Bagged Apples, update

22 Nov 2011 2 Comments

by katsmama in environmentalism, food, gardening Tags: , , , ,


It isn't beautiful, but it isn't as visually intrusive as I thought it would be. That is, I never looked at the tree and thought, "dang, that's ugly!"

Back in June, I wrote a post about growing apples organically by using paper lunch bags to form a barrier against the critters that might want to lay eggs in my apples.  I just picked the apples a few weeks ago, and it worked pretty well.
Some of the bagged Golden Delicious fell off in July or so. My total “harvest” from the Golden Delicious tree is only 7 apples. Sigh.
My other tree (name unknown) had a zillion apples on it, and I only wound up bagging a dozen or so before my stapler died. The bags have to be removed before I pick them so they have a chance to redden. I did pick one, to test for ripeness, and it did need more time.

I will definitely do this again next year, with two differences.

I will put the bags on earlier, and thin the fruit at the same time. I’ll get bigger individual apples, without spraying poisons.

I will pay better attention to when to harvest. The sour apples, from the tree that was here when we bought the house, need time in the sun to ripen. I’ll have to pull the bags off well before the first frost date, which on average is mid September here on the Front Range of Colorado although we didn’t freeze in my yard until October, which is crazy.

Actually, one more difference- I’ll get a better stapler.

Ummm…should the apple tree be horizontal?

02 Nov 2011 1 Comment

by katsmama in design, gardening Tags: , ,


A few more inches fell after this. See the oak tree- it looks like a candy cane.

We had a wet heavy snowstorm last week, and people all over town lost electricity from branches falling on power lines, lots of tree damage all up and down the street. We got lucky- full power all day and just a couple of branches gone from the ash tree in front.
I thought we had gotten lucky until I did a fuller inspection of the back yard. My golden delicious apple tree was uprooted. Completely knocked flat.
It is in a shaded spot, so the snow took a long time to melt from it, the way it has melted from the other young trees and bushes. I was hesitant to go out and mess with it right away.

Do you see the apple tree? Me neither.

That's better.

My plan:  first drive some stakes into the ground (it wasn’t staked previously, and it had started to lean when it was weighed down by apples) then pull it upright, stomp on the soil all around it and add some mulch.

It might not survive the winter, which is really too bad, because it had just started to produce.

I always read in garden design books and magazines about planning for “winter interest.” That means making sure there are evergreens and structures that look pretty in the snow. It is not supposed to be interesting like the Chinese curse,”may you live in interesting times.” Winter interest is not looking out the window and wondering if your trees are going to die!
This storm was unusual, but not unheard of. There’s a reason why this region is not forested- there are enough pre-halloween storms that break lots of limbs, and enough May freezes that kill buds to make this a very tricky place for trees to survive.
I keep trying, though.

Pumpkins!!!! Adorable Little Pumpkins!!!!!!

28 Oct 2011 Leave a comment

by katsmama in gardening, Uncategorized Tags: , , ,


Que pasa, calabasa? That's Spanish for what's happening, pumpkin?

I got a Wee Be Little pumpkin plant last spring, because they are just so darn adorable. No other reason.  We just harvested, in time for a jack o’lantern. We have a total of 7, and 6 of them will go to pie and bread.

Don't fear the reaper- actually, there was an unfortunate mishap with the scythe. It got sliced off, but we plan to replace it...

The Girl brought home a lovely cinderella-coach-shaped squash from a bonfire/fall party, and carved an intricate grim reaper scene into it. We roasted the seeds, and they were really tasty- thin hulls and nutty insides. I may try to figure out what variety it was, and plant it next year, because it is so darn adorable, in its own way.
The wee be little doesn’t take up much space, about a 4×4 foot square. I planted it in the former location of the compost bin, so there was a ton of rich compost for it to feed off of. It did sprawl in the wrong direction, I tried to nudge it the other way, but it kept encroaching into the sugar snap peas. By July it didn’t matter, because the peas were finished anyway.
The Boy was able to carve this independently, which is nice- I really hate getting my hands in pumpkin guts. It’s just gross.
We will probably wind up getting a big grocery store pumpkin, so we can have the classic picture of the monstrous jack o’ lantern eating the tiny one.

And when I said we would make pies from 6, I must have meant 5, because the Boy is carving another one.

He said, "write on your blog that I'm performing plastic surgery."

get them before they go to seed FAIL! thistle edition.

07 Oct 2011 Leave a comment

by katsmama in environmentalism, gardening Tags: , , , ,


Doesn't it look pretty, glowing in the late afternoon sun? Yeah. It's a thistle.

