Archive for the ‘Gardening’ Category

« Older Entries

Double Covered Hoop Tunnel

Sunday, October 28th, 2012

Carrots in Hoop Tunnel

I planted a bed of carrots and beets on August 12th. Here are the carrots, eleven weeks later. They’re doing great and we’re harvesting some fairly large ones, already. The beets are doing just fine, too. I’m hoping to keep the harvest going well past when the hard freezes set in by using a low hoop tunnel with two protective layers.

Hoop Tunnel

The outside frame of the tunnel is covered with clear poly sheeting. Directly over the carrots and beets is a layer of agricultural fabric. I saw a talk given by Elliot Coleman where he described how he uses similar systems to get carrots to grow through the winter in Maine. All I want to do is get them to last into December. We’ll see how it goes, but I think I’ll be happy with the results. These hoop tunnels are easy to construct, and easy to set up, take down, and move around. The basic instructions for setting up a hoop tunnel are here.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in CobraHead, Gardening | No Comments »

Year Old Sweet Potatoes for Dinner

Wednesday, October 10th, 2012

Year Old Sweet Potatoes

Continuing the discussion of sweet potatoes which I started with a post about my harvest a couple days ago, these are the last two sweet potatoes from the 2011 harvest. Sweet potatoes, when stored properly, last a long time. We’ve frequently kept them well over a year. Getting a crop to last that long without having to freeze or can makes sweet potatoes ideal for the home grower.

Our storage method is simple. Lay out the sweet potatoes to dry for two weeks. We spread them out on the kitchen floor under the kitchen table. After drying, wrap the large and medium sized tubers individually in newspaper. Use up the small, stringy, and damaged tubers first. They will not store well. It’s smart to save the bigger ones for last. Store the wrapped potatoes in a cool dry place. We keep ours in a cooler area of our heated basement.

Baked Sweet Potato

Judy baked the two potatoes on a cookie sheet for an hour at 400o. Served with butter, they were delicious.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in CobraHead, Gardening, Recipes | No Comments »

Best Sweet Potato Harvest Ever!

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012

Six Pounds From One Plant

With frost forecast for later this week and knowing that I would be out of town, I decided to harvest my sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes cannot tolerate frost, so I did not want to take a chance on losing any of my crop.

Sweet Potatoes Ready to Harvest

I had previously put a clear plastic cover over the bed as we had some nippy temperatures a week ago. The leaves under the plastic were already showing black from the previous frost and wilting badly, so I didn’t think I would lose anything by pulling the plants out, now.

Vines Cut Off Using Pruning Loppers

I figured out several seasons ago that the easiest approach to harvesting is to remove all the vines at once. I cut them off using pruning loppers. It’s then very easy to lift off the protective black plastic and start harvesting.

A Plastic Ring Protects the Vines

I knew a good harvest was in store when I saw several big spuds protruding from the soil. The plastic ring in the picture is placed around the sweet potato start when it is first planted in late May. The ring protects the start from wind and insect damage and also keeps the black plastic cover from accidentally covering up or damaging the start. It also makes it very easy to water the small plants. I think it’s a great aid to getting the plants established without problems.

Using the CobraHead to Help Harvest

Sweet Potatoes are exceptionally delicate when they are first harvested. It’s easy to snap them in half and even easier to accidentally scar their skin with digging tools. I use a garden fork to loosen up the soil around them, but the final dig out is accomplished with the CobraHead. These potatoes are growing in really hard clay and even though I’ve worked in a lot of straw and compost to soften it up, it still packs tight. The CobraHead lets me dig around and under the plants to get them loose with a minimal amount of damage.

A Bountiful Harvest That Will Last A Year

Here is most of the harvest. The yield was over 82 pounds of good, usable sweet potatoes. That’s over a 4.5 pound per plant average yield. I had one plant that weighed over seven pounds. I read online that the agricultural average is 2.5 pounds per plant on the high side, so we did okay.

