on a little land

Elephant Garlic

2011-08-26T19:47:00.003-05:00

This has been our worst growing season ever. In addition to Mason taking a new position and me beginning work full time, the weather here has made it exhausting to work in the garden at home. Because we've both been working outside, it has been difficult to muster the energy to go back out in the 100+ degree heat to work in our own garden at night. Though we have kept up with the watering, it hasn't seemed to matter. Last year, we harvested over two hundred pounds of tomatoes--this year, around ten pounds.

Our only respectable harvest has been our garlic. This clove makes me feel a tiny bit better about the other issues we've had.

-Megan

Toronto Film

2011-08-21T10:16:00.000-05:00

For posterity's sake, though they're nearly 4 months late...

Catching Up

2011-05-04T09:59:00.004-05:00

So many things have happened since my last post that I'm not even going to attempt to accurately document them. I am typing this while listening to Prince Charles' speech streaming live from The Future of Food Conference at Georgetown, so I may be a little distracted by that as well.

In my last post, I mentioned seeding buckwheat in one of the (supposedly) fallow beds. Unfortunately, I ran out of room in the tomato garden and needed a place for my Sub-Arctic Plenty plants, along with the tomatillos and ground cherries. So, the buckwheat is now sprouting up all around these plants. I haven't read anything about using buckwheat as a living mulch, so I'll have to do some research to see if they will be able to grow in harmony.

We arrived home from our Toronto trip late Thursday evening and spent most of the weekend recovering. I waited for as long as possible before we left the Friday before to get the tomato plants into the ground. Mason was working with no time to spare, so I spent from sun up to sun down that day getting all 113 tomatoes, 6 ground cherries and 5 tomatillos into the garden.

It was still quite cool during our trip and even for the last few days, but they seem to be handling the cold well enough. It is supposed to be nice and warm for the foreseeable future, so I'm officially declaring it "almost summer". We'll be planting seeds and warm weather transplants over the next week or so.

I'm sure that I am forgetting many, many things, but I think that I'll leave it at that for now. I will try to make a post (with several photos) on our trip soon. We had an amazing time in Toronto and exhausted ourselves exploring the multiple neighborhoods that make up the city.

-Megan

Cover Cropping

2011-04-19T08:10:00.003-05:00

I spent the Thursday before we left for Dallas digging Bermuda grass out of the beds that will be lying fallow this year. Those beds are a mixture of hardpan clay near the edges and almost pure sand in the center. The Bermuda has steadily crept back into the clay and is not so slowly making its way toward the sand. The garden is made up of 4 4x32' mounded beds. We dug it last year, added compost and attempted to grow our summer crops (other than tomatoes) in the beds, but the soil still leaves a lot to be desired. We're going to spend the summer, and possibly the fall, working to improve it by adding compost, mulching heavily and growing several rounds of cover crops.

I spent 4 hours digging and finished one of the beds with the exception of the outer paths. I think we're going to try to sheet mulch the paths with cardboard and more wood chips because the clay is almost impossible to get a shovel through at the moment. After, I finished the bed, I forked it over gently and broadcast buckwheat seed to help break up the clay and give us some good organic matter to amend the sand. We used buckwheat in the other garden beds last year and it really did seem to improve the clay soil through just one planting. Hopefully, it can do the same for these more challenging beds.

-Megan

Garlic

2011-04-15T07:42:00.003-05:00

The garlic is the only thing that we have growing in the big garden right now. The stalks are getting thick--much thicker than they were this time last year. Some of this is elephant garlic, so that would explain why those are larger, but the rest I would guess is due to the unseasonably warm weather we've had for the last few months. We may have an earlier crop this year.

We've been talking about what needs to be done this summer and putting in a large bed for garlic on the old land is at the top of the list. We haven't decided the best way to go about ridding that large of a space of bermuda grass. I'm thinking it will need to be some form of sheet mulching because that many raised beds would be cost prohibitive. The bermuda in the yard behind the old house is much worse than any that we've been battling here. Garlic hates competition and we won't be there every day to watch over it, so I'd like to do as much as possible to eradicate the grass beforehand.

