We Have A Winner!!!

Wow, now that is fast. The seed order made on the phone Friday morning is here already and Johnny's Select Seeds is the winner as the just delivered box indicates. Now on to the garden planning.
Happy Gardening

Zinnia Summer 2011

Exploration of the zinnia







Most of the seed orders were made on Friday, with one going via USPS tomorrow. Territorial Seed Company had some tempting lettuce but spinach and some interesting peppers were the top choices. Johnny's Selected Seeds got the arugula picks but also the lettuces. The reason was simple - pellitized seed. Because transplants are an important process in my lettuces; pellitized seed makes for ease of planting. I am going with as many pellitized seeds as possible. This company also has carrot seed pellitized and basil too. I feel that the increased cost is negated at plating time because of the ease with which one can position seed into flats. This would be true even with direct seeding in the garden - think of no more thinning in the carrot row. I am sold on pellitized seed and would suggest you try some. Also a neat find was a seed trademarked as 'simply salad' from Stokes Seeds. They have multi-seeded mini pellets with multi-species salad mixes. I am going to try both the 'alfresco mixture' and the 'global gourmet' mix. Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds provided me with some of my zinnia choices . This Summer is 'The Year of the Zinnia', according to the National Garden Bureau - so we are ready with some selections of old time zinnias. Baker Creek also had a luffa gourd and a few tomatoes of interest. Pinetree Garden Seeds will supply the yellow tomato 'Nebraska wedding'. I have seen this variety labled as determinate and indeterminate so growing it will tell the tale. sand hill preservation center is the source for my cubits grafting seed.

I want to continue the experiment with tomato grafting but also want to try grafting some melons and cucumbers. The literature suggest using 'cucurbita ficiolia' and 'cucumis metuliferus' both of which Sand Hill has - great. plus I like the seed packet size of this supplier. They are a small company with a great catalog - no pictures so you will have to read their descriptions. They are also a catalog of rare poultry. So if you are going to experiment with chickens you might get their catalog. Chickens are a dream here but maybe not practical yet. One concern with Sand Hill is their 25 chick minimum order - way too many birds for a 4 hen ordinance here in Green Bay.

Besides the grafting I am using the summer green house space to grow our cucumber crop so I ordered varieties that will produce fruits without pollination. This is rather noteworthy because I want to work on learning more about native bees as pollinators. After the success of getting the ban on residential bee hives lifted here in Green Bay. knowledge of native bees which are just as efficient, maybe more so, than honey bees, would help in spreading the word about these species that could be encouraged in back yards maybe more easily and definitely cheaper than honey bee set-up. 'Farming for Bees' guidelines for providing native bee habitat on farms, from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation - ISBN 9780974447513, is a good introduction to this idea. Go to the society web page to read about pollinators and get publications.
Happy Gardening

Seed Order Season

We no longer heat this greenhouse space in winter - too costly
'Cocktail' is the variety name.
This red blotch ( S. curtisii )means this bulb will not stay in my collection - it MUST go!
Grafted tomatoes are available at Territorial - not a bad price either.

Making decisions is always difficult - making the seed order at 9 degrees with drifts of snow at the back door leading out to the garden is just that. But the anticipation of what the garden could contain is what these seed wish books are all about. Those perfect pictures of what might be only fuel the desire to fill every inch of the garden with those plants and hopefully one's plate with the same delicious produce. So decision time is upon me so that several months from now I can harvest those dreams.

Today I sorted through the seed boxes to remove the very oldest packets (I will make a few rag dolls with some to test the germination) and to get an idea of just what I have - too many cucumber packets and a nice selection of pellitzed lettuce seed. The plan this year is to very selective with cucumbers as last year's greenhouse cucumber growing was successful and could possibly replace any field grown cukes. I was also going to try to buy only pelitized lettuce as it is so easy to seed into flats. Melons were not as successful as I had hoped and so this year we will work with only a few (trying to keep the choices two types and one of those for the greenhouse)

The seed catalogs have been highlighted with a wish list and now the work will be to finalize the list down to the best choices. Once I have got the list done I will share. But don't expect total rational thinking on my part for I too can be fooled by tempting pictures and mesmerizing catalog copy.

