Fluffy Ears

Recently the three of us walked out to our garden to pick some flowers for a bouquet. Most of the flowers were still in full bloom, but Anders particularly liked how "fluffy" the zinnias were.

It didn't take too much encouragement to get him to pose for some "fluffy" photos with his flowers. (I use the term "pose" loosely.)

Fluffy Ears...

...Fluffy Eyes...

...Fluffy Nose!

A modern take on Three Wise Monkeys, perhaps?

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders Rocket

The End of Summer Tomatoes

Thanks to a long summer, our garden was still producing prolifically into October. When it looked like the first frost was coming, we harvested whatever was left: tomatoes, tomatillos, boxes of squash, and piles of herbs. We spent most of a weekend cooking and canning: Zucchini Dill Pickles, Chile Verde Sauce, and a wonderful Tomato and Sage Sauce. All made from garden ingredients! (Thanks to Debbie for some of her garden plum tomatoes.)

The blender technique to this particular recipe was a bit unusual for a tomato sauce. But with so many different varieties and colors, the process was beautiful.

Onions, garlic, sage, and chili pepper

Ready for jars

One last bit of summer tucked away, just enough to remember it by.

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

2 October 2011

Insalata Caprese

Alas, we had our first frost on Friday night. Luckily we had a heads up from the weatherman. So Mike shifted his hours on Friday so that he could come home early to harvest all of our tomatoes.

This year our neighbors, who have certified organic land, started vegetable farming. (This has been great for us given that our garden was largely a bust¹ other than the tomatoes.) They bought a new seeder and in the process of trying it out had planted five 1,000 foot rows of basil. Yes, that's almost a mile of basil! Since a frost was imminent, they told us we could pick all we wanted. So on Friday afternoon Mike also picked a kitchen garbage bag full of basil. And to put things in perspective, this was probably only about 5' of the 5000'.

We decided to devote a good portion of the weekend to the kitchen, making and freezing tomato sauce and pesto. Anders also had his first insalata caprese. We had given him a few pieces of tomato a couple weeks earlier and he didn't seem to be a big fan. But apparently tomatoes are a whole lot tastier - or at least more interesting - when he gets to hold the whole tomato and snack on it.

- Corinne, Mike, and Anders Rocket

¹ Bust = crazy work schedule which delayed or prevented us from planting + gophers who ate the entire bed of garlic Mike planted last fall

Date: October 5, 2009

So Much For Farm Help

Okay, I think we're overdue for a non-Rocket post on this blog! But somehow, I just can't think of anything that has happened in the last 3 weeks that doesn't involve him in some way. I guess that's what people mean when they say that "your life changes."

While we were in Seattle, fall arrived in Trout Lake. Most of the trees in the orchard had already dropped their fruit - most disappointingly, the Italian plum trees were just ripening when we left and were pretty much finished when we returned. But by far the biggest disappointment was the garden.

When we left for Seattle that weekend, we were only supposed to be gone for about 3 days. So I watered the garden a day or two before we left and planned to water it again when we returned. But of course, Rocket arrived early and changed those plans. If we had been able to return home sometime early that following week to water it, the garden would have been fine. But of course, Rocket had jaundice which kept us in Seattle for an additional week. We even might have been able to explain to someone the somewhat lengthy instructions for turning on the irrigation system, but by the time we realized that we weren't going to make it home as early as we had liked, it was too late.

I almost couldn't look at the result: wire cages full of tomatoes in various shades of red, just rotting on crispy brown vines; clusters of young squash under piles of shriveled leaves. But I keep reminding myself - it is much easier to buy tomatoes and squash than it is to buy a baby.

The main reason that we decided to have kids was so that we would have some additional farm help.¹ So far, that plan isn't working out so well.

- Mike (& Corinne & Anders)

¹ Okay, maybe not.

The Ups and Downs of Gardening

I'm long overdue to write about this year's garden, so here it is. Each year our garden gets a little bigger, and we're a bit more organized. Unfortunately, that doesn't always mean that the garden will produce more or be healthier or fuller.

We continued building out our garden this year. The garden layout stayed the same this year: 16 beds, 4' x 10' each. I built two more of the simple raised beds this year, for a total of 4, with the other 12 beds remaining simple mounds. By late May, the snow was gone and the weather had turned warm enough that we were confident that we were beyond the last frost.

