Garden Drawing

I wanted some way to document exactly what is growing where at this time, so I made a garden plan sketch. I know lots of gardeners keep written notes, but drawings are a good way for me to process and document information.

Flowers in pots, seeds in bags

What's nice is that I'm now past the settling-in phase of moving to a new town, and am now reaching out and discovering all the great places that Tacoma has to offer. One of these is Gardensphere. It's not just a garden supply store, it also has stuff for urban chicken keeping! We splurged on a galvanized metal chicken drinker for the ladies, since they've been drinking water out of a large Tupperware container since we moved here. They sell chicks too, so I can get my peeper fix.

When I was there I needed potting soil, and I found out that Tacoma makes its own subsidized potting soil called Tagro. Cool, huh? Seattle makes potting soil and compost too (Cedar Grove) and I really liked buying it, so I'm glad I can get stuff here too which is made from the city's waste products. Reduce, reuse, recycle, y'all.

As I stated in an earlier post, I want to add more flowers to the garden to attract more beneficial insects. I don't know if this really counts, but, I bought this Hummingbird Mint (also known as Anise Hyssop) to work towards that end. I'm sure bees will like it too. It's a perennial, so I figure it will anchor this pot and I can plant other things in with it every year. For its first iteration, I added in some basil and curly parsley. I put it outside the picket fence, technically in the driveway but near the gate, because there's good sun exposure there and I don't want the chickens to jump in it and mess everything up. They are drawn to freshly turned soil like magnets! I also bought a bag of this seed mix stuff, a mixture of bee-attracting flower seeds, mulch, and fertilizer, and sprinkled it in a few places throughout the garden.

Blueberry Park

Well I've discovered that Tacoma has some pretty awesome public parks. Now that the weather is warm, I have sampled the delights of Point Defiance, Wright Park, and most recently, Blueberry Park, one of the most unique parks I've been to! It used to be a blueberry farm, and now it's open for everyone to come and pick berries, have a picnic, whatever. There are also apple and cherry trees. What a great resource! Rather than lamenting my lack of space for trees I can just go to the park and get what I need. And I don't have to fiddle around with a tiny blueberry bush in a pot of special, acidic soil.

I loved creeping in between these giant bushes. Most of the berries weren't ripe yet, but there were plenty for RC, Amber, and me to collect our fill. We've still got a good supply left, and I've made blueberry pancakes, blueberry corn muffins, and blueberry balsamic ice cream topping so far.

State of the Garden Address

It's really summer here now and I'm feeling quite happy with how our first garden season is progressing. We've been getting plenty of turnips, kale, and peas, which are all growing in the front yard. The turnips and kale are part of the polyculture bed, so in the shade of their large leaves I find small carrot, beet, and parsley sprouts. I've been gradually thinning out and harvesting that bed to make way for these new plants to take over the space when all the kale is gone.

I've also observed that the chickens love kale with a fierce passion, which they peck at through the spaces in the chicken wire fence. Their hunger even compels them to jump the barrier, which is unfortunate for me because I have to keep watch over them so they don't cause trouble. However, when they are just tearing off chunks through the wires I feel they are actually saving me the energy I would expend harvesting kale for them to eat.

I'm happy with how most of the perennials are doing. The artichoke, especially, has grown vigorously and is currently growing a tiny bud. I have planted two raspberry bushes, and one has been producing a small amount of berries even though it's barely eighteen inches tall. All the asparagus have been sprouting, which surprised me since the roots came from Fred Meyer. The fennel is also doing well, but the comfrey, rosemary, and salal have stayed small. I contend, these could all be slow-growing plants, but I was under the impression that comfrey would be super-vigorous and grow four feet tall. Mine has like three tiny leaves that tend to get moldy. I really appreciate the lavender and chives which were already here. The lavender bush is covered in bees all day long, which makes me very happy. I want the bees to make it, damn it!

We've had other flowers: tulips, daffodils, poppies, foxglove, rhododendron, hosta, and stonecrop, but currently lavender is one of the few pretty, showy, bee-attracting flowers in the garden. There are two hanging pots of nasturtiums flanking the front door, and the "Boothby's Blonde" cucumber vines are covered in pretty yellow flowers the bees seem to dig. Next season, I'm going to incorporate more flowers into my design. I want insect-attracting plants in the garden all season long.

The up-and-coming plants right now are the tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, and peppers. I have a single bell pepper plant on the patio with the potted tomato plants, which actually has a good-size pepper growing. I've got yellow crookneck squash and acorn squash, and two varieties of cucumber, the aforementioned "Boothby's Blonde" which is a small variety with white skin and pale green flesh, and a Japanese long cucumber. The potted tomatoes on the patio are growing into huge plants, but all their tomatoes are still small and green, the plants in the front are smaller overall but are ripening earlier. In fact we've gotten three ripe tomatoes so far. We also planted watermelon and cantaloupe, but the vines of both are weird and tiny, so I fear for their future. We've also been getting a few strawberries off our four plants. I believe their first year is generally unproductive, but also I may want to up our number of plants. I need lots of strawberries!

Some plants that I think will take a while in the ground before we can harvest are the acorn squash already mentioned, as well as a few brassicas like Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and collards. We also have a lot of onions going, and a couple potato plants! The red potatoes aren't growing well, but the Yukon Gold are doing great. On the patio we have a small bed planted with corn and chicken scratch. We literally took a handful of scratch grains and planted them, mostly out of curiosity, and they are growing quite well. There are a few types of grasses, wheat and barley perhaps, with several sunflowers towering over.

