Plan for Food Garden 2009

Fish boxes with lettuce and spinach last May.

What do you do when there is sleet pelting the windows and cars skidding down the street? Stay home! I did some garden planning for next year.

Once again, I am not sure I will be at my current address all of next summer's growing season. Depends on many things: Will DH get into grad school? Will we be able to prepare my mother's house for habitation? Will we move to another city altogether? Will the collapsing economy have us all sharing a cardboard box under a bridge? The future is murky.

I am going to plan for a combination of my yard and my mother's. I will put most things in containers here at my house, so I can take them to Mom's if I need to move. My yard has the advantage of soil built up for a few years. Mom's soil is awful and thin in the sunny places, so I will have to build beds and use containers there, too. She also has groundhogs that will need trapping.

Another option is to get a community garden plot. I am still thinking about that. But then I would be tending three gardens. Maybe I could get a plot for just a few crops, like sweet potatoes, corn, onions, and cabbage. We'll see.

Lessons learned in this past year's garden:

• I don't have the patience for the many challenges of tomatoes, so no tomatoes next year. We always know people with excess tomatoes that we can have or buy cheaply, so I will put my energy into other crops.
  
  
• Consistent watering is not my strong suit. There always comes a time in the summer when something takes me away from the garden and things get too dry. I need to automate watering, using Self-Watering Containers (SWCs) and/or driplines.
  
  
• The potatoes were a limited success. I can buy them cheaper. I will just grow sweet potatoes, which did very well with little care in 2007.
  
  
• I liked the winter-sowing of herbs and annual flowers. I will do that in milk jugs again in late winter. Lots more basil.
  

Various herb sprouts in milk jug greenhouses in May.

I plan to use several growing methods. I like my fish boxes for for lettuce and other greens, raised high off the ground to avoid pests that munch and cats that spray urine. They are easy to cover with nets. I will sow the fishboxes around St Patrick's Day, when I plant onions at Mom's house.

I planted some big containers last year, and will do it again but make them SWCs. I got some recommendations from my container-gardening list, and I think I will plant peppers, eggplant, chard, zucchini, and celery in big SWCs.

I want to try Straw Bales at my mother's house. They will be good for a year or two, and will break down into her soil. I thought I would try the vining veggies there, cucumber and squashes.

What to plant in the ground when I might move? I was thinking lots of peas the mature early, and then beans if it looks like we will be here through the summer. Several rounds of basil can go in at my house and Mom's. Onions and other roots go in at her house, if I can get a decent raised bed prepared. I liked the carrots and beets this year. I am very tempted to buy "seed tape" for carrots and beets, which I spent a lot of time thinning.

I enjoyed growing my first onions this summer.

The herbs can go into portable clay pots again. Basil and parsley will come from seeds, but I think I will get another thyme, some sage, and some rosemary from starts at Glick's greenhouse.

I experimented with basil in pots and in the ground. Both worked,
but I need more of it. What looked like a lot of pesto in July,
is almost gone in December.

I want to grow larger amounts of fewer veggies, sticking more closely to what I know we will eat. I already have some seeds, from seed-saving, and from catalog orders this fall:

Corn, Ornamental Indian
Cabbage, Copenhagen (heirloom)
Pea, Mississippi Silver field pea
Pea, Tall Telephone - needs trellis
Pea, Black-eyed (saved)
Lentil, French Green
Basil, sweet Italian (saved)
Bean, Commodore Bush Bean (red)
Bean, Taylor Dwarf Horticultural Bush bean (saved)
Bean, Pole bean, Romano (Italian Flat)
Lettuce, Romaine, Parris Island Cos
Spinach, Bloomsdale Long Standing
Cucumber, Lemon Apple
Squash, Burgess Buttercup
Squash, Waltham Butternut

There is a Seed Round Robin coming in the mail from one of my lists, eventually. It might have things I am still missing. Otherwise, I will put in another catalog order. I still need:

chard
kale
sunflowers for seeds
pickling cukes
pie pumpkins
carrots
beets
thyme

Some things, I like as starts from Glick's where I can buy just one plant for less than 50-cents, for my small yard or container. Things I will get from starts at Glick's:

onions sets
sweet potato sets
one zucchini
one eggplant
celery

My cabbage and broccoli starts this past year were savaged in flats that were given to me when they were half-dead. I got a lot of veg from those free flats. I know that they originally came from the Kutztown Produce Auction. I am going to check that out in the spring. If I can get starts very cheaply, it will be a more efficient use of my time than nursing and thinning seeds. And, I can share extras with neighbors.

So, that's my plan, so far. I wish I could grow some fruit, but everything takes time to get established, so I will probably keep buying at markets and visiting u-pick places until we are settled someplace more permanently.

Independence Challenge - Week 23

Sorry - no photos this week - having trouble with the stupid
camera battery. And the stupid printer. Stupid technology. Grrr.