Last year we brought in over 2000 lbs of compost from a local orchard to enrich the garden soil. This year's compost would come from our own piles. There are two ways to manage a compost pile:

1. Carefully monitor the carbon (brown) and nitrogen (green) components of the material you add to the pile. Frequently turn and water the pile to maintain the correct temperature. Collect finished compost every 6-8 weeks.
2. Throw compostable material on the top of a pile. Collect compost sometimes, when you think of it.
   

Since the last time we collected our own compost was almost 2 years ago, guess which one we do? It took several hours for us to go through our 3 piles, but we were pleasantly surprised at how much compost was produced: 6 wheelbarrows full! Once we got over the idea of sorting through material covered in bugs, it was fun to sift through the remains, trying to determine what various chunks used to be. Corn cobs, mussel shells, banana peels - we encountered lots of partially decomposed material. By far the strangest find, though, was a green dinosaur ring. We certainly didn't put that in our pile, so we're still mystified as to where it came from. The compost we extracted was spread around the garden and some of the flower beds around the yard, while the remaining un-composted material (minus the shells and occasional bone) went back into the piles for another go.

The next step was to start the planting. Since we still don't have a fence around the garden, we tried to stick with the plants least likely to be attractive to deer: onion, garlic, herbs, some short-season melons (a new experiment this year), and lots and lots of squash. The one exception to the rule that we just HAD to have is tomatoes; we expanded to 3 beds of tomatoes, and put a makeshift fence around just those beds.

I had started some seedlings inside a few weeks earlier and had also bought some starts from local growers, but we also had a number of plants still in the garden from the previous year. Garlic is planted in the fall, since it needs about 9 months in the ground for optimum growth. We planted one of our raised beds with garlic last October, just hours before the first snowfall; when spring came, the garlic took off.

The rest of the growth was a happy accident. We had lots of carrots and onion still in the ground last year that we had intended to harvest, but we just never got around to it before the snow came. We had a pretty heavy snowpack all winter, so I think it provided enough protection that they all survived through the winter and have continued to grow this year. Our perennial herbs - parsley & chives - also came back, which I hadn't anticipated. It's amazing how motivating it was to see something growing in the garden even before you've done anything new that season.

On Memorial Day weekend, we managed to plant virtually the entire garden - that's the earliest date ever! We still had some tomatoes to put in and a few squash mounds to fill (we ran out of some seeds), but overall we were in very good shape this year.

We initially had some trouble with our irrigation system that threatened to delay our planting. When I went to turn on the breaker box for the system the first time, absolutely nothing happened. After last year's irrigation troubles, I was worried that this would be another month-long process of troubleshooting. I called our PUD (Public Utility District) to let them know about what appeared to be a problem at our 3-phase electrical box. Within a few hours later that same Saturday, two PUD servicemen came out to check the box. They replaced a fuse, we fired it up the system, and everything worked! Crisis averted.

I connected an overhead sprinkler to a hose in the garden, as in previous years, but my ultimate goal was to put in a drip irrigation system. I figured that a drip system would be more efficient with water, would allow us to work in the garden while it was on, and would significantly reduce the weed growth in the garden area. It took about a month of research and numerous trips to the local irrigation supply company, but we now have a drip system that feeds each bed with individual drip emitters (squash, melons, tomato) or localized sprinklers (herbs, garlic, onions, carrots). The system has 4 "zones": the 8 East beds, the 8 West beds, the North flowerbed soaker, and a pre-existing dripline for the young trees surrounding the garden. Each invidual bed also has an on/off valve, for more fine control. It's a manual system; there are no timers or automatic switching, since the irrigation pump has to be turned on manually anyway. There are still a few kinks to work out - like the fact that the system will occasionally have a "blowout" when a connection fails, and will send a geyser shooting into the air - but overall it is working well.

The best laid plans of mice and men...

Despite getting the garden in earlier than in any other year, it just wasn't growing. The weather was extremely hot for about a week in June, then cooled down to below the germination point for most of the seeds. Many of the seeds just never came up. We were so busy with other things that we didn't get around to replanting most of them.

Speaking of busy, our watering schedule wasn't as frequent as it should have been, either, which I'm sure didn't help. Nor did spending the better part of a week in Boston with no watering. (We have a housesitter for our trip to Denmark, so we won't let that happen again.)