Moving forward I plan to plant beans. Legumes are nitrogen accumulators and it's helpful to plant them near other plants which deplete the soil of nitrogen. I think that planting them near all these tomatoes and squashes and corn and so on will help restore the soil, and hopefully it isn't too late in the season to also harvest the beans for eatin'. I have also let a patch of arugula go to seed, so I hope that area will reseed itself.

Blogging al fresco

Happy Zombie Jesus and Marijuana Appreciation Day to all who celebrate! I am sitting on my front stoop with a big 7-Eleven coffee, enjoying the spring sunshine and admiring all the green growing things in the yard. I'm so happy our landlords planted a bunch of tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, and narcissus in the garden. It's been such a nice surprise watching them all come up.

The dogs, cats, and chickens are all hanging around too. I just watched our hen Beatrice scavenge up the bedraggled, disembodied wing of a little birdie, probably killed by Freya our cat, and eat it with clucks and chuckles of pleasure. A few days ago she ate a mouse, whole!

Pictured above is Pearl, who was just acting very interested in going inside, and also in the contents of my coffee mug. I don't think that's a good idea, girl! Anyway, the garden is coming along. I have planted several perennials, including this artichoke:

It looks so alone and puny! Artichoke plants can get really big, though, so I planted it in the corner of the yard so it can just grow and sprawl out as needed.

This really exciting picture is of a bit of the polycultural vegetable bed, which is a fancy name for strewing a bunch of different types of seeds in the same bed together and just letting them all grow, thinning out and adding more as needed. I've got a few types of greens, beets, carrots, turnips, and such in here. I'm excited to see how this goes because it's way easier than planting in rows.

Here's a picture of the elusive Minerva Louise, from about as close as one can get to her. As I was taking this photo, Pearl snuck up and nipped my thumb, coincidentally the one I sliced open with a bread knife a couple weeks ago.

I've been continuing with my dairy preservation efforts. After making ricotta and finding it so easy, I made it again, this time with goat milk, and have also tried making butter, yogurt, and creme fraiche, with mixed results. Butter is as easy to make as ricotta, so I've made that twice now as well. I made yogurt successfully once with cow milk, then tried with goat milk and was left with a weird, half-lumpy yogurt-type liquid. My most recent experiment was the creme fraiche, which didn't work at all! It ended up as a quart of warm cream. I made it using some creme fraiche starter culture RC got from his work, but maybe the fact that it's expired means the cultures are dead. Who knows! It's been a lot of fun trying all these methods for preserving dairy. I could honestly see myself making butter, ricotta, and yogurt regularly, and I like the idea of rescuing a bunch of expired milk and cream and putting it to use instead of throwing it away.

Making Ricotta

In essence, urban homesteading is about taking oneself out of the cycle of consumption, and turning instead to creation. I make a lot of food from scratch but I still buy lots and lots of pre-packaged food: cheese, bacon, yogurt, bread, those plastic containers of baby salad greens, and so on. I want to start making more items myself, and so I turned to an easy one: ricotta!

RC works at a food co-op, and thus he gets first pick of expired items. This is how he was able to score two half gallon jugs of organic, raw milk from grass-fed cows, usually pretty pricey stuff, for nothing. To make ricotta, you need a half gallon of milk, one and a half cups of cream, a teaspoon of salt, and 1/4 cup lemon juice. You also need some specialty items: cheesecloth and a thermometer. Obviously a dairy thermometer is best, candy thermometer is good too, but I had neither so I used a meat thermometer, which was less than ideal but it did get the job done.

Put the milk, cream, and salt in a big pot and put it on the stove over medium-high heat. Stir it frequently, and when it reaches 195 degrees (which I tested by sticking the meat thermometer in the middle of the milk every so often, but if you have one of the other types of thermometer it should be easier to tell when it happens) pour in the lemon juice, stir a bit, and take off the heat. Then let it sit for five minutes.

After five minutes it will have curdled. It will be chunky and kind of nasty-looking. Now you have to drain off the whey, which is a yellowish liquid that is high in protein and can be drunk OR used to make lacto-fermented pickles, and can be frozen. Anyway, to separate, line a colander with three or four layers of cheesecloth and put the colander in a bowl. Dump the contents of the pot into the colander. Most of the whey will drain into the bowl within twenty minutes, and you can then decant into a jar or other container of choice.

If you want firmer ricotta, you can gather up the edges of the cheesecloth into a hobo bag and tie it over the wooden spoon, then hang it in the pot to let it drain even more. You're supposed to do this for an hour. We left the house at this point to run errands, but our car battery died while out so we ended up coming back after a lot more than one hour, and it was still okay.

After hanging it's all done, and will keep in the fridge for four days. It's that easy! Go forth and make cheese!

(I got this recipe from the June 2013 issue of Martha Stewart Living.)

My Plant Sale Spoils

We went to Seattle Tilth's March Edible Plant Sale and brought home some babies!

Clockwise from top left, you can see mint, fennel, comfrey, and rosemary. In the brown paper bag is the shy and elusive rhubarb, which is grown from a chunk of root.

I bought all perennials. I do plan to grow annuals as well but I am going to start them from seeds I already have in order to save some money. There are also many more perennials I'd like to get, but this is what I could afford to get for now. It's easier, cheaper, and less stressful to build one's garden gradually, rather than trying to get the whole thing done perfectly in one try. Meanwhile, these babies are living in the mudroom at night and sunning themselves on the back steps during the day, hardening off while I dither about garden fencing.