Another big week in food storage. Good news: I think I could comfortably feed us for three months on what I have now. Some stuff will last a year; some things still need more stocking. I feel much more secure, foodwise.

Made a fascinating trip to the Kutztown Produce Auction on Thursday. It's a big pavilion out in the middle of the corn fields, with a parking lot full of farm trucks and buggies. Mennonite owned, it is has been in operation since around 1950 when a group of Old Order farm families bought farms near Fleetwood. I saw an egg auction, nursery stock auction, a lot of produce (local and not), and tons of potted fall mums. Most things come in very large lots - like 6 bushels of green peppers that might go for $4/box, but you have to take all 6. But some lots are smaller. I can see this being a fabulous resource when I am set up to do some serious canning, or to supply a community co-op or event cooking project. Most of the bidders appeared to own restaurants, farm stands, garden centers, large institutions, or food processors. It runs Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday of every week, year-round. Saturday sales include straw and hay (by the ton), and firewood.

DD15 was with me. "OMG, Mom! You brought me out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by miles of corn, to watch old men sell vegetables for hours, and my cell phone is running out of charge, so I can't even text people. I'll be in the car reading if you want me to load anything you buy." Maybe she isn't quite ready for grid-crash, eh?

I spent most of my time watching and listening to three simultaneous auctioneers. I saw squash I couldn't even identify, gorgeous Chinese cabbages, tons of hot and sweet peppers, and cauliflower bigger than basketballs. Watched Macoun apples go up to $24/bushel in hot bidding, when other varieties were going for $8-10/bu. Eventually, I registered for a number and bought two boxes of those pluots I like so much. That was 56 pounds of pluots - for $9. They take cash, checks, debit and credit cards, and provide a computer print-out of your purchases.

I plan to go back at least once this fall, to buy apples, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and root veggies. I wonder if they auction cider.

Although this would be a fabulous place for corner stores and large families to buy produce, I noticed there was not a single non-white face at the auction. DD15 said she saw one man that looked Hispanic helping load a truck. More than 40,000 Hispanic people living 30 minutes away, many working in nearby Blandon mushroom houses, and none of them buying deeply discounted bulk food. The only people not speaking English were speaking Pennsylvania Dutch.

Planted: Planted spinach in three fish boxes, to try making a cold frame for it through the winter.

Harvested: A single Black Beauty eggplant, the whole summer's harvest from that single plant. The "Little Fingers" plant did only slightly better, and I pulled it up weeks ago. Last year was a great eggplant year; I was giving them away right and left. This year, not.

Saved seeds from garlic chives, cinnamon basil, stella d'oro lilies, snapdragon. I'm going to participate in a round robin seed swap, so I need to get them cleaned, bagged up and labeled properly.

On Craigslist, I found a family that had a yard full of fallen black walnuts. We gathered four big plastic shopping bags full, and they still had lots more. I have only ever used these to dye fabric or to antique wood, not to shell them for eating. Hulling and shelling them looks like it will be an adventure, and may require finding some new equipment, like a 4" bench vise. Came home to find a squirrel eating them off our porch, so now they are in a galvanized wash tub covered with a board, until I get time to hull them.

Preserved: I took another stab at banana chips , following instructions from a woman that sells them for school snacks. I had high hopes that thicker slices dipped in pineapple juice would be the charm, and I did better at rotating the trays. But I think my cheap single-temperature dehydrator is too hot. The finished product was still unpleasant and over-cooked. I've lived my life so far without banana slices, so I think I will just give up and keep eating fresh bananas. I can always mash and freeze them for baking.

I got frustrated and told DH I was throwing away my $3 yard sale dehydrator. I said we had lived without home-dried food all this time, and would survive without it. He surprised me by saying he thought I was giving up too easily. I didn't think he would do more than give me a glazed-over look. I don't give him enough credit for paying attention to my food storage efforts.

He did agree to stop with the bananas! But he is right about not giving up on dehydrating. I had slipped in a tray of apple slices dipped in the pineapple juice, with the banana experiment. The apples came out OK. I will try the old-fashioned method of hanging them on a string, for comparison. The apple season has only just begun to rock, so I have plenty of time to experiment with apples.

Made 7 half-pints of plum jam with no pectin and reduced sugar. Nice balance of sweet and tart. Since I had 20+ pounds of pluots to use, I experimented and made 2 pints of plum-ginger jam by cooking in a cup of diced candied ginger. Yummy! Then I made "plum butter" in the crockpot.

Froze 3 bags of cauliflower in soup-recipe-sized portions. These heads had partly frozen in my fridge, which got turned up too high. Then I froze 2 half-head bags of blanched cauliflower for meals, along with 4 bags of blanched broccoli. And 2 half-pound bags of blanched green beans.