And as I alluded to in the previous post, we also had a gopher discover the garden as well. We didn't see too much immediate damage other than the mounds and tunnels, but I'm sure he was chewing on the roots and stunting growth. And unfortunately, the gopher that Max captured was not the one from the garden. Dang.

So, the garden goes on. It will likely be a smaller harvest than we would have liked, but we will have a harvest. We've also agreed on a rough plan for the type of fence that we would like to put in at some point, so hopefully we'll get around to that soon (though the likelihood of this year goes down with each week.)

- Mike (& Corinne)

Snow on the Spring Flowers

Looks like I may have spoken too soon about the arrival of spring - we got more snow!

It didn't stick for more than a few hours, but nonetheless it was there. Once the sun came out it melted quickly, so we only had a short window to capture the moment photographically. The snow vaporized into steam, which can be seen in the background of the garlic photo below.

 

- Mike (& Corinne)

First Snow Arrives

It's been raining here for the last week. (Yes, I know, stereotypical Northwest weather.)

For a few weeks now we've had a list of some outdoor, end-of-the-season projects that we wanted to finish before winter arrived: mulch and protect the newly planted garlic; final cleaning of the irrigation system and the orchard; collect kindling for winter; final mow of the lawn; etc. We tried to wait for a "nice" day to work outside, but by Sunday morning we realized we weren't going to get one. So we trudged out into the rain and began raking leaves.

Within about a half-hour, the rain turned to snow; within an hour the snow started to accumulate on the ground. Just a few hours later, it looked like winter! I guess we aren't going to get any more herbs from our herb barrel, and it's probably time to pull out the last onion and carrots from the garden.

In the end we got 2+ inches of snow. With any luck, we'll have snow on the ground from now until April!

- Mike (& Corinne)

The Rest of the Weekend

Aside from preparing for, enjoying, and cleaning up after our Pie Party, we did manage to get a few other projects done around the house on this 3-day weekend.

Outdoors
Saturday was a beautiful day (despite the 100% chance of rain prediction), so we used the opportunity to do some winter preparation: putting up storm doors, packing away the grill and other summer stuff, etc.

During our first winter in Trout Lake, part of the rock wall around our small parking area was knocked down by the snowplow; well, now almost two years later we've finally managed to repair it! Just in time for snow plowing again...

Indoors
Monday it actually DID rain all day, so we built a fire in the woodstove and worked inside.

Last month we harvested the squash from our garden. Since then they have just been sitting in our garden shed, waiting for some inspired cook. That inspiration didn't come, so Corinne did some research on preserving squash, and as a result we decided that the best method for us was to roast, puree, and freeze. A few hours of effort later (and lots of fun with our vacuum sealer), we had almost 40c of squash puree - and from only the 2 large and 2 small "mystery" squash (which we're guessing is probably some variety of pumpkin). We packaged them in amounts convenient for muffins, breads and pies. We even ate some as a snack, with nothing but some butter, salt and pepper - good stuff. And that still leaves the sugar pumpkins and acorn squash for another day.

Hurray for three day weekends! Boo for the end of summer!

- Mike (& Corinne)

A Perfect Fall Weekend

Here are the reasons why this was a perfect fall weekend:

1. 3 Days Long. We had some extra vacation days (due to a postponed Daly-family trip), so we took Friday off.
   
2. Lazy mornings. We slept in every day, then enjoyed homemade lattes and lounged until well into the afternoon.
   
3. Red Sox World Series baseball and TiVo. The games start at 5pm, but we can start watching whenever we want - as long as we are careful to avoid all outside communication so as not to spoil the fun.
   
4. Clear, crisp weather. Perfect for raking leaves, planting daffodil & iris bulbs (thanks Mom!), and putting in the first crop of the 2008 garden season, garlic.
   

We need to take a long weekend every fall! (And winter, and spring, and summer.)



- Mike (& Corinne)

Squash Harvest

We decided to plant a lot of squash this year because deer don't like messing with the prickly leaves.

I never used to be much of a squash fan but am seeing the light. A few years ago while still living in Boston, Mike discovered a great butternut squash soup recipe after someone at work who didn't cook, gave him this weird squash they didn't know what to do with. ("Here, you cook!") And then just last year, our organic gardening friend Judith convinced me to try one of her delicata squash. (Cut in half, salt & pepper, roast flesh side down over a pat of butter. Heavenly!)

