Preparing the Garden for 2013

Well we have been insanely busy down here in the Maketewah Valley.  This year my boyfriend and I are working at 3 different garden spots in the neighborhood, with help from some friends too!  It's been rather tough working full time, and spending every free hour of sunlight digging and turning beds!  I’m worn out, but the big projects are done!  Here is a brief overview on what we’ve been doing…..

One of gardens is in a friend’s yard down the block, just a big grassy backyard; perfect for bigger plants that need more water (easy access to a hose).  We dug a few beds out last year, but this year we made them larger and used the cut strips of sod to build up a natural border.  Added compost and leaf mold so they are ready! 

The border will be nice so we can keep building up that soil.  The two long beds in the back grew our corn, beans, gourds and amaranth last summer; but this year I’m trying tobacco! More about that later :)  The huge bed adjacent to the tobacco beds will be full of peppers and okra.  We threw some peas in for now; they should be about done by the time the peppers are going in.

At our house we are starting lots of seeds. 

Everything is doing great!  We have a small hoop house for starting seeds and storing tools.  We set up a heater a couple nights last month when the temperature dropped below freezing, but for the most part the hoop house stayed warm enough.

Here is a look inside….

We put our seedlings in tubs with glass or plastic bags over them to keep everything warm and moist.   Now that the temperature is rising, we remove the covers in the morning otherwise the seedlings will get fried. 

We used these old metal storage containers to hold planters and then wrapped a large trash bag around them at night.

My boyfriend started some basil in these 2 liter bottles.  Just cut them in half, add water and a cotton “wick” and plant.  Seem to be working out so far, and you don’t have to worry about watering.

For this large, floating tobacco tray we just set up scrap wood barriers with glass and plastic on top.; which worked perfectly for starting greens.

Our compost piles....

We have been having beautiful weather here, so we took this opportunity to turn our compost piles.  We have two big piles and two small ones, so we started with the bigger pile.  Fork it up, then turned the adjacent pile into the first pile.  Once we got all the stuff that was still decomposing turned into the first pile; we collected the pure, worm filled compost in plastic tubs and trash cans.

The plan is to let the compost dry out in these tubs over the summer.  The tubs and trash cans are pretty deep so we will have to mix them up so the compost dries evenly.  Drying the compost makes it easier to work with.  Rather than adding a handful of compost mush to your soil, you’re adding dry compost mulch that easily forks into the soil and spreads evenly.

We covered the tubs in plastic bags to keep the rain out, and we will go from there this summer.  We turned the smaller compost piles onto the large pile.  Now we have one huge pile that is close to being done.  The chickens get to scratch around in this pile; turning it up, eating bugs and pooping all over making our compost into gold!  We throw our food scraps in the smaller piles, layering it with yard waste and old hay from the chicken coop.  Another benefit of having our compost organized in various stages of decomposition is that we don’t have to worry about the chickens eating things they shouldn’t out of the food scraps, like egg shells and avocado skins.  Dirty work, but the plants will thank us later!

Winter rye was planted all over last fall as a cover crop. So we turned it all over and added leaf mold and compost to prepare those beds. Took a bit of work, but the soil looks beautiful and ready to go. 

We also rolled all the plastic off our hoop houses, so the garden is ready for spring and summer.  Currently we have peas, onions, greens and lettuces planted.  The fruit trees are blooming, all our perennial herbs are coming back and the seedlings are growing strong.  This year looks very promising! 

 

               

DIY Natural A-Frame Trellis Part 1

Today my boyfriend and I started making trellises for our peas, cucumbers, gourds and melons.  We had an abundance branches from cut trees.  So we dug through the pile of tree limbs matching similar size branches. 

Basically we started with a tripod.  Taking 3 branches and anchoring them together using the natural notches in the stick to lock them in place.  We wound the thickest jute I could find around the sticks, wrapping tightly and knotting in multiple places. 

We built 2 tripods close to the same height.  Then put a long, relatively straight beam across the tripods giving us a well supported a-frame.   We tied the center beam down, although it didn’t seem necessary because they are pretty sturdy as they are.

We made a couple for the house garden, and 3 others to take to our other gardens in the neighborhood.  We tied them up in little bundles so we can carry them easily and remember which branches go together.  It seems to be easier to set the frame up on site, rather than carry tripods.  Once you have some branches picked out it really only takes about 15 minutes to put together. 