-Megan

Trails

2011-04-12T12:14:00.003-05:00

We headed out to the old land yesterday to work on cutting our trail back to the wild plums and blackberries. It's only 5 acres, but there are a lot of cedars that grow very closely together and require a lot of trimming to make even the narrowest of paths. We worked for about 3 hours and managed to make quite a bit of progress; I trimmed and Mason cleared branches until we made it back to the first stand of plums. Making a decent path through the berry brambles is going to be a lot more work, though, and slow work at that. There is a small clearing to the west of the brambles where I'm going plant some of the starts that we got on Saturday. We're hoping to get some more native edibles going out there. Unfortunately, most of that will have to wait until we get back from our trips and do all of the garden planting.

-Megan

Foraging Walk

2011-04-11T08:09:00.003-05:00

Jackie Dill from OK Wildcrafting hosted a foraging walk on Saturday in Coyle. I had emailed her the second I saw a mention of it a few months ago to reserve our spots. I was disappointed to find out about the walk just a week too late last year. I'm so glad that we didn't miss it again because it really was fascinating. She taught us to identify a ton of the edibles that are all over the place here in central OK. We came home with several little potted up starts of dewberries, wild hardneck garlic, polk salet, walking onions, buffalo berries and a different variety of wild garlic than what we have here. We also harvested a small bunch of soapberries, a few pods from a Kentucky Coffee Tree and 6 passion flower vine seeds.

After the walk, we had a delicious potluck lunch at a local church. Several people brought homemade food (we took a few jars of our salsa from last summer) and Jackie made a wild salad with chickweed, redbuds and a dressing made from her own vinegar. She also boiled a big pot of the polk that we found on the walk. It was my first time trying it and I actually liked it quite a bit. It's a little like a very mild asparagus in the form of small, tender greens. She also had vinegar mothers from her own pear wine, but we somehow ended up coming home without our bag. I have no idea what happened there, but it's disappointing because they looked great.

All in all, we were both really glad that we went and it has encouraged us to try to get out and learn to identify more of the natives in our area. When Mason gets home from work today, we're going to go see what we can find as we work on the walking trail we've started cutting on the old land. The trail will eventually lead back to the tangle of blackberries and a small stand of wild plums, but who knows what else is out there.

-Megan

More Austin Photos

2011-04-07T19:53:00.002-05:00

Here are some of the film photos that I took during our Austin trip.

We've got more trips to Dallas and Toronto in the next coming weeks, so we'll have to get the tomatoes in the ground some time in between. I finished potting them all up today, though I haven't done a final count yet. I know that I lost a few to wind on the first day of hardening off (yesterday), but I think most of them will recover.

-Megan

Spring Break

2011-03-23T12:13:00.004-05:00

We spent the weekend in Austin working at SXSW--selling ukes, snapping photos, window shopping and eating delicious food. We still need to get our film developed, but here are a few digital shots, mostly from The Natural Gardener.

-Megan

Leaves

2011-03-14T08:21:00.005-05:00

I'm seeing a lot of interesting foliage around here lately.

Of the 5 Dancing with Smurfs seeds that germinated, 4 have blue leaves and stems. All of these have a light speckling of dark blue. That's one of them above. The other one is green with the same speckling of the darker blue.

The OSU Blues have that speckling as well. All but one are mostly green; one has a bluish-gray tint to the leaves.

The Churra Plum foliage is beautiful. I had 100% germination on the 6 that I seeded and each is covered with a thick fuzz like the one below. These are some of the prettiest seedlings I've seen.

One last foliage note: It seems as though I have two potato leaf plants coming up from my Amish Paste seed. This is commercial seed from Baker Creek. I'm not sure if it was a seed mix up or cross or what, but I'm very curious to see what comes of them.

-Megan

Cold Frame Crops

2011-03-13T09:11:00.001-05:00

The sprouts are really starting to come up in the cold frames. We seeded them on 2/20 and saw the first sprouts about a week ago. It looks like we now have some of every variety except for the old spinach seed that we weren't sure would germinate at all.