Cooked: Another episode in the search for perfect Banana Bread. I tried a recipe from the new whole grain cookbook I got last week, and I like it, even though I slightly under-baked it. Not too sweet, nice chewy texture from the whole wheat flour and wheat germ. Lots of banana, easy to make. Good with butter, cream cheese, peanut butter, or alone. I think we have a strong contender! It would be perfect if DD15 liked it - she wanted it a bit sweeter. She and I are the only ones that eat it.

I got some Asian pears and Macoun apples to try at the Sunday grower market. Also got the usual eggs, three bunches of carrots, a white eggplant, a celeriac, the season's last basil, and another butternut squash. Got a pound bag of homegrown kidney beans from the Reigel family stand - the first time I have seen dried beans at a market stand. All that is for immediate use, not preserving.

The four of us discussed a Family Eating Plan to develop our eating-from-storage skills. We'll see how that goes when we start "walking the talk."

Mom stopped by last night, and I fed her homemade soup, toast with some of the new plum jam, and an Asian pear. I gave her a ripe Bartlett pear to take home for her oatmeal in the morning. It's kind of like feeding a stray cat. Eventually, she will learn to come here for food, and then stay for the winter. LOL

Stored: Time to start working on buying meat. We tend to eat chicken, turkey, and pork. We like various sausages, bacon, and a little scrapple. Our beef tends to be the occasional pot roast and some burgers. We seldom eat steak, since we can't afford anything worth eating. I buy cheap beef cuts like shin to make stock. I'll have to look for some meatloaf mix (beef, pork, and lamb). The holidays are coming up, so I expect to see some good sales. This is also butchering season, so there should be a lot of choice out there. I hope to find a good deal on shrimp, and some fish for DD15 and I. The only finfish that DH eats is albacore tuna, and I have a can/week laid in for him (more would be a mercury risk).

Shopped at the Fairgrounds Market with an eye to freezing recipe-sized meat portions. Bought 2 pieces of smoked ham end, a big smoked ham shank, and a pound of smoked sausage. Can you tell I like me some smoked pork in my bean soup? This market has an on-site smoker that is hard to resist. I also got 3 kinds of fresh sausage, 18 big chicken thighs bagged in sixes for soup, a few beef short ribs, and some turkey thighs. That's about 8 weeks of soup and sauce meat.

Went to a farm stand and bought giant heads of broccoli and cauliflower, three large butternut squash, two other winter squash, about 8 large sweet potatoes, and a couple pounds of green beans.

DH bought huge bottles of 750 ibuprofen and 500 multi-vitamins at BJs. I also sent him to get a case of canned chicken noodle soup for DD12, 6 jugs of laundry detergent, 3 canisters of grated parmesan cheese, two 10-gallon totes to make a worm farm, and a 32-gal trash barrel for storing clothing. I have been under-using him as a shopper - he is very efficient at shopping from a list, not straying off into impulse buying or letting the kids wheedle things out of him.

Made another trip to the BRL grocery liquidator. Got another 48 double rolls of toilet paper for less than $20. I want to start using some cloth wipes, but we just aren't there yet. Some of my other good deals: 40-oz cans of black beans for .49, bags of Nestle chocolate chips for .65, 3-oz of whole allspice for under $2, Barilla whole grain spaghetti for .50/box. Weird stuff: a food service-sized bag of country gravy mix that makes a whole gallon of gravy with just hot water, for $1.49 - I'll re-portion that. Also bought: granola bars, chai tea mix, boxed whole grain cereal (like Total) for the people that won't eat oatmeal like I do, band-aides, canned soup, baking chocolate, ramen, pectin, pasta.

Scored 30# of Gold Medal stoneground whole wheat flour for .75 per 5-lb bag, and it wasn't expired yet. Popped it right into the freezer to make sure it is free of bugs. I love my freezer so much!

We now have enough canned tomato products to make 24 meals worth of pasta sauce, with the average large can costing less than 50 cents. I can make a pasta dinner for four, with garlic bread, for under $1.50 - at that rate, I can afford to put meat in that sauce. :-)

Now, I mostly watching for deals on dry milk, powdered eggs, canned tuna, and butter.

Prepped: Got a big basket at the Goodwill, to use for squash storage. Three large skeins of rusty-red yarn at the Salvation Army store, along with a couple of canning jars.

Did well at the yard sales last weekend, including a wrought iron pot rack, a new Foodsaver for only $10, and a nice set of flannel sheets.

Managed: Stored the squash and sweet potatoes in the cellar, in big baskets I got at the Goodwill. Laid out the 20# of potatoes in one layer on newspaper in a big shallow oak drawer I use for drying things. Rotated the oats and rice out of the freezer after 3 days, and most of the flour into it. Sorted things left in the small freezer over the fridge, and gave it a good scrubbing.

Did more thinking about how manage to manage our water needs. Sticking with the slow recycled milk jug storage for now: 8 gallons stored. Our monthly water bill dropped from $98 to $77 last month. Not sure if that is just seasonal, or because we are being more careful.

