Late January in the Garden

January 30, 2016 Elizabeth Boegel

It's simply delightful outside today. Yesterday we had a nice, long, soaking, misty rain - the plants really needed it - and today is warmish and sunny. The song sparrows and finches are all flying about, chasing each other (mating?) and chirping, the hummingbirds are defending the feeder, the bumblebees are all over the manzanita, and the honeybees are bringing in pollen - a good sign that the queen is starting to lay more eggs.

An incoming bee meeting an outgoing bee at the hive entrance; they are probably sharing a taste of the newly collected nectar

I sat under the manzanita for a while and just watched the incredible amount of activity going on. Other than the narcissus (and a few fava beans), nothing else is blooming in my garden, so this is where everyone hangs out. I have other, younger manzanitas that are not blooming yet, and this makes me want to plant even more. Loads more. What a boon it must be for all these creatures who desperately need spring pollen and nectar. I noticed that the ceanothus is close to blooming, and that will be the next plant that gets all the action.

Days of sun interspersed with rain is also so very good for the garden. Suddenly everything is waking up and getting busy. Interesting things are popping up in the wood chips.

And the vegetables are all doing wonderfully, still very small in most cases, but getting bigger every day.

North Garden; the row covers have been off for weeks now, but might go back on tomorrow night, as it's supposed to go down into the mid 30's

This is either "Colorado Rose" red potato or "La Ratte" fingerling potato

succession plantings of 'Regiment' spinach

Peas, "Progress #9," starting to climb up the trellis

There's also loads of Asian Braising Greens, Chard, and Kale, which I am now picking and eating every day. These are the stars of my winter garden and provide us with our daily salad or saute.

In between trips to the garden (just to enjoy the sun and the wildlife!), I'm getting lots of projects underway - I'm working on the new tomato and pepper indoor seed setup, my new vinegar crock has arrived, I'm baking bread, and checking on the olives. More to come on these projects and others!

Preserved Lemons

December 13, 2015 Elizabeth Boegel

I picked another three dozen lemons from my generous neighbor's tree.

They're perfectly ripe. Meyer lemons are thinner-skinned then regular lemons, and have a slightly different taste and scent, a bit sweeter. I juiced a bunch - roughly a dozen makes a pint of juice for the freezer. But I wanted to try a new project, preserving them in salt.

I don't make Moroccan food very often - in fact I'm struggling to think of a Moroccan dish I've made in the last year and none come to mind. Moroccan dishes are usually where you find preserved lemons. However, we do have a roast chicken every month or so, and I always want lemons for the cavity. As you know, I hate buying anything out of season, especially if I can preserve it in season. So I thought, do folks use preserved lemons in roasted chicken? And sure enough, when googled, a dozen recipes pop up.

I did a lot of research on this a few months back when I was thinking of Christmas gifts, so I just needed to refresh my memory. Most recipes call for cutting the lemon into quarters, leaving the stem end together so the lemon ends up like a sort of opened flower. However one of my favorite websites, NW Edible, had a recipe that called for quartering them completely. I followed Erica's guide for these, and so far I'm really pleased.

Basically all you do is quarter a bunch of lemons and put them in a big bowl. As you put each lemon in, sprinkle it with two tablespoons of Kosher salt. When they're all in, toss 'em around.

Then stuff them into a jar (or jars).

Let them sit for an hour to get soft, then press them down into the jar so they form a tight pack and release some juice. Then juice another few lemons and add to the jar until the salted lemons are nearly covered with juice.

You'll let these sit on the counter top (a cool place, easy in winter when lemons are ripe) for a week, giving them a good shake every day. After that, you store 'em in the fridge for up to a year.

The week on the counter means you're basically fermenting these guys, so you might get a sort of whitish 'bloom' in the jar. Apparently this is harmless.

Every time I ferment something on the counter, I think of ancient times, and how people used to do this regularly as a part of their food preservation. It's a skill that's generally lost today, though I know that you can take classes in home fermentation everywhere in the Bay Area, so it's coming back in to fashion. I've put Sandor Katz's book "The Art of Fermentation" on my Christmas wish list, so I can learn even more. We've fermented pickles, peppers, and ginger, as well as milk, but we've yet to try cabbage or the hundreds of other fruits and veg that can be fermented.

Anyway, here's what the lemons look like in the morning light today. They'll get glossier as the week goes on.

It's raining lightly again today, which is gorgeous. I'm determined not to let grey skies depress me this year, because it means that we're getting much-needed moisture. I tend to get a little 'S.A.D.' every winter (Seasonal Affective Disorder). I find several ways to combat it: I try to appreciate what the season brings, try to find projects to distract me from early dark, try to get outside as much as possible, and walk a lot. Since Joe is injured, the walking isn't happening as much, and I just don't feel good about going out without him. But I might have to just put on my boots and go for a muddy hike and try not to think about him at home, longing for a romp in the open space.

One of the things the season brings is pretty mushrooms. I found several of these beauties while mucking about in the compost yesterday.

And I've already seen several stinkhorns in the vegetable beds. It's mushroom time again!