Bed 1: Lettuce
Little Gem, Parris Island Cos Romaine, Oakleaf and Tom Thumb

Bed 2: Spinach
Monstreaux Viroflay (old seed)

Bed 3: Asian Greens
Extra Dwarf Pak Choy, Tatsoi, Ching Chang Bok Choy and He Shi Ko Bunching Onion

Bed 4: Kale
Nero di Toscana, Red Russian (saved seed), Blue Curled Scotch and Red Russian (commercial seed)

-Megan

The Dwarf Tomato Project

2011-03-12T14:13:00.002-06:00

I've signed up to participate in the Dwarf Tomato Project through Tomatoville. I only recently learned about this project. I wish I had known sooner as I think it is a very interesting and worthwhile endeavor. If you've never heard of them, there is a lot of information about dwarf tomato plants on the project site. I received my assignment this week. I'll be growing vials 3086 and 3089 from the Beauty breeding line. The seeds came in the mail on the 5th and I started them last Monday. So far, I only have two little purple striped sprouts, but I'm hoping for more in the next few days.

Vial 3086: Purple Striped (6 seeds)
Vial 3089: Chocolate Striped (7 seeds)

The project has been going on for a few years now and they've just released the first stable varieties, Dwarf Beryl Beauty, Dwarf Emerald Giant and Dwarf Mr. Snow commercially through Victory Seeds. You can also get on the waiting list for Rosella Purple and Tasmanian Chocolate, which should be released soon.

-Megan

Potting Up

2011-03-01T12:21:00.007-06:00

I spent yesterday afternoon potting up tomatoes from the 392 cell trays to 72 cell trays. They'll stay here for quite a while before moving into the 4 in. pots. We've had pretty good germination considering some of the varieties are from swaps and others are older seed. I think we're right at about 85%--no varieties with zero germination this year, which is an improvement over last year. I've been updating the spreadsheet with all of the info here. The seedlings that have been potted up are also being taken out of the heat boxes and put on regular shelves.

I'm seeing quite a few more pepper sprouts and have just finished updating the pepper spreadsheet, which is here. The germination rate still isn't all that great. These will stay in the heat boxes for a while longer in hopes that we'll see more in the next few weeks.

Despite the fact that I've already planted way too many of both the peppers and tomatoes, I've received the rest of my seed orders and can't resist planting a few other varieties. I will have plenty of extras to give to family and friends, to send with Mason to work, to give to the Kids Cafe gardens and probably others to force off onto strangers. This year, I was trying to be cautious by planning for only 50% germination. Next year, I'm going to plan for about 80% and plant accordingly. I figure that we start early enough to have plenty of time to reseed anything that may not work out the first time around. I wish I'd thought more about it and done that this year!

-Megan

Germination Progress

2011-02-23T13:50:00.005-06:00

We went from 21 sprouts on Monday to 107 yesterday to 189 today. Now, we just have to get them through the next 9 weeks or so. Why did we plan our Toronto trip for late April? What was I thinking?

I have a germination spreadsheet here, for any other tomato nerds who may be interested. I'm working on one for the peppers that should be up in the next few days, not that there's much to report. I think we have 3-4 sprouts so far.

Here is our tomato variety list for the year:

Rutgers
Stupice
Bradley
Mer de Noms
Gardener's Delight
San Marzano 2
Fox Cherry
Sub Arctic Plenty
Principe Borghese
Amish Paste
Reisetomate
Mule Team
Silvery Fir Tree
Red Fig
Riesentraube
Tess's Landrace Currant
Green Grape
Mini Orange
Coyote
Lime Green Salad
Cream Sausage
Isis Candy
Jack White
Striped Roman
Violet Jasper
Green Zebra
Green Sausage
Arkansas Traveler
Absinthe
Black Russian
Orange Banana
Black Cherry
Wapsipinicon Peach
Sungold Select II
Black Plum
White Currant
OSU Blue
Black Mauri
Yellow Riesentraube
Dancing with Smurfs
Churra Plum
Pink Boar (not yet seeded)
Michael Pollan (not yet seeded)
Haley's Purple Comet (not yet seeded)
Sweet Carneros Pink (not yet seeded)
Banana Legs (not yet seeded)
Martino's Roma (not yet seeded)

-Megan

Makeshift Cold Frames

2011-02-22T11:16:00.003-06:00

Last fall, my dad rescued all the original frames and windows from a remodel in their neighborhood. He installed two pretty complicated cold frames using the material in his own yard and set the rest aside for us. He's put together a complex A-frame system using 4 windows per box and used it to grow very nice greens all the way through winter.

