Spring Planting Redux: Summer's Salads

Four-day weekend -- with no rain and warmish sunshine -- let us get some things done and finish up the garden layout.

Tilled up a 4' x 10' patch of back lawn, and another 8' x 8' patch to add to the approximate 200 sq ft. of raised beds and tilled front lawn. Puts us at around 300 sq. feet, exclusive of of fruit trees and a dozen large pots. When we finish Spencer's patch we will be looking at about 350 sq.feet, a respectable space if I do say so.

Put down today (into the one of the new rock-walled beds) are lettuce starts (Romaine, red Romaine, oak leaf, red oak leaf, head lettuce) and spinach, all interplanted with some interesting English (Kew Gardens Brand) organic carrots.

Also down today a long strip of green beans (purple seed) adjacent to last week's snow peas, so two thirds of that box is planted. The last third will be some other nitrogen fixer (maybe a yellow wax bean) or some shelling peas or both.

Spencer's watermelon patch will get interplanted with potatoes for fall, and maybe a corner of broccoli.

The girls have requested more Roma tomatoes, and we will be definitely put Big Jim New Mexico chilies in from saved seed. Possibly bell peppers, and likely some red cabbage somewhere, although the cabbage may be headed for a big pot, as they are heavy feeders and we don't want them to compete with other stuff, or the soil-fixing effort on the south 40".

Still debating putting in a stand of broom straw somewhere, likely the front lawn . . . just contemplating how to make it decorative . . .

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First Pass on Early Spring Planting; Hungry Already! Is it Summer Yet?

Last weekend hand weeded about half the original "south 40" raised-bed of buckets of grass starts; after six or seven years of home compost, home worm compost and some store compost, and cover greens tilled under, the soil is now quite dark and crumbly, alive with worms. Great stuff!

Mid-week, we soaked some snow-pea seed we saved from last year's crop overnight and stuck it into a couple of long rows to beat the rain. A few seeds have floated up, but a quick finger poke has them back in the ground. Should be buckets of peas in a couple of months, and we will keep adding seeds every 3 weeks or so. Each new wave of plants should give us peas well into summer. Always fun to cruise the back yard for dinner, and steamed or stir-fried vegetables -- and especially the snow peas -- are really yummy.

Last weekend we also put a bunch of stuff into the ground.

Genovese Basil, about twice as much as last year, went in as seed. Until last year I had no luck with basil from seed, but these plants were champions. We whipped up and froze buckets of pesto (with HGO Garlic) in the fall, and if we are lucky, the new plants will be up and usable about the same time we run out of frozen stuff.

Kathryn thinned and transplanted last year's leek starts, and she should have plenty to grill up and put in her soup shortly; Hannah planted purple-seed green beans in her planter box, with second generation saved seeds. Spencer put down a watermelon patch, which we hand-tilled into the back lawn and surrounded with some of the river rock we collected on our permit a while ago.

We also took up a three-foot by 40 foot stretch of the front lawn with the mantis tiller, and put down two rows of corn (about a hundred plants), interplanted with Anasazi beans and sugar pumpkins, yellow squash and green squash. The plan is for the corn to act as trellis for the squash and beans. The beans will grow all summer and be picked and saved as dried beans for use in other dishes later; the squashes should be producing by late spring or early summer, and the pumpkins should be ready by August for eating (both savory, like squash, and sweet, as in pumpkin' pies) and saving for Halloween.

Leslie has tidied up her herb box and has several new and returning items to add to it.

If it dries up this weekend, will finish weeding up the south 40 and consider what to put in . . . I am tending to broccoli again, although last years crop was a big disappointment and I need to do some research to see what would be good as an alternate-year crop in that space.

We started the new year with only about 5 inches of rain on the season (since June 09) but have had 10.50 inches additional since January 1; nearly 3.50 inches in the last 24 hours.

All the other perennials -- especially fruits -- remain, and are beginning to show signs of spring. Mandarin oranges are fully ripe and quite delicious. What we have not eaten or handed out by March 1 or so, we may make into preserved fruit, or jam or marmalade. Might try juicing some too, but they are kind of small. Really fascinating juice though!

The scant five gallons of hard cider we put down late fall is nearly clear enough to consider bottling. It has promise, but it won't be clear what we have until at least May. This batch was all wild caught yeast, a strain that developed in a bottle of juice on the counter, which we cultured and then fed to the larger carboy. I actually drank most of the new cider that came from the wild caught (it was only a half-gallon) but came to my senses with enough yeast left in the sludge to feed and culture for the larger batch.

As we contemplate spring and summer harvests we are seriously considering two or three more of the hanging fruit dryers -- very effective and store nicely. I even dried racks of apples in my classroom over a rainy weekend -- which my students loved.

COMING SOON: What goes into the remaining South 40? How much of the back lawn will get tilled into river-rock raised beds? And will my neighbors complain if I put more of the front lawn into broom corn?

We "Tie One On" Without the Master Craftsman Nearby, and It Comes Out Okay.

Been working on a new skill for the last several weeks. Back in September, took a broom tying class from Little John, arranged by the folks at Adams Forge. Didn't quite finish the broom we made in class, and needed to find the materials to sew it down. Which proved a but of an odyssey, but worth it in the end.


Tried making a broom needle out of various objects, but none did the trick. Finally orderd a flat steel "needle" that worked really well. Except that it had very sharp edges and a very sharp point and it had a tendency to cut the sewing thread. But what are a blacksmith's tools for if not making and fixing other tools. (Grin.)

So: filed off the edges and rounded off the point of the "needle" a bit, and it worked great. Used some heavy black hemp line from Michaels' for sewing down my first "class" broom ($1.50) and it worked great too. Trimmed the corn ends with heavy snips, and the first broom was done.

It was really fun to do, and the end product looked great, even if it was a mediocre outcome. So I figured I wanted to do it again. But one thing I had learned was that the proper equipment makes a big difference.

