Garden: Hopping into Spring

Been a while since I posted a non-beer post. It's a nice day so I went out and took some photos of the Spring garden prep.

The hops are all coming up and doing ok so far, given the worst Spring on record. These are the 2nd year Tettenangers and they're doing the best of the lot. I repotted all the hops into 18 gallon tubs last fall. Got them at Fred Meyer for about $4 each, drilled some drainage holes, put some fresh potting soil in, and repotted the plants. Hopefully this will solve some of the watering and root-binding issues I had last year. Hops like space.

Nevertheless the plant has developed a soft yellowing in the leaves. Don't think it's a disease, maybe just a slight nitrogen deficiency? I'd applied some 9-4-7 organic fertilizer a month or two back but it didn't seem enough. So I've decided that, where the hops are concerned, I'm relaxing my generally organic principles. Last year the hops were sickly and prone to insect problems. This year I'm hitting them with some 20-20-20 Miracle Grow every few weeks. Hopefully that heavier fertilization will make them more robust, so that I have fewer fungal and insect problems over all. Still not going to be spraying DDT around or anything...

The Tettenangers and Cascades get the most sun, but the Centennial and Chinook are coming up as well. This time of year they still get a fair amount of shade though. Stupid tilt of the Earth and my neighbor's roofline. Also, as you can see I gave all the hops a layer of organic compost a couple weeks back. This should keep the weeds down and seep in some more nutrients.

There is a school of thought, particularly among commercial growers, that you should trim back the early hop shoots and allow later shoots to grow as the weather improves. My suspicion is that in areas that get less sun and cooler seasons, the hops need all the help they can get. So I'm not trimming mine back. Just going to watch them and see if any mildews are attacking and treat accordingly. If this Spring and Summer are going to be as cool as they say, seems to me the more time the plant has to grow leaves the better. Now that these are 3rd and 2nd year plants I will be trimming back to just six shoots per plant though, three on each line. I'll be pickling the trimmed shoots in a few weeks. Also: my over-wintered parsley and chives are both very happy.

The garden is in a holding pattern of sorts right now. My winter kales have all bolted and been picked. You can see the last Collards have bolted and so are going into a Portuguese Linguica stew tonight. You can see the bed in the back is covered with compost. Tomatoes will go there. Probably in June... sigh. The last of the over-wintered leeks are in their pot, and I planted a row of shallots in another long row-pot. Planted some fresh sage in the little black pot, since last year's didn't make it through winter. In the same pot is the sad, sad remains of the sorrel. Something, I don't know what, ate it down to the roots. Mowed down like a lawnmower. Squirrels? My dog? An army of slugs? It's a mystery. But there are signs that it's not dead yet, so I'll see if I can get it to grow back. The mint in those two pots, had died back for Winter but it's coming back with a vengeance. Mojito time!

Cold Frames

Last Fall I found some sliding glass doors and decided to turn them into cold frames. Well, it's been 6 months, how did they do?

Overall they did best in the late Fall and later this Spring. In Dec-Feb I really got little noticeable growth of anything in them. I think this is partly due to the location, they get shaded most of Winter there. Also, it's our Maritime Northwest Winter. What little sun we get doesn't have much umph behind it. Still, in the worst Spring on record my little winter lettuces and mustard greens are doing great, and the garlic is loving it. Planted a row of shallots in there, and some green onions. Just sowed another round of lettuces, mizuna, and mustard greens in there too.

The other frame has been replanted for Spring. In the back I sowed a row of Sugar Snap Peas. In front of them are some Ruby Orach Spinach. Both of these did fantastically last year. In the front I put in some Purple Mustard Greens. These did great last Spring. Also sowed some lettuce around, will harvest when small before the Spinach and Greens get huge. The glass has protected these guys from some hail storms recently. So that's nice.

But how well do they trap the heat? I was wondering that, so I took my infra-red laser thermometer out and tested the soil surface. It was 58 degrees outside around noon.

In the shade of the bed.







In the sunny part of the bed.

Not too shabby! And this is with the beds propped open about 4" for airflow. May move the frame off the pea-bed and onto the tomato bed until the 'maters get fully established. Rather than the flimsy plastic cloche I cobbled together last year.

POTATO EXPERIMENT 2011

Planted two varieties for this year's experiment in growing potatoes in odd things. Warba, a high yield all-rounder and Rose Finn, an early season red fingerling. Hope to get two rounds of the Finns, will plant the next round in a couple weeks. As you can see I'm trying something new this year: tires. Just stack and fill as the plants grow!

Good thing the forest roads around eat my low-profile tires... Wait, no. Well at least I have several dead tires around for this project.

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Cold Frames (Winter Comes)

"The days are getting shorter, the air is getting colder, and while you sip your rum and coke, kid, you're just getting older." - Jason Webley, Winter.

I've been thinking a lot about the upcoming Winter. Apart from the fact that it's likely to be horrendous, (for Seattle anyway), I've actually really appreciated having noticeably different seasons again. South Florida has two seasons, the Wet Season (aka Hurricane Season) and the Dry Season (aka 'Winter'). But here, trees change colors, plants flower and then die, mushrooms begin to pop up everywhere with the first late-Summer rains, the sun tracks lower and increasingly weakly across the sky, and growth is notably stunted in most of my remaining garden plants. It smells differently this time of year, and it makes me realize: Winter Comes.

First up, after harvest I decided to repot my hops. They were rootbound, and I was thinking of different ways to get cheap, large pots to put them in. Solution: 18 gallon Laundry Tubs from Fred Meyer, $5 each. Now they're sitting pretty in much bigger pots, with some fresh potting soil. Hopefully the harvest will be better next year.

The tomatoes began to show serious signs of Late Blight about three weeks ago. We let them vine ripen as long as we could, but we got a sunny weekend day and decided it was time. So we picked all the tomatoes that were in good shape, ripe or green, and have been storing them. They're slowly ripening away inside, and they're pretty darn tasty. My guess is they'll last at least another month.