Reduced, Reused, Recycled: Helped out at the church's fall work day, and trash-picked the discard pile. Got a quarter sheet of nice thin plywood, and two large pieces of foil-backed insulation that I can use to seal off the back cellar door. Also took a discarded play kitchen and put it out at our curb - it was adopted to a new home in less than an hour.

Replaced the power strip in the kitchen with one that has a shut-off switch, so we can turn off all the power-vampire chargers. Harbor Freight has a sale on 4-outlet surge protectors for $2.99.

I have been using a lot of gasoline on these wild stock-up trips. Happily, gas fell to $2.99/gal this week. I know it won't stay there, but I'm glad it fell while I have to use it. Once I get the basic stock-up done, I will develop a more moderate pattern of driving for food. I can say that I have not wasted the miles - I always come back with a loaded car.

Bought $8.58 worth of red wiggler worms at Petsmart (about 100 worms). They sell them for lizard food. I have not been able to find them at bait stores, and I didn't want to spend shipping money online. I will just start slowly until they reproduce. I hope to have worm composting news and photos blogged later this week. DH is a little squicked by the worm containers in the fridge.

Local/Family: All those pluots I bought? I gave a whole 28# box away in bagfuls to neighbors and friends. One had given me iris plants, and another gave me a big bag of cookies - "seconds" from the Pepperidge Farm factory where her husband works. One bag to a lady across the street that just always waves at me.

A woman at church has a family cow that produces more milk than they drink. We might talk about setting up a very small cow share. I am doing some research about how to set that up.

Most of the talk at the church work day was talking about food and recipes. It's time to start some kind of food group there. Part of me wants to share all this local food knowledge I'm gathering, but part of me doesn't want so many people to know I store food. And I am not sure I want everyone competing with my foraging. I am sure that's part of what's wrong with the world - we fear that someone will take our stuff, so we don't collaborate. My blog is pretty anonymous - my church is not.

DH has asked the girls and I not to tell people we store food, because he also envisions people knocking and asking. There would need to be a big pay-off for him to change his mind, not just the warm fuzziness of helping other people prepare. Maybe a co-op buying would do it. Bulk buying is not working with the Neighbor Club - everyone has different cash-flow patterns, and few of them use what I would buy. Some depend on food stamps, some get paychecks.

Learned: Researched a bunch of things: cowshare management, bokashi buckets, worm farms, black walnut harvesting, and the many things to make out of too-many-plums.

Library: Found copy of the Audubon Society's Eastern Forests guide for 99 cents at the Goodwill. Nice bark and leaf ID photos for trees. Ordered McMahon's American Gardener, a reproduction of a 19th-century garden guide, at the recommendation of a listmate from one of my discussion groups.

Independence Challenge - Week 17

Our new kitchen cabinet, sanded, scrubbed, and set at the back of the kitchen table. Note ghastly brown-patterned paneling on the walls. I put the egg cartons and berry baskets on top - we recycle them to our favorite truck farming family. Finally have a safe place for my hobnail cake plate up there. The photo is dark, even with camera flash and all the lights on- but take my word for it, it looks great in person. DD11 was a bit more critical: "That just makes you and all your jars look old."

Planted: Kale and spinach in fish boxes. Beets and carrots direct sown in ground. Another round of peas.

Harvested: A bunch more gourds from that prolific volunteer vine. Some cute chocolate-colored peppers. Another large Brandywine tomato. Black-eyed peas drying in pods on the back porch. I am not going to get very many of them from a little 6' row, but they were very easy to start and grow, so I will plant more in a bigger space. The cabbages and broccoli are both forming heads now - the first I ever grew. I hope no one messes with the pumpkin growing on the ledge outside the back fence. It has the first hint of orange.

Preserved: Decanted the yarrow oil I made 6 weeks ago. I have about 12 oz. of yarrow-infused oil now. I am supposed to pick up a lump of beeswax at the farmer's market this weekend, so I can try making my first salve. It smells pleasantly herbal.

Cooked: DD15 invented a fried zucchini sandwich with tomatoes and basil. She breaded and shallow-fried zuke slices. Nothing else very new: rice pudding, PB cookies, curried chicken, pork stock. Got pork neck bones, chicken legs, and burgers on sale. Monday seems to be a good day at Weis - lots of reduced day-old bread and marked down meat close to expiration. Must keep that in mind if we get the freezer. I feel sad when I go there lately - an elderly woman was killed crossing the street in an unsafe manner, and I think of it every time I drive by. Stay in the crosswalks, people!

Stored: Bread flour. Too busy with other stuff to shop.

Prepared: I found a heavy porcelain utility sink via Freecycle. A bit battered, but it will be perfect as an outdoor bin for potting soil and screened compost. If we need to do some laundry outdoors in the future, it will also work as a double wash tub that we can set up to drain into a bucket, or the garden. I found a metal strand to use as a base, and we installed the sink in what we hope is a convenient spot in her backyard, not far from the future location of a rain barrel. We have a pile of pavers to make place to stand in front of it.


