Still Warm Weather

A November Queen Elizabeth
Sesame flowers
Sesame seed pods
The ripe open seed pods

I shake the dry pods and their seed into a bin
The sifted seed almost clean and ready to use in bread
The NoKnead bread recipe is back in the August 24th blog entry
The Chicago fig tree gave us three ripe figs this week - they were great
The Meadow Vole trap parts


The finished trap ready to be baited
The lard in jars cooling down and soon to be used

This month has been unseasonably warm. Today the temperature here at the garden was a sunny 54 degrees. No wonder I still have the Queen Elizabeth rose trying to bloom and out and about I have seen a Shasta Daisy and Easter Lily blooming in a yard! Too bad I harvested all the apples off the trees a month ago - they would have been much better tree ripened than cooler ripened.

The sesame crop for this year was small but the included pictures show the harvest and the half cup of seed for bread that this year's crop provided. The great NoKnead bread recipe is back in August. The sesame seeds will be used in the loaves Susan will make for Thanksgiving. Next year I am going to try for a full cup of harvest so that will mean a big row of sesame in the garden instead of a 6 ft. row next to the house. I planted the crop there because that spot was warm enough for this long season crop, but maybe with another warm fall, I can get a bigger crop in the garden.

I have included pictures of the PVC Vole trap in this issue because meadow voles are such a terribly destructive pest in the yard and garden. I make these traps from 1 1/2 inch PVC pipe. I usually buy a half length, 4 feet, and can make two traps from that amount. The pictures show two 8 inch pieces for the sides and one 4 to 6 inch piece for the center fill tube. If you want to use the trap in the garden buy some end caps for the center tube so you can place that part of the trap vertically and fill it in the winter without digging the whole trap out of the snow. I do not glue my pieces together because you don't need to, as the pipe will fit snug and glue just adds to the cost. I have used two different poison baits this season and will see which one gets eaten the most by the voles. I still put plastic rings around my fruit trees just to be safe. There is nothing worse than when the snow melts in the spring to find that your fruit tree has been eaten on all winter by voles and you have to try to save the tree with bridge grafts. Voles are territorial so the more of them you can remove the safer your plants will be during the winter. I have seen these vermin destroy huge hosta clumps because voles do not hibernate but must feed all winter long. Take the time now to manage the population.

The garden is still providing some greens, nice parsley and carrots, and the Napa cabbage is still growing and we should be able to have some for Thanksgiving dinner. The fig tree, whom we have named "Stinky", provided us with three tasty tree ripened figs this week. Stinky is a keeper.

As a cook I like to experiment and I have been reading about returning to using animal fats for some cooking. Old fashioned organic "LARD" has resurfaced as not as bad a fat as was once thought. Lard has some of the same good nutrients that one finds in olive oil; so this week I bought some organic pork fat and rendered it on the grill. The included pictures are of the the three half pints of cooking fat that I got. I am going to experiment with the product this holiday with biscuits, pie crust and some frying to see just how we like the lard and how our digestive systems fair. This is plain, no additives added fat from organic pork that was locally raised so the product I rendered should be about as pure as one can get.

Happy Gardening

And the 2010 Winner is ....

Today the FIRST of the 2010 garden catalogs arrived in the mail!!!

The Stokes 2010 Gardening Guide arrived in the mailbox today so how far off can spring be now.
This is undoubtedly the earliest I have ever gotten a vegetable catalog. Nice work Stokes - now
I have something to start planning with.

Happy Gardening

November - And Still the Garden Has Bounty

Borage has escaped the frost and still blooms
The absolute last rose of summer
Hidden beauty of Nasturtiums
These little zinnias are really tough reliable bloomers
The sorrel is still out there for egg dishes
Flat leaf parsley tastes best after a touch of frost
This white borage is really a great plant - I will have to search for seed to save
Even the Alpines still have a few fruits
Spinach for next spring

Most of the leaves have colored and fallen but this viburnum is still showing


The days have been warm recently. The meadow voles really did damage the lettuce crops (ate it all !!!) in the cold frames and as a result I replanted this week. I had to use a variety of old seed that may or may not germinate because I planted all the specialized winter type seed that I had purchased. I will make a note not to do that again. The spinach has germinated nicely in the hoop house so I included pictures this week. Leaf raking is done and most of them are piled on the curb waiting to join the other leaves in the city compost piles. That site is close, so in the spring I can go there to get extra compost to add to the garden.