The basil that was planted with them and spent the entire summer kindof sad and stunted suddenly took off. Then two nights ago it was 38 degrees. Now they look pretty sad. One last round of pesto and that's that. Got a few more zucchinis too, but they were getting pretty serious powdery mildew, so I pulled them. Not wanting a glut of zukes I only planted two plants. Unfortunately, at the end they seemed to put up only female flowers so while there were several proto-zukes possible, I couldn't pollinate them. Lost quite a few that way.

With Summer's veg wrapping up I was faced with a decision. One option would be to let some of the beds go fallow, planting a cover crop of Rye, Vetch, Peas, and so on. Then mow that down in the Spring, mulch it on in, and arrange some cloches to get things off to a good start in, say, April. Some portion of the beds could also be planted with hardy, overwintering crops like leeks and kale.

But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that I'd like to see what I could grow in our maritime winter. We tend to rely heavily on the supermarket during the Winter, importing bright and shiny fruits and vegetables from far, far away. But it wasn't always like that. What about here? Maybe I could manage some fresh salads past the New Year? Maybe with a little thought and a little effort I can grow a lot of my own food this season, and store the rest in the form of my potatoes, and root veg from the Farmer's Market.

So step one was acquiring plants. I signed up for a Winter Plant Start CSA through Cascadian Edible Landscapes. These folks are really friendly and helpful, and you can usually find them at the Ballard Farmer's Market selling plant starts in the Spring, right up until the first berry harvests begin. I love their idea of a plant start CSA. The investment helps them plant without needing bank loans and to plant more of what people actually want, and it removes some of the guesswork of sales. We get a box of great starts, picked to be just the sorts of things that will grow really well, right here, right now. For about $30 we got, near as I can remember:

• Six Std. Broccoli starts
• Six Mixed Variety Broccoli as well
• Six Collards
• Six Asst. Kales
• Six 'Eros' Endive
  
• Two pounds of organic cover crop seeds
• Two heads of seed garlic
• A start of Sorrel
  

Plus I picked up some leeks and six Brussels Sprouts starts at Swansons. Couple that with some Mild Mustard Green seeds and Mache seeds and I've got the Winter Garden going.

I managed to find enough pots for the kales, collards, broccoli, and brussels. Frankly, if it stunts the kales or collards I'll consider it a blessing. I pulled the big Red Russian kales that grew up all Summer from random seeds in a mesclun greens mix. They were huge, over three feet tall and several feet across. This provided shade for lettuce underneath during the Summer, but by now we were sick and tired of kale, and shade was no longer our friend. They had to go. Added some of Walt's Organic Rainy PNW Blend in and planted mache and mustard greens in its place. The scattering of salad seeds began to pop up all over, which made me happy.

Then the squirrels came.

It's that time of year where they bury little caches of food around, digging up any patch of open looking dirt. Scattering and mauling my little lettuces. Grrr.

The solution appeared one afternoon when I drove by a neighbor's house. They were in the midst of some remodeling and there, on the street corner, were two sliding glass doors and a 'Free' sign. The wheels began to turn and I ran back and hauled them into the garage.

Cold Frames! Basically, cheap mini-greenhouses. A solar oven for plants. The glass traps light and keeps excess wind and rain out. On colder nights, or if it snows, the plants will be significantly warmer and protected from the harshest of Winter. With any luck I'll have salad through February, and be able to start plants earlier in the Spring. Ideally I'll get tomatoes in a couple weeks earlier, without resorting to my semi-effective penny-conscious cloche, and have a head start on other things as well.

So this weekend I got some lumber, conscripted a friend and got to building.

The basic idea is that it's a collar that sits on top of the existing raised bed. In fact, it's exactly the same as the bed, with a few minor adjustments. To make two, 2' x 6' frames I needed:

• two big old thick sliding glass doors
  
• four 2" x 12" x 8'
• two 2" x 6" x 8'
• two 4" x 4" x 8'
• 3" wood screws
• six 6' long 1" diameter sections of foamy pipe insulation
  

Basically, cut the 12" plywood to a 6' section and a 2' section. That's the sides of the base. Cut the 4x4 into four 12" sections and four 16" sections. These are the corners. Screw the 2' sections onto the 4x4s, one short one on one end and one long one on the other. Then screw the 6' sections of 12" onto the 4x4s, front and back, forming the frames. Cut the 6" boards into 6' and 2' sections. Screw the 6' sections onto the back side of the frames, where the 16" 4x4s stick up. This creates a slope that will allow rain to drain off the doors. Cut the remaining 2' long 6" boards on the diagonal, and screw the triangular pieces down on the sides. Then run around and staple the pipe insulation around the edges. This isn't so much to make it more airtight, as it is to protect the glass. I don't want to have to clean up a broken sliding door from my lettuces. The frames really don't need to be airtight. Which is good, because fine woodworking this was not...

The frames just sit on top of the existing beds. When it's cold out, say it's snowing or we have a cold, clear night, I can close them. The rest of the time they get propped open a bit with some removable sections of scrap 4x4. This keeps them from getting too hot and humid. Once the rain really starts up I'll open them completely every few days to water everything. To muck around inside them, pick things, weed, etc., I can prop them up against the siding of the garage and they seem pretty secure. The glass is really, really thick and heavy.

Hopefully they'll work out. Unfortunately, there's nowhere in the yard that gets really great full sun, so I hope the added shade from the lip of the frame doesn't hurt too much. It's a balancing act between providing space for the plants to grow tall, and shading them while they're younger. They have about 12" of headroom in the front and closer to 20" in the back. But one of the cool things about this is that conceivably these are just basically planter boxes, so in the future I could always put them in the yard as such, if say, there isn't enough light for them to work well where they are or if we move somewhere with a spot of full sun.