A few weeks ago we finally drove the truck over there and picked up the rest of what he had left. 4 good frames, 1 totally trashed one, 2 sets of windows, a giant glass door and some other window he scavenged. We flattened out last years potato mounds, set the frames at about a 25% angle with eastern exposure and filled them with all the material from last years tomato pottings, shredded leaves, bagged compost and other soil leftovers. While they don't look nice, they do work, as evidenced by the tiny sprouts coming up in them.

We planted four varieties of lettuce, spinach, baby bok choy, dwarf pak choi, tatsoi, bunching onions and three kinds of kale (one of which we saved from seed). Megan also put in the same kale from Baker Creek seed, so we'll see which one grows better.

-Mason

Wild Boar Farms

2011-02-22T08:36:00.002-06:00

Wild Boar Farms is a seed company in California that has developed some of the most interesting, beautiful OP tomato lines I have ever seen. This is our first year ordering from them. The seeds came very quickly: ordered on 2/15 and received on 2/19.

We are growing:

Pink Boar: Looks like a port wine colored Green Zebra. Striking looks, outrageous flavor that is sweet, rich and juicy. Early to mid-season. 70-80 days. indet. regular leaf. 2-4 oz. with good to great production. Aggressive grower. Port wine color with metalic silver green stripes. Dark colored flesh is juicy and very good rich and sweet flavor. Originally from Black and Brown Boar.

Sweet Carneros Pink: F-5 2-4 OZ. Rose pink with gold colored stripes. After 4 years this has proven to be very near 100% pure and of excellent quality. Huge producer for 2009. Great looking with a nice sweet tomato flavor.

Haley's Purple Comet: Wonderful large cherry tomato. Sweet, productive with rich "dark tomato" flavor. Originally from Cherokee Purple.

and

Michael Pollan: Odd shaped mutant from green zebra. Named after the awesome writer, journalist and teacher. (Please read one of his books) Taste is very different from the Green Zebra. Much less tartness, more mild with good sweetness. Very positive response at the Farmers Market. They stuck out and people really liked the flavor. As I ran out later in the season, customers kept asking about them.

(descriptions from the Wild Boar Farms site)

-Megan

First Sprouts

2011-02-21T08:45:00.007-06:00

When I checked the germination shelf this morning, I was happy to see several little tomato sprouts popping out of the ground! We've got quite a few varieties coming up: Amish Paste (4), Black Plum (1), Black Russian (2), Fox Cherry (3), Gardener's Delight (2), Green Sausage (1), Mer de Noms (1), Riesentraube (1), Sungold Select II (1), Tess's Landrace Currant (2), Violet Jasper (1), White Currant (1), Yellow Riesentraube (1) and one pepper, Korean Dark Green (1).

-Megan

Our Main Crops

2011-02-16T16:00:00.003-06:00

We have decided to focus our gardening on mostly tomatoes and peppers this year. They are our two favorites and it is hard/expensive to buy the ones that we want at the market or the grocery store. They are also what we've had the most success with so far. We're going to plant lettuce, Asian greens, spinach, kale and a couple of other cool crops in a few small raised beds and we'll also probably devote one of the large garden beds to green beans, cucumbers, basil and sunflowers. We're not going to bother with melons or squash this year because of the space. They are easy to find at the market and not too expensive, so it makes more sense to use that space to grow other things. We may grow them again next year if we manage to eradicate some more Bermuda grass this summer.

I've spent most of the day sorting seed and seeding trays. Like last year, I'm starting our seed with a 3-2-1 mix in 392 cell trays. This is probably unnecessary for most gardeners, but it allows me to have more seeds germinating in our heated sand boxes at a time. It worked really well last year (especially for tomatoes), so I'm hoping for the same results this year.

-Megan

Seed Orders

2011-02-16T14:39:00.005-06:00

I made several seed orders last week and they've begun rolling in.

