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Teaching an Old Dog to Teach

Monday, December 12th, 2011

The outdoor season is over for my 2011 Wisconsin garden.  I may do a little more clean up, and possibly drag in a few leaves to cover up some north beds, but the frost has already penetrated deep and there is nothing left to harvest.  There will be no more weeding or working the soil.  All my efforts now are in preparing for next year.

Gardening patterns and habits repeat themselves as you learn what has to be done to ensure a good harvest, but that hardly means every year is the same.  Change is constant and I’m always ready to try something new or modify what may not be working.  Here are a few new things from this year’s gardening adventure:

Cold Frame

I finally built a small cold frame.     I really didn’t put it to the test until this fall, but the results were excellent and it has me keen on trying more season extending structures.  Next year it’s going to be put to work early in the spring.

New bed

After shrinking my garden area for the past several years, I actually carved out a couple small new beds in the compost area.  The bed project was a test to back up my teachings on making the raised bed system I employ and the ease with which these beds can be formed and put to work.  The results were carrots, beets and peppers that I otherwise would not have had.

Planting Boards

I had been using planting boards for years, but my boards were just scraps of plywood I had laying around.  Not quite right, so this year I cut a couple to exactly the right size and I’m really glad I did.  It makes planting and working on my hands and knees much easier.

T-Post Tomato Trelils

I finally built the rock-solid tomato trellis I had envisioned for many years.  It put an end to the wind blowing over the cages and made it easy for me to string the vines up high.

And lastly, I became a teacher this year.

I’ve actually been giving talks about my garden for several years.  I’m a very loose disciple of the garden teacher Alan Chadwick.  What I really embrace is the open raised beds  of his teachings on intensive food production.  In the past  these talks were done gratis, but I’ve secured some paying engagements next year, and I’ve found that I really enjoy sharing my gardening experience with others.

To be a good teacher you have to keep learning.  And to learn you have to try new things.  I was quite happy with several new things I tried this year and I’ll continue to innovate in the garden in 2012.

 

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Sautéed Veggies with Volcano Rice

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

Veggie skillet

Recipes are normally Judy’s and Geoff’s department and what you see here is totally Judy’s creation, I’m just putting it down on the blog because I found it way more than worthy.

Judy had to grab the phone to take an order and that’s a good thing.  On her way past me as she went to her desk she whispered, “stir the veggies.”  When I went to the stove, the skillet looked so colorful I knew I had to take a picture.

What we have here are several kind of green beans, some are purple, but they’re still green beans, leeks, garlic, and sweet peppers.  All from our garden and that’s cool.  They are being sautéed in olive oil and flavored with tamari sauce and toasted sesame oil.

Veggies over volcano rice

The finished stir fry was served over Volcano Rice with crumbled blue cheese.  The rice was seasoned with mushroom broth and cooked with a hot pepper, garlic, and a couple shiitake mushrooms for added flavor.  We buy several exotic rices from Lotus Foods at our local co-op.  Lotus is owned by some really nice folks we first met at a trade show in Chicago. They mail order if  their products are not available where you live.

How did it taste?  Well, as the great Louis Jordan said,  ”Mmm, mmm, mmm.  I’m such a hungry man.”   Judy’s not from Tucumcari, but she’s the one I did marry, and man, she sure can cook.

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Burning with Boss

Sunday, December 4th, 2011

Our Woods

I posted recently about leaf burning and why I don’t think it’s such a great idea, even if it is allowed, but I was careful to mention that I’m not at all opposed to fires.  Being a relative land baron out here on my almost rural four acres, I would have some major disposal issues if I could not burn prunings, deadfall, and  other natural debris.

Just a little over half our property is wooded.  You can see a neighbor’s house to the east of us in this picture, but if the leaves were still on the trees you wouldn’t know the house was there.  The woods are a great screen from the traffic that goes by on our front road, which is a US Highway and the commuter route between Madison and the town of Jefferson, about 9 miles east of us.

I won’t earn any merit badges for forest management.  I do minimal work in the woods, but I do have to take down any dangerous dead or dying trees, and the deadfall into the lawn area is significant.   I’m also waging constant war against the forest as it encroaches into the yard and garden area, so there are always plenty of pruned branches to be disposed of.

Burning with Boss

So several times a year we have small to large fires to dispose of the trees, branches, and prunings.  It was cold and damp today and a good day for a small fire.  I kept feeding the fire for about an hour while Boss the cat gave me a lot of help. Tomorrow or the next day, when  the ashes are cold, I’ll shovel them up and mix them into  the compost pile.

 

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Too Late for Dinner in the Garden This Year

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

Deer in the Yard

Anneliese took this picture of a young deer in the yard this afternoon.  It was relatively fearless and Anneliese was able to get fairly close before it bolted.  Fortunately for us, the deer have not been much of a nuisance this year and did no garden damage.  I attribute a lot of that to Anneliese’s dog Zuri, who gets free day care with us while Anneliese is here working.  We also see Zuri a lot on weekends, when Anneliese is out and about and we become dog sitters.

