beautiful, beautiful spring!

For those of you up here in the Hudson Valley you, like I, are probably luxuriating in the most unbelievably beautiful spring these parts have seen in years and years. Thanks to record temperatures everything is blooming all at once, some things months early - like lilacs. What I've always termed "mud season" has turned into the most wonderful season I could have imagined. Those of us who are blessed with the most magical autumn aren't usually blessed with so magical a spring.

I like to think that it's the world's way of apologizing for last summer (and for the most snowless winter I have ever lived through around here). But I'm also painfully aware of how much danger those beautiful blossoms are in. We're still almost a month from the average last frost and a hard frost could kill off our apples, our apricots, our cherries - all of it! But given the choice between worrying and luxuriating in the beauty, I easily choose the latter option. It's not hard. it is so incredibly beautiful outside.

Unfortunately, my cold frame is buried in the barn and i have not been able to get it out. I also discovered that the hinges broke off of the frame, so I'll have to reattach the windows to the frame, whenever I can lift off the residue of winter and take the cold frame out of its winter hiding.

This weekend marks 3 weeks before the last frost, so I will be planting a ton of things Indoors and outdoors. I'll let you know what's on the list for planting soon! For now, enjoy the spring!

Garden Journal - 5 weeks Before Last Frost

I planted my ground cherries, finally. And I separated my seeds into separate envelopes, as is my habit, organized by planting times. That way I can reach for my packet that says "3 weeks before last frost - indoors" and plant all of those seeds in one go next week without consulting which seeds I need to plant or where I need to plant them, or searching through all my other seeds for them.

In other news, I thought my rosemary was a lost cause, but it germinated! yay!

Things seem to be doing well. Some damping off of daisies and calendula, but the repotting has helped with the mold, which seemingly cleared up. Most everything has a second pair of leaves on it.

Time to get out the cold frame and start hardening off some of my lovely little seedlings.

Repotting, fighting fungus

I repotted all of my nightshades yesterday into plastic pots, composting the newspaper ones into my weeds-only compost. The mold was clearly growing in the newspaper itself, and only then spreading to the soil. Hopefully, the move will help with the fungus problem. I haven't found my book on organic disease-curing in the garden (probably lost in the move, alas!)

Please feel free to ask questions - I'm always happy to answer. Leave a comment and I'll let you know all about it if I can!


More later (about kombucha). For now, endless amounts of data entry.

Spring Weekends are here!

It's spring. I will be planting peppers, ground cherries, and tomato seeds tomorrow in the glorious sun, putting them on my new heat pad, and praying (peppers will be small and late this year, but oh well). Then I'll be working my newly-tilled garden over with a broad fork, probably bringing some soil over and forking it into the beds, adding some wood ash (in lieu of lime) and maybe even going to pick up finished manure somewhere or leaf mold, if I can find it. Then planting peas and setting up pea trellising. Definitely going for a long walk at my old house and picking a ton of ramps.

Hopefully I'll be pickling beets and root veggies, and maybe even ramps as well.

And, when it all comes down to it, I need to to get all my veggies out of storage and have a Thanksgiving-in-May party to finish the root veggies - though i think I'll plant some parsnips and carrots just for the hell of it - they're biennials and will therefore flower this year. Umbel-shaped flowers are particularly good at attracting beneficial insects into the garden, though the juice from parsnip stalks is very caustic - so be careful not to get it on your skin! I'm sure the parsnips and carrots are both hybrids and therefore I won't be able to save seed (the carrots aren't worth saving seed from anyway - they've gotten horribly woody), but it'll still be a fun little science experiment.

Now it's just a matter of getting out my farming shirts (long-sleeve button-downs) and my big garden hat, and getting to work!

Planning, thinking, mulling

Only a minority of my peppers and tomatoes have germinated. I'm worried. I also had my first garden worry dream last night. I dreamed that I was at a local farm and they had large okra and full-grown peas and all sorts of delicious veggies already in the fields, not to mention bearing fruit. I sat up in a tree, oggling the lush, spring fields below me thinking, "How could I get so far behind! My okra isn't even started yet!" Then I woke up. My garden hasn't even been tilled yet!