I've got a stack of mostly peppers and herbs from The Sample Seed Shop. I have ordered from Remy two or three times now and the service has always been great. She ships really, really quickly and always adds in a little bonus. Her prices are excellent, too--especially if you are looking to try just a few of several different varieties and don't need huge packs of seed. Ordered 2/10, received 2/14.

My Baker Creek order was pretty small this year. I have a ton of seed leftover from last year's order and just needed to fill in a few things. I did slip a few tomato packs into the cart...Black Mauri, Chile Verde and Yellow Riesentraube. Ordered 2/12, received 2/16.

And I was happy to find my small order from New World Seeds & Tubers in the mailbox as well! I imagine that they have been flooded with orders in the past week, so to have received mine this quickly is a nice surprise. They must be working overtime to get everything out along with continuing to update the site. Ordered 2/12, received 2/16.

-Megan

New World Seeds & Tubers

2011-02-15T14:46:00.003-06:00

Breeding legend Tom Wagner has a new site up with some very interesting offerings. I've already run out of space in the garden planning, so we decided to limit ourselves to two purchases, Churra Plum and Dancing with Smurfs. We are both very excited to grow these this year.

Churra Plum: Like a sugar powdered Churro, the Churra Plum will throw some nice striped tomatoes that resemble the groves of a churro and will be very woolly. Another color will be popping up but I’ll let my customers find that color. Trying to guess those colors will churra plum-drive you crazy!

Dancing with Smurfs: F3. Cherry tomatoes with a variety of blue shoulders and/or blue stems and leaves. Some will be incredibly blue.

It took us quite a while to decide which two to get and I'm honestly already wishing we'd gone for a few more.

-Megan

How We Spent Our Garden Vacation

2011-02-15T10:29:00.001-06:00

It was a little sad not to have a fall garden this year, but it did give us a lot of free weekends to travel around and spend some time doing the other things that we love (like going to estate sales). We've also both picked up our old film cameras and started taking photos again. Here are some of the things we've been doing over the last 4 months.

Halloweening

eating at Frontera Grill

acting touristy

shooting film

celebrating our 10th Christmas with Comet

flea marketing

going to auctions again

playing in the snow

and (of course) eating delicious food

-Megan

New Season

2011-02-15T09:13:00.006-06:00

Sorry for the long absence. We skipped the fall garden this year to give our soil a rest and spent a lot of time hiking at the cabin instead. But, after last week's snow, the 70F temperatures have been a great reminder that it's time to get things started again. We spent the weekend organizing seed packets, narrowing down tomato wish lists and cleaning off the propagation shelves. Mason picked up some worm castings yesterday and I'll be spending today sterilizing the starting trays and mixing up the coir, castings and vermiculite. We have plans for a lot of new projects in the coming months that I can't wait to get started and I have a new camera to help document them all.

-Megan

Cabin Weekend

2010-09-21T13:51:00.002-05:00

I forgot to post about our last trip to the cabin. We had so much fun and are already preparing for another mini trip this weekend. Hopefully, it will be a bit cooler this time and we will be able to get in a few hikes.

Also on the agenda for this week: the fall garden. We're going to go light on ourselves this season and focus on attempting to grow all of our own greens while leaving the broccoli, cauliflower, beets and turnips to the market growers. So, expect lots of photos of kale, collards, spinach, lettuce and parsley this fall (we hope!).

-Megan

Peach Salsa

2010-08-09T20:10:00.004-05:00

Last week, Loring peaches were ready at the local orchard. They are so delicious and sweet! We went out and picked 45 pounds for fresh eating, pies and canning. In addition to several half pints of jam, we now have 19 pints of peach salsa. The recipe is a tweak of Annie's Salsa that I saw mentioned in a post on the Harvest forum. It calls for substituting half of the tomatoes in the original recipe for peaches. I was a little leery of the peach/tomato combo, but it really is tasty. The jar pictured is one that we made with Wapsipicon Peach tomatoes, Loring peaches, yellow habaneros and sweet red bells. It is the prettiest of all of the batches, but they all taste great.