Managed: We uncovered an old cabinet under a drop cloth at Mom's (photo at top). She thinks it might be something she salvaged from her father's workshop when her childhood home was sold. It will hold at lot of my jars of spices, beans, lentils. If it helps keep the table clear, I will then have room for baking and bread-making. I put the big jars of flour and sugar on the bottom shelf. Need to find more big jars of different kinds of flour - bread, pastry, all-purpose. The spelt and wheat flour is in the fridge. This also cleared counter space where the jars used to be - yay!

Reorganization continues - we recycled a large mass of old homeschooling paperwork. The basement is almost ready for storage. Now I have to go find some free 5-gallon buckets. I eventually want to use Gamma lids, but they are too pricey for right now. D11 went back to school, so I have been working with DD15 until her online school begins - we are reorganizing maniacs.

Reduced, Reused, Recycled: Spotted a pile of pallets behind a hardware store with a "free" sign, and got a few for my cellar floor. If anyone else wants some, they are next to Leinbach's Hardware in Mt Penn.

The new kitchen cabinet covers a heavily-used wall outlet, so I ran a multi-outlet surge protector from it. That will give us a switch to turn off all the energy-vampire rechargers.

Local/Family: Our neighborhood playground is being renovated. No idea what the plan looks like, or where to view it, or how the design was developed. DD11 has been using the playground for 5 years. I am sure she had some ideas, but no kids seem to have been asked for input. The project was awarded to Bertolet Construction (Wernersville) for $318,864 in local, state, and federal funds. The Recreation Department webpage says it will be done by the end of October - construction fence was up Thursday. I hope we at least get some benches or picnic tables, so we can have neighborhood meetings.

Talked to Mom about coming to stay at our house this winter, from the end of December to the end of March. It would save her a heating season, and we could still work on her house, without us worrying if she is warm and safe. It will be a good test of how well the five of us would do together. It will require some work here, to make room. I have asked the landlord to insulate the attic, to start, so we can move the girls up there.

I am concerned that "the Depression" has already come to Reading. This week we were reported to have the highest poverty rate of cities in the state. According to the Census Bureau, "Almost 35 percent of the city's population lives below the poverty level, which was an annual household income of $21,203 for a family of four in 2007." More than a third of the city! Almost every kid qualifies for free lunches. My blue-collar neighbors report that manufacturing jobs paying $8-10/hour are hard to find, and better jobs at $12-18 almost impossible.

Learned: The "Adapting in Place" class is back in swing, now talking about security, death, sex, and money. There was homework over the quiet week, but many people were overwhelmed by the assignment to make a short, medium, and long-range plan for well, everything. I will work on that after the course is over.

Researching root cellaring, to see what I might try to keep in the cellar this winter. Lots of apples, root vegetables, squash, potatoes, and cabbages will be available in the markets soon. My cellar is very damp - the sump pump runs when it rains hard. I thought that would make it a bad storage cellar., but my reading tells me that the humidity is actually good, as long as the cellar is under 40F, as close to freezing as possible. Since we no longer use the oil furnace or the clothes dryer, most of the cellar should be pretty cold.

We are also looking into buying a 8-10 cubic foot freezer to put down there. A new model is more energy efficient than used. Manual defrost makes food last much longer, but requires an annual defrosting effort. Also saw plans to convert a freezer to a high-efficiency chest fridge, but I think I want to try that with a used freezer first, in case it burns out the compressor.

Library: DH is catching on to my new range of interests. For our 11th anniversary on Monday, DH got me a book. How to Survive Anywhere: A Guide for Urban, Suburban, Rural, and Wilderness Environments, by Christopher Nyerges. I flipped through it and already learned about magnesium fire starters, which I will add to our list for bug-out bags.

What have you learned this year, so far?

Been sharing the parsley flowers with some little visitors. When they get big, we will put them in a bug box to watch them make a chrysalis and then emerge from it.

Anyway, I wrote this in response to a question on a container gardening list.

1. WATER: Invest in soaker hoses and water barrels. Manual watering is uneven and hard to gauge. Most things in containers need a self-watering feature, no matter how faithfully one plans to water.

2. FISH BOXES: Get more fish boxes - works great for greens. Focus on what we already eat: romaine, spinach, bok choy, and kale. No exotic lettuce.

3. FERTILIZER: Compost is not enough. Everything got bigger after the fish emulsion. Explore other organic fertilizers. Find a source for mushroom dirt or compost at the start of the season - small city yards cannot produce enough compost.

4. SOWING: Winter-sowing in milk jugs is good for annuals and herbs, not so much for veggies. Mid-March start for onions, lettuce, spinach, peas was good. Transplanting peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes too early is dumb. Build cold frame this fall.