As for flaws, I overbuilt them a bit. They'll last a while but they take two people to move. And the glass is heavy, and I'd like an easier way to open them up fully. I may also paint the inside black, to harness more heat, or coat it with tinfoil to reflect some light into the darker corners.

So that's the situation. Will I have fresh Salad in February? We'll see how it works out.

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You Say Potato, I Say Ye Chick'n Of The Dirte

So the Potato Project is officially finished. In terms of rigorous scientific method it was a total disaster. Which is why all my evidence will be of the best kind: anecdotal.

I managed a harvest of about 18 lbs of Yukon Gold and Purple potatoes from two 1 lb. packs of starter potatoes. Not bad, but not great. I think I can do better next year.

Here, in short, is what I learned.

1. Potatoes are really, really easy to grow. Seriously. I neglected the hell out of them and they still grew just fine. Barely watered them all Summer. Never fertilized them once. Subjected them to daily psychological and emotional abuse. The soil was just a 2:1 mix of garden dirt and compost, without any lime added to soften it and no fertilizer. And yet they struggled through it. Lesson learned: Potatoes appear to be immune to psychological torture. And yeah, I probably should water them more next time. Maybe a dose of fertilizer wouldn't hurt either. But damn, potatoes sure are hardy critters.
2. Potatoes grow just fine in whatever you put them in. Just plant them near the bottom and mound away. In terms of yield, I didn't notice a difference between the boxes and the grain sack. The potatoes in the plastic tubs were larger, so I guess the tubs win. But those potatoes were planted a couple weeks before the rest, so they had a head start. Lesson learned: plant earlier. Around St Patty's.
   
3. The plastic tubs and the grain bag held up just fine and will be used again next year. The cardboard boxes though... Ok. They held up just fine, in that they more or less kept all the soil in and supported the plants as they grew. But the bottom did eventually rot out around them, so moving them once planted: not an option. Also my Weedwhacker did a number on the cardboard, so watch out for that one. But it was nice to chuck the boxes and spent plants into the compost bin all at once at harvest time. No fuss, no muss. Lesson learned: the plastic bins are probably the best, but cardboard worked out just fine. I seem to be racking up old tires right now, so I may try the tire stacking method next year too.
4. I recommend harvesting on a sunny day if possible. It's much more pleasant to dig around in the dirt and the potatoes are easier to spot.. Also, they face less chance of molding or anything else untoward.
5. Growing potatoes in boxes is a great way to plant them without having to dig up your landlord's lawn or put in a bed. I'd say if you put a good tarp down underneath (to help with cleanup) you could do this pretty much anywhere.
   

So the harvest is now in a big paper bag, sitting in the house in a corner. You need to keep the newly harvested potatoes in the dark and reasonably warm for a couple weeks in order to "cure" them. The skin thickens up and dries out a bit, giving them a much longer shelf life.

Not that they'll last that long. They're delicious.

Died back and ready to harvest!

Rotten right down to the core.

Digging Yukons is fun. They're like buried gold bars. Arrr, treasure!

Sometimes I can take OK photographs.

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Garden Update: Late Summer

Right, it smells like Fall outside now, so it's time for a garden update. It's apparent that my beds need more compost and maybe some moss or something, the 2:1 ratio of Veg soil and Cedar Grove compost tends to drain really quickly and doesn't hold moisture as well as I'd like. A project for the Spring.

After a wet and cold June some of the plants did better than others. The clear winner is the Red Russian Kale. It grows like crazy, needs almost no maintenance, fertilizer, watering, or care. Nothing really seems to eat it. Interestingly, it came in a seed packet of Mesclun Greens that I'd planted for salads. Everything else did fairly poorly, but the Kale plants are several feet tall. They actually serve a cool purpose though, the wide fronds shaded my more fragile lettuces from the worst of the Summer sun. But they also shaded the chiles I'd planted, stunting them. Oh well. Looks like I'm going to be buying chiles in the future. The zucchinis did pretty well this year. Produced a few good sized ones, but not so many that we were totally sick of them. Just flowered again too, may get another one or two zukes out them still. The Yard Long Beans were a complete disaster. Should have planted them much, much earlier. But the ones I'd planted in June got sad and diseased in the wet and cold, while the ones I started inside to replace them didn't take off until the heat of August, by which time it's just too late. I need a grow light inside to do starts, we just don't get enough light in the early Spring. The Yard Longs need more heat, and full sun. Maybe I'll plant them in the middle of the front lawn next year. Because they are delicious.


We'd planted Ruby Spinach in-between some Sugar Snap Peas with the idea that they'd be companion plants; the extra nitrogen from the peas would help the spinach out. Boy did it ever. By the time they bolted, the spinach was taller than Meredith. We finally pulled the stalks, stripped the leaves, quickly blanched, packaged, and froze the remaining spinach; netting us several pounds of frozen spinach. Unfortunately, shaded somewhat by the huge spinach, the peas developed a powdery mildew. Spray took care of it, but the peas went through the wringer. Only got a few more pods off the plants before they were done for the season. They'd done well though, I snacked on them every time I went out to check on the garden. The leeks have reached full size and are starting to send up flowers. They didn't get as big as I wanted, but my green onions struggled too. I think the soil mix, either pH or nutrients, is not quite right for alliums. Have to look into that one.


The tomatoes have grown like crazy! This is my first time trying the English hot-house trellis method and I have to say: hell yeah. They're up over the garage roof. It's actually a cool setup here: the garage shades them a bit in the morning, yes, but makes up for it with reflected heat and light from the afternoon sun. Once they hit the eaves I just let them hang freely back down.

You can also track the season on the vines. At the very bottom are the first tomatoes that set back in May. Most of them have ripened and met their tasty fates. Then there's a spot with a lot of dropped buds: June, where everything refused to set. Then further up you start seeing tomatoes again until you hit August's growth, with many many set tomatoes hanging from the very top.