So, the first thing I needed was broom corn. Ten pound box from from an online store: arrived well before Christmas. Buying broom corn was far easier than you'd expect. Turned out buying the right twine was another matter.

The sewing line wouldn't work: Not really strong enough to support the needed tension. Couldn't find anything very workable or attractive in several local stores, but thankfully Little John made free with the name of his secret only-from-Mexico-in-10-mile-spools brand of nylon net-making twine. Now it isn't supposed to be available easily -- but one quick Google, and there it was, in 200 yard, $6.00 spools! That arrived just after Christmas.

Unfortunately, to properly tie a broom you need to pull on the string pretty hard while turning the handle -- which requires a "tying wheel."

This is basically a big spool that you can step on to hold down the roll of twine while you pull sharply. I had some ideas on how to make it, then I noticed that I had some barrel staves and a table saw . . . After a couple of false starts, I cobbled up this tying wheel: Solid oak, and it smells like wine. (Grin.)

So now I needed a handle.

We have some large branches of apple wood and also of holly, so I cut off a nice curved section of holly branch, sanded it down to near white (a little mottling for visual interest) and off we went.

Since I had a pile of undifferentiated broom corn I spent an hour sorting it into four piles: Small, medium and really long -- plus broken bits. It took a little while to do as I started out with "long" and "short" and discovered that the straw came in three distinct lengths, not two, so had to restart at one point.

After a while Hannah came out to help, and we made her a quickie "flying broom" out of a stick in the backyard and the broken broom corn bits. Turned out nicer than I expected, and proved that the tying wheel worked.

So, long story short, I finished the broom I started at home from scratch. It has some serious flaws in execution, most of which are not visible. I did leave off the second layer of straw, and so had to undo one whole layer, add the middle layer in where it belonged, and then redo the top layer -- but it made a big difference in the fullness of the broom.

At the end, I clamped the broom in the post-leg vise between two more barrel staves to sew it. Came out pretty ok, given all the oopses and redos.

Oh, and naturally I saved some of the seeds that fell of the broom corn and we will have to see what we can do with that this spring.

The Holly-Handled First Solo Broom

Cider, Woodsmoke, Soap Bubbles, Beef, Barley & Guiness Give the Illusion of Fall in SoCal

A deep bed of white-orange hardwood coals throws its heat six, maybe seven or eight feet, warming my waterlogged and cold fingers despite my distance from the fire.

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Darkness has arrived, and is impatiently settling into full night, despite the parting comments of the sun written in the bright blue glow of the twilight sky. There is just enough light left to finish cleaning the cider press without resorting to the jarring eye-noise of the backyard floodlights. The last pressing bag is hung to dry.

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Two fresh logs on the fire flair with surprise as they settle onto the coal bed, then transform themselves into the hot, steady flame befitting the tree from whence they came. Cider is in the kitchen; homemade Beef, Barley & Guinness stew is simmering; fresh cider-bread is in the oven. Fresh coffee is on the table and I have a few minutes to make some notes and observations on the ol' electronic kitchen calender here.

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Another Round of Fall

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At the more northerly latitudes of Europe from whence we Americans borrow our seasons, it is winter. Late August through about Halloween are the transitional time, and the traditional start of winter in November can be quite bitter. Around here, if we have nights in the 40s and days in the low 70s we consider that winter has truly begun. (Ah Southern California!) Overnight we had our second lowest temp since last spring -- a mere 42F or so -- and a high not much out of the 60s. We almost had rain; a few places had a cloudburst on Friday, but here we got nothing but some pretty clouds scudding around on a brisk breeze. This is the second patch of "fall" that we have had this year -- after the last patch we had a week of temps in the 90s. Sigh.

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Oak Glen Apples

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Made the annual pilgrimage to Oak Glenn for cider apples last weekend. Didn't buy as much as we usually do -- maybe only half to two-thirds. No particular reason. Feelin' thrifty I guess. The Snow-Line cider seconds look quite nice this year -- very little in the way of rots, moths, etc. (Some years there is more carving done on the apples than not. Today in a bushel I had maybe two cups of parings -- and most of those precautionary. )

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The mix appears to be Gala, Fuji, Granny Smith, Pippen, Rome, a couple of Honeycrisps, a few Winesaps, the odd small Arkansas Black, a couple of the cloyingly-sweet Golden Delicious and one lone Red Delicious in that first box. Made a sweet but not too sweet mix over all. Nearly two gallons out of the bushel, wish is good.

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Hannah and I pressed up one box this evening -- just to get some cider for dinner. And breakfast. And midnight snack tonight. (Grin). Nothing quite like cold cider with apple-wood smoked bacon, and some really fresh eggs, fried potatoes with HGO garlic, onions and peppers.

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"Dinner is almost ready," Hannah tells me, singing a song about cider she invents on the spot as she blows her soap bubbles. The hot smoke from the fire carries the bubbles high into the sky, and we laugh.

Garlic Madness Under the Moontree

Yes, madness I say. Garlic everywhere, and not a vampire in sight!

This is, I think, my fifth fall planting garlic. (It all started with some sprouting store-bought stuff several years ago; several garlic related posts here.)

Today, I just finished planting 175+ cloves of five varieties of garlic. Next summer there will be much deliciousness. Last year's crop is being consumed even as you read this, and, well, we may be reduced to buying garlic by late spring. No chance of that in fall 2010 though.

This year we bought a two-pound sampler pack from Filaree

Farms, plus planted our own planting-stock of last years Cuban Purple/Rojo. Sampler included several hard neck and softneck varieties (links on both the variety and specific cultivar give detailed information):

• Chesnok Red a hardneck purple-stripe garlic said to
  be good for baking;


• Killarney Red another hardneck, a true rocambole;


• Cuban Purple / Rojo de Castro, a delighful hardneck creole that we love in pesto;


• S&H Silverskin, a softneck, braidable, silverskin variety;
  
• Lorz Italian, a softneck, braidable, artichoke variety

Planted 25 of each of the four, plus 50 of the Cuban

Purple/Rojo (we really really like them). Still have Silverwhite Silverskins from last crop to eat, and plant if we decide too. A couple of little spots left with finishing fall stuff that can go to garlic in a week or two.