5. YIELD: Herbs, celery, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, beets, and peppers suit us best, so far. Tomatoes, zucchini and cukes are hard to protect from bugs, and local organic can be bought easily and inexpensively. Plant lots more beans and peas. Replace some ornamentals with more medicinals.

6. NEIGHBORHOOD: Expand program of helping kids plant tomatoes in containers. Ask more neighbors if we can "farm" their unused front yard planters.

Independence Challenge - Week 10

Planted: More cabbage transplants, more basil transplants. Those three flats that were labeled lettuce, broccoli, and cabbage - I am no loner sure any of them were labeled right. The "head lettuce" looks and feels like cabbage (above). Oh well, we will see what grows. If those are cabbage, I'm going to have to thin the ones in fish boxes.

Harvested: Carrots, rosemary, parsley, basil, green onions. I pulled up two potato plants that were wilted and got 1.5 lb of new red potatoes - enough for skillet-smashed taters with garden herbs.

Preserved: Froze 2 lbs. of raspberries. Dried local sage and oregano from the market. Froze fresh-squeezed lemon juice in cubes, and dried grated lemon rind. Froze mashed bananas in 1 cup baggies.

I was planning to can cherry pie filling, but we went through 13lb of cherries like locusts. Obviously, we need to pick FAR more cherries for me to have any left to can.

Cooked: Although it was hot, we made pie. DH made Coconut Sweet Potato Pie that was to-die-for, for a family picnic. My Pickled Red Beet Eggs went over fairly well - but its hard to top PIE. I also made sweet cherry yogurt, and a new banana bread recipe with spelt flour.

Baked a big spiral ham from the freezer, that I bought for only about $6 - a warehouse store near me heavily discounted Easter hams when they neared expiration. Next year, I will buy more hams. We got dinner, a large pasta salad I call "Ham on Rye", breakfast ham slices, and a lot of sandwiches from that.

Managed: Bought 4 more 8' bamboo poles at the market. Bought a year+ of red miso paste - it's a Japanese import, but I am wary of US soy products, which are 90% from GMO seeds. There are organic US producers, but none closer than Massachusetts, and I can't find it locally.

Bought a cherry pitter. Stored ketchup, mayo, cider vinegar, ground cumin, soy sauce, cane sugar, honey, rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide. During a long car ride, we all worked on making a list of toiletries and other personal necessities that each person wanted to stock up, and estimated how much we would use in a year.

Reduced, Reused, Recycled: Bought a big box of old church candles to use and/or remelt into votives. Trash-picked 2 boxes of Gulf canning paraffin. Approached landlord about insulating attic, in case we are still here in next winter.

Local: Attended a screening of Good Food, a film about the Seattle area's organic farming community. Met a lot of new and interesting people, and heard about a group that might be starting to carpool for food shopping (too far from me, but useful as a model). Thinking harder about how to get involved, feeling a project coalescing, but feeling uncertain about our own family's future in this specific place.

Did some matchmaking at our small Sunday producer market: the soapmaker was having trouble finding lye, and I introduced her to the pretzel-maker, who also uses lye - they can buy cooperatively.

Learned: That Pennsylvania has a strong wind energy community, apparently a pet project of current PA governor Ed Rendell. Learned how to manually pollinate zucchini.

Library: I have been collecting slow cooker recipes. I like the convenience, and it's a great substitute for the oven in the summer. Also, most slow cooker recipes will easily transfer to a solar cooker. But I hate the old "canned soup" style of recipe - I want to use fresh and whole foods. Found a good cookbook at the library: Better Than Mom's Slow Cooker Recipes, that I am buying used on Amazon. Lots of recipes with fresh herbs, beans, inexpensive cuts of meat, etc.

Ordered A Modern Herbal (Volumes 1&2) by Margaret Grieve. An older (1971), well-reviewed two-volume reference that sounds like the comprehensive guide I need.

Spring Veggie Review

This week's record-breaking temperatures in the upper 90's have pretty much ended "spring" for us, even if Summer Solstice is not quite here. This seems like a good time to review the spring veggie season. For spring harvest, I planted lettuce, spinach, mustard greens, green onions, and peas - all for the first time.

Lettuce: directly sown into styrofoam fish box, very early in the spring. I over-sowed, and while the lush carpet of sprouts looked great, they were very hard to thin and I failed to be ruthless. The lettuce was productive, but would have grown larger if it were thinned better. The bigger problem was that no one really liked the "Black-Seeded Simpson" variety. DD15 and DH both thought it was bitter.

Spinach: directly sown into styrofoam fish box, very early in the spring. Again, over-sown and under-thinned. The plants are starting to bolt, without ever having gotten large enough to pick. I do still have some transplanted into the carrot bed, and they may still produce leaves.

Spinach Mustard: winter-sown in a tray enclosed in a bag. First thing to sprout in March. Way, way too densely-sown and hard to transplant. I had no place to go with these. A few went into the ill-fated Mom-box and are still growing - the critters didn't like them. The rest of the tray bolted (photo above) without getting more than an inch high - the crowding must have been too stressful. There are also a few in the ground near the carrots, but I think they are bolting, too.