Canning Salsa

2010-07-29T08:51:00.001-05:00

Well, it's true that we couldn't keep up with the Can Jam, but that doesn't mean that we haven't been canning. We harvested around 60 pounds of tomatoes last week, so it was time to make some salsa! I've read a ton of rave reviews of Annie's Salsa on Gardenweb, so I read through this thread, which lists all the safe alterations and decided on the version that I thought would suit us best. I was a little hesitant to use a recipe that calls for tomato sauce and paste. After all, we're growing and canning in an attempt to AVOID having to make those kinds of purchases. But, everyone says that it makes for a better texture, so I decided to leave it in this time. We'll probably reduce the amounts with each batch in an attempt to find a balance between best tasting and least dependent on outside products.

These are the changes that we made:
-Instead of 1 cup of apple cider vinegar, we used 1/3 cup each of lemon juice, lime juice and ACV.
-Instead of sugar, we used honey.
-For a hotter salsa, we used 1 cup of jalapenos and 3/4 cup of red peppers to reach the 1 3/4 cup of peppers.
-We only used 12 oz. of tomato paste.

Most of the recipes list a final product of 6-7 jars, but we ended up with a scant 8. This salsa is really good--and pretty hot because we didn't deseed any of the peppers.

Estate Sales

2010-07-28T20:32:00.005-05:00

The estate sales this month have been pretty excellent. I am a firm believer that almost everything that we need can eventually be found at an estate sale, yard sale, thrift store or on craigslist. Furniture, kitchenware, garden tools--as long as you have the patience to wait for the things that you want and the room store what you think you will need later, you can get great deals on practically anything.

I've been meaning to take pictures of all of the things that we've found, but didn't get around to it until today. It is getting really hot out there, so I only snapped a few for now.

This is an early 70s stoneware Pfaltzgraff pattern called Nordic Gold. I got a mostly complete set for $15, but I didn't feel like dragging it all out to photograph. I will be on the lookout for extra pieces and I would really love to have this and this!

I also scored a ton of Pyrex this month which is almost all in use at the moment and a sackful of little prep utensils and nice wooden spoons that were only 5 or 10 cents each.

We have a large Boos block, but I don't like to chop on it because it was a gift and I want to keep it in nice shape. We use it mostly for kneading doughs and rolling out crusts. We have a smaller Boos cutting board for daily chopping, but are always finding that more than one of us needs it at a time. This is a nice little butcher block that was only $1.50.

I've been looking for a large crock for a long time. Most of the crocks that I see used are cracked, which isn't good for fermenting. This one will actually be usable. And my Meme is a fantastic haggler who talked them into selling it to me for $20. I love the giant hardwood tamper!

This is actually a quite nice iron scale that I was surprised to see was only $5. We need to find a strong basket to hang from the hook, but for now we're just going to use a galvanized bucket.

I have a thing for handmade quilts. It's a little ridiculous really--I can't risk using them on the bed because of the four muddy pawed dogs that go in and out of our room all day long. So, they get folded up and stuffed into chests and cabinets until I find or get Mason to build a non-ugly quilt rack one day.

And, finally, a clangy old bell that needs some work. It was only a dollar and Mas said that he could fix it. I have no idea where it will go, but I have a feeling that we will find a use for it someday.

-Megan

Waste

2010-07-21T14:49:00.005-05:00

Composting on Saturday was insane!
The food bank often receives produce that cannot be distributed because of spoilage. We gather on Saturday mornings, unwrap it and shovel it all into our piles. Generally, we have a few pallets of food to compost each week--around 3-5, sometimes 6-8. This week, we had 25! If you're having a hard time visualizing that amount, the tractor load of blueberries above is about 1/10 of a pallet's worth of food. The volunteer center attempted to recruit some extra help for us, but it is a hot and messy job and we ended up with only 10 people to handle it all. Not only was it a lot to compost, but all of those pallets had been sitting outside in the 100+ degree heat for 2 days before we got to it. There were 4 pallets of bagged lettuce that had liquified and had to be poured into the wheel barrels to be taken to the piles. I think that we were all shocked that we actually managed to clear all of the food and break down each of the cardboard boxes to be recycled.

I don't like to get preachy about things like this, but can everyone please stop buying individually wrapped produce? Do you really need your tomatoes to sit on styrofoam and be covered with plastic wrap? A few months ago, we had tons of individually wrapped sweet potatoes! Why? It is just so unnecessary. I think that most people would be shocked by the amount of plastic that we end up with at the end of a composting session. We're working on finding a recycler for it, but it all goes to the landfill for now...