The Cuban Purple/Rojo we planted was ordered from Filaree Farms last year, then grown by us in '08-'09 and saved for replanting. (We have some to eat too, but we really liked it, so a third of the best bulbs were saved for "seed" for this year.) Our planting stock was much brighter red than I remember the mailorder Rojo planting stock; maybe we should call it Rose City Rojo? In any case, we love the stuff -- great flavor, easy mild "burn" in pesto, easy to peel. One of our four-year-old's favorite jobs this summer was peeling the Rojo garlic for dinner.

In taste testing the planting stock, the Killarney Red had a nice, easy but complex flavor. Haven't tasted the others yet, but since we have 1-10 cloves of each left, we will soon. (Grin).

We have planted 25 cloves of each variety, plus an extra 25 cloves (total of 50) of the Rojo, plus a "green garlic" plot of an additional 25 miscellaneous cloves.

Green garlic is what it sounds like: Garlic that has not been dried or cured, and in some cases may not even have really started forming bulbs.

It is surprisingly delicious, and is like a mild garlic-flavored green onion. So, since there where lots of odds and ends (at least 5 cloves of each variety) I planted a patch to pick before the bulbs mature without regret.

Growing garlic also provided the interesting discovery that chopped greens -- just some of the leaf or even the stalk of a pulled green garlic -- make a lovely garlic-flavored chive sort of effect!

Last year we ordered late, and put in about 40 Cuban Purpe/Rojo and 40 Silverwhite Silverskins in two batches; one location did pretty well, the other, not so well. Our one-pound investment in planting stock yielded about 12-15 pounds of garlic, if you include all the sampled green garlic and greens. We still have eating / planting stock from the Silverwhite's, but I think we may have enough garlic in the ground, including one silverskin variety allready.

Now that the bulk of the garlic planting is done, there are always a few cloves extra for the available space, so we will be having a small side by side taste test comparison soon.

Coming Soon: Cider Season!

Fall Arrives for Real; Summer Recap Part II

Fall arrived for real last week. Two weeks ago daytime temps peaked out between 90-100 F; last week the morning low was 46F and the daytime high all of 67F or so. Good grief. But welcome to Southern California, neh? For the last two years Halloween has had a daytime high right around 80F, although one year not long ago it bucketed rain. Go figure.

We are recovering from numerous colds in the house, and trying not to cross contaminate, and so far I am the only one who has missed all of the bugs. So everyone is home, lallygagging about, resting up. In the cool overcast I am casually cleaning up outside for fall planting as my form of rest.

The basil we started from seed last April is still going great guns, and, in fact, had taken over a significant part of the raised bed. We pulled and cut back about half the basil, and topped the rest so it would not go to seed, and have picked and cleaned about 4 quarts of basil leaves. The job this morning is to make up numerous batches of home made, home grown pesto and freeze it up for winter enjoyment.

Took two of us nearly an hour to pick and wash the leaves, but the pesto should make up quick after a short trip to Trader Joe's to stock up on sheep's milk Parmesan cheese and pine nuts. We have plenty of HGO (home-grown organic) garlic.

Of course part of the clean-out is to ready space for fall garlic; five or six varieties on tap this year, more on that in a later post.

Granola Making Day . . .Mmmm!

Yesterday was granola making day. I hate to admit to it as it is such a stereotype, but its good, and really healthy, and really easy to make. We have "his" and "hers" flavors made from the same basic supply of organic rolled oats, olive oil and honey, baked on a tray in the oven. In "his" mix slivered toasted almonds go into the oven too, and the mix is cooked a little darker. Amusingly, the "hers" variety has, er, no nuts.

The "his" variety has, in addition to almonds, unsalted cashews, dried cranberries and organic raisins; "hers" uses a Trader Joe's "golden berry" mix with golden raisins, dried cranberries, blueberries, and cherrys, plus some additional organic brown raisins.

Really good as cereal with milk, as a hand snack, with a few dark chocolate chips as dessert, on top of or mixed into yogurt (especially the TJ maple yogurt) and vanilla ice cream. And as it happens the whole oats are pretty good for fiber and cholesterol reduction, if those items are a concern.

A Very Dry Summer Means Good Drying Weather

All the basil smell reminds me that we had a great summer drying things in the new hanging food dryer from Path to Freedom's web store. Figs, tomatoes, some grapes-to-raisins, all eaten already. Also, in the photo below, we dried more of that same HGO Genovese Basil, various HGO apples and HGO New Mexico Chili's. Also marjoram, and a wonderful lime-basil that has the unfortunate tendency to attract bees (lots of them!) when made into pesto and eaten outside. It's hard to keep up on the apples as people chomp them up almost as fast as we can dry them.

Our apples were done a month ago, and we canned up many jars of applesauce (plain and honey) and new apple butter. The Oakglen run should happen at the end of October, first of November, with cider and more apple goodies. Alas, it will be harder to air dry apples that late, but we might try the hanging dryer in the kitchen.

Speaking of Dry: Seeds Dry on the Vine

In addition I am reminded that we harvested dried coriander seeds, and dried celery seed (I let the celery get away from me, was slow to remove it, and found the seeds quite easy to harvest), as well as saved seed for planting from the "Bee" Basil. I still have a huge store of saved sunflower seeds, and really hope to get some in the ground at school in the spring. We enjoyed beans and peas all spring and summer from seed I saved last year. We have some pepper seeds saved too. It's really pretty rewarding to grow things from seed that you grew and saved, rather than having to go to the store each year for a new commercial packet.