Green Onions - directly sown in prepared ground in March. Slow to germinate. Fairly robust, but still not large enough to harvest. Seems to be a success. Could have been sown more evenly. Requires little labor beyond some weeding. I also planted lots of yellow and white onions from sets, to harvest later in the summer. I find the onions all to be low-labor and easy to weed. Onions may be cheap to buy, but they are also easy-peasy to grow. It felt very productive to have something to plant in the earliest part of the season.

Peas: directly sown around St. Patrick's Day. Pear tree twigs later added as pea trellis. These were a lot of fun to watch sprout and bloom. Pretty plants and flowers. We have already harvested all the peas and eaten them the same day. I need to add innoculant next time, to increase the yield. I would need to plant many more of them, if we want to have peas to freeze. I count the peas very much in the success column.

However, if our overall goal was to reduce our spending on produce, the spring was a failure. I've harvested and dried thyme, lemon balm, and mint. We ate a little of the lettuce, and about 2 cups or so of peas. But much was learned at little expense, which is valuable before we start growing on a larger scale. The germination was very successful, and the fish boxes are great containers. I need to work on less-dense sowing, better thinning, and more containers for transplanting. We would have been fine with 8-12 full-sized plants of each variety of greens, and I sowed hundreds. For lettuce, I think I want to stick with growing romaine, which everyone likes, and was grew nicely last year. I will have another shot at spinach and lettuce in the fall garden.

I've pulled out the lettuce in one fish box, and planted transplants of a head lettuce I hope is heat-tolerant. We also pulled out the pea vines today, and planted a short row of 20 cowpea seeds in their place.

So... on to summer gardening!

To-Do List Update

Things are on hold until this heatwave breaks Tuesday night, but then we have things to do in our yard:

- replant fish boxes with broccoli and lettuce
- start cowpeas to replace peas
- harvest remaining peas and compost vines
- harvest dill, bee balm, and mint
- pot up coleus and plant marigold starts
- water everything with epsom salts - 1 Tbl to 2 gallons
- shear the grass again later this week
- root cuttings of salvia, sedum, baptisia
- expand veggie bed for cabbage plants
- find source for food-grade 5-gallon buckets
- figure out peony problem - Phytophthora?
- move - bee balm, salvias, sedums, small peony, iris

And in Mom's yard:

- sort pots
- plant parsnips & sweet potatoes
- plant something new in fish boxes
- borrow pick-up truck to haul brush and scrap

Independence Challenge - Week 3

We have a super-prolific lemon thyme plant, so it seems like all I do is harvest and dry thyme lately. Fortunately, I really like it in stock. The other herbs are not mature enough to pick.

Planted: transplanted greens into fish boxes and empty spots in the ground
Harvested: leaf lettuce and lemon thyme
Preserved: dried lemon thyme
Managed: more work preparing Mom's yard, preparing to move
Systems: found a new CSA with an open house this weekend
Reduced Waste: the usual recycling and composting
Learned: how to preserve my herbs better
Library: Beginning Algebra

It's been rainy and cool lately. I have been doing daily weeding, but not a lot else in the garden. Really busy with work and other responsibilities at the moment. Need to find a source of free soil for the fish boxes - I hate buying bags. Maybe the leaf composting facility in Mom's township - I think she can get compost for free.

Fishbox of greens ready to give to Mom

Potting more plants to relocate to Mom's yard, and making containerized veggies to take there. We are slowly clearing space for planting at Mom's - turns out there was a layer of brick under the stuff in the spot she thought would be good. We are removing the brick by yard-cart-loads to a pallet in the back of the yard. Slow progress, but steady. She is feeling better after a really tough time adjusting to new medication.

We are starting to get ready to move by the end of the summer. Sorting and boxing, making piles to sell or freecycle. Reducing the clutter of school paperwork and outgrown books. By the time we move, I will have a better inventory of what we already have.

I posted to Sharon Astyk's food storage email list last week, to get advice about preserving herbs we grow. Great source of expertise and experience. As I work my way into the attic, I am going to install a drying rack up there, to use until we leave. I have been using labeled ziplocks to store dried herbs - I need to buy some canning jars and lids for this. I found it too hard to get the food smells out of used commercial food jars (pickles, salsa, relish, etc.).

Loads of herbs ready to move to pots and borders

Spinach planted in fish box

Weather: Sunny and 50 today, down to 40 tonight, back up to 50 tomorrow, with showers. More rain and mild temperatures predicted through the weekend.

The soil in the two fish boxes seemed evenly damp, so I planted a packet of spinach in one. It will come up dense, but we can eat the thinnings. But I couldn't find my clear plastic to cover the box! Not freezing tonight, so it should be OK. I will buy plastic tomorrow, and plant the other box full of lettuce. I plan to keep the plastic on with big rubber bands I saved from something.