I was especially pleased to see that grafted tomato plants are available to the American gardener this season thanks to Territoal Seeds. Grafted plants have been available to the English home gardener for a few years already. A few internet threads show gardeners who are still surprised and new with the concept of grafted vegetables. I have been looking for a tomato grafting workshop that I might attend this spring, but as yet nothing real close has shown up. If anyone hears of one let me know - nothing like some hands-on training to help in my experimentation. I have been told that grafting melons and cucumbers is a bit easier than tomatoes so I will have to look into some tough gourd seeds for that experiment.
Happy gardening

New Year - New Tool

A look back at the 2010 garden
Crocus naturalized in the yard - I planted 90 more bulbs this past fall.
Wild ramps - a great spring tonic
Jack in the Pulpit
French Sorrel - a wonderful green for every garden
These copper bands were not too successful.
Our front yard living sculpture.
Mother's day is pink roses.
The fig tree and the 'Earthbox" planters - good idea- excellent harvests.
Who can resist sunflowers.
Potato flowers - the beauty of nightshade flowers.
Grafted tomatoes - a fun experiment.
Tomatoberry - good little variety
Green Doctors - sweet fruits.
We just like zinnias.
A Monarch beauty.
The greenhouse cucumbers were a success worth repeating.
The makings for Mango jam.
Mother Nature's way of recycling.
The garlic harvest.
Footies were not too effective against apple pests.
So we will continue to use plastic bags.
A delicious pepper harvest from the 'Earthbox' planters.

Oh, those zinnias, they were a favorite of my grandmother.
Harvested cardoons ready for cleaning and cooking.
Our new hoop house.



Welcome to 2011 and another year to experiment in our Wisconsin backyard garden.

I got a new shoulder for Christmas - rotator cuff surgery on 12/22 - and am happy to be on the mend. The recent rain and spell of warm weather was going to make a parsnip harvest possible but not after my surgery - oh well, we will just have more when we dig them in spring.

I went back to the pictures of last year's garden and those are the choices you see. This past season had some good experimentation and a few successes of note - the grafted tomatoes worked but will need more efforts this next season; the apple bagging was again successful; and some of the tomatoes new this year will get as repeat this year especially the 'Tomatoberry'; the 'Earthbox' plantings were wildly successful for peppers so much so that I will add a third box and grow all our peppers in them with none in the garden; and lastly the fig tree was very productive and I intend to buy another small variety mail order this spring.
We won't be using footie's for organic apple production next year because of expense and the fact that did not succeed against coddling moth. The copper bands around the peppers were not too successful and with all the peppers in containers that eliminates the slug problem for good so
I will just have to fend off the earwigs.

Maybe the most successful endeavor of 2010 was our successful work to get the ban lifted prohibiting bee hives in the city of Green Bay. Now that one can legally have a hive, I think I will look into the class about bee keeping that is scheduled this month - my wife has always wanted bees - they might be what we get instead of the chickens that I have always wanted (they too are legal in the city limits now too).

I hope you both learned and enjoyed our garden this past season and will join us again this season.
Happy Gardening

A Snow Blanket and Sprout Time

Sunflower sprouts are a great treat you can grow yourself.
The first real big snowfall of this winter.
The hoop house took the storm well.
These sprouts are ready for light and harvestable in a week.

Harvest time for these sprouts.
One has to clean the seed coats off the sprouts as a fair number do not drop off.
Harvest with a knife or kitchen shears.
I clean them in cold water and then spin them dry for storage.
The roots can go on the compost pile or out for the bird to have some winter greens.

Our recent winter storm brought a white blanket to the garden and covered the cold frames so most of our harvest for 2010 is over.
However, on December 1st I harvested Napa cabbage, sorrel, and some parsley but now most of those are covered with snow. I am not too sure if I will be able to get any parsnips out of the ground this December like last because the ground is really frozen and a nice heavy snow blanket is not drifted on that patch. If snow was over them heavy the ground might warm enough for me to dig them in a few weeks. We are down the the last of the apples for one more batch of applesauce and then that harvest will be gone.
The hoop house held up real well in the storm. High winds ( 30-40 mph) did not seem to bother the plastic and the snow was blowing so much that little accumulation on the house occurred. But we still have a few more months of snow and wind to endure. The snow did pile up on the greenhouse and because the glass is old, I pulled snow off twice in this storm. I don't heat that space, but a sunny day will cause the snow load to slip off. Snow did not slip this time. The drifting as noted in the pictures, made pulling the snow off a bit easier than usual because I could stand on the drifts.
Outside gardening is over, but we are still growing. The first of the Amaryllis are showing nice flower stalks and we are forcing Paper whites. The paper whites are one of the easiest flowers to force in the house, because a bulb is like buying a flower ready to go. Three or five bulbs will make a great show for over two weeks. We have returned to growing sprouts in the basement as well. I have grown three batches of sunflower sprouts recently and let me review how I do that.
I wash the sunflower seed in water with a couple of sprays of Clorox. Afterwords, I rinse them off and let them soak overnight. The next day I drain them and scatter them in a plastic tray that does not have holes. I have been putting a small amount of potting soil in the tray before I scatter the seed. I then pat the seed on that soil bed ( less than a half inch) and mist the seed before I put a dampened sheet of newspaper over the seeds. I use a plastic dome over this and put a bath towel over that. At one time I was putting the tray on a heat mat but that just seemed to promote mold - ugh.
For the next several days I spray the paper and check for germination. Usually in three to four days the roots emerge and then you must be vigilant about water and air. Take the newspaper off and begin to give the seedlings light. I have them next to or sometimes under the florescent light bank that I have in the basement for a few plants that I winter over. Keep the growing seed mois,t and add water the the tray. In less than two weeks you will have a nice crop of spouts.
I then cut half of the tray and clean them as some of the seed coats do not fall off the cotyledons as they grow. Cleaning is in a sink of cold water and then I spin the sprouts in a salad spinner and bag them into plastic and store in the refrigerator vegetable bins. Expect a week on the cut sprouts and let the other half of the tray continue to grow and harvest them 4 to 5 days after the first batch.
Sunflower sprouts are great in salads, sandwiches, wraps, soup or just eaten by the hand fulls. They and other sprouts such as alfalfa, mung bean, radish, and broccoli are something we grow most of the winter. The key to success is constant rinsing of sprouts grown in jars and constant moisture for spouts grown in trays. By the way, sunflowers as a field crop are not treated for insects so in reality you can share the 50lb bag with the birds and still have great sprouts in the kitchen.
When you are done with the tray, toss the roots on the compost pile. The birds might find the leftovers good and if you have chickens they will appreciate the winter greens too.
Happy Gardening