I went to a part of the yard that I hadn’t been to check out for  while (no, the yard isn’t that big, but I’ve been busy with school, and taking people to soccer and play practice, and the Girl just started Tae Kwan Do classes, and it was really hot until a few days ago…)

Anyway, the thistles have bloomed. Crud.

Some seed have scattered, some are still attached, so my mode now is to carefully cut off the seed heads and put them in a bag, then put the bag in the trash. My compost doesn’t get hot enough to kill weed seeds, so I avoid putting them in the compost bin.

Philosophically, are my weeds providing me a service? They are holding on to soil, bringing up nutrients from the subsoil, harvesting rainwater, turning atmospheric carbon into fodder for the compost pile?

Yeah.

They do all those things. And more.

But, I don’t want many more of them. Especially the prickly ones. Oh well.

A year’s worth of garlic, part 2

29 Sep 2011 Leave a comment

by katsmama in environmentalism, food, gardening, herbs, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , ,


I saved the largest bulb of my “harvest” to plant, and ordered some from eBay.  The kind I saved from what I planted last year is soft-neck, which is ordinary grocery store garlic, and in fact, this came from an ordinary grocery store. The kind I got on eBay is a hardneck variety, which is supposed to have a different flavor (there’s a question- how different can it be, and still be garlic?) and also it forms flower stocks and blossoms, which are called scapes.

We got some scapes in our CSA veggie box a few years ago and I had never seen them before- they’re really interesting. You could wear them as bracelets to ward off vampires- long green spirals. I sliced them for stir fry, and they had a bright, super-garlicky taste. Growing hard-neck garlic  means you get an earlier harvest, something to pick before the garlic is actually ready to dig. This helps with the year’s worth deal. Once the bulbs in the basket have either been eaten or started to sprout, there is something to pick that tastes like garlic.

Yes, I know I could just go to the grocery store.

Why bother growing my own? Honestly, carbon. How much diesel fuel is used to plow, plant and harvest garlic in California, or China?      http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11613477  how much energy to ship it here?

I am okay buying olive oil, because I can’t grow that here in zone 5, but I swear, garlic grows itself.

Before the fall equinox, I loosened some soil, broke the garlic heads into individual cloves and planted them. I put them in an area where the compost pile was, so there’s plenty of humus. I’ll cover with mulch, and wait until spring. I won’t water at all until next summer, and then it will still take less water than most people use on their lawns.

Grow garlic!!!!! Seriously!

No photo on this one- better artists than I can take beautiful pictures of bare soil.

She’s a sad tomato

10 Sep 2011 Leave a comment

by katsmama in food, gardening Tags: , , , , ,


One lonely ripe tomato was all I had as of August 29.

Up until this past weekend, I had only picked one ripe tomato off the Mexican Jungle that my veggie garden has become this year.  Because of the Mexican Jungle effect, I can’t tell you the name of the variety, because the little tag got swallowed up by greenery. Let’s just say  I planted things too close together, again.

On Friday, before we left for the mountains, I picked some beautiful chocolate cherry tomatoes, and a couple of Romas, and some more of these, whose name I don’t know. There are a ton more green ones, threatening to knock over the trellises. As long as we don’t get an early freeze (average first frost date here is September 15, but last year it didn’t happen until early October) the green ones will get a chance to ripen and become salsa, and salads and tomato sauce, and maybe dried tomatoes. Nom nom nom.

The grape tomatoes ripen a deep purple, and taste great on their own, but with these, I sliced them in half and threw them in with some pasta and vinaigrette. Now I have lunch this week.

According to my journal, these are "Chocolate Cherry", started from seed by a friend. They go dark, almost army green before they go purple. They are rich and sweet and filled with jelly.

Craptastic garden design

26 Aug 2011 1 Comment

by katsmama in arts and crafts, design, gardening Tags: , , ,


“Have you walked up the road to see the house on the corner yet?” my sister in law asked. We were at a family reunion in small town Idaho.

“Why,do they have, like, garden gnomes or something?”

“Well, no, I didn’t see any gnomes, but you have to go up and see it…”

“But why?”

“You just have to go see it.”

Well, we took a walk at sunset.

The shed was actually white, but glowed in the setting sun.

Wow. It was a high desert garden filled with junk- no gnomes, just farm implements turned into birds, bedframes hung with mugs and vases, a bottle tree. multiple bowling balls, a shelf of trophies. Craptastic!  Both of my brothers- in-law looked at it with dread, worried that they were going to wind up with a yard full of crap too.  DH didn’t say anything, but obligingly took a photo of the bottle tree in the setting sun.