A Day at Home

June 12, 2015 Elizabeth Boegel

Today was supposed to be my last day of work for the summer. I've worked as a para-educator for several years now, part-time. The work is very rewarding, but the best part about it is that I can take the summers off to be with my own kids. The school I work for ended classes Wednesday, but we are moving locations, and the latter days of this week were for packing and moving. Unfortunately Kate woke up with a fever and vomiting this morning, so I needed to stay home with her. I'm of two minds about this; while it's nice to have an unexpected day off (even if it does mean looking after a sick person!), I was hoping to see all my work-mates today and celebrate the end of the school year with them. I've really enjoyed my work this year, and it's mainly due to the fact that we had a very strong team of people in our classroom. Most of the folks are half my age, but they are all highly motivated, intelligent people whom I admire very much. Nearly all of them are moving on to other jobs in the Fall, so I won't see them again. This makes me sad. I learned a lot from them!!!

However, a day at home is never wasted. It's hot here, again - hovering around 100 - so I do a chore outside, then do a chore inside, etc. As always, there's plenty of interesting stuff to look at, work on, and explore. So come on a tour of the garden with me, and then we'll talk some culinary stuff!

We're getting three eggs a day at the moment.
I'm not sure, but I think they are all coming from
two chickens. Today I noticed a barred rock
nesting, and then afterward I found this big 'un!
Looks like full sized eggs are soon to be in our future!

The corn is recovering from its deer-provided haircut. The
tallest are about hip-high. It's safe to plant an inter-crop
here now, so today or this weekend I'll put the
sweet potatoes in. The SP's have rooted and shooted
in their shallow pan of water after a month indoors.

I planted two varieties of pole beans this year, green and purple.
These are the green. I love watching them figure out how to wind
upwards on the trellis.

The delicata squash has gone crazy, growing up
between the trellis (not winding, like I'd hoped), with
these big leaves. No blossoms yet. The butternut
is not far behind in size.

The tomatoes are flowering freely and a lot of fruit
is forming. We removed the straw mulch from the
paste tomatoes and sprayed the leaves with copper;
that seems to have done the trick, and paste
tomatoes are growing as vigorously as the slicing and cherry

We have plenty of both sweet and hot peppers
fruiting; these are definitely preferring the
North Garden over the South Garden (last year's
spot) - more heat and sun

a fresh crop of cilantro is ready for harvest

the first patch of basil (with cosmos interplanted)
is nearly ready for pesto-making

We're letting our second (and final, for this year)
artichoke flower; I think it looks really cool
and I can't wait to see the blossom

One ripe raspberry so far! I ate it immediately
after taking this photo. Boy, was it good.

Another dog vomit fungus. I get these all over
the wood chips that surround the raised beds.
This one looks a little like popcorn.

collards, which I like sautéed with bacon and eggs,
is a great summer alternative to kale and spinach,
which prefer cool weather. The leaves will get
enormous, but I like them younger and smaller.

The potato plants are huge, with holes everywhere from
those dang cucumber beetles

harvesting carrots daily, glad I planted in succession
over six weeks; we'll have carrots for a while

The shallots are ready for harvest. The bulbs are
gigantic. We'll cure these above the chicken coop,
just like we did garlic. I'll have to read up on
storage methods.

Ah, sweet blueberry, one of maybe 10 we've had
this year. I think I need to learn how to prune blueberry bushes
for more consistent fruiting

We're harvesting huckleberries every day;
they are delicious and numerous, but fiddly to harvest,
as they are tiny. How does anyone ever get enough to make a pie???

We're getting a last burst of clarkia 'mountain
garland' before the truly hot weather sets in.
I'll harvest the seed for next year.

I must've planted Queen Anne's Lace seeds at
one time, and totally forgot. It's beautiful in the
pollinator garden, light and airy over the more
steadfast poppies and sage

I have beautiful 'aloha' nasturtiums all over the
garden, both in the flower beds and the veg beds.
I used to hate nasturtiums; then I discovered
different varieties other than that garish orange
and I've fallen in love with them

Black-Eyed Susan, reminding me of my home state of MD

So that's the news from the garden. There's a long list of jobs to do there, hopefully I'll get to them tonight in the cool evening, or tomorrow morning before it gets hot.

Meanwhile, I spent a little time in the kitchen with some 'herb-y' projects. Alice Medrich is one of my favorite recipe-writers, she mainly handles desserts, and they are always interesting and different. I read a recent post she wrote for Food52 about mint chip ice cream using fresh mint from the garden. Well, if there's something I always have a lot of, it's mint. So I followed her instructions for infusing heavy cream with chopped mint, and it's steeping in the fridge for later, when I'll make a custard (using home-grown egg yolks!) and we'll make a delicious treat, perfect on a hot day. (I just hope Kate can eat it!)

I washed and chopped the mint, then wrapped it in cheesecloth...

tied it up...

then added it to the cream. It already smells so good, minty but delicately so!