The 'Tween Season: Summer Came, Went, and Lingers On; RIP the Car

Wow.

Busy busy busy spring and summer; so busy living it, no time to write about it. Whew.

But since may main purpose on this blog is to create, for myself, a "kitchen calendar" of jotted doings and observations, I will try to catch myself up. Might take two or three posts, but here we go.

The Engine On the Car Goes 'Rrrr Screeeet Thud' (All Over Town)

Back in May, we lost a car.

The timing belt on the KIA separated, got wound up in the external moving engine parts in such a way as to become one with the internal engine moving parts, killing the engine at 65 on the freeway one afternoon.

This proved to be the equivalent of a stake through the heart for the KIA (the fix was more than the car was worth; there were no active repair bulletins, warranties, insurances or other dodges to get it fixed at lower out of pocket).

So, since May we have been a one car family. Works out pretty well so far.

Driving Bikes to Work, School and Preschool

Most days, Hannah goes to school in the bike trailer (apx 1 mile one way) and the delivering parent (usually Leslie) goes on to school via bike. Kathryn drives her own bike to school (apx. 1.8 miles) riding part way with a parent. This happens most days whether the van is available or not.

I either ride my bike in the early morning, or, when Spencer is with us, ride with him in the van to school in La Verne (25 miles away). He gets himself home on public transit three days a week, and I pick him up via minivan and deliver a band friend to his home on marching band practice nights. Later, Spencer has a bike and we often ride en famille to the park for free concerts, or to South Lake avenue for groceries or just to window shop (especially at the bookstore!

The trailer is parked at school, and both parents have a trailer hitch on their bikes, so either can pick up. And the trailer folds flat, so in the event that an unexpected car pickup is needed, it pops into the back of the mini-van.

We are preparing for inclement weather, and plan to purchase an L.U.V. (or someday maybe two) to get to school(s) on really cold *and* wet days.
What, you may ask, is an L.U.V. ? Its like an S.U.V. only completely opposite. :-)

That is, its is a "Local Use Vehicle:" Small (2-4 passenger), easy to park, low top speed, and best of all a pluggable electric. Although there have been really excellent all electric freeway cars, with 100 mile range no less, since 1998, we do not need that car. We need a car to supplement the bikes -- for when the weather is too cold and/or too wet, or even too hot for Hannah in her trailer (many LUVs have AC). We might want two LUVs because in bad weather both adults might need to go separate places at separate times. But for now, one will do.

Oh we'd still keep the mini-van, but pretty much just for running thither and yon via freeway. or if we needed to go somewhere with the whole family in one vehicle and bad weather.

So, we used Hannah's first bike trailer for the summer (being it's third year in use); it was sufficiently worn, however, that we bought a new, bright yellow trailer for the coming school year, along with a patio chair cover.


The chair cover is exactly the right size to cover the trailer and protect it from rain and UV light when it is parked at Hannah's school. And it only costs $14 instead of $75!


So, we dropped our other car off the insurance and now pay about 45% less than we used too. No gas or upkeep on a second car, and no tickets for forgetting to pull it onto the driveway at night. We aren't car-free by any means, but we get pretty close.

Bees Back, Hot Hot Hot & A Garden Tour

Near record heat today, 90.1 F a little after 1:00 PM PDT, the record for the area being 92F. Last week, no record, but a high temp of 59F and overnight into the 30's. Welcome to Southern California: Today it is high summer, next week, it will be cool. March and April snow in the nearby mountains is not unheard of at all.

Spring planting is mostly done, and we are still waiting on the fall garlic to mature to free up the space for a late spring planting . . . Since I'd like to enjoy some of the spring space hogs before late summer, I am anxious to get the garlic beds back.

We have been eating green garlic from a small side plot, and the bulb formation is nil. The plants look like large green onions, and have a surprisingly mild, lovely garlic flavor. We also, of course, have been eating garlic greens all winter, stealing the odd leaf from various plants and chopping them like garlic-flavored chives.

Garden Tour

As a periodic check in, and for my own amusement down the road, it's time for the garden tour. Mundane, even boring if you aren't me, but this is as much my record as something to amuse any of you (grin). Clockwise around the garden then:

Boysenberries have doubled their fence coverage this year, and are deep in fragrant white flowers, buzzing with bees. Volunteers under the orange tree and further down the fence augment the canes growing on the fence and gate. July and August boysenberry feasts beckon!

Mandarin Orange is mostly played out for this year; a dozen late fruits remain, which I threatened to turn into marmalade. My hand has been stayed by the discovery that late-season, super sweet Mandarins are really good in a salad; the mandarin juice is quite good too, and I may just clean the tree this week and freeze the juice. Next winter's oranges are in bloom now, and the tree was a-buzz with California (and some European) honey bees. Since boysenberries were bee-full too, this is a good sign, as I had not yet seen many bees this season.

Peach trees are still dormant, a cause of some small concern as they were just planted this past spring. Some buds starting, some tell-tale darkening of stems, but no solid signs of life. Fingers remain crossed.

Loquat has large fruit and a medium heavy crop; last year was a heavy crop, but smaller. I like the larger fruit, as the seeds are so large the small fruit are a bother to eat, even if very sweet.

Apples are bloomin with the potential for a heavy crop in a couple of varieties. Much depends on how the others bud-out, and how bad the June Drop is this year.

Grapes have leafed up and have heavy fruit. The south side -- the neighbor's side(!) -- has the heaviest fruit, but the yield looks good. Researching raisin techniques, to, hopefully, repeat the successful raisin making experiment. And we are parceling out last year's Grape Preserves to make it to the next harvest (grin). Fortunately, we have apple butter and fig butter to keep us going on our own preservation work for awhile.

Figs are leafing in slow; it looks like a modest crop after last year's bumper. At least we are not yet as heavy with immature fruit as last year, so I am predicting a light crop.