We are still planning to enlarge the garden but a new prospect has been discussed. Instead of having a rail fence around the yard and another fence around the garden to keep the bunnies out, we have discussed fencing the entire back yard and eliminating the garden fence. I like that idea because then I can walk in and out of the garden wherever I please, and eliminate bunnies from the entire back yard. I think we will work on that plan and see just what it will cost as part of the garden projects for 2010.

The winter rye seed has germinated nicely and the green cover crop will grow till freeze-up and then next spring I will till the rye into the soil. I have done this for many years and the process has greatly helped me lighten my heavy soil and add good organic fiber to the mix.

With the garden work much slower at this time of year I will decrease my postings to every other week.
Happy Gardening

Fall, And Most of the Leaves Have

My "Bloodgood" Japanese Maple has great fall color
The parking spot for Saturday night - almost no takers
This hoop house was a kit that had 9 plastic braces for the wooden members

I put the side braces on to help stabalize the structure - next year a real hoop house.

In the last week many of the leaves have fallen due to high winds of the last few days, and only a few leaves are left on the trees. The different grafts on the apple tree show different fall color or as some apples, no color at all - kind of an interesting look on the tree. I have been drying and making apple sauce almost daily this past week and will continue until most of the crop is processed. The "Firesides" and one variety, no name anymore, off the garden tree are the favorite for fresh eating so I will try to hold on to them as long as possible. Most of the rest will be dried.

With a few sunny days I was able to cover my wooden hoop house and protect the planted seed from all the recent rain. I covered the structure with two sheets of 10ft X 25ft X 4 mil plastic. I used staples and battens to secure the cover to the structure. I had good luck with this covering holding up all last winter, even with heavy snow and wind. The spinach has sprouted inside the hoop house and so have the mixed greens but I have not had any lettuce show in the cold frames. I am afraid the seed may have been too wet and will give it another few days before I will try some re-seeding. The mixed greens that spouted in one cold frame have be attacked by voles - those evil creatures. I put poison in the vole traps and hope that puts an end to them. Voles are voracious feeders and must eat all winter as they do not hibernate. I am trying two kinds of poison bait to see if one or the other does a better job. Obviously, I will have to fight them year 'round to manage their population. I will also put plastic rings around all the fruit trees just to make sure they are excluded from that food source.

I harvested the sesame stalks today. The dry leaves are best pulled off with an upward motion along the stem. That leaves the seed pods that will dry and open. I cut the stems and put them upside down in a brown grocery bag and put the bag in the green house, which on sunny days is nice and warm, to dry. The pods will split open and the seeds fall to the bottom of the bag. This should take about a month. Then they will be destined for that great bread that Susan makes.

Happy Gardening

Where was this rain all summer?

Love those Wolf River apples


And people question me when I say that I bag all my apples
Transplanted carrots - but they still taste good
The Cold Frame Manual - I am proud of my part in this publication

My light space in the basement
Mylar is great reflective material - easy to get and use
Some of the dry apples from this year's harvest


This has been a very rainy week. The sun shone on Saturday but for the most part the week was very wet. That was good for the winter rye planted last Sunday and for the lettuce and spinach seed planted then too, but not for any work in the garden or yard. I left the cold frame lids open for natural watering of the newly planted seed but had to close them after I decided that multiple days of rain was a bit too much for the seeds in the cool soil.

I harvested some of the carrots that were transplanted as seedlings and, yes, they did grow, but many of them have multiple root tips which is not ideal for carrots. The experiment worked but the multiple tips make cleaning a chore. Luckily there is no difference in the taste. I think I would like to experiment with deeper containers next season. Transplanting allows me to get my carrots in the garden in short rows and in multiple places and not have to struggle to get the seed to germinate which has usually been a problem in the past.