A Few Last Garden Harvests

Cardoons are great plants
Cleft grafting on apple - think about this for next spring.
Tomato grafting is an interesting experiment for the home gardener.
Cardoons tied up for blanching in October
Today's harvest for tonight's meal.

Cleaning the cardoons.
Scraped and sliced stems.
Into lemon water they go and then they will be blanched.
The cardoon dish ready for the oven.
Spinach seedlings in the hoop house that will be the 2011 harvest.
Cold frame lettuce
Napa cabbage that the slugs just love - but we harvest the head anyway.

It may say fall on the calendar but the seed catalogs have already started to arrive. This year by November 16th I had two! - Stokes again was here first but PineTree was in the mailbox too. So November catalogs mean the countdown till the 2011 planting season has begun -"Boy Howdy!" I can hardly wait.
I got to teach a class in plant grafting at Fox Valley Technical College last weekend and I was really excited about the enthusiasm of the class I had. We discussed hard wood grafting and did some practice scion cutting and cleft grafting. I brought apple watersprouts for the practice. Now would be a good time to think about grafting some different apple varieties on that apple tree in the back yard. You would have time to research your choices, learn about grafting and maybe find a class to sign up for that would make your spring grafting experiment successful. Grafting is also a way to renew a tree or save an old favorite apple from another tree onto a branch in your back yard. you can go to the May 6th, 2009 blog entries to see the grafts I put on that season. This season I did not graft any new varieties onto the trees but I think next spring I will be back at it.
We also discussed vegetable grafting and tomatoes were part of that the topic. I think that this grafting is a bit more difficult than hardwood work, but still, as a way to experiment, I find tomato grafting a real challenge. This is the activity I would like to find a class in so I will be checking the Extension sites of both Missouri and North Carolina to see what they might have as classwork next season. Both have done such classes in the past and the North Carolina site has good information about the process. This too might be good winter reading and then you can plan to try tomato grafting next season along with your apple grafting.
The garden is still producing fresh produce. Today I harvested Daikon radishes, Napa cabbage, and Cardoons. Cardoons are on the menu tonight - AuGratin style; however, the Internet shows them as a crispy fried treat too. I harvested three heads that had been tied up for blanching for several weeks. I cleaned the stalks, scraped and pulled off the tough parts and thorns, and put them in lemon water and then blanched them. I am cooking them casserole style with onions, garlic, thyme and cheese but there are many good recipes on the net -Google 'cardoon recipes' and look at the images too. This is a great vegetable and a beautiful garden plant. Here in Wisconsin they are usually an annual but with some protection I have had some return to make seed heads the second year. We also ate these immature flower buds just like artichokes which are a close relative of cardoons. Several seed catalogs have the seed - put them on the wish list for next season.
The pictures this week show some of the hoop house and cold frame plants that will hopefully survive the winter for harvest next spring. The Napa cabbage was ravaged again by the slugs but a little salt in the cleaning water and they are done for - no escargot in the salad please. As you note we are back to alternate weeks with posts during this slow growing time but with the seed catalogs arriving the thoughts of next seasons garden slowly takes form and the excitement of another growing season builds.
Happy Gardening