And best of all these trellises are all natural and biodegradable, just compost or burn when you’re done.  We haven’t decided what to put across the sides to encourage the plants to grow up the frame.  Wire fencing, bird netting, or jute is what we are debating. Jute will work for peas and possibly for cucumbers if strung in a grid, but that will be figured out in Part 2.

Chunky Ketchup Sauce

 

I’ve wanted to make ketchup for awhile now and we have so many cherry tomatoes!  We put them in everything; salads, pizzas, sandwiches, wraps, eggs, bread and we still can’t keep up with the garden!  So I went out and collected every ripe cherry tomato we had (mostly Peacevine Cherrys, which have been awesome!), plus all the Casady's Follys.  Also known as psychedelic tomatoes, and while they look beautiful; they just don’t have that juicy, flavorful bite that I love in tomatoes.  But I figured they would still be good in ketchup!

 

I used this recipe as my base, changing it slightly by adding more spices and sugar instead of agave since I didn’t have any.  This ketchup is amazing!  It’s not the super sugary, corn syrup filled ketchup we are used to in the US.  It reminds me of the ketchup in Europe, a more naturally sweet tomato sauce, only it’s chunky because you leave the skins on.  They soften up enough while cooking them, adding extra flavor, texture and nutrients!

 

I learned a good rule of thumb the other day for measuring produce.  1 pound equals 3 medium apples.  I figured I had a little over 2 pounds of tomatoes.  I pulled the stems off the tomatoes and sliced the bigger ones into chucks.  I threw them all in a pan, added enough olive oil to coat them and roasted them until they were tender.

 

I put them through a food processor, blending till smooth and returning the mixture back to the pan. I added:

1 tbsp white sugar

4 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 tbsp brown sugar

5 cloves garlic chopped finely

1 tbsp or so dried basil

1 tbsp or so dried oregano

1 tbsp cayenne pepper powder

1 tbsp turmeric

1 tsp cinnamon

Sea salt and pepper

Then cook the sauce over medium heat for half an hour or so, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens up to the consistency you like.  Put it in a Mason jar and store in your refrigerator.  I assume you could process it too, just like you would pasta sauce, but I knew this batch wouldn’t last long enough to need that!

 

 

 

 

With all the work of making homemade ketchup I had to make some fries to go with it.  Making your own fries is so easy, it just takes a while.  I just slice up a couple potatoes into fry shape.  Throw them in a bowl and coat with oil.  Then add spices… I like to add sea salt, pepper, garlic powder, cayenne pepper.  My boyfriend is from Maryland, so he always adds Old Bay spices, and here in Cincinnati we add Grippos bbq spice… there are many ways to spice up fries. 

 

Toss your potatoes in the oil and spices, spread them on a baking tray and cook at 400° until they are crispy and golden brown, flipping them occasionally.  When I first went vegetarian I ate way too many fries!  But when you make them yourself with fresh ketchup from the garden, they’re not soo bad :)

Drying Herbs

Many of our herbs are starting to flower. I wanted to start drying bunches so we can use them all winter long.  Today I harvested a few different types: spicy globe basil, purple shisho, greek oregano, summer savory and some of our hopi red dye amaranth that was knocked over by our gourds!  First I washed all the leaves as best as I could (except for the amaranth, it’s too fragile) and let them dry off.

For hardier herbs like oregano, savory, rosemary, etc you can simply air dry them out of direct sunlight.  Just gather them in bunches from the stems, tie together and hang.  I always have lots of dust, dirt and animal hair in my house so I prefer to be safe and put a brown paper bag around the herb bunches.  I took some scrap fabric strips and tied the herb bunches tightly together. 

 

Then I placed the herbs in brown paper bags, cut a small hole in the bag and inserted the fabric strips through the hole. 

I tied the strips tightly around the outside of the bag, and tied an additional loop with the excess fabric so I could hang the bag. 

Worked out pretty well!  I hung them under a shelf that doesn’t get much sun.

For herbs with delicate, soft leaves like basils or mints you have to dry them quickly.  So you can use a dehydrator, which I do not have, or your oven.  I just spread my basil and shisho out on a cookie sheet, turned my oven to the lowest setting, and checked on the herbs frequently, flipping them over here and there.  It took about 3 hours until they were completely dried.  Then I pulled the leaves off the stems and stored them in air tight containers out of sunlight.

