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

NYC Horticulture Adventure

Central Park view
Weeds will colonize bare ground anyplace and even here near Ground Zero
Mystery fruit of the week - pucker up
Street flowers - they are everywhere and very nice
A beautiful stand of American Elms in Central Park

Under the trees in the BBG
We went to the BBG especially to see this bonsai collection - very nice


NYC roof top gardens

Susan and I are in New York City as part of our 30th wedding anniversary celebration so the pictures are a bit of our sightseeing around the city and at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens.
Hope you enjoy them as much as we did seeing them.
Happy Gardening

Busy week but not in the garden

Last rose of the season
Cardoon seed is ready for harvest
Internal damage to peppers by earwigs
Most of the bell peppers have been damagaged

Hen of the Forest - Polyporus frondosus Edible and choice
Scramble with eggs it certainly is choice


This was a busy week mostly with education. On Monday I had the privilege to speak to a Beginning Horticulture class at Fox Valley Technical College. This is always a treat. The class was large and along with my standard PowerPoint I brought an example of all the tomatoes from the garden. We discussed vegetable gardening, made a "Rag Doll" for seed germination testing and talked about the growth industry that is possible in horticulture. The students were engaged and I had a good time - Thanks Roxanne.

On Wednesday I co-taught a class on drying fruits and vegetables at UW Brown County Extension. Home economist, Judy Knudsen and I had a packed class. We covered quite a bit of information and gave out some good tips. I even had the chance to show how to make my home remedy "Fruit Fly Trap". Also, in my dehydrator this week, I had a bonus. Someone brought a beautiful mushroom into Extension and I was lucky enough to get part of it. I had wonderful scrambled eggs and mushrooms on Friday and the rest went into the dehydrator for use all winter long - Thanks Tammy for sharing.

In the drying class, I was asked to list a favorite canning book so here it is:

PRESERVING NATURE'S BOUNTY by Frances Bissell. Sterling Publishing Co.
IASB 13:978-1-4027-2731-3
This is a good book for making small batches of jams, jellies, and other seasonal preserves. The Clementine Marmalade is great. The book basically details the long cook method for making these preserves as no commercial pectins are used in the recipes.

The rest of the week was devoted to the work on the brick apron in front of the greenhouse. I got the bricks down and have swept sand over them and hope to finish the sand and fill in the edge around them and plant grass seed this next week.

Happy Gardening

Construction Time

I was surprised to see this mystery plant in bloom this fall - Know what it is???
My favoirte eye candy for the garden - Zinnias are always planted.
Sedums are fun color.
Our great tasty pole bean even at this size - there is some confusion as to variety
The construction zone
My miniature geranium - I think its called Robin Hood?

Pink Pearl - lovely to look at and good to eat


We are still dry - the last rain was in late August and we could sure use some cool fall rains. Luckily, the hose reaches from the faucet to the garden and I have been getting that inch of water on the garden. Tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, peppers, and the herbs are all still producing. I got the onions cleaned and the garlic into a mesh bag for storage. The dill seed is finally dry and time to sift it and put it into a jar for winter use. We have a Dill Bread recipe that I will post in the future. Drying of veggies and herbs continues, and with some nice apples from a friend I made a batch of Hot Pepper Jelly with the Big Bomb peppers. That variety is REALLY HOT! I tasted one and my lips were on fire for twenty minutes and several large glasses of milk. I used the Big Bomb in the jelly but chickened out in the end and removed most of the pepper pieces before I put the jelly into jars. The extra that I tasted was snappy, so as the jelly matures it should be really hot. I like hot pepper jelly with peanut butter.
The proposed brick apron in front of the greenhouse got closer to completion with our work this week. Check out the "tamping video - there was no way for me to rent and maneuver a mechanical tamper so the hand one will have to do. I have laid down the gravel base and put a layer of paving sand over the gravel in preparation of placing the leveling sand and then the pavers. Susan and I moved the 1500 or so pavers out of the way of the construction and hopefully the last move will be to place them on the apron site. This construction project will allow for a nice level site for the early cold frames in the spring and a good level location for the rain barrels on the east side of the green house. Just a note: the greenhouse is only heated for one germination month in the spring. The cost of fuel is such that I can not run the greenhouse all winter as in the past. This change came about several years ago as fuel cost jumped and heating the greenhouse was doubling our heat bill so something had to go and that was the most efficient. I can winter over a number of plants in the basement under eight fluorescent lights. Keeping them on for about 15-16 hours a day makes the plants under them thrive and the cool basement temperatures seem not to bother them. I have successfully over wintered my favourite miniature geranium, Robin Hood, for over 25 years and in the basement for the last six with little problems. African violets grow their best under fluorescent tubes - try it - and see if they don't bloom beautifully with the artificial light.
The apple harvest continues and I have started to dry some too. The variety "Pink Pearl" is a great one to dry. They keep their beautiful color and we really enjoy them and all the other apples that we dry.
Happy Gardening