Tomorrow is Wednesday, so I will be stopping at the market to get more fish boxes, and I need to get a couple more bags of soil. I am tempted to use my own garden soil, but I know it is full of weed seeds that will sprout soon. Last year, I had that fiasco of growing a whole tray of carefully tended weeds, going so far as to transplant them, thinking I had planted mislabeled herb seeds of some kind. I even posted a photo on GardenWeb, and people thought it might be a cress. I even tasted it! It was a weed that soon sprouted all over my yard. I had accelerated the germination in the contaminated seed tray by fertilizing and watering the damed things. So, much as I hate spending money buying dirt, I am controlling what goes into those fish boxes, so I can plant successive crops of greens.

Still not sure where to put all the onion sets I want to get in the ground. I better save the rest of the pea seeds for late summer, and concentrate on finding room for carrots and potatoes. As the ornamentals come in, I will be able to see where I can fill holes with veggie plants. I have a dozen potato pieces chitting, and a sweet potato with two strong sprouts.

I toured around the yard looking at the ornamentals starting to poke out of the ground. One crocus is blooming in the grass, lots of tulips, daffodils, and hyacinth coming up - most planted by former homeowners. I planted a few tulips and one crown imperial last fall - I see the tulips, but I am not sure what the crown imperial looks like, so I may be mistaking it for a tulip. If we were staying here, I would naturalize more early bulbs into the grass areas - I like that effect.

The red peony shoots are showing - all the peonies have gotten wider. I am going to spray them with baking soda water, since I read that is supposed to help prevent powdery mildew later. I am anxious to see of all three bushes bloom this year. The one that was accidentally dug up has been back in the ground for two years now, and I hope it blooms.

There are the tiniest beginnings of Siberian iris, larger fans on the bearded irises. The salvia are alive, but mostly still dormant - most of them heaved, as did the sedums. I have to research how to prevent that heaving. New growth in the crown of a big yarrow. The stella d'oro lilies continue to sprout. I see the beginnings of rose growth, and the fringes of larkspur germinating. Wish I had a camera with a macro lens to take photos of the the beginnings of things.

I trimmed last year's dead stems off the guaras. I think at least four of five lived. I left the foliage on to help protect them, then piled a lot of yard waste on most of them to protect them from the wind all winter. I just raked that off about two weeks ago, and I see growth in the crowns. Three along the sidewalk are alive - not sure about the one at the back fence that was uncovered. The biggest one, next to the mulberry stump, looks alive. I read complaints on GardenWeb that people had trouble bringing guaras through the winter in Zone 6 - but if this winter is an indication, I think the key may be heavily mulching or otherwise protecting them.

This week I will go to Mom's house to see how the stuff I transplanted in the fall survived. I have been in her yard, but not specifically to look for my plants. It's probably too early for many of them to be visible.

Planted peas and onions

Weather: Below freezing last night. 50s during the day. Cloudy, clearing to sun by noon. Windy. Forecast says more of the same for the next week, except for Saturday which will be in the 40s with snow showers in the morning.

I meant to plant peas a few days ago on St. Patrick's Day. All the really cool gardeners have had their peas started in rain gutters or under cloches for weeks. But at least we got the darned seeds in the ground on the First Day of Spring! That's better than last year, when I planted no peas at all.

DD15 planted the peas along the back of the strip along the fence, where there were eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers last year. This strip could really use a round of legumes. When the peas are done at the end of May, I will put beans in. There are also a few perennial flowers left in the ground there, and some spring bulbs getting ready to bloom. I can fill any bare spots with potted herbs. If things go as planned, I will be able to strip the pea vines off the fence by June, before they shade the neighbor's tomatoes in the next yard.

I didn't have any innoculant for the peas, so I will look for some and add it after the fact, hoping it will still work. Pruned the lemon thyme at the end of strip. Smelled great and is budding new stems all over.

We got onions in the ground, too - sets of white onions, and green onions from seed. Intense little 3x3 patch of each, where there were sweet potatoes last year. I buried a lot of kitchen waste under there last fall, and I will mulch with newspaper and grass clippings after the rows sprout. Not sure we had the "onion snow" just yet, but the ground is completely workable, so I am forging ahead.

I filled the fish boxes with bagged soil and stacked the boxes. Need more boxes and more bagged soil. I want to try a few with regular garden soil, too. The kids filled the top one with water to let it filter down and soak the soil. I want to get them really wet and let them drain before I plant them with lettuce and spinach. My plan is to raise the boxed off the ground to try to keep the slugs and rabbits out. We lost our whole fall lettuce and spinach crops to critters.

My plan is to ramp up my casual veggie gardening this year, and so far, I am way ahead of last year's game. Let's see how much this little city backyard can produce.

TO DO: Buy legume innoculant. Find another camera on eBay for garden photography.