Keeping Up With The Garden - Basil and Upside 2-Liter Containers

It’s so hard to keep up with basil!  If you don’t keep it from flowering it gets all bitter tasting, plus cutting basil back makes the plant grow bigger.  And since I put basil in the top part of over half of our upside down 2-liter containers, we have a lot of basil!  So I had no choice but to take some time and make a huge batch of pesto!  Just look at all that basil.  And that is the biggest bowl I own!

I used my PurpleShisho Pesto Recipe as a base, substituting basil for shisho of course and eliminating the cheese.  I would have added some pine nuts if I had any, and I tried sunflower seeds a couple weeks ago and it turned out great.  But all I had was basil, garlic and olive oil.  I also decided to use a blender this time, which was way easier than a mortar and pestle and creamier.  A chunkier pesto is still awesome though, just more work.  I basically just blended the basil, added garlic and oil till I had the taste and texture I wanted, which means super garlicky!  And I mostly harvest our Spicy Globe Basil which made for an amazing pesto pizza!

Also here is an update on some of our 2-liter containers.  Everything is doing pretty well, other than a couple of the tomatoes that have outgrown their containers.  And I used a natural twine to hang some the 2-liters, which is beginning to rot out (one fell already, but survived!).  So next time I will have to stick with the nylon macramé cord I started out using.  The peppers are doing great; creating a beautiful, spicy canopy over the bench in front of the hoop house.

And I excited about our cucumbers!  I really want to make pickles this year.  So we have Russian pickling cucumbers growing down out of the containers with some dill on top.  And then some massive 18 inch long Japanese slicing cucumbers growing up out of the ground.  They are starting to get intertwined and producing a few baby cucumbers.   We’ve already had some cucumbers come out of the hoop house so I hope these are soon to follow!

Pole Bean Project

Gardening is all about experimentation for me. We are constantly learning what works best in which areas and next to which plants. This mindset of constant learning also helps us deal with disappointment when something doesn't work out, because we just think about how we can do it better next year.

One project I'm really excited about is our 10 foot Rattlesnake Pole Beans from Fedco that we planted up against the front of the house.  Basically we made posts out of old wire coat hangers.  We straightened the wire out flat and then cut each hanger in half by bending it back and forth in the same spot so it eventually broke apart.  Then we bent one side into a loop like this...

We shoved these posts into the ground as far as we could.  Then stapled long pieces of string to the outside edge of our windows, and attached the other side to the loop on our posts, pulling the string taught.  Then we planted our beans around the posts and waited to see what happened.

So far so good.  The beans are growing up the strings, only about 3 feet high at this point, but hopefully they will get close to the windows by the end of the summer.  All our windows are south facing and we don't have air conditioning so this should not only give us lots of beans, but also help cool the house a little by providing shade.


*UPDATE* Sunday August 6th, 2012

The beans are doing great! Almost reaching the second story window, which is even taller than they typically grow. We harvested our first 2 beans today and threw them in a salad. Taste great and look awesome growing up the house.

Three Sisters Beds

I just wanted to share how awesome our corn, beans, gourds and amaranth are doing!  Our yard is already filled with a garden where we have herbs, greens, tomatoes, peppers, fruit trees, cucumbers, onions and so on… But not much space for corn.  Luckily a friend down the street has a huge sunny backyard, so we dug a couple beds, mixed a little manure and compost in and planted away.  Everything looks amazing.  The smaller bed was planted about 2 weeks after the first one.  Here is what we planted and where we got our seeds:

Ohio Blue Clarage Corn (Southern Exposure)

Black Iroquois Sweet Corn (Southern Exposure)

Purple Podded Pole Bean (Baker Creek)

Provider Bush Green Bean (Fedco)

Blue Bush Lake 274 Green Bean (Fedco)

Bushel Basket Gourd (Baker Creek)

Opopeo Amaranth (Baker Creek)

Hopi Red Dye Amaranth (Fedco)

I’ve only had the space to do a Three Sisters garden once, and I had to move out before harvesting, so I’m excited to see how these beds do!  Everything can be eaten except the gourds.  I’m not so into squash, so I figured something useful could replace it, like a gourd you can make bowls out of!  The Ohio Blue Corn can be eaten as sweet corn when it’s young, but we plan on trying to make corn meal with it once it’s mature.  You can eat the amaranth greens in salads and whatnot, use the seeds in breads and I definitely plan on experimenting with dying fabric using the Hopi amaranth.

Gardening is so exciting!  And since these are new beds the bugs are pretty minimal. Way different from out house garden, which has been full of plants and bugs for years.  If only we could get some rain!