I’ve since moved all these potatoes onto the kitchen floor where they are laid out on newspapers to dry. After two weeks of drying, we’ll wrap each larger and medium sized spud in newspaper and store it in the basement. We use the little ones up first. We’ve easily gotten sweet potatoes to last a year in storage. Sweet potatoes are one of the most nutritious plants one can eat. Growing a crop that lasts a year in easy storage conditions, is good to eat, and is good for you makes a lot of sense for the home grower.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in CobraHead, Gardening | 4 Comments »

Salted Sunflower Seeds

Monday, October 1st, 2012

Mammoth Sunflowers

I grew a half dozen Grey Stripe Mammoth sunflowers this year and decided to save some seed for snacks. These monster plants are not the tallest sunflowers one can grow, but they are tall enough, and the mature seed heads are well over a foot across. This seed came from Botanical Interests. Mammoth Grey Stripe is an old, open pollinated variety, so I can save a few of these to grow again, next year.

Ripe Sunflower Seed Head

The seeds were just starting to let go from the heads and become food for the birds when I cut them all off with pruning loppers.

Removing the Seeds is Easy

Removing the seeds was easily done by rubbing them out with a gloved hand. I just let them fall into a five gallon bucket to collect them.

Sorting the Seeds

We got over a gallon of seeds from the six large heads. I did a little online research, but I didn’t find any reference as to a quick and easy way to separate the good seeds from the ones not worth saving and the debris from the flower head. I ended up dumping about a pint of seeds at a time onto a cookie sheet and just hand picking out the good seeds while moving all the chaff and bad seeds to the other side of the sheet. It was a little time consuming, but not that hard. Judy and I each took turns sorting a pile of seeds to break up the monotony.

Soaking in a Salt Bath

We salted and oven dried most of the seeds. The method cited online in several sources calls for soaking the seeds in a solution of a cup of salt to a gallon of water. We soaked them overnight, stirring them frequently, and dried them on cookie sheets in the oven at 200o for about four hours.

Dried Sunflower Seeds

Here is the finished product. A gallon of seeds, lightly salted. We’ll have snacks for several months to come and we’ll have plenty to give away, too.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in CobraHead, Gardening, Recipes | No Comments »

Ecology Action

Monday, September 24th, 2012

Earlier this month Anneliese and I had a chance to visit Ecology Action, in Willits, California.

Ecology Action is the research farm of John Jeavons, author of How to Grow More Vegetables than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land than You Can Imagine. Given that this book had a huge influence on the way that both Noel and I garden, it was a big deal for me to finally be able to visit the site.

Looking down at the gardens of Ecology Action.

John Jeavons wasn’t available, but another John, who is currently interning with Ecology Action, took time out of his schedule to show us around. The site is hidden among redwood hills and is difficult to find. The view of the mini-farm is spectacular, but the soil is not. Part of the research involves showing whether or not the Bio-Intensive method works in conditions similar to that of small-farmers on marginal soils with little access to outside inputs and large-scale irrigation.

John, one of the interns at Ecology action, gave us a personalized tour. Here he is with Anneliese.

To that end, the goal of the garden is to generate all of its own fertility. This means growing lots of crops as much for the carbon and other biomass that they produce that then goes back into the compost pile as for their food value. At Ecology Action, they follow a 60%-30%-10% model. Sixty percent of the space is devoted to crops that produce a lot of carbon as well as some food, such as quinoa; the seeds are eaten and the stalks go into the compost. Thirty percent of the space is reserved for high calorie root crops and ten percent of bed space is for vegetables.

Grains and grain like crops are an important part of the system that Ecology Action has developed, both as a calorie crop and as a source of carbon for the compost. We saw lots of quinoa.

At the time of our visit, we saw lots of quinoa and amaranth almost ready to harvest. Since this is a research farm, everything that is harvested is weighed and recorded. Signs on the various compost piles showed the ratio of carbon to nitrogen in each pile; later the effects that different blends of compost had on yields would be observed.