As usual, Seattle grew the hell out of the Cherry Tomatoes. We planted Sungold this year and they are rocking. Easily 100 tomatoes. The Prudence heirloom did very poorly in June, but has more than made up for it during August's heat. The Black Prince set some very early tomatoes, many of which were, ahem, kind of lewd.

The San Marzano Romas started off slow, but have now set a good thirty or so tomatoes. Unfortunately they don't all want to ripen at once, meaning no giant harvest and sauce canning day.

Otherwise the herbs have done well. Parsley is rocking right now, and the mint held up. The dill though. What the heck.

It shot up these long stalks, with almost no leafy fronds. So much for cooking and pickling with it. So I've let it go to seed, at least I can harvest dill seed. I planted it in the same pot as some pickling cucumbers, and they did fairly well this year. I probably harvested a good 10 pounds of pickling cukes from them, ending up with around 8 quarts or so of pickles. Made a 4 quart batch of my grandmother's Bread and Butter pickle recipe, which should be enough to grace our sandwiches until next year.

The hops have been a disaster this year. They got a start in May, but then the cold June stunted their new growth. The bines that were already up never really grew like crazy. Interestingly, the only one not to have sprouted by June, the Chinooks, grew like crazy afterwards, had the best growth, the most and biggest cones.


But the basic story is that they are rootbound. The pots are too small, the nutrients just aren't there, and they need to be watered constantly. Consequently they had stunted growth, insect problems, and bine die-offs. I've got to come up with something better for next year. Maybe half-wine barrels or 30 gallon pots. Of course, planting them in the ground would be nice too. I may get enough hops for a fresh hop beer this year, but it will probably be an English Bitter and not an American IPA, if you catch my drift.

Moving Forward

So we head into Fall and Winter. The daylight is shrinking, rain is moving in, and our Miami cat is constantly seeking out warm laps and scowling at us like it's our fault the world is so cold. In the garden we're eating the leeks, green onions, and last of the zukes. The potatoes have been harvested and are curing, though I'm already using the tiny ones as new potatoes. The Kale will outlive us all. The tomatoes are still producing, we'll have loads through September and probably well into October. I've planted more weird lettuces, and about two dozen more overwintering leek starts, so we'll have leeks all Spring (by the time the storage onions are gone). Planted some Brussells Sprouts as a sort of challenge to Meredith: make them edible! We've signed up for a Winter Plant Start CSA with Cascadian Edible Landscapes. Pickup is Friday, I'll let you know what we get. With the tomatoes still in and one bed full of leeks I'm not sure where I'll put things...

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Release the swarm!

It's been a slow year for my hops. The gray, rainy June stunted the vigorous growth of May, but they seem to be back on track. I also added some more fertilizer, in the form of an organic fertilizer tea, which has helped. I need a bigger pot for my Cascades, they're pretty rootbound. But the Chinooks and Centennials are doing well and the new Tettenanger rhizome is settling in nicely. But as usually, an annual problem has finally arisen.

Hops are fairly easygoing plants overall, but they suffer from a few problems. First among them is everyone's favorite little green bastard: the aphid. Aphids love hops. Left unchecked they will blanket the newly grown leaves and the apical bud, they'll infest the hop cones, and they'll seriously stunt the bine's growth. If you see aphids you really need to get on top of it, ASAP.

Depending on how large the hops have grown you can do several things to fight aphids. Commercially, industrial pesticides are used. And to be fair, there are times when they are really infested that I think "Man, a little Diazinon would show 'em what for!" Which is one of the reasons that organic hops are so hard to come by. It's just so much easier to spray insecticides. But there's a geographical component to the problem too. Three-quarters of the country's hops are grown in the Yakima Valley, and the fields usually touch each other. Organic certification would be difficult for any one field, as the spray from his neighbors would reach his fields. Plus the social flak of "Hey neighbor, I now have to spray my fields more because your organic field is just a nursery for pests and diseases!" Add the economics of it all and you can see why organic hops are somewhat rare. Which is partly why they have been exempted from the Organic certification for beer. Well that, and I imagine that AB-InBev's 'Stone Mill' Organic Pale Ale would use all or most of the country's current production.

But if you are growing at home you can be as organic as you want to be. Not being stuck with an economy of scale, you can use a few more labor intensive methods.
If the plants are small you can just use your hands, crushing and flicking the pests off as best you can. You can use a water jet to blast them off. You can use an insecticidal soap, which works but I've found it's not usually great for the leaves. Or you can set your own biological control in motion: release the swarm!

Ladybugs. Lots of ladybugs. 1500 ladybugs. Picked them up at Swanson's Nursery for about $12. That'll put a dent in the aphid population.

One of the problems with ladybugs though is keeping them around. It doesn't do you any good if they decide the grass is greener in your neighbor's yard and just take off. So you need to encourage them to see the many perks, amenities, tax-breaks, etc. that your yard has to offer.

I started by sticking them in the fridge once I got home. A couple hours cold makes them slow and hungry. Then I released them as it got dark, since they tend to only fly during the daytime. Since it was right around the Solstice, that was about 10:30 at night. I also prepped their new home. First I sprayed the bottoms of the hop plants with the hose a bit. This gives the ladybugs water to drink and also makes them "stick"; they don't tend to fly when they're wet. It helped that it was gray and rainy for a few days too, they explore more on bright, sunny days. I sprinkled them around the base of the hop plants, and a few more around the garden. Then went to bed.
Then next morning they were all over the yard, and especially all over the bines, happily munching away on the aphids. But it's not really about how many they eat the first time around. Yes, the adults will eat lots of aphids but mostly they're thinking about other adult things: are there mates and is this a good place to lay eggs? If there's enough food around, they ladybugs will start getting it on like a tree-full of monkeys on nitrous. And they did. You see, what you really want are the ladybug larvae, which look like little weird alligators . I've heard they can eat 50+ aphids each, a day. And once they pupate into adult ladybugs the next round begins.

They stuck around in noticeable amounts for a good week or so, and I still see a few around. Hopefully the rest laid lots of eggs before they took off to wherever it is ladybugs go.