Mulling, continued

When I start thinking about jobs and career paths I inevitably bump into my freelancing ideas and small business concepts, which, while scarier and much less fail-safe than the jobs I was mulling over yesterday, are actually better suited for my long-term hopes and dreams. The trade-off between short-term security and long-term gain, when it comes with what feels like a significant chunk of risk in the immediate future (my savings, my financial security and stability, my resume) is a lot to wrap my mind around.

So I need to keep mulling. This time, about the summer, and a half-baked plan I keep toying with to work fewer hours this summer in order to focus on starting a home business either making salves and such things or writing more (freelance, etc.)

If I cut back on my hours and work 35 hours a week, I will have to make $50/week (after taxes) to make it worth taking the cut. If I actually committed to starting a small business, that $50 would actually be reflective of many, many more hours than 5 per week. The question is whether the extra 5 hours of personal time would be a big enough time investment in my freelance writing/small business to make the cut pay off.

Let's say, for example, that I take fridays off and work 8:15 - 5:00 (35 hours) Monday-Thursdays. Monday-Thursdays would basically function like normal weekdays, the extra :45 morning minutes wouldn't change much in how I function. Friday, however, would turn into a full, 8-hour (9-5) work day for me, in which I could focus on developing whatever business plans, etc I'd like.

That seems like a good trade, but I think it'll only make sense to make that tradeoff if I start working on the business ideas now so that making money starts happening when I start taking time off from work (Let's say at the beginning of June), rather than that time-off serving as more planning time. Which means that in the next few months I need to see what it feels like to work 2 jobs at once, if that's what I want to do (plus having a garden!)

Now, the question is, do I focus on selling the book and on freelance writing or do I keep the book going in my spare time as my hobby and focus on salves, teas, and products of that nature? Or do I sit tight, keep on working, and take some horticulture classes while waiting to apply for a job that's really in the field I like?


Yesterday's mulling and today's is a conflict that is, inherently, about whether I want to organize my life around career-building or around homemaking. Yesterday's plan is a career-path that would make me happy. Today's plan is a make-money-and-homemake-path that would make me happy. I'm not sure how well I could do yesterday's plan and then switch to this one if and when I decide to have kids and settle down - starting a new and successful business while starting a family sounds about as easy as becoming superwoman (and would require something of the sort). However, an established home business based in the rural lifestyle I love is something that could grow with me. Not contributing to a household income and not continuing to maintain self-sufficiency isn't an option.

I go back and forth. A lot. There is something extremely appealing about just having a job in a field I feel strongly about and not worrying about clients, sudden flare-ups, or anything work-related after 5. I am not particularly ambitious, and I don't know how well that would translate to entrepreneurship. I seriously would love to be a part of a public garden. Furthermore, one of my fatal flaws is a lack of patience - which often translates into me working for a future that is by no means certain and for future desires at which I can only guess. And yet - isn't it foolish to not try and guess and work towards that guess? And, besides that, few things are more appealing to me than being able to define where and how I live. The idea of being able to make it on my own with my own business, and with my own ideas of success is absolutely thrilling.

I think, when it comes down to it, I want a business partner and a part-time job at a public garden.

Calendula Germinated

Calendula has germinated. Still no sign of life from the peppers and tomatoes. Still no need to be nervous, I know, but I'm nervous! I just can't help it! I've been keeping the house very warm though, so I should really stop worrying.

I'm very glad I've arranged to bring my seedlings to my sweetie's for tending this weekend (along with the cat - in exchange for leftover seeds for his garden and him probably fattening my cat up trying to get her to love him best - which will never happen). It's going to be a wicked weekend full of frosts and cold days. I'm not sure if I should bring the florescent light over, because I doubt he'll have a place to set it up. In a south-facing window the seedlings should be fine for a few days, so I'll probably leave it at home.

I'll have to plant my ground cherries when I get back from the weekend away. As well as fertilize my lemon tree and think long and hard about repotting it (oy!)