One of the best structures was a fence around what I think is a goldfish pond- I stayed in the alley, so I couldn’t get close enough to be sure. The fence was alternating panels of sheet metal and either glass or plexi, and I bet it was designed as winter patio- not quite a greenhouse, but you would get a greenhouse effect- you could go out in the sunshine in the winter and be protected from the North wind, but still get sunshine, and since the structure was only around 6 feet tall, you wouldn’t have to get a building permit.

The family reunion was 4th of July weekend, and since then I have been evaluating the things I add to my garden- how much crap does one need? A little crap may look insecure, whereas a ton of crap inspires people from out of town to stand in your alley and peer over the fence.  I am thinking I might want a bottle tree, though…

Bloom Day- Let’s shop for stuff that blooms in August…

16 Aug 2011 3 Comments

by katsmama in gardening Tags: , , ,


It has been hot and dry here lately. Typically we get late afternoon thunderstorms that cool things off and moisten things up, but not so much this year.The lack of water has made things peter out sooner than usual, and looking around, I am realizing, I don’t have that much that blooms late summer. I need to get to work on that.

The asteraceae family does well in the dry heat- purple coneflowers and daisies and black-eyed susans have been blooming their heads off, and attracting pollinators for a few weeks now.

I don't deadhead the Echinacea (purple coneflower) because the birds like the seeds. What the birds don't eat will self seed and grow next year.

The herbs are the pollen workhorses- bees are all over the lavender, anise hyssop, oregano, thyme and mints.Not much to look at, but the bugs sure love them.

I have one tiger lily blooming right this minute, and I want to order about a gross of late summer lilies. I had some other oriental lilies that have already finished blooming. Never liked lilies before, but they fill an important role in late summer.  Orange is never my first color choice, but they just fit this weather and this time of year.

Love this tiger lily.

Wait, a gross of lilies, that’s a gross of holes to dig. May have to rethink that plan.

 

edited to add- I noticed some sweet peas still blooming- which I have always thought of as cool weather flowers- but no, it’s crazy hot and dry, but those little old fashioned sweet peas are still blooming. Hooray.

Should I fertilize the plants in the pond. or just buy more goldfish?

28 Jul 2011 Leave a comment

by katsmama in gardening, goldfish pond Tags: ,


oooh, pretty flower...ugh, what's wrong with the lettuce?

My water lily just bloomed- a lovely yellow flower, and I notice that the bloom is the same shade as the water lettuce and the water hyacinth. That’s not good. They are supposed to be a much richer green. My pond book recommends fertilizer spikes for potted plants, but these two are floaters- they have massive furry root systems that absorb nutrients from the water. Nutrients such as fish poo.
I won’t put fetilizer in the water of the pond itself, because that would be hazardous to the fish.

I put 5 comet goldfish in the tank at the beginning of the summer, and have removed one corpse- the other fish are nowhere to be seen, but I am assuming they are alive- Shrodinger’s cat, I guess, if I dig around in the pond searching for them, does that change the outcome? Maybe I don’t really understand what Shrodinger’s cat is all about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat   In fact, I’m pretty sure I don’t.

Google has helped me once again, though, by suggesting that I put some fertilizer in water in a bucket, set the plants in them overnight and see if that helps.  About half the plants are soaking now- we’ll see what happens.

Bloom Day- I love Larkspur…

16 Jul 2011 1 Comment

by katsmama in gardening Tags: ,


Blue and white larkspur, golden yarrow and white chamomile.

I have encouraged larkspur to self seed all over my back yard, ever since my wonderful MIL gave me that first envelope of seeds several years ago. At some point, I will probably consider them a weed, too, and complain that I can’t walk down the flagstone path because of them. Until then, they make July a little brighter.

I have only recently gotten into lilies, and my expensive R.O Backhouse Martagon turk’s cap lily has not flowered this year, and in fact looks yellow and horrible, while the Walmart lilies, whose variety I don’t know, if I ever knew them, are flourishing.  There’s probably a lesson there.

The brass headboard is actually a plant support in disguise- installed so I don't have to stake liles.

Love this dark red.

The roses are late this year, usually they are pooped out by now, but it has been such a wet spring they are going crazy. I don’t think I have ever had roses in the middle of July before.
I’ve mentioned before that the previous owners crammed several rose bushes into a bed at the end of the driveway. I don’t know the variety, kind of a cameo pink-but they bloom every year without any help from me. No fertilizer, no dusts, no sprays. After they bloom I whack them back to about a foot tall. By September, they are 5 feet tall again, and blooming their heads off.

This bunch doesn't even begin to empty out the bushes- there are still a couple dozen more on the plant.

 

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