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Project: Rain Barrel

So Saturday my friend Al arrived at my doorstep with one of the stranger birthday presents I've ever received, a 55 gallon plastic drum. "This guy was selling them on Craigslist for like $20, so I bought two!" It was from the back dock of some kind of bakery and contained 'Maltitol', a sort of sugar-alcohol artificial sweetener. It was slightly sticky, and smelled of cupcakes.

Actually, as birthday presents go this one is pretty sweet. Part of our renewing out lease was an effort to cut down on our water bills. Get landlord to fix leaky things, put new guts in the toilet, etc.. A rain barrel was also on my mind. So seeing how it was Memorial Day weekend and we had nothing else going, Al and I hopped into the car and sped off to Home Depot.

Rain barrels are actually really easy to build. At its heart you need something to divert your rain gutters into the top, then something to filter leaves and bugs, then a spigot on the bottom. Finally, and most importantly, some kind of overflow setup (more on this later). The goal was to make it modular, so we could fix anything that went bad or was ill-thought-out. I wanted it to cause little or no damage to the existing gutter system, so I can put that back together when I eventually move. I also wanted the water to divert well away from my heating oil bunker, and still allow access to it. So we looked around the yard, looked around the garage, wandered around Home Depot for a while, and came up with this setup.


The gutter diverts (via some duct taped pipe fittings) to a hole on the top. In there is an atrium grate, with window screen rubber banded on to keep bugs out. The spigot is a threaded plastic electrical bulkhead, glued in with a bunch of Plumber's Goop glue. A garden faucet is screwed on that. The overflow is a 2" to 3" ABS coupler, glued in with more Plumber's Goop at a sloping angle. The overflow and main pipes were cut from an 8' section of 3" PVC that I used to protect my fishing rods during the move. The whole thing is propped off the ground by some sections of 4x4 that was left over from building the raised beds in the garden. All told, the barrel cost about $20. (Well, $40 if the barrel itself hadn't been a gift.) But how well does it work?

Do you know how many gallons of water pour off your roof every time it rains? A LOT. The guestimation formula is:

Roof Square Feet x 0.6 = Gallons of Water per Inch of Rain.

Based on City estimates, I'm going to say that rain gutter drains about 1/3 of my 1500 sq. ft. roof space, maybe 500 square feet. Which means that for every inch of rain 300 gallons fall on that part of the roof! Given that it rains about 37 inches annually in Seattle, that's 11,100 potentially useful gallons that otherwise go to the storm drain.

Here's where the overflow comes in. As we finished the project it began to drizzle. Soon we could hear a drip, drip, drip in the barrel. By morning, it was full. Completely full. 50 gallons. The overflow was draining nicely into the blackberries off on the side of the house. Guess this is why people put three or four barrels in series. But since it takes 1/6 of an inch of rain to fill the barrel, and it rains about 150 days a year here, I don't think I'll run out very often. My garden's not huge anyway, and I don't water the lawn in the Summer.

The BIG use I had planned for this was in cutting down on my brewing water use. My plate chiller uses a lot of water, usually 20 gallons or so to cool 5 gallons. Typically I either just drain this off, or use it to water plants if it's Summer. Today though, I used rain! And it worked pretty well, I got a good cooldown to 66. Perfect for ales! Unfortunately, of course I was brewing a lager... Best part though, I just poured the used water back into the barrel. This cut my total brewing water use down by at least half.

Of course, the City charges me about $3.80 for 100 cu. ft. of water (over 700 gallons) so in terms of savings...yeah I saved 11 cents. Wooo! But it's about Green building, and the DIY gratification I guess. My part of the city is under a major stormwater reclamation project right now, as each of those 11,000 gallons would otherwise drain into Shilshole Bay. And once I start watering the garden more often the gallons will start piling up.

Unfortunately the flow from the barrel is pretty slow. I blame drag from the long hose I have attached to the barrel, I'll try a shorter one and see if that changes anything. No way I'll be spraying anything with water pressure from the barrel, but if I get a watering can and maybe a soaker hose I should be set.

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Garden Update: May

My how time flies. It's been almost a month since the last post. No real excuse. I cooked a few things that weren't really exceptional. Then Seattle Beer Week, ahem, intervened. We had a mushroom expedition that was a total bust. Haven't brewed anything due to a current surplus of homebrew (lagers finally coming home to roost). Honestly I haven't felt much like writing these last few weeks. But it's time to get writing again.

First up, I think I'm going to start doing a monthly garden recap. It'll help me keep a record of what grew where and when, what worked and didn't, etc.. That way next year I can plan accordingly.

Above you can see one of the real success stories so far. Purple Mustard Greens. We planted four and they're growing like crazy. Seems every day I come out and it's shot out another two foot leaf. Also, after one minor caterpillar attack in the first week it seems that nothing is interested in eating them. Does a good job of shading the lettuces too. Definitely planting them again.

The lettuces we planted from starts are doing well. We've been pulling one or two a week for salads. My mesclun mix that I started from seed is still very small, and very sad. Could be the weather, they grew fine when we had a few days of sun but they seem to hate the cold and wet. But I think something is up with the pot they're in, though I'm not sure what. Next time I'll start them indoors.

The radish leaves keep getting bigger and bigger, but don't seem to be setting radishes yet. They should be ready to go any day now, but aren't.

Green Onions: Slow. Very slow. I think the soil dries out a bit too quickly on top of the row. I planted another round in front of them, down at the base of the row. We'll see how they do.

The Yard Long Beans have sprouted. Five for five. W00t.

The Potato Project is going along swimmingly, though it makes the yard look a bit rednecky. I may have planted too many seed potatoes in the grain sack, but it does seem to be draining well. The cardboard boxes are holding up well enough, but we moved them to this spot in the yard so they 1) get maximum sun, 2) are near the mound of leftover dirt, and 3) won't need to be moved again until harvest. The tall thin box shades the leaves pretty heavily. We'll see if the increased mounding pays off in the end.