Many gardeners have access to outside fertility. Even Noel, who generates almost all of his garden fertility on his property, relies on composted leaves from other parts of the yard not dedicated to food growing to replenish the organic matter. At Ecology Action, the assumption is that the garden must become a source for organic matter, not a sink; the garden must produce more organic matter than it consumes.

A closed-loop fertility cycle is just a small-part of the method presented in How to Grow More Vegetables. Even if you are a city gardener who relies on purchased compost for your fertility, the other raised bed techniques, crop spacing guidelines, and more make the book one of our favorites, and visiting the research farm in person gave me a new appreciation for their methods.

 

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Gardening | No Comments »

Simple Seed Saving

Monday, September 10th, 2012

Lettuce Flowers and Seed Heads

I could have titled this, “Seed Saving for Dummies”, but I’ve never been a fan of the “For Dummies” or “Idiot’s Guide” list of titles for how-to manuals. How dare they imply that I may not be too smart? Anyone reading our blog posts is obviously very intelligent and I would never insinuate otherwise.

Greens Gone to Seed

There are plenty of seed-saving guides out there and this is not going to be a treatise on complicated seed-saving techniques. Some seed saving is extremely easy. This picture shows the bed where I grew garlic and interplanted it with salad greens. I wrote about that here.

The garlic was harvested in July and the lettuces and most of the other greens have long bolted. Rather than ripping them out, I’ve let them flower and put out seed. Also in the bed is cilantro, dill and kale. Those all are repeat volunteers which I encourage by letting them go to seed and then scattering the seed when it dries. These volunteers come up everywhere and I have them to transplant, leave to grow if they are not in the way, or just cull out the ones in the wrong place as if they were a weed.

Arugula Flowers

The lettuces, arugula, mustards and other greens now flowering will drop seed, some of which will come up as volunteers next spring. I’ll transplant some of them and I’ll also save and dry some of the seed heads this fall to have free seed to plant next season.

In all cases saved seed should be from open pollinated varieties. Hybrids are not reliable to give an offspring you may be happy with.

This method of seed saving is cheap and easy, but it has the minor drawback in that seeds can cross. This is more likely with lettuce. There is a chance it will cross with wild lettuce and produce a bitter offspring. It could also cross with another lettuce variety. That would not be a problem, it just wouldn’t be the same lettuce you had originally planted. But over the years, I’ve have plenty of volunteers, free seeds, and no crossing that I was aware of. For cilantro and dill, unless you grow several varieties, crossing won’t be an issue.

While this isn’t quite permaculture, a significant portion of my vegetable garden is volunteer or grown from saved seed. Saving seeds from other vegetables is also very easy. We’ve saved bean and pea seeds, which is no more difficult than letting the pods get almost dry on the vine then finishing the process of totally drying indoors. If you leave the pods to dry completely on the vine, there is a danger the pods will split and the seed will fall to the ground.

For seeds from tomatoes, peppers, melons, squash and other vegetables, the process is a little more complicated, but still easy. For the home gardener who does not have to ensure that the seed saved will produce an exact offspring of the parent, you really don’t have much to lose by giving simple seed saving a try.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in CobraHead, Gardening | No Comments »

Cassius Cauliflower

Saturday, September 1st, 2012

Cassius Cauliflower

We’ll try to stay lean, but we won’t be looking hungry when we cook up this good-sized Cassius Cauliflower I harvested this afternoon. The fall coles are coming in nicely; cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and soon Brussels sprouts. Cabbage type crops are great for the northern home gardener. The harvest this year has been super.

Harvested Cassius Cauliflower

Cauliflower heads don’t always turn out this flawless, or this large. This one is worth bragging about.