So we decided we really wanted butternut and delicata and then threw in some snackjack pumpkins and acorn squash for fun.

Well, the butternut start we bought turned out to be something else and the delicata did horribly. Lessons learned:
a) Squash is easy so just start it from seed.
b) As with everything, plant as early as you can!
c) Brush up on sweet talking skills. Judith's delicata crop was great.

Here's the final report:

8 Snackjack pumpkin

3 "Butternut" squash
(really a good size
pumpkin of some sort)

17 Acorn squash

2 Delicata squash
(puny specimens which
probably aren't ripe)

I'm looking forward to testing out this pumpkin recipe from the October Sunset Magazine: Baby Pumpkins with Garlic Custard.

- Corinne (& Mike)

First Frost

We received our first frost; temperatures have gotten as low as 30 at night. We haven't received a hard frost yet, but it's only a matter of time now. The marigolds are in full bloom, creating the opportunity for this summer/winter dichotomy photo.

Most of the garden is done already, but we are still trying to eek out some more tomatoes. Hence we have devised a system of sheets over the beds to try to keep some of the daytime warmth contained, as well as prevent the dew from condensing on and damaging the plants and fruit. We'll see how successful we are.

- Mike (& Corinne)

Deer Attack the Garden

As the summer progresses into fall, the deer must be getting more desperate for food (even though there is still plenty of green around). That bed of green beans that looked so promising has been reduced to stalks. Every leaf in the entire bed was eaten; you can see the remnants on the left side of the photo below, under the fence arch. They even ate the tops of onions. They aren't supposed to like onions!

Here they are, caught red-hooved.



- Mike (& Corinne)

Garden Update: August

Okay, so it's been almost two months since my last post on the garden; it's time for a garden update.

We went bigger this year, mounding 14 beds and filling the allocated garden space. As with last year's garden, we've had mixed results so far.

Greens
Our plans included 3 beds of greens, including spinach, chard, and a number of different salad greens. But the greens were not to be. We planted late, and the temperature had already gotten pretty hot, so many of the seeds didn't germinate. The ones that did come up were decimated by the deer. We're still procrastinating on putting any permanent protection around the garden (read: fence) since the garden is right in front of the house. Long story short: no greens this year.

Tomatoes
The cherry tomatoes are just starting to ripen en masse, so with any luck pretty soon we'll be inundated with tomatoes. Despite the result last year, I decided to go for some larger heirloom tomatoes as well; they are growing well so far, and hopefully they'll have enough time to ripen before the season ends.

Zucchini
The single bed of zucchini has produced enough fruit to feed a small army, so we've tried to make as many different zucchini recipes as we could find: Zucchini Bread; Chicken & Zucchini Curry; Lasagna with Zucchini; Baked Stuffed Zucchini; Zucchini Chocolate Cake; Zucchini, Corn & Pepper Hash; Beef, Broccoli & Zucchini Stir Fry; Hoisin Zucchini; Potato, Pepper & Zucchini Hash; Zucchini Fritters, ... and yes, we really made all of those. And more.

Other Squash
The other 4 beds of squash are growing, albeit at a less prolific rate than the zucchini. The delicata squash is growing particularly slowly, so I'm guessing we won't get any fruit from it before frost arrives. Pumpkin looks good; we should be able to start using those soon. The "butternut" squash (photo on right) is a bit of a mystery. It sure doesn't look like any butternut we've seen. We bought a start from a local nursery, so I suspect the plant was mislabeled.

Radish, Onion, Carrot
This bed is looking pretty good - the radishes produced well, and the onions seem to be growing nicely. The deer apparently liked the radish tops, so those are gone; thankfully the radishes had already formed, so I don't think the lack of leaves has stunted its growth.

Beans
A whole bed of beans. No fruit yet, but the plants look pretty healthy.

Cucumber
The cucumber are getting big fast; figuring out how to use them all will likely be a problem. Cucumber and tomato salad sure is good, though.

Flowers
The north side of the garden has several rows of sunflowers; and many of the individual beds have marigolds planted on the ends. Both flowers were grown from seeds Corinne saved from last year.

- Mike (& Corinne)