In other news, I have been drinking home-made kombucha for over a week now! When I get home from the weekend away, round 2 should be nearing completion. I made this batch with jasmine tea and sugar and it is divine. Next batch is early grey and honey - we'll see how it goes. I've been diluting it with water, which is less than ideal, but I'm a bit lazy on the iced tea-making front, or juice-buying front, and it's still delicious. Also, I added it to my asian-style dressing and it was divine.

watching seeds germinate (true garden journal begins)

Turn on grow light when I wake up. water when I get home. keep stove stocked. turn off light at 8 or so. That's been my routine. I'm keeping the stove stocked (at a calm, warm, temperature with small brick-sized logs that have been lying around) to make sure the little seedlings germinate.

My lettuces broke soil yesterday, and the daisies are just starting to do it as well. Nothing else has germinated. I'm worried I kept the house too cold for the first few days - not really stoking up a fire. it was probably just under 60*, which I realize now was a mistake, but I was worried about my wood lasting - though I'm less worried now. I've been watering with water that's about 70* to keep the soil temperatures up. Germination temperatures for daisies are in the 60*s, so if they germinated, everything should be fine. There are more than 1 seed in each pot, so even if I get a 50* germination rate due to lowered temperatures, I should, in theory behind. Either way - it's too soon to worry. Nothing's been in soil for more than a week.

My landlord is going to water the seedlings for me, though I'm worried that it's going to be a cold weekend, so I'm going to try to send my tender nightshades to someone with heating for plant sitting, and put the other seedlings by the south window for the weekend for light and heat. Maybe I'll trade my extra seeds and pots to start them in for seedling-sitting.

I check everything in my Fedco catalogue for now - they have good master charts for germination (side bar also has seed starting charts for flowers and herbs).

Gardening is not farming and cold frames are not greenhouses

The seedlings are wet and well under their humming florescent light (which has insistently given me a headache and given my living room a bizarre glow for the past few days). I'll be starting ground cherries in a week and Okra, a spattering of herbs, and marigolds right around May Day (I started calendula and daisies already). I haven't decided if I'm going to start sunflowers in pots or try to keep the birds away and direct-seed them.

I am trying hard to figure out a way to stay home more. I have been away every other weekend for the past two months. Aside from what this does to my poor kitty, the result has been very destabilizing to my attempt to chart my desires and my future and get started. There's a certain amount of alone time with myself that I need before my brain starts clicking about certain things. Today I remembered thing I haven't though about in months and shocked myself by the conclusiveness of my decisions over the past year and where they have landed me. I think, all in all, I'm happy about the firm decisions I have made and less happy about the things I have floated through.

So I'm putting my foot down. My home, my garden, and my plans have been put on the back-burner as a result of a routine that has begun to resemble eat-clean-pack-drive-socialize-drive-repeat. It's a three hour drive to Jersey. I cannot, cannot, cannot do it twice a month. I am only leaving for weekends away from home once a month starting in April (I already have a trip planned for April to Jersey). So please, plan ahead with me, way ahead, if you want to see me away from my home. And keep in mind that it's summer, and upstate is beautiful and worth visiting. Friends and family from far away are more then eagerly invited, but it might include some help in the garden.


In other news,
Some suggestions on a theme:

Gardening is not farming and cold frames are not greenhouses. While its true that the lines blur at the edges, it is extremely hard to start seedlings in a coldframe during a typical early spring season and it is equally unwieldy to use standard farming procedures on a typical backyard garden. I learned this the hard way. For example, gardeners have enough room to start seeds in pots rather than trays so as to not bother switching from starting trays to small pots to larger pots, which farmers do to save on room (but not on labor - in fact, it'll take a tone of your time for no good reason if you do it this way).

Gardens really benefit from fencing and they're small enough for this to be possible, unlike farms (seriously).

Greenhouses and cold frames are not interchangeable. there is no heat source in a cold frame (unless you just got really fancy - though i bet you didn't) so beware the freeze and, more specifically, the optimal germination temperatures of the seedlings you will be starting. Also, Cold frames are much more prone to shading some of their contents. There is a reason cold frames are used for hardening off seedlings, rather than starting them. Unless you're willing to schlep all your plants indoors most nights and monitor the temperature and light in your cold frame extremely closely (I'd say every few hours), use the cold frame in the last, not the first, step of preparing seedlings for the garden.