The tomatoes are doing well. However, my penny-conscious cloche is a bit flimsy in the impressive wind and rain we've had lately. Next year I'll rig some PVC pipes. Also: these went in when the first starts showed up at the farmer's market. Now, though, the starts in the market are three feet tall, with proto-tomatoes already growing. I'm jealous of dry, warm, sunny Eastern Washington greenhouses. Maybe I should wait a couple more weeks next year? Or will the increased root growth from early planting pay off in the end? We'll see.


The Ruby Spinach is doing very well and we've started chowing down on it. We made a round of Swimming Rama with the Ruby Spinach and Purple Mustard Greens last night that was fantastic.

The shallots and leeks are plodding along. Sweet Peas are climbing and have started flowering. They need more sun though, and the weather isn't cooperating.

The Bok Choi and early planting of Mizuna were disasters. Pulled them and replanted new things. Too cold? Not enough sun yet? Replanted mizuna seems to be doing well so far.

Seeded this month: basil, sage, radishes, pickling cucumbers, more mizuna, more Hakurei turnips, lettuces, thyme, more green onions, yard long beans.

Hops. The hops need more sun, but are doing ok given that it's still only May. The Chinooks had been lagging but seem to finally be going now. Going to trellis them this weekend. The Willamettes are toast. Re-potted, gave them a month, no sign of anything. Somehow died over the winter, too damp perhaps? Going to dump them and use the pot for cucumbers. Fortunately the new Tettenanger rhizome has already broken the surface. Aphids and caterpillars attacked the Centennials. Water and soap to treat. Hateful little green bastards... Brown tips on the leaves of the Centennials and Cascades, either water issues (the pots are too small) or iron deficiency. Time to fertilize them again probably.

Final note: poor bed planning. I wanted to put the beds flush against the fence and the garage, but there's a buried concrete foundation that made that impossible. Now grass has grown quite high behind the beds. I'll have to come up with some way to control that, even if it's just me and a pair of scissors. If the grass goes to seed I'll never get it out of the beds...

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Chive Blossom Vinegar

My chive plant overwintered just fine and is already flowering. So just for kicks I picked a handfull of the flowers and stuck them in a bottle with some white wine vinegar. A week later it looked like this:


What a fantastic neon-pink color. As for taste, it's garlicky vinegar. Goes great in salad dressing.

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The Potato Project

How about another garden post? This year we're growing potatoes for the first time, but I'm trying something a little different. One of the problems of growing potatoes in a bed is that potatoes are subject to a wide and interesting variety of diseases and over time your bed will probably develop blight. So you'll need to rotate beds at least every three years. On top of that, potatoes need to be mounded, so they also take up a lot of space.

Or do they? One solution is to grow them in containers. As the plant grows, you 'mound' by raising the dirt level in the container. Every time it is about 4" above the soil you add 3" of new dirt. The plant responds by growing taller, and will start to shoot off future potatoes from the newly buried stalk. When the season is over you can just dump the whole container out on a tarp and sift through it to find the taters. If it looks like there's a disease afflicting one container, it is isolated to that container's soil, which can be disposed of.

I've seen people grow them in a variety of things. Garbage cans, old oil drums, packed earth columns. A stack of old tires is interesting: as the plant grows you just stack on tires and fill with more dirt. So I decided to try a few different things, with the goal of finding something cheap or recycled that works well. At the end of the season I'll weigh the potatoes harvested from each container and compare.

First up are two big storage lugs that I got at Home Depot for about $4 each. They're 18 gallon capacity. I took a 3/8" spade bit and drilled drainage holes all around the bottom. Then put in about 3" of moisture control potting soil. (Potatoes do not like wet toes.) Then put four little Certified Seed Potatoes in and covered them with about an inch of soil. Pros: cheap, easy, big, reusable. Cons: cost $ (though not much), not recycled, possible chemical transfer from cheap-ass plastic?

Second, a cardboard box. I know this seems crazy, and it might be, but hear me out. It only has to last for one season, and if you've ever left cardboard outside for a while it holds up better than you'd think. And at the end of the season I can just toss the whole thing in the compost bin. This one was a leftover box from a 6-gallon carboy, and my only concern is that it may be too small. Poked some holes in the bottom and planted as above, but only three seed potatoes. Pros: free, recycled, compostable. Cons: chance it will completely fall apart on me. But I can always use duct-tape to reinforce it.

Third, a malt bag. A leftover Maris Otter bag to be precise. Took the plastic inside-liner out and rolled the bag down the sides. The plastic mesh should drain well. Filled and planted as above, again only three potatoes. My favorite part: as the plants grow I can just unroll the bag up as it fills, meaning the plants will probably get more light in the early stages (not being shaded by the walls of the container). Pros: free, possibly reusable(?), recyclable, quite large, and the whole-roll-up-thing is neat. Cons: a bit floppy, I'll have to lean it against something as it gets more full.

So now we let them grow. I'm planting "All Blue" purple potatoes and Yukon Golds. All the purples are in, and soon as I get another malt bag and reasonably same size cardboard box I'll get the last of the Yukons in. I'm hoping to end up with 30-40 lbs of each by the end of the season. We'll see.

UPDATE 9/17/10

The Final Results

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Let the turnip feast commence!

This Hakurei Turnip was the first non-herb thing harvested from our garden this year!
It was crowding out the others, who are all still a few more days from harvest. It's cute!

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Tomatoes

This Sunday the first tomato starts appeared in the Farmer's Market. We had a 2x6 bed all ready to go, but I was concerned about the cold and wet stunting them. We're past any frost danger, but it's still going to be cold and rainy for another month or so. A brilliant solution was arrived at by my lovely wife: use the plastic tarp I'd bought to cover the mound of dirt as a penny-conscious cloche for the bed.

