberry jam, pickles, and ketchup) and build every year on that knowledge.  You can't become a self sufficiency or canning expert overnight, so I'm employing the "learn one or two things a year and build the toolbox of skills" plan.

We had enough cucumbers to can (10) Quart jars of sweet pickles and make (2) 1-gallon jars of refrigerator sweet pickles.  Canning pickles was a snap, a limited number of ingredients and short prep time made this one of the easiest canning recipes I've tried.  The refrigerator pickles were also a huge asset since I could make the vinegar/sugar/spices mixture, put it in the gallon jar and store it in the refrigerator.  Once the mix was made Alycia could easily chop and add cucumbers as they became ripe (this was especially useful and efficient when I was out of town and cucumbers were ripening).  See the post - Bread and Butter Pickles for more info and the recipe. The only downside to the refrigerator pickles is that the gallon jars take up a lot of space in the fridge. 

Holiday Newsletter

For those who may not have been on the mailing list, and for everyone else on the World Wide Interwebs, Welcome to the Cummings/Chappell Environmentally Friendly Family Newsletter – 2011 Edition!!! 

You’ve been good all year, and I’ve been watching.  You’ve been kind to small children and animals, haven’t played your music too loud, and eaten all your vegetebles.  As such you are hereby bestowed with the greatest Holiday blessing I can give you – the fourth edition of the Cummings/Chappell Family Newsletter.  We’ve listened to our customer feedback from previous years and included more pictures of Alycia and the dogs, fewer pictures of John, and less of John’s tedious writing.  

2011 was a wonderful year in North Dakota filled with gluten free cookies, furry canine companions and their antics, fresh garden tomatoes, and strolls along the Red River of the North.  Here are some highlights!!!  

Our garden continues to expand and we added another raised bed, a compost bin, and some additional fruit trees.  And in a spirit of addition by subtraction, we removed the unruly stand of lilac bushes and gained significant acreage in the front and back yard.  Since lawn mowing is a much maligned chore in the household, John has begun discretely (yes John can occasionally do things discretely) converting small areas of the yard to annual and perennial beds, slowly so as not to alarm the local neighborhood watch who already has the household on the “suspicious” list due to their California lineage, distinct lack of FOX News Rocks!! or I ♥ Karl Rove bumper stickers, non-truck ownership, and otherwise admittedly odd habits.  

John spent the year fine tuning his Tater Tot Casserole recipe, writing on the world famous Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes blog, planting more apple trees and currant shrubs, wearing plaid shorts and sandals about town (see above paragraph on public perception of “odd habits”), and quietly enjoying bird watching as much as Alycia.  John was thrilled in March when the basketball team he plays on won their division in the 2011 Grand Forks Grand Am Basketball Tournament. Though he didn’t win any individual accolades or a coveted purple ribbon, he contributed greatly to the team effort (in his own special way) and was voted by his teammates as “Most Likely to Foul Out of a Game” which was deemed by all to be a great honor.  And despite the fact that summer is by far the most pleasant season in North Dakota, John spent much of the summer travelling back and forth from San Diego to continue his consulting practice.  

Tito turned 11 years old this year and celebrated a decade as Alycia’s dog and half a decade as John’s step-dog.  In his old age he has decided he no longer wishes to be burdened with the arduous task of walking up stairs.  He plays the “I’m an old man” card, makes a sad sack Tito face and Alycia carries him up stairs every night before bed.  Even though he claims to be an old and infirm dog, he still manages to occasionally play with Shaak Ti and Shadowfax and is strangely remarkably spry when there are treats or leftover bits of Thanksgiving turkey to be handed out (picture below on the right).  And since he never wanders more than a foot away from the Tasty Treat Triangle (aka Alycia’s Dad, the outside barbecue, and the kitchen), he has gained free roaming and off leash status anytime he visits the Cavalier estate.

 

Shaak Ti turned 5 this year and continues to take daily informal singing lessons, preferably prior to her early morning walk. She has happily embraced the role of big sister to Shadowfax by teaching her invaluable life skills like thrashing on her back and making bizarre groaning sounds (though since they’re both deaf, we’re not sure how these skills are passed along).  Even though she’s now the middle child, Shaak Ti enjoys the company of her big little sister and the two play and wrestle daily.  Shaak Ti also continues to operate as the household’s fuzzy alarm clock, making sure to awaken the entire household at 5:30 am.  

The photos below are after an epic Spring muddy-buddy marathon race through the back yard with Shadowfax, and posing with Alycia’s Dad for family picture day.   

It was our first full year with our new puppy Shadowfax.  Alycia and Shadowfax spent much time at obedience classes and now (with proper motivation) they can both sit, lay down, stay, play dead, roll over, come, walk nicely on a leash, crawl, down stay, leave it, and fetch.  Alycia continues to hone her “fetch” playing skills with Shadowfax, the most recent fiasco involving the puppy’s lacrosse ball hitting the gutter downspout, flying out of the fence, and ending up two houses down across the street in the alley. Shadowfax is a frequent visitor to doggy day care, and the legions of eviscerated toys will attest to the need to have her expend energy outside the household.  She is by far the best trained and most well behaved of the three pooches, and once she outgrows the puppy spazz phase, she’ll easily be a model citizen. 

Our basement visitor suite was completed in early 2011 and we celebrated by hosting visitors including: Alycia’s sister and fiancé from England, Alycia’s parents from Cavalier, North Dakota, most of John’s family from San Diego, and Alycia’s college chum from Los Angeles.  The pictures below are John’s family (dad, sister, brother-in-law, and in the carriage, our nephew, Jacob) out for a stroll at Turtle River State Park just west of Grand Forks and John and Alycia at their friends’ wedding in Portland, Oregon in September.  

We wish you the happiest of Holiday seasons and a productive and fruitful New Year.  May your pantry and deep freeze (we know you all have one) overflow with the bounty of the past summers’ harvest, and may the happiness of the season leave big stains of Holiday spirit all over your reindeer sweaters.  Thank you to all of our family and friends, near and far, four legged and two legged who make our lives brighter.  We love and cherish you all.  Our last picture is of Alycia, Tito, Shaak Ti, and Shadowfax.  John was again out of town when they had the picture sitting so don’t freak out that the whole family isn’t in the picture.  

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to Everyone!!!