I checked today and the winter rye has begun to germinate, so by next week, I should see the shoots emerge from the ground. Also, I hope to be able to cover the hoop house with plastic this week. The forecast is not looking that good with more precipitation in store most of the week.
Once the hoop house is covered and when the spinach germinates, I will have to keep the soil moist till freeze up, when the seedlings will be on there own through the winter. I did occasionally toss snow inside on top of the spinach and the pictures back in earlier blog entries show what a great crop of greens we had in that space this season - so I hope to repeat the success.

I was pleased this week to receive copies of a publication that I wrote for the GOT DIRT program last year. The COLD FRAME MANUAL published for the GOT DIRT Garden Initiative was a excellent experience. Funded by the UW-School of Medicine and Public Health's Wisconsin Partnership Program in conjunction with UW Extension, the manual is available from the Brown County Extension office and is on line at this web site: http://www.co.brown.wi.us/i_brown/d/uw_extension/cold_frame_manual.pdf or you can Google search 'Cold Frame Manual and David Parsons'. The manual gives directions for making what I think is the best garden tools one can have; a set of cold frames.

I have been bringing in what few plants I intend to over-winter into the basement. There, I have a set of fluorescent lights and trays that are my winter green space now that I don't heat the greenhouse. The lights, boot trays, and space blanket Mylar material make a cozy bright area. I have about a dozen florescent tubes that are on a timer for 16 hours a day. Now there are three geranium plants (a variety called Robin Hood miniature that I have had for maybe 20 years!) that will be my source for cuttings next spring and a few orchids, one bay plant, and later space for other forced plants. Also, florescent lighting is one of the best ways to grow African violets. They seem to love the light culture and make fantastic blooms in this environment - just ask the violet growers in your area. There is more than enough light for my orchids and geraniums and thiswill be my indoor green space for the next several months.

Happy Gardening

Till and Plant

This is White Borage - but I have not had these seeds for several years - Surprise
The last asters of the season
Searching for cardoon seeds - hair of the dog
There are those seed
Two heads worth of seed - I am really happy with this amount of seed
The maple seedlings healed in and the vole trap in place
This is the mint ring - a cast iron pipe that has been used in the past to contain the mint
The mint will stay in this planting for three years and then be dug and replanted
Lettuce planted in the cold frames
The Napa cabbage looks good so far - not too much slug damage

Even though the season is over for some crops planting for fall and spring crops goes on. This week as the weather got better I had time to finish the tomato clean up by tilling that part of the garden. The straw mulch was tilled under and I planted winter rye seed as a cover crop and to help my heavy soil dry out in spring. I dig a shallow trench down the garden to help drain the area in the spring. The rye should be up in about two weeks and it will continue to grow till hard freeze and then start to grow again next spring. This cover crop will be green fertilizer next spring. I have used this cover crop for years as a way to build my soil.
The hoop house was planted with four kinds of spinach and some fall greens. I also planted the cold frames with lettuce - Winter Density, North Pole, Arctic King and Italienischer. These were all direct seeded into trenches and covered with potting soil, watered and in the cold frames the lids were closed. I will check periodically to see how the germination is going. Hopefully things will move along as we should have cool but not cold weather for a while. I will cover the hoop house when the spinach germinates and that crop should be happy there for the winter and be the great greens crop for next spring.
I worked with the cardoon seed heads to separate seed from all the choke fibers. I wore gloves to strip the spiny part of the cardoon seed head and then I broke the seed head apart. Removing the seeds from the fibers was like looking for ticks in the hair of a dog. You need to rub your fingers into the fibers and locate the seeds and then rub them out. I used my soil screen to catch the seeds as I removed them. The seeds feel hard like a buried tick hiding in the coat of a dog - sorry but that's is just what the process feels like.
I buried most of the bonsai in one of the potato mounds. The maple seedlings that will be root stock for some grafting next spring and future bonsai projects should winter quite nicely in this soil banked with straw. I put a vole trap, as the picture shows, in the center as I will supply them with some poison instead of maple trees to feed on. Just as a matter of protection I put collars around the fruit trees and use several of the PVC baited traps to keep the vole population in check.
The napa cabbage seems to be slug free even though some holes appear. I need to put plastic on that cold frame to help this crop get to maturity.
I have been drying apples and making apple sauce this week too. The apples dry quickly in the food dryer. I seldom remove the skins as they are good fiber and nutrition. I quarter the apple away from the core, thick slice the quarters, dip them in a mixture of water, lime or lemon juice, and a bit of honey, drain them and put them on the trays.
My dryer will do six trays, about 8 to 12 medium to large apples, overnight for about 25 cents. I made apple sauce in my Fissler pressure pan - great pan - in basically the same way. I leave the skins on, quarter the apples, add a bit of cinnamon, ginger, honey and water and cook them up to pressure and hold for about 5 minutes and then let them cool. I hand pick out the skins from my sauce because I do not like putting it through a Foley mill. I think that make the sauce too homogenized. The video this week is what the garden looks like now that the winter rye is planted.
Happy Gardening