Elephant Garlic is still going. Getting impatient to harvest, but done to soon and there will be no bulbs.

Yellow Onions have been adding to salads as we thin them (grown from seed) and use the very strong green onions; Green Bunching Onions are ready to use, but waiting for the yellows to be all thinned out before we go after the bunchers. The bunchers will stay small and "green onion" style even as they mature, whereas the round onions just grow badly if left too crowded.

Silver White and Cuban Purple Garlic currently fill about half the garden space. They are dancing close to harvest time, but the leaves are staying green, and so they stay in the ground.

Cabbage stuck into a couple of bare corners have produced a few nice heads; cabbage is one of those things that requires more space, however. One head of cabbage can be a couple of feet across, with all it's outer leaves.

Hannah planted a patch of edible flowers in the horse trough early this spring, which have greened up great guns but nary a snack-able flower petal yet. Hannah also planted a window box with shelling peas and carrots. Peas are up and looking for the promised trellis, and the carrot sprouts have been emerging all week. Her volunteer Sunflower is now officially taller than her, and should have an open flower any day now.

Kathryn planted leeks and some fascinating carnival carrots -- old style carrots that come in orange, white, red, and purple! Each is sprouted, and the waiting begins.

Bell Peppers in Red, Orange and Green have survived the transplant shock and are putting out flowers. We planted several plants, as we discovered bell peppers freeze really nicely if cleaned and cut first.

New Mexico Chili Peppers, really tasty and a special project by Leslie also are hanging on. We have five plants, so come fall there may be chilies for everybody.

My patch of Italian Basil is sprouting, and if we see a mature plant or two at TJ's we may find a pot for 'em. We really grew to love the home grown pesto last year! We also have some Lemon Basil seedlings inside, waiting to transplant.

Chives struggle. After going great guns as seedlings indoors, they are not thriving outside side. Frustrating, as these could be a perennial.

Bok choy starts have new growth after the transplant; bush bean starts are struggling but holding on, while the pole bean transplants from in the house have mostly all died. Amusingly, additional seed planted alongside the transplants has germinated and is doing fine. Go figure, same seeds! (The seeds are from last year's crop, saved by us.)

Pickling Cucumber starts are in, and hanging in; Slicing Cucumbers started in the house all died, and were replaced by store starts -- and some seeds from the same package, which have sprouted already.

Broccoli is a disappointment this year; planted 10 plants, expecting a bumper crop, but the output has been meager.

Snow Peas, originally a pair of volunteers, augmented by additional plantings of our own seed, produce a reliable bowl or two of pea pods every 2-3 days.

Asparagus has run its course, and the three stalks that shot up today have been allowed to go to seed; funny stuff 'cause it grows by INCHES per day.

Romaine Lettuce starts have been harvested from time to time, and the stumps are regrowing leaves for the second harvest. Need to do some lettuce starts inside ASAP if salad is wanted this summer! Oak Leaf Lettuce doing similar. Both are in red clay pots on the patio.

Celery, first time item for us, are quite pretty, and doing well in another big clay pot. One can pick the outer, strong flavored stems one at time, and it is hoped that the six plants we have will see us well along before they try to go to seed. For flavor in stews and chopped in salads the celery leaves are quite tasty.

Hannah has a strawberry plant that struggled all spring, and is now sporting a half dozen berries. The other plants did not make it over winter; the one big red berry she was eyeing vanished over night to backyard marauders.

Finally, last but not least in the back, the lemon has the last of a crop, a new green crop, and fresh blooms -- all at once -- as it often does.

The front yard herbs, and especially the rosemary, thyme and oregano, and lilac continue to produce reliably. The lime was all a-bloom, but we have yet to produce a single mature fruit. Mostly it is neglected and gets insufficient water.

Once the garlic is up and drying, lots more getting ready to go down in the same spot!

Still More Weird Hot Weather (Sigh); Volunteer Sunflowers and Mystery Plant Invade The Garlic Patch

Fall keeps teasing us -- or is it Summer? -- as we move from temperatures in the 40's overnight and daytime highs in the mid-60's only, to the 90's this week. Again. We even had .12 inches of cool rain two weeks ago; not much, but it seemed like a start on the winter season around here. Today we are looking at humidity right around 15%.

Fires everywhere today, but not right here in Pasadena, at least not right now. This morning the Sylmar area was hit by fires, and we watched the wind gusting as the Mayor of Los Angeles spoke on TV.

When we went to the http://www.wunderground.com/ weather map, you could see sustained winds at 25 MPH with temps in the mid-60s at the top of Kagel canyon, with lower wind speed but temps around 80-85 three or four miles out into the valley. We hear on the news about the dry desert air bunching up then expanding as it comes over the mountains, and the expansion resulting in warmer air (as in Santa Ana winds) but have never seen it so graphically on the weather map.

Tomorrow the Inaugural Pasadena Marathon is being run, and we will

pretty much have front row seats -- three times. The course loops around the city, first passing

one block to the west, going three or four miles up hill, coming by the same spot, then passing one block to our south. We will probably go down for at least a little bit and have a look-see. Since most of the roads will be closed encircling our house, we are trying to get our basic errands done today.

Can't wait to see how that goes, too, with 90F weather and two fires. [Update: 6:30 PM Mild smoke here, coming at as from three directions, but mostly moving away from Pasadena. ]

This morning we biked en famille (less one child, who is off at his mother's) to a backyard craft sale being held at the home of a colleague. Saw at least one other teacher from our school there, and one of our staff members with some excellent pottery on offer. Found some lovely local-made items for small Christmas items. Usually these sorts of things are pretty dreary, but the quality of the homemade items was high, and the company convivial. Even in the 90 degree heat it was a pleasant ride along tree-lined streets.