So there it is. Stapled to the back of the bed, suspended over some of last year's tomato cages, and held down in front with some radish pots. It's easily 5-10 degrees warmer in there, and with the ends open it gets good airflow to keep the humidity down. The tarp and cages were technically being reused, and all in all this cost about $1.50. Hopefully, the added warmth of the cloche will let us start harvesting tomatoes in mid-late June, easily a month earlier than normal.

Unfortunately rain is pooling in areas on the top. I go out and knock the puddles off once a day or so, but if this becomes bad I'll go get some PVC and make a more rain-friendly frame.

There are four tomato plants. The first is Sun Gold, cherry tomatoes grow amazingly well in Seattle. Second, Black Prince - a black tomato variety from Siberia, well suited to Northern climates. Third is a variety called Prudence, which I believe is a big ol' beefsteaky heirloom type. Finally, San Marzano Romas, so we can sauce and can some for Fall and Winter. All of these are indeterminate varieties so I'll have to rig a trellising system when they get a bit bigger. I'm done with tomato cages.

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Garden 2010

Check out that gorgeous day in Seattle! The new raised beds are in and the garden is prepped for 2010. We moved right around the beginning of June last year, which sortof cut the preparation/harvest cycle in half. As a result, we grew a few things in pots but it wasn't really on a big scale.

So this year around we decided to do it right. I built three 6' x 2' raised beds in the back, up against the garage and the back fence. The fences in the yard block the sun during part of the day, but the house also blocks afternoon sun in the back, so I decided that this was probably the ideal place. Even this early in Spring it gets sun from about Noon to maybe 5:30, though it's getting dark about 7:30 right now. Oh sweet June ... dark at 10:00. As the sun gets higher in the sky it will get even more sun too. So I think this will work.

Each bed is made from two 8' x 2"x 12"s, and about half a 4' x 4'. Not pressure treated because of poison and not cedar because I'm not made of airports. So it won't last more than a couple years, but hey, we rent. I had trouble organizing the topsoil to fill it. I only needed about a cubic yard, but I also knew I'd need compost. So I settled on a yard of premium garden topsoil from Sky Nursury and a half-yard of compost. Had a local 'man with a van' deliver the small mountain, which cost as much as the soil did. Ugh. But I don't know anyone in town with a pickup, and the hassle of U-haul was worth the $10 savings to have this guy pick it up for me. And he was quick and relatively cheap. Anyhow, last weekend we got to work with shovels and now the beds are in.

All told the garden now has:

• Snap Peas
• Ruby Spinach
• Various Lettuces
• Purple Mustard Greens
• Green Onions
• Shallots
• Leeks
• White (Hakurei) Turnips
• Mizuna
• Thyme, Parsley, Chives, Rosemary

I'm gearing up to plant some Yukon Gold potatoes soon as my seed potatoes start to sprout. This will be its own weird post. Some radishes will go in one of the beds to kill the time until tomatoes are in season. Yard Long beans will go up against the trellising in the middle bed next month.

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Brewday: Fresh Hop Beer!

So the weatherman was predicting the end of Summer here, and we had one last glorious weekend ahead. My Centennials were doing pretty well, as you can see above. My Cascades and Willamettes grew to about 7 feet tall and then just stopped. No weird diseases or pests. Just stopped. But they were planted near the end of June so I can't really blame them. My Chinooks have flowered but the cones weren't ripe yet. I decided to go ahead and make the Fresh Hop beer with just the Centennials. If it began to get cold and rainy while I waited for the Chinooks to come around I might lose the whole lot to mildews and diseases. The first year is about building root structure anyway. Can't wait for next year!

So I climbed the ladder, unhooked the C-clamp that the rope was tied to on the roof, and we harvested what we could. I'd had aphid problems on the Centennials and Cascades. Sprayed with insecticidal soap three times throughout the season. But I think what really helped was a wasp colony that found the vines and started eating the aphids. Still, freaked me out when I had to climb up there...

We managed to harvest a mighty... two ounces. Yep. Woo hoo. With the 1/4 ounce I'd already harvested and dried, that was it. I'd planned on using six ounces of fresh hops in this recipe, so I faced the choice of: use what you have and see what happens, or cut with Cascade and make something drinkable but inauthentic. Decided, screw it. Use only the 2 oz and see what happens. The bitterness of fresh hops can be difficult to dial in, so I did use an ounce of Newport to get the IBUs spot on. Anyway, the reason you use fresh hops is their superior aroma and flavor anyway, not bitterness.

Fresh Hop Pale Ale
All Grain. 5.25 gallons
Est. O.G. 1.054
Act. O.G. 1.061 (over boiled, oops. Diluted later with a gallon distilled water.)
Est F.G. 1.012
Est ABV 5.2%
IBU = somewhere between 40 and 45

9.5 lbs Pale Ale Malt
8 oz Crystal 80
4 oz Cara-Pils

Mash at 151 for 75 minutes. Knockout at 168. Collect 7.5 gallons.
90 minute boil
1 oz Newport (11.1% AA) at 60 minutes.
1 oz Fresh Centennial at 15. I would have preferred 3 oz.
1 oz Fresh Centennial at 0. I would have preferred 3 oz.
1/4 oz Centennial (dry hop)
Whirlfloc at 15.

Used Wyeast London III. You could use American Ale and it would be fine. I just needed a starter for my upcoming Pumpkin Ale.

Oh yeah, water modifications. Into the mash: 1 T pH 5.2 stabilizer, 2 t gypsum, 1/4 t kosher salt, 1 t Epsom salts.

UPDATE 11/19/09

The beer has turned out well. It's pleasantly hoppy actually, despite only 2 oz of fresh hops. It seems to have picked up a floral, perfumey hopiness more than anything, which is really, really weird considering it was Centennial hops. There's a bit of grassiness too, which I attribute to dry hopping with the 1/4 oz dry whole Centennial. Won't be doing that next year. Needs a bit more body. I'll mash at 154 next year.