Another Frost Does Some Things In

My 15 year old Maple bonsai in fall color
The cold frame landing done for this season
Wolf Rivers - they will stay in the plastic till eaten to prevent shrivleing
Footie apples
Bird damage to only one apple

The end of the the tomato patch
Cardoons tied up for blanching and later harvest
Garlic is a fall planted crop
I planted before I left for NYC and when I came back

Tomato seed saving - cut open very ripe fruits and press out the seed
Rub off the flesh
Wash off the flesh
Dry the seed and then bag and label the fresh seed

With our travels over, we are back in Wisconsin for much cooler weather. The forecast for the weekend past prompted me to harvest many of the apples. Several branches did real well this season. The apples in the "footies" seemed to be a success so I think that I will have to get a box of these things and try them on the small tree in the garden next season. The Firesides are in short supply this year as that tree had a major drop during this dry summer - too bad as that is my favorite fresh apple. We got a nice crop of Wolf Rivers as the photos show, and for the most part all the varieties produced from five to ten apples. Thus with officially 35 different varieties on three trees, we have a good supply of varieties. Some of the newer grafts only produced two or three apples but that was enough to make the first taste trials. I have been know to remove varieties that either do not produce well or do not pass the taste and drying test. Cox Orange Pippin was one that just did not do well and was removed in favor of using the branch to graft red fleshed apples like the Pink Pearl show in a previous entry.

The tomato and pepper crop were done in by the recent frost and with the tomatoes on the string method I was able to remove the plants in less than an hour of work, put them in garbage cans and will haul them off the the dump as I do not compost pepper, tomato, or cucumber plants. I took down the strings and sent that to the dump too.

The tomato crop was good this year with the 'Sugary' and 'Golden Rave' winning as the best flavor followed by the 'Valencia' and 'Persimmon' for yellows and 'Big Beef 'and my old standby 'Red Peach' for the reds. 'Red Peach' is a vigorous plant and the greenest and healthiest of all the tomatoes this late in the season. I think this would be a great producer in a more southern environment that would allow this variety to continue late into the fall as I had nice green fruits still maturing on this plant. I was most disappointed in the Black Truffle as it was flat in flavor. The Grubs and Green Pineapple were tasty but the fruit production was spotty so I will try the Grubs again but not the Green Pineapple. The basil in the tomato patch was a great success.

My peppers were generally a poor crop this season. 'Volcano' was a good hot and 'Big Bomb' was very HOT and had a good fruit set. The rest of the peppers were poor and between the slugs and earwigs the corp in general did not produce well based on the amount of space I gave them. Cucumbers were great for a while and then they got away from me and I think next year I will work on better spacing my plantings time-wise and work at better records of what produces the best fruit. For some reason several of my flat leaf parsley plants are going to seed already - they are usually a biennial, flowering next spring if they survive the winter.

The cold frames are back in the garden. I have Napa cabbage covered with one. The others are protecting lettuce. I want to cover the hoop house with plastic and then plant spinach in the next week. I also want to till the tomato patch and plant winter rye for a cover crop in that area.
I have included a photo series this week of how I save tomato seed. I use an old metal screen to collect and wash the seed. When the seed is dry I use one of my wooden labels to scrape the seed off the screen and into a container for storage. This year I will save Valencia and Red Peach seed.
Happy Gardening