Garden Goings-On

Garlic is sprouting but not yet above ground. Quite a few volunteer sunflowers have come up in the eastern planter box; the watering and warm weather have them all confused. We will probably transplant them out, might even grow them in planters in my classroom. Soon as we get the first serious chill they would be done, but I want them out before they have a chance to damage the garlic crop.

Similarly, over in the south-40 [inches] that we planted in garlic some small volunteer has come up in profusion. Can't tell just yet what they are going to be. The seed-leaves could be anything from a failed salad green planting last spring to latent volunteer broccoli. Or maybe just weeds. We will watch them for a while, and if they look like something edible, will transplant them. If not, they will be simple enough (albeit annoying) to pluck out of the way of the nascent garlic.

Sometimes, like the original accidental cider, the volunteers make the best crops.

More Weird Weather; Garlic In the Ground, Waiting for Early Spring Garlic Greens (Yum!)

The weather under the Moontree has been crazy for a month: High 40's overnight one week, high 90's all day the next; 12% humidity many days.

Today, high temp 63.9 F, rain and drizzle overnight, with 80% humidity at the moment. Still, we are late enough into our traditional fall heatwave that the worst should be about over.

Garlic in the Mail, and in the Ground

In years past we have had great good luck and terrible luck with garlic. Our first crop was planted from store garlic gone sprouty, apparently planted at just the right time of year. The greens were great chopped in salad and for cooking (a very mild garlic flavored green, mmmm mmm). And the fresh, undried garlic bulbs were extraordinarily mild and flavorful too.

Spring planted garlic was a failure, bolting before producing any useful bulbs.

This year, I ordered up a pound of seed garlic from Filaree Farms, an organic seed garlic producer in central Washington. Since they have dozens of varieties I asked for a starter pack suitable for our area consisting of one hardneck variety and one softneck.

Hardneck varieties have stiffer, woody stems and cannot be braided into those beautiful garlic braids. Softnecks have floppy green stems, and dry into something like rafia -- ideal for braiding.

The starter pack came with about 40 "seeds" (garlic cloves) for a creole softneck variety called Cuban Purple and a silverskin hardneck variety called "Silver White."

Half of each crop went into rows in the south forty (forty inch wide raised bed near the south facing wall of our house, that is) and half into the similar sized planter box with a little bench built in over by the fig.

(That seat-planter was so rich and full of too-hot compost it killed most things we planted for the first six months, although the mini-pumpkins did well. Currently, the box is so rich with earthworms, it is almost as dense as our purpose built worm-bin! Since this suggests to me that the dirt is less hot now, we will give it a try. )

Eating Garlic, Saving Seeds; Trying Not to Eat the Seeds!

A few of the smallest cloves went into the horse-trough planter, near the basil. They were planted tighter than they should have been, as I plan to eat the greens and the early garlic before the bulbs have a chance to grow over-large. (I wonder if hardneck greens are edible? Hmmm. Well only one way to find out!) And this way, maybe we will have enough left in the two main plantings to eat and save seed for next year's crop.

And I can always order more from Filaree next year.

Speaking of eating the seed, I couldn't resist tasting both varieties of the seed stock. I took one or two of the smallest cloves (smaller cloves = smaller plants, so I felt less bad about the whole thing) and warmed them up in a little butter. Delicious, and each really different. Can't hardly wait for spring. (Grin.)

For now, the weather is supposed to stay cool for a while. Here's hoping that winter is here to stay. Cool weather is better for the garlic. Now I wonder where I put my broccoli seeds . . .

Accidental Hard Cider, On Purpose

Last weekend we pressed cider, put 10 gallons down for fermentation, and have been drinking or have given away another six gallons of sweet mill cider.

Two years ago when we pressed we had a happy accident; three gallons got left in a carboy on the back porch on Sunday night, by Monday night the heat of the day had started the natural yeast fermenting and blown the stopper off, further exposing it to our local wild yeast.

Not knowing what else to do we let it work.

It sat on the back porch for a week, blowing its cork daily for awhile until I jammed a fermentation lock into it. Still we didn’t have time to get it into the house and settled, and since it had sat for several days in 90 F weather, with at least an hour or two of late afternoon direct sun, we figured it was pretty much ruined.

So we let it work.

By the next Saturday, we had a three-gallon carboy full of pretty clear cider with an inch of sediment working vigorously. Although we considered dumping it, it seemed to be doing fine, so we brought into the house, topped up the lock, and let it work.

We fussed and fiddled with the remaining 10 gallons we put down, adding honey and other exotic ingredients. Five gallons were undrinkable for nearly a year; the remaining five proved explosive (popping pint beer bottles from time to time in the basement) and not very good.

The little jug of forgotten cider, however, sat on its lees for several weeks (or was it months?), as we just let it work.

When it finally slowed up, and we racked it and bottled it, it had the best unmatured flavor of the bunch. And in fact as it matured it developed into a delicious, clear, sparkling, strongly apple-tasting cider with no hint of the usual yeast overtones that take months to die in the bottle.

That year, the day we pressed had been an unusually cool weekend. We had a fire in the fire pit, and the wood smoke wafted over us as the family washed and sorted apples and watched as the cider poured from the bottom of the press. Then, on the Monday after pressing, with our little lost three-gallon carboy sitting outside, unseasonable 90F + weather struck.

We had already resolved to try to recreate our happy accident, so it was lovely and fitting when, the Sunday of our big pressing. we had an overnight low of 45 F (!) and the Monday after it dawned 90F plus!

I left the cider in the heat again, although I did pop an air lock on sooner this time to avoid getting vinegar and general contamination (hoping that our wild yeast either came on the apples or lived on the press or settled during pressing).

Yesterday, I brought both bottles into the house after a week of sunshine-semi-pasturization. This morning, they are both working well, and clearing, indoors. Cross your fingers!