Tags: ,
Posted in CobraHead, Gardening | No Comments »

Garden Tomato Salsa

Sunday, August 26th, 2012

Several years ago I got this salsa recipe from a friend of a friend who worked at the local post office. (Consider this my plug for saving our little post offices – they’re good for more than just mail…) I make it every year, as long as I have tomatoes, onions and peppers all at the same time from the garden.

Salsa and Pear Shaped Italian Beefsteak Pomodoros

Garden Tomato Salsa Recipe

9 cups skinned tomatoes, chopped

3 cups chopped onions

3 cups chopped peppers, mix of mostly sweet peppers with hot peppers to taste

1 ½ cups tomato paste (cooked & sieved cherry tomatoes)

1 bulb (several cloves garlic) chopped

1 cup cider vinegar

2 tsp. salt

Several grinds of fresh black pepper

1 bunch chopped cilantro

Salsa Ingredients

Simmer all of the above ingredients for 30 minutes. Water bath can in pint jars for 15 minutes or freeze. The salsa has a better texture if canned but if you’re not into canning it is still very good frozen.

This time around I used mostly a large meaty Italian heirloom tomato, Red Pear Selezione Franchi, but you can use whatever you have. The original recipe called for a can of tomato paste but I have always used the abundance of small tomatoes from the garden. Just cut in half, cook until most of the liquid disappears then sieve in a food mill. If necessary, simmer the puree a little longer to thicken it to a paste consistency.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in CobraHead, Gardening, Recipes | 2 Comments »

Growing Microgreens

Wednesday, August 15th, 2012

My friend Ted Skenandore of the Tsyuhehkwa Center has been growing pea and sunflower micro-greens and explained his method to me a few months ago. Now I’ve been growing them for myself as well as with the young people of the Save Our Youth program. These are his directions. My comments are in parenthesis.

  • Fill a 11″ x 21″ tray with small drainage holes half full of potting soil. (The standard black greenhouse trays that are referred to as 1020 trays work well.)
  • Water potting soil
  • Add about one cup of seeds evenly across soil (Use one cup only if the seeds are large, like peas or sunflowers. You only need 2-3 tablespoons if the seeds are small like Chinese cabbage or radishes.)
  • Add enough potting soil to cover seeds
  • Press in firmly
  • Water again
  • Cover with second tray that is the same size and press in firmly again. (For the second tray I use one that doesn’t have holes in it.)
  • Water every two days. (I have found that if the trays are indoors they only need to be watered every three to four days.)
  • When seedlings start to push top tray up flip it upside down and re-cover.
  • When seedlings push upside down tray up uncover and put in sunny location for one day
  • Seedlings should turn green and are ready to harvest

The sunflower Microgreens just after I removed the top tray.

The sunflower microgreens later that same day.

Pea Micro-greens ready to eat.

Microgreens have gotten a lot of hype about their alleged super nutritional value. Unfortunately the evidence doesn’t yet back that claim up. They are, however, a great addition to one’s regular outdoor gardening. I like having something ready to eat one week to ten days after I sow it and they taste great.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Gardening | 7 Comments »

Noel Valdes of CobraHead Demonstrates the Broadfork

Wednesday, August 15th, 2012

Noel and the Gulland Forge Broadfork

Anneliese, our resident communications arts guru, shot and edited this video of me using Larry Cooper’s Gulland Forge Broadfork which the gardeners at CobraHead both use and sell.

The broadfork is an ancient tool that is enjoying a revival with small scale growers and larger scale home gardeners. The tool is excellent for loosening up previously cultivated soil to quickly prepare large areas for planting. I also use it to break up areas that have gone to weed for quick cleanup, and it is a good tool for harvesting root crops.

We are happy to be selling a broadfork designed and made by blacksmith Larry Cooper of Siler City, North Carolina. I’ve used several broadforks over the years and I’m quite sure this is the most logical, best designed, and best built fork available.

Check out this video


If a broadfork is in your future, we know you will be happy with Gulland Forge.

 

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in CobraHead, Gardening | No Comments »

« Older Entries