Having a dog on patrol really keeps deer problems to a minimum.  The years I have not had a dog with the run of the yard, I’ve had significant deer damage, and I’ve had to resort to tall fencing and cloth covers to protect my precious vegetables.

Zuri

The deer did not leave the yard after Anneliese came inside.  Zuri was in the house barking wildly while Anneliese was taking these pictures.  We let Zuri out, and the deer quickly exited.

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When Autumn Leaves Start to Fall

Saturday, November 12th, 2011

In the village that borders us a few blocks to the west and south, leaf burning is prohibited, but it is allowed and practiced as a seasonal rite in our township.  I’m not advocating a ban on burning, but I really wish the neighbors understood what they are wasting.  While I was working hard today to get as many leaves as I could into my garden, I could see at least four smoke trails in the neighborhood.  Too bad for the leaf burners, they could be making some beautiful compost for free.

I spent a lot more time weeding my garden this year than I should have because I did not do a good job last fall of getting my beds totally covered with leaves.  I’m determined not to make that mistake again.  Since I took the picture above I’ve drug in several more tarps full of leaves.  The south beds are now almost all completely and deeply covered.  I’ll keep dragging in more until I either run out of leaves or the weather puts an end to my efforts.

I began covering my garden beds with leaves about seven or eight years ago.  It pays off in many ways.  Weed growth is slowed down through the winter and the beds are noticeably softer in the spring.  In many instances all I have to do is rake back the leaf cover and start planting.  The beds that do not get planted right away have a thick leaf mulch to keep weeds from sprouting, and as I rake the leaves off the beds they break down in the paths and continue to suppress weed growth.  Of course, the most important benefits are the free fertilizer and compost the leaves provide as they decompose.  The tilth of my extremely clayey soil is noticeably improved.  Every year my beds get softer.

Raking leaves and dragging them into the garden is not the easiest  of chores.  This year I’ve employed mechanical assistance.  In years past I was dragging tarps full of leaves from the yard to the garden using only my brute strength.  I may still be a brute but my strength is fading, so this year I used the lawnmower and its 18 horses to do the heavy hauling.  It worked wonderfully.

And soon I’ll hear old winter’s song, but I know the autumn leaves are in the garden, where they belong.

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Garlic Growing Redux

Sunday, November 6th, 2011

I took advantage of a dry day between the rains to get my garlic planted.  I’ve been using a method Geoff taught me years ago that works particularity well with raised beds.  I’ve posted the method several times before, but it’s worth repeating as it works so well.

I form a loose worked-up bed into three ridges (or two troughs) using a steel rake.  This year, before I planted the garlic cloves, I liberally dusted the entire bed with cilantro and anise hyssop seeds that I had saved.  I’m hoping to have an early harvest of cilantro and if the hyssop takes off, I’ll move some of it to other areas of the garden to use as an herb and as a pollinating insect attractor.  I really like anise hyssop, but I never seem to have enough of it, so I’m hoping this will work.

I’ll also seed and transplant spinach, lettuce and other greens into the bed in the spring, after I pull away the straw from the sprouted garlic.  Interplanting the garlic with greens pays off.  I get more production out of the bed and the greens seem to do well in the shade of the garlic flags.

I kneel on a plywood board to keep my knees from damaging the soft edges of the bed.  The garlic is planted  into the top of the ridges.  I push the cloves into the soil until they are just covered.  To plant the garlic neatly, I set down one row of plant markers on six inch centers.  I eyeball the planting for the two rows across from the markers, and the last row is planted alongside each marker.  A yardstick would work just as well, but this is an easy approach to getting the spacing just right.

I covered the bed with two small square bales of straw, using the small CobraHead tool to rip apart the sheaves and to fluff up the straw, thus making it as insulating as possible.  I then raked up and tamped down the straw with a small adjustable aluminum rake so the straw wouldn’t blow away in the gusty winds.  We’re looking forward to another good garlic harvest next July.

If you haven’t planted garlic yet, it’s not too late. You can also plant early in the spring, but your yield will not be as good in terms of bulb size.

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What You Need to Know About Fractal Dimensions of Cauliflower

Saturday, October 22nd, 2011

Judy harvested these two excellent heads of cauliflower this afternoon.  The one on the right is one of the best heads we’ve ever grown.  It was over eight inches across and perfect in every way.

I searched “cauliflower” on Wikipedia just to see what might be of interest for a blog post and discovered fractal dimensions.  Mathematicians find broccoli and cauliflower interesting because of their fractals.