If all goes well we will be bottling 10 gallons on our semi-traditional Christmas Eve (or at least Winter Break) with good drinkable cider by February and great cider by March.

Or not. The brewing gods are like that; stay tuned!

The Mild Summer is Ending, Let the Preserving Begin!

Found an old horseshoe in the garage while cleaning some things out. Don't know where it came from, no one here has horses. And although the house is 104 years old this year, the garage dates from the 1940s.

For no good reason I put it up over the side door to the garage. Kinda jaunty if I do say so myself.

Fruit Fest, Part I

Things are coming ripe around here, and this year I vowed not to let the overabundance of fruit go to waste. So we have been doing lots of preserving, of various sorts.

Apples

We get three distinct crops of apples around here, depending on the variety.

Grannysmith's come ripe first, and get eaten out of hand first, as we have been watching the darn apples ripen all year. The Grannysmiths are done by the end of August.

They are great dried, and using our little core-it-slice-it-peel-it machine (hand cranked, of course) the apples come out in perfect little disks. (They actually come out in a spiral, but through the miracle of geometry the spiral becomes a stack of rings with a single downward stroke of a knife.)

We also eat and dry slightly under-ripe Winesaps and golden delicious. The goldens are more tart when under-ripe, and dry better when less ripe, and are not even bad out of hand. Once they are ripe they go mealy quickly, and tend to go browner when dried, so the goldens are mostly done too. (In point of fact, I have a few on the tree and many in the eating bin, right at this moment. )

The Winesaps go from green to mixed red and green, the redder they get the sweeter they get too. Since we have been eating and drying solidly since the first week of August, they actually have stayed on tree long enough to get good and red. They are a very white-fleshed, crisp, juicy apple, close to my favorites. They usually finish in the first week of September, but since that week will be pretty busy, I think they will come in to be dried then too.

Grapes

The Seedless purple Grapes have come on in great profusion this year; the neighbor harvested those on his side (at my invitation) several weeks before ours. We have been cutting and eating or giving to friends all summer, and the grapes have gone from tangy-tart to super-sweet. As the last 20 pounds or so were starting to drop, we cleaned the vine last week. But what do you do with all those grapes?
Well, for starters, the other half made grape jam. Yes, jam, not jelly. Came out so good we bought more jars and made a second batch. If you are lucky we will share.

Then, more as an afterthought and experiment than a serious effort, I laid some grapes out to dry in the sun. After about three weeks, we have a small batch of delicious home grown raisins!

If I had put out 20 pounds of grapes to dry, it would have been a failure; but like all our best experiments, we only made one tray, and will have about two cups of raisins. Still, watch out next year.

Indeed, the neighbor likes the grapes well, and we may have to plant more vines along the same fence in the spring. Alas, they do take two or three or more seasons to start producing well, but I think it will be worth it.

Stay tuned for Part II !

Grape Jam, Homemade Raisins, Both From Backyard Grapes

(The mini pumpkins are decorative, also grown here. Anyone have a recipe for mini-pumpkin? )

Grapefruit-ade, Ver. 2.0

After a little trial and error, the Grapefruit-ade recipe needs a little revision. Instead of the 1-2-3 proportions noted, the following works better:

Roger's Grapefruit-ade (Ver. 2.0)

2 cups fresh white grapefruit juice

2/3 cup sugar (up to 3/4 cup, to taste)

4 cups water

Be sure to mix the sugar into the juice and water BEFORE adding ice to help the sugar dissolve completely.

Much better at these proportions. . . by the by, my generous colleague and not-to-near neighbor Jeremy (who provides the grapefruit) swears by the old recipe, only he replaces the last 1/2 cup of liquid with orange or lemon juice. . . haven't tried it myself yet, but sounds pretty good too.

Moontree Glows on a Soft Summer Night

Summer School ended yesterday, and only a few weeks remain of the summer; one of those weeks is given over to teacher training, but still and all this is the best part of the year.

On this, *my* first day of summer, the tall ladder is up to trim up the "moontree" -- a drooping acacia with bright yellow flowers this time of year and two-foot long rock-hard been pods that drop onto the wooden deck with a suprising "BANG,clatter clatter" later.

We call it the moontree because it holds the odd shopping-mall-sized spherical light fixture my grandfather retrieved when cleaning up after tenants renting my Great-Grandmother's house years ago.

For a couple of decades at least it hung in the ornamental pear tree outside my grandparents' kitchen and office windows in Pasadena, just at eye level. Lit inside by a single, naked 60 Watt lightbulb, it looked for all the world like a pale full-moon dragged to earth and wedged under the tree canopy. The warm, diffuse light it shed on the iron bench and damp green space below it gave the yard an aura of magic that always suprised me.

My startlement stemmed in part from the fact that my Grandfather was the sort of utilitarian and practical fellow who would (and did) take a saw to an old tiger-maple rolltop desk to remove the roll top and replace it with a sheet of painted plywood, the better to read building plans and blueprints in his trade as a building contactor.

I was at first puzzled and then amused by his frequent derisive comments about the tenants who had been crazy enough to mount it on the 10 foot cieling of their living room. He frequently called it "a piece of old junk" and his regular, nonchalant explaination for its continued presence in the tree decades after he found it was that he put it there to get it out of the way one day and forgot about it.

When Grandfather passed away (Grandmother had gone a little before) and the house was sold, dire rumblings about how to get rid of the moon fixture were heard; aghast I rescued it from oblivion, and when my wife and I moved into our house (also in Pasadena) it quickly took pride of place in our own tree.

(Turns out, by the way, the thing was hardly just "hung there," but carefuly mounted on a 3/8th inch bolt so as to withstand the strongest winds yet leave room for the tree to grow. Wonder how that happened?)

Now, our backyard -- and our tree -- abut a street with relatively heavy foot traffic (and not a few cars). And we often hear comments by people walking by, or are asked about the tree by our students at school, marveling at the "moon." We like it, and its diffuse light sets our yard aglow in the evenings without the harshness of other lights. And we have sort of adopted it as a logo for our homemade and homegrown products.