Then our weekly meat delivery from Tara Firma Farms arrived. This week it's high-end grilling meats, so I kept the rib-eye steaks out to defrost and put the other items in the freezer. I decided that a freshly grilled steak wouldn't need any seasoning other than salt and pepper, but I'd make some compound butter, too. This is super-easy to do. Just soften a stick of butter. Go out into your garden and choose any combination of herbs you like. Chop 'em up along with some garlic and mash them into the butter, then roll into a cylinder and put back in the fridge. It'll keep for three days (long enough to enjoy with the filet mignon early next week!).

I chopped up thyme, sage, rosemary, marjoram, and oregano

squished some home-grown garlic

added a stick of softened, grass-fed butter

mashed it up with a fork

rolled it into a tiny log, and wrapped in plastic wrap

Adam's home from school (7th grade done and dusted!), Kate's asleep on the couch as I type this, and I think I might brave an outside chore, next. Gotta get those shallots out of the ground and up on the coop for curing!

Interesting finds

June 4, 2015 Elizabeth Boegel

Just a quick post to show you some cool things I've found in the garden and woods lately.

Our watermelon plants are coming up. The variety I planted is called 'Moon and Stars.' I expected to see this pattern on the fruit, but isn't it neat that it's also on the leaves?

I noticed this 'bouquet' of Lysurus mokusin (or Lantern stinkhorns) coming up by the train shed. Click the link for other fun pictures of stinkhorns. The more I learn about these fungi, the more I'm intrigued. This particular kind comes up quite frequently in my garden, on the wood chips.

I found this beautiful caterpillar this morning, not ON the carrots, but near them in another plant (apparently it likes carrots and carrot-like food and blossoms). It's a papilio polyxenes, or Black Swallowtail. I'll be curious to see if it sticks around and pupates.

And finally, while walking with the dog this morning, I found several kinds of ripe plums on wild plum trees. I usually bring home some to eat, but I was feeling generous and gave them to the chickens, who adore any fruit (I've been giving them all the fallen peaches and apples from my trees, and they eat it all up, including the pits). Since I'm a little short on greens in the garden at the moment (although it's nearly time to rip up the peas), I'm feeding the chickens whatever I can find. They do get regular chicken food (grains), but I really prefer to heavily supplement their diet with plant forage. This way, the eggs will have superior nutrition. And, it can only help keep the chickens healthy. Besides, in the wild, they would eat all this stuff.

Tom and I are gearing up for the Urban Farm Tour, which is coming up in two days. I have an insider tip about discount tickets - so if you're on the fence, and need an incentive, leave a comment here and I'll give you the scoop. Meanwhile, regular readers can look for a post about it Saturday night, with pictures! We're extremely excited about having a lot of folks over to look at the garden!

Raising the Fence

May 3, 2015 Elizabeth Boegel

We worked all weekend on raising the fence. Tom did all the cutting and measuring of wood, I helped with the wire, and chopped down several old, woody bushes that were in the way. What we have now is, hopefully, a subtle but effective deer deterrent.

You can barely see the three-tiered wire going across these posts, which is just how I like it. Neighbors can see in, we can see out, and yet no one wants to jump it. The fence goes around our entire property, except for the driveway and garage, so this was a major undertaking. Tom bought six foot lengths of 4x4 posts and cut them into two foot sections. Then he bolted them on (using deck screws) to the existing posts using metal plates on two sides. The wire is heavy gauge and is threaded through staples pounded into the wood.

We have three gates, one of them double-sized. So Tom's next project is to make, essentially, four gates, each six feet tall. He'll make them similar to the chicken coop door, since we have some supplies leftover from that. They'll each be latched by some sort of string system that can be accessed by either side.

I cleared out a truck-sized load of old westringia, ceonothus, sunrose and buckeye. It was difficult, scratchy, and painful, and I would have liked a nice huge bonfire afterward to celebrate, but that's not allowed here. So we borrowed Dad's truck and took it to the compost facility at our local waste center.

This project took up most of the weekend, but I managed to make some new bars for the beehive; paint a brick for the new blackberry vine I scored for free on Nextdoor; open the hive (all looked well); reseed some corn, beans, watermelon; add dirt to the potatoes; clean the coop and the house; do laundry; and weed and mulch and get everything looking nice - plus a half day of training for Girl Scout camp. We did cross everything off the list except I didn't get to the herb purees. That will be a job for the week to come!

I've ordered three new bare-root fruit trees to take the place of some of the bushes I took out. I chose two different sweet cherries and a Santa Rosa plum variety hybridized by Luther Burbank. Once I plant those, I'll spread a ton of flower seed around them, and hopefully have a pollinator garden in the North Garden as well as the South.

Everything in the veg garden has sprouted and looks great. I have yet to harvest kale and plant basil in its place, and I have yet to harvest the shallots and plant cantaloupe in its place, but everything else is in. It's all wonderful, but it's the flowers that are really knocking me out these days, so I'll leave you with pictures of those, plus a funky mushroom (I think it's a stinkhorn).

Clarkia, Mountain Garland

Blue Flax

Forget-me-not

Pollinator section of the South Garden

Redbud seedpods

Tidy-tip and Phacelia

Stinkhorn?

Bonus picture -

Gopher snake Tom saw on a hike with Joe