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BLT From Scratch Challenge

So a while back Michael Ruhlman issued a challenge on his blog: make a BLT.

From scratch.

Make the bread. Make the bacon. Make the mayo. Grow the tomato. Grow the lettuce. Of course, you have to draw the line somewhere. So while you'd get bonus points for raising the pig or growing the wheat, it wasn't required. Still, I did my best to make as many of the ingredients myself as I could. Here's my entry.


And here's what went into it.

Step one: put some Tom Waits on the stereo. I'm not sure why, but it's BLT music.

First, the mayonnaise. God I hate making mayo. It's not that difficult, it's just that if you screw it up it's back to square one. And it's murder on the wrist if you use a whisk. Which I did at first. It's old skool, you know?

Speaking of old skool, interesting fact. Mayonnaise is said to have originated in Port Mahon, on the isle of Minorca, off Spain in the Med. The island bounced back and forth between the British, Spanish and French during the colonial and Napoleonic wars. In 1756 the French fleet captured the island from the British without losing a man (the unfortunate British Admiral was later tried and shot for losing the port.) The French admiral was so ecstatic that he did the customary thing and ordered his chef to create a dish commemorating the victory, which he then popularized throughout France. Who doesn't like talking about the dish you ordered to celebrate your glorious victory? So we got mayonnaise from "Mahon". Oh the things I learned from reading all of the Master and Commander books. Anyhow, when I got tired I moved everything into my mini-prep cuisinart. Which promptly broke the emulsion. ARGH. Back to square one. The key is patience, a bit of luck, and an electric hand mixer. So once I dug that out, I began again.

Ok, for real this time. Mayo begins with an egg yolk. Mine came from my parent's chickens. Those lucky fowl live in the nicest coop in the NW. It has stained glass windows. No seriously. (My mom is a stained glass artist). So I had some eggs from their chickens, and cupped a yolk into a bowl. In went 1/2 t salt, 1/2 t mustard, a pinch of cayenne, a pinch of sugar. Whisked up, then in went about half of a mix of 2 t lemon juice, 1 T white wine vinegar. Whisk. Drip in, drop by drop, a mix of 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil and 3/4 cup vegetable oil until it gets kinda creamy looking. (The olive oil was too strongly flavored to use on its own.) Then slowly add in the rest of the oil. Add the rest of the lemon/vinegar when half the oil is in. Then continue whisking and adding oil until it's all in. Then add teaspoons of hot water until it's a good consistency. There you go.

Next up: the garden ingredients. It's been a rough year for my tomatoes here. I had them in too small a pot, and when it got really hot this summer, they got blossom end rot and I lost almost the whole crop of tomatoes. Fortunately, they recovered after I transplanted them to a bigger pot. Namely some totally grassless parts of my back lawn. Even still, they had to re-flower and re-fruit and are still mostly green. This set my BLT waaaaaaay back. Fortunately, Ruhlman's own tomatoes were still green nearing the deadline, so he extended it. Unfortunately it was the 15th, and even on the 15th none of mine were really properly ripe yet. Got one today that was ripe enough to use though. Whew. If it starts getting colder I may have a feast of fried green tomatoes in my future.

The next problem was a biggie. I didn't plant lettuce this year. Or ever. I just don't bother. We use about one head a week for salads and whatnot and I just never felt the desire sit and watch slugs decimate my lettuces before I finally felt like having a salad. I'm having enough trouble with cabbage worms and my bok choi. And yes, in a fit of desperation I did briefly consider using bok choi instead of lettuce for this. So I had to find a substitute that was not my going out and buying lettuce (even though we buy awesome lettuce from the Ballard farmer's market.) Well, interestingly my tomatoes came to my salvation. When I dug up the lawn to replant them, I disturbed (and watered and fertilized) the soil. Poof. Within a week I had dandelions popping up all over the place. It's been a war of attrition against them, but I've been weeding them out before they flower. And before they flower, they are soft and tasty! And chemical free because I don't put anything on the lawn. Even water... Which is probably why there are so many dandelions.

The next problem was bacon. I have plenty of my pancetta left over. But I also have guanciale... So I cut a few slices off it. Oh yeah, come to papa. I didn't raise the pig but it's from Sea Breeze farms over on Vashon Island, so it was a fat, happy little freeranging porker, as you can see in the ridiculous fat layer.

Finally the problem of bread. We've been trying to rehabilitate our sourdough starter but it's just being a right bitch at the moment. So yesterday's dough-soup came out as this morning's... dough soup. There's something wrong with either the starter, or our kitchenaid doughhook just sucks, or probably both. The glutens are not glutening like they should, and it's not rising as well as it should. But I managed to get the dough into some kind of shape, and flop it into a searing hot dutch oven. 25 minutes at 450 with the lid on, 25 with it off. Ended up with a sort of weird hybrid sour focaccia. It's actually not bad, but I was going to dice it and make panzanella (unlike our big tomatoes, the cherries have done excellently this season). Then I got the idea of slicing it like focaccia for this sandwich. Bingo.

Putting it all together.

Sauteed three slices of guanciale till brown and crispy. Then toasted the cut side of the bread in the rendered fat until golden brown and delicious. The last slice of guanciale went on the heat just until the white fat turned clear, then it went on the bottom slice of bread to sortof melt into it. (I was going for two different textures on it, guanciale is great crunchy but it can also just be eaten raw. Om nom nom.) Then dandelions, guanciale, tomato slices, slather of mayo on the top. Boom. BLT.

How was it? Amazing. Really, really good. Structurally it was a complete disaster, totally unsound, and made a huge mess. The bread was too crusty and dense and it just squished the tomato and mayo all over. But in the words of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, "it's what I've got to work with!" The tomato was delicious, the dandelions still tender and mellow, mayo wasn't too shabby and the guanciale is just out of this world. So I stood there smiling, eating it over the sink. Fun project. Now we just need to get the bread to shape up...

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