Although Grandfather Blumer had a decided utilitarian bent, and appeared not to have much in the way of poetry in his soul on first acquiantance, I often like to think of the first Moontree as "Jack's Folly" and proof that everyone can appreciate a little magic now and then.

Winter Went; Summer '08 Half-Gone: Time for a (First) Second Planting & The Yard In Review

Life gets busy.

None of the winter crops did much; the front yard vegetable strip was removed, due to its proximity to the oak tree and lack of production as a result; there was some rain this winter, but not overmuch, some cold, but not overmuch, and the summer so far has been alternatively a little hot or just nicely warm.

Except for the day or two in early summer when we had hail and tornandos.

Spring saw Spencer and I build a pic-nic bench and a new planter box. The box is about 4' x 12', and about two feet deep, in the back yard. Along one edge we placed a 2 x 12 board as a long seat, to increase the number of places for folks to rest a rump when out back. The box was laid down on grass, covered over with weed barrier cloth, then filled with topsoil and compost. The combination was too "hot" and even though we let the soil mature for two or three months, the first plantings in it did not thrive.

After a couple of months, and some more plantings, the seat-box is full. Miniature pumpkins are emerging on the vine twining up the chain link fence. They started out slow, being part of the original planting, but have gone great guns lately.

Similarly, the yellow crook-neck squash and green squash were the lone survivors of their stunted plantings, but have begun to produce reliable food in the past couple of weeks.

The three bell peppers -- one each of green, orange and red -- were part of the second effort at planting. They started out slow, and set lots of peppers that did not mature, but have a lot of fruit coming on now and I have great hopes.

At the far end of the box, the Russian finger potatoes and single russet plant seem to be fairing well. The fingerlings in particular go well with roasted meats in the fall late fall. Potatoes are one of those surprising, fun backyard vegetables. Relatively hardy, and easy to grow, with free seed in your kitchen vegetable bin in the form of potatoes-to-far-sprouted-to-eat, there is something very satisfying about grubbing in the dirt and coming up with a chunk of something edible!

Lettuce grew but with great resistence, and some very few salads emerged before they gave up the ghost. (Some volunteer oak leaf lettuces on the South Forty (Inches) provided most of the salad greens.)

The hot soil also took its toll on the basil (Trader Joe's basil plants are amazing) which jumped right back into health when removed from the too hot soil. An earlier basil, from Wholefoods, has smaller leaves and an almost lemony smell. It too has boomed, along with a few rows of yellow onions in the old horse trough. (For once I planted the onions in neat rows, and pulled every other one for green onions early, and the rest are doing nicely, thanks.)

The TJ basil makes excellent pesto; I was just struck that the lemony basil would be very good on steamed red potatoes with some garlic and onion greens sauteed in butter. Yum!

The usual south-wall box did not get planted in the spring. A few cucumber plants there were neglected and died, and the grass has taken over. This weekend is dedicated to clearing out the box and putting a second-season crop in . . . not sure what to plant yet. I might take a risk and plant the fall broccoli and garlic crop, even though it is still a little early. Suggestions appreciated .
Meanwhile, the front yard lime tree too suffers from chronic neglect; this spring it set lots of fruit which never matured. If I can just get rid of the Oleander between the back and front yard, install a gate and work out a drip water line to the tree, we might have lots of limes next summer for G&Ts. (Grin).

The loquats this spring went crazy and while we ate a lot of them, many went to the critters and on the ground. Most mornings Hannah insisted on loquats off the tree for a snack, unless she was demanding a Mandarin orange.

The orange crop was fair sized, not as large as some years, but better than many recent years. Good fruit, and only a half dozen were not eaten by us right off the tree for lunch and snacks. The tree has already set next year's fruit -- it is shooter-marble sized, and will mature next January and February. We will have edible fruit from February to May (and even June, if you don't mind the dryness that comes with older fruit.)

The apples set a moderate crop too. Granny Smiths and some Winesaps are coming ripe. Our apples tend to finish in August with first fruit late July, and completely picked by September. The four columnar apples bloom, and set their odd-tasting fruit, later in the year and should be edible in September. Still not impressed with the fruit, and am giving serious thought to replacing the four columnars with one standard sized apple, or even two more of the Orchard Supply four-on-one dwarf grafts.

Boysenberries did quite well this spring. We also snacked on those as we passed in and out of the yard, and had a couple of big berry picking days. The non-fruit canes finally started doing my bidding and have moved down the fence line, dropping roots into the soil in a thick, prickly and poky addition to our back fence. Volunteers from near the original, temporary placement in a planter have come back, under the orange tree, and instead of fighting it I have stopped mowing them down and begun training them in a dense prickly circle under the tree. We should have even more second year canes for fruit next year. Yum!

Lemons have set their third crop of the year and have a fourth in flower. For awhile we could not keep ahead of the windfalls; lately we have caught up as the kids love making lemonade, and we fill a two-gallon glass jug that we keep on the counter in the summer.

A Pasadena neighbor and work colleague borrowed our chain saw to take down a dead plum tree, and returned the saw with a bag of big yellow grapefruit. Not too sour, but definitely not the super-sweet modern varieties. Unfortunately, I am the only one that likes grapefruit in our house; fortunately I discovered that they make great "grapefruit-ade" which I get all to myself!

My recipe is easy as 1,2,3:

ROGER'S MOONTREE GRAPEFRUIT-ADE

1 cup sugar, completely dissolved in warm water.

2 cups fresh squeezed grapefruit juice.

3 cups of water.

Mix Well; serve chilled or with plenty of ice. NOTE: Adjust the water and sugar from here 1/4 cup at a time-- more of each if a little too acid, less sugar and/or more water if too sweet, etc.