No matter how much light your seedlings are getting, make sure it's enough. Full, day-long sun is key. seriously consider that it costs only $30 for a whole grow-light set up and way more than $30 to purchase all of your seedlings (and that's only for one year) if you mess up. Your window sill probably isn't enough, and please see the warning about cold frames above.

Your time, unlike a farmer's is not being compensated, and you are doing this for you - so be realistic about what you are willing to do. when you save money, you are almost always paying for it in your time - and this is a really important consideration, especially when it comes to how you might wiggle out of your best-made plans after 40 hours of work a week.

When starting 12 tomato plants, if 6 die, it's a catastrophe. When starting 120, it's to be expected. Losing that shaded-out row at the front of your cold frame that's pretending to be a greenhouse is probably not going to be worth it.


That being said, I'd love to hear if you prove me wrong.

How-to Start Seeds, build a sifter

This weekend is going to be full of gardening. I'm hoping to start seeds with my sweetie today after work in this fine, fine weather. If we have time I also hope to bring out the cold frame and maybe tap a black birch just to see if they're still flowing - black birches give the most divine sap for drinking straight (too much of a pain to boil down to syrup because the sugar ratio is pretty low). Since the season for tapping birch is slightly later than the maple's I'm hoping the sap is still flowing, though this sugaring season has been incredibly short and strange - we haven't even been getting nighttime frosts anymore where I am! And something that's making me giddy is that my animal kick is being totally fixed by my sweetie, who surprised me a few weeks ago by dropping that he will be working at an animal farm this summer! Yay!

Since you too need to start some seeds, here's what you'll be doing over the next few days:

Starting Seeds
Seed starting is an integral part of growing food. if you're going to do gardening the cheap way, you will not be buying seedlings at the nursery for $3 a pop. instead, you'll buy a $3 seed packet and get planting!

Materials
high quality top soil/potting soil/finished compost
a sifter (optional but helps - see below on building your own)
pots, trays, whatever you'll be planting into
water (a lot)
seeds
a seed-growing station (florescent light, surface to place seedlings on)
a bin/wheel barrow for soil
clothes you're going to get wet and dirty
something to mark what's what (Sharpie and masking tape works well)
a rag or something to wipe your hands on
any soil additives (like bone meal or blood meal) that you're using

Procedure
Dump as much soil as you will need (I always err on the side of caution and use extra soil) through your sifter and into a barrow/bin. working in small batches, pour soil over sifter, and shake the soil into the wheel barrow/bin, throwing large chunks that can't be sifted into a separate pile for use in the garden, compost, or with better-established seedlings. Sifting soil provides for the finest soil so your seedlings don't have to fight through rough and chunky soil to get established. Add any additives you're using at this point.

Wet the soil until it's very wet, but not muddy, and mix well. I do this all with my hands.

Next, fill your pots or trays to within a centimeter of the top. Fill all the pots at once, because you'll need to have somewhat cleaner hands for the next step. You want the soil to be packed in enough so it won't settle much more. When you're done, wipe your hands.

Get your seeds and plant them in the pots 2-3 seeds per pot (you can weed out the weakest ones later). Generally, seeds should be planted at a depth of twice their width. Some seeds, however, need light to germinate. Check what the catalogue or seed packet says, or consult a gardening book. Also make sure that your seeds don't require extra treatment like scarification prior to planting. If you're planting seeds that have a very poor germination rate, plant in flats with a lot of seeds and then replant the surviving seedlings into individual pots. In general, starting in trays and then transplanting to pots saves a lot of space if you're doing a large-scale garden.

Cover the seeds with soil and label the pots with plant, variety name, and date started, along with any other relevant details. I'll be keeping a journal (on this blog) about varieties, how they grow, what they taste like, etc.

Bring your seeds your seed-starting station, if you're working outside. Once seeds germinate, keep them in the light for at least 10-12 hours a day, adjusting the height of your lamp to prevent leggy plants. Keep the plants warm (soil needs to be warmer than 55 for a lot of seeds to germinate. Check your specific seed guides for what temperatures you'll need). Water daily with a light stream of water that doesn't displace soil or harm the young seedling. Once the plants have leafed out in their first true leaves, thin to the strongest seedling in each pot.