A paper cited says:  “The fractal structures of a green broccoli and a white cauliflower are investigated by box-counting method of their cross-sections. The capacity dimensions of the cross-sections are 1.78 ± 0.02 for a green broccoli and 1.88±0.02 for a white cauliflower, and both are independent of their directions.”

I’m not going to suggest I really know what math guys are talking about, but if you’re curious, here you go:  http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/cond-mat/pdf/0411/0411597v1.pdf and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_dimension

 

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Greens Under Glass

Friday, October 21st, 2011

We’ve been harvesting salad greens from the cold frame I built earlier this year.  I talk about the building of the cold frame here.

I seeded the frame about a month ago with a mix of mustard, spinach, arugula, several Asian greens and some lettuces.  As the picture shows, germination was excellent.

Until now, when we are finally getting some very cool nights, the main issue has been to remember to open up the glass lid totally during the day.  The daytime temperatures under the glass easily climbed to over 100 degrees F on sunny days, even with outside temperatures in the 60′s.  With the lid propped open but still above the frame, the temperatures got really hot, so I’ve been opening the frame totally during the day and leaving it open about an inch during the night.

Now that we are approaching freezing temperatures at night, I’m closing the frame totally each evening.  So far, the greens are beautiful and my salad mix rivals the best high priced mixes we see in the markets.

As the greens are really thick in the frame, I’ve found the easiest harvesting method is to snip off the entire plant with kitchen scissors just where the stem is coming out of the ground.  I just look for the greens that are the tallest, grab a leaf to get some tension on the plant and cut it off.

Here’s a picture of a salad made with greens, shredded yellow and orange carrots and sliced red onions.  Dressed with a garlicky balsamic dressing, it is delicious.  If all goes as hoped for, we’ll be eating salads like this with our cold frame greens well into December.

 

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Aerial Combat in Cambridge

Sunday, October 16th, 2011

Turkey vultures are extremely common in Wisconsin, but it’s rare to see them flying directly overhead in my yard.  Our wooded property is the main residence of an extended family of crows that controls the neighborhood skies.  The crows never allow vultures, owls, hawks or other larger birds to secure the local airspace or even intrude into it for very long.

This afternoon there must have been  a major road kill on US Highway 18 which is the north border of our four acres.  I was working in the garden when at least a dozen vultures began circling overhead.  They were so close and so low to the ground my first thought was, “they’re coming after me”.  Since I’m not dead yet, I knew that was probably not true.  It was the best look I’ve ever had of these wonderful flyers.  Hang gliding humans pale in comparison to the vultures’ ability to effortlessly ride the air currents.

More vultures showed up.  There were now at least twenty circling directly overhead.  I was wondering where the crows were when I heard a few caws.  It wasn’t the raucous cacophony I expected, just a continuous back and forth of their familiar signaling.

Then I saw the crow formation.  At first I thought it was another group of vultures, but they were way more organized.  The crows had scrambled, like Spitfires in the Battle of Britain.  There were about fifteen birds,  grouped tightly, and while they didn’t attack the vultures directly, they took control of their airspace.  The vultures climbed to a higher elevation and headed west.

I really missed having my camera by my side.  I went to the house to get it, but the action was over by the time I returned.  I took a picture of a solitary vulture hanging around to check things out but it was already at an altitude out of range for my camera to get a good shot.  A few minutes later only a couple crow sentries remained in the mulberry tree at the south end of the garden cawing the all clear to the rest of their family.

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Sweet Potato Harvest

Saturday, October 15th, 2011

With several nights of frost  predicted for this coming week, it was time to harvest the sweet potatoes.  They will not tolerate frost.  Here’s the bed of potatoes, thick with foliage.  The plants are grown through a cover of black plastic which heats the bed up quickly in the spring and pretty much eliminates any weeds.

Harvesting is much easier if all the foliage is cut away and removed first.  This is the second year I used this sheet of plastic and it looks like it will be in good enough shape to use one more time.  I’m not a fan of using polyethylene, but I bought a roll of the material years ago and I get multiple uses out of each sheet which assuages my guilt, slightly.  We are researching other more ecologically benign fabrics for future use.

Sweet potatoes are very delicate when they are first dug.  They snap easily and it’s hard to keep from stabbing them with your digging tools.  This year’s harvest set no records for weight or size.  I attribute that to the particularly clayey nature of this bed.   The softer the soil the better.  I took a chance and so I can only blame myself for a less than spectacular yield.  The plants were very healthy, but the tubers did not fill out as well as most of my previous harvests.  A lesson learned.  I’ll work a lot more compost into next year’s bed.

Nevertheless, we’ll still have lots of sweet potatoes to store.  We let the tubers air dry in the kitchen for two weeks, then  we wrap them in newspaper and store them in the basement.  It’s important to use up the smaller and stringy tubers first, as they do not store well.  Larger tubers, however, can last up to a year in storage.

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