In a few weeks, you'll need to bring them into your cold frame to harden them up. I'll be posting a cold frame tutorial soon. In the mean time, a sifter:

Building a soil sifter
A soil sifter is pretty much the same thing as a flour sifter. It lets through small particles of soil, fluffs them up, and keeps out larger particles. It's a useful garden tool and extremely easy to make. Keep in mind that you will be pouring the soil into the frame and then shaking the frame to sift the soil while you make your sifter.

Materials
- A window frame or sturdy picture frame (preferably with a middle beam for added sturdiness) that is roughly the size of the bin or wheel barrow you will be sifting soil into.
- 1/4 inch hardware cloth (or 1/2 inch size, or a smaller screen, depending on how fine you want your soil)
- Staple gun
- Wire cutters
- gloves

Procedure
Measure your hardware cloth to be larger that the size of your frame so that you can curl the edges around the frame and over the back of the wood, and cut, using the wire cutters. You'll want to be wearing gloves, because cut wire is sharp and no fun to play with.

laying the hardware cloth under the frame, fold the hardware cloth so that the edges wrap over the top side of the frame. Fold in the edges as if you were wrapping a textbook.

Staple ever few inches down, so that the hardware cloth is firmly attached to the frame. Cut off any excess wire that might hurt you while sifting.

Do a test run to make sure everything works properly, that the hardware cloth is firmly attached, and that there are no sharp wires cutting into you as you sift.

Make sure you keep your sifter out of the rain so it doesn't rust and lasts you for a long, long while. Every year, check to see if the staples or the frame needs reinforcement. It's much easier to fix things while they're only mildly broken.

What is this month doing??

First of all - HOW did it get to be MARCH 17TH already!? Last time I checked, it was February!

Second - Spring took steroids this year. The crocuses are blooming! The willow over the pond behind my house is that yellowish shade it gets! A flock of red-winged blackbirds followed me in the trees on my walk (which I took without a jacket) yesterday. Sugaring season is already over! WHAT!? Has anyone seen ramps yet? What are the morels going to think about this!? Please, please, weather gone wild, DO NOT kill off the tomatoes again!!

and thus begins the mild insanity we call early spring.

Which means that this weekend/week I will be:

Bringing my cold frame out of winter hiding
Marking out my new garden plot and helping my landlord till it
Going over the tilled plot with a broad fork to aerate the soil (the tiller doesn't go very deep)
planting out lettuce into the prepared soil (if you have spinach you can plant that too)
Picking up a bunch of topsoil from neighbors (anyone have a pickup truck I can borrow?)

I will be doing that on top of what I had planned for this week (err...and earlier), a whole 9 weeks before the last frost:

Starting my nightshades!
Finishing my chicken coop


It's still March and I already feel like the white rabbit! I'm late! I'm late!

In good news - I opened up the cellar and it turns out my veggies were fine. No flooding. And seriously - 5 months later, my veggies are still delicious (except the carrots, which got really woody and are going to the compost, stat), firm, and not sprouting. It has been by far the best root cellaring experience I have ever had. Way easier than the high tech cellars we had in my last house (a really lovely co-op check it out)


Oh, and my darling readers, have I told you that I will be making and selling salves and other things of that sort starting this summer? I haven't figured out the details yet, but if anyone wants to chat with me about it, I'd love to chat. I need a label design - I'll barter salves, gardening advice, garden design, or whatever else we can think up for a label design. Let me know if you can do that for me.


...can you tell that I've had too much coffee today? and one too many little green cupcakes with nothing nutritious in them at all?

March 8th!

Happy International Women's day! And beautiful, beautiful spring weather! Yay!

This is one of my favorite holidays, mostly because it feels like a family secret. Apparently, Americans don't believe in international holidays like this one and May Day. I'm going to celebrate by scouring the local thrift stores for a nice, large enameled casserole dish and making brisket (using this recipe). I am sick of my simple cast-iron dutch oven, which (among other virtues) is a pain to clean, retains smells, and currently has a lining of burned beef chuck stew that I can't scrape off - a remnant of my one and only tragic dinner burning experience. I have scraped, soaked (I know - I SOAKED my cast iron!), and still haven't successfully detoxed my dutch oven it's so stubborn. It's partially my fault for putting off cleaning it. I was so distraught about burning dinner to a crisp that I just left it and my sweetie and I went out for dinner instead. When I got home, I was still too upset about it to deal with it. I put the burned beef stew on the floor where the cat was overjoyed at the opportunity to pick at it and went to sleep.

The way to get the worst burned-on gunk to unstick from the bottom of your pots and pans is fairly simple. Pour baking soda into the pan just to cover the bottom, then add about an inch or 2 of water and boil for a few minutes. When it's been boiling just long enough for you to have finished whatever other small task you were doing, pour off some of the water (just a precaution so you don't splash yourself with boiling water) and scrape the bottom. Usually one round works.

I will also be starting my lovely little lettuces. I decided I'm going to have to buy a heat pad for my seed starting table - I simply do not keep it warm enough indoors to ensure proper germination of my seeds.

Spring Fever!

Yesterday was an incredibly beautiful day that smelled like spring! And it really is the season. The sap is beginning to run in the maples, it's time to have started the onion seeds, you could have started your lettuce seeds already, and the hens have been laying for almost a month! I spent yesterday drooling over farm animals on craigslist that I could never afford or take care of. I also picked up some meat at a local farm and found out that they have laying hens I can buy for $15 a pop. Not a great deal, but definitely worth it, seeing as laying hens for sale are pretty hard to find around here - especially 6 of them!

As for me, I don't have onion seeds to start, but friends have started them about a week ago. Im going to start my lettuce seeds today, and hopefully tap a maple tree (if I can find one on the property that my landlord hasn't tapped already).

11 Weeks before the Last Frost
Start Onion seeds (if growing onions from seed)
Tap maples
Start lettuce seeds (just put 2-3 seeds under 3-4 millimeters of moist soil and keep warm and watered until they sprout, then thin to the best one)
prep the coop for hens (if you're me)

Tapping Maples
Tapping a maple tree is fairly easy, and if you have cheap anything to boil the sap on for days, it's a great way to make maple syrup. Maple sap runs when nights fall below freezing but the days are above freezing. That's now, so get started!

Materials
A maple tree that's 10 inches in diameter or more (one tap per 10 inches, no more!)
A drill and bit that's 7/16" (or 1/2" if that's what you have)
Grimm spouts with hooks (or see cheap alternative below)
gallon plastic bottles or buckets with netting to keep insects out
A nice big pot for boiling water near an open window - it's going to get steamy!

The process
The best trees to use are sugar maples, but silver maples and a few others are good to tap. Make sure you have the right tree! It's best to mark your trees in the early fall when they still have leaves. If not, consult a good guide book with bark identification (such as the Audubon guide to North American trees)

Drill a hole with the bit that is angled slightly up at a height that makes sense for you to hang the bucket/jug at. If you have a grimm spout all you have to do is stick it in, hang the bucket off of the hook and let the spout empty into the bucket (on top of the netting is fine), or force a hole into the side hanging jug so that the spout empties into the closed (and therefor bug-free) jug.

If you don't want to buy Grimm spout, here's a cheap alternative - but you're going to lose some sap, so it might be worth investing in the grimm spout and hook - which is pretty cheap as things go. Cut a soda can (or a sardine lid or something similar) to about 4 inches long and 1 inch wide. Roll this into a half-tube and stick this tube into the hole you drilled into the tree as tightly as possible. hammer a small nail into the tree just about the makeshift spout and hang a bucket or jug off of the nail so that the spout runs into the jug or bucket.

Check your sap buckets daily and empty them. If you're not going to start boiling immediately, keep the sap refrigerated. Simmer the sap, being careful not to burn it, until the sap condenses to become as sweet as you want it - it takes about 32 gallons of sap to yield one gallon of syrup - so that boiling will take a while! You can add sap as you collect more in the early stages of the boiling, but once the sap starts boiling down, I'd transfer the syrup to a smaller pot and keep it on a low simmer until finished. YUM! Keep finished syrup refrigerated. any mold that forms can be taken off the top of the syrup which should then be boiled before using.

Make sure to try some raw sap! It tastes like magical water.