-Megan

Tomato Season

2010-07-12T08:25:00.008-05:00

The tomato production is ramping up. In the last two weeks, we've gone from 3 oz. to 12 lb. 9 oz. There are tons and tons of green tomatoes on the vines. Now that it has stopped raining for a bit (besides a small chance of showers today), we're hoping that they'll really start ripening and putting out. We had our first big tomato salad yesterday. It was so good--just tomatoes, basil, salt and a tiny glug of olive oil. Definitely worth the wait!

-Megan

I Like Tohwrdles

2010-07-11T10:42:00.002-05:00

I was never the kid who collected reptiles. I was by no means "snake boy" (not that it would have been out of character, but I grew up in a very suburban neighborhood without ditches or creeks or woods). Having moved to the country as an adult, I took up the habit of making sure turtles don't get run over. When I'm driving (which I do a lot, the downside of living on land) I stop for all turtles on the road. I pull over, I get out, I pick the turtle up and carry it across in the direction it was going. I usually try to place it on the opposite side of the ditch, but that's not always possible. I toyed with the idea of keeping some sort of turtle treat (they exist, I googled it) with me to reward my shelled compadres, but Megan assured me it would be unfair to them, as it would ruin them on wild food and they would become despondent and lead deeply unfulfilling lives thereafter.

This reptile rescue has unfortunately extended to our own backyard because of the dogs. This morning I was sitting in the studio, working on songs for the new album (due out August 15th, 2011 - set a reminder in your phone). I looked out the window and saw that Riker was gnawing on something in the yard. I put the guitar down and ran outside to get it away from him - I had that horrible feeling that he'd killed it, but was thankfully wrong. He'd only gnawed the very outside of the shell and the turtle inside was fine. (see picture above) I washed him off and carried him down to the edge of our neighbor's woods to let him go.

Also on the reptile front, we had a snake in the house last week and instead of killing it I trapped it inside a bucket and took it down to the ditch. Here's how it went down:

0. Look snake up on the internet to make sure it's not poisonous. Google "[name of your state] native snakes" for pictures. If you're (reasonably) sure that it's not going to kill you, proceed to my snake handling instructions. I am 100% not responsible for you getting bitten, so do this at your own risk.

1. Trap snake under appliance (in our case a washing machine).

2. Get a 5 gallon bucket with a lid and broom or mop. Put a wet rag in the bottom of the bucket.

3. Set the bucket down on it's side and either wait for the snake to climb in (it will head toward the moisture), or speed it along by tapping it's body with the broom or mop. (I tapped, but I was on top of the washing machine because even though I'm not afraid of snakes, why take chances?)

4. Once it's in the bucket use the broom or mop handle to pull the bucket back upright and quickly set the lid on. Place your hand on the lid, but don't snap it in place, you just don't want it falling off.

5. Now carry the (sort of) sealed bucket out to a ditch or woods or stream far away from your house. Set it down and use the broom to knock it over (away from you). Don't run. If the snake is super mad, it will follow you. Most likely it will just slither away because it really didn't like being in a bucket. If the snake doesn't come out instantly, go away slowly and quietly and come back later. It will be gone.

6. Collect your bucket and go about your business. If you end up with multiple snakes or it keeps coming back, you might have a mouse problem that you don't know about. You should look into it.

-Mason

So that's me and reptiles. I love one of them and am cautiously respectful of the other.

Peach Picking

2010-07-07T14:51:00.010-05:00

Peaches are a big deal in Oklahoma. We don't get a ton of apples or pears, very few cherries or apricots, no citrus, but lots of peaches. Great peaches. We couldn't resist buying a bag of Earliglos two weekends ago, then eating them too greedily and ending up peachless over the 4th while the other varieties were still ripening. On our way home from unloading the hay this morning, we noticed that the orchard down the street from the old house had its gates open. We had an hour or so before Mason needed to head to work, so obviously we had to stop and do some picking. Only three or four of their varieties are ripe at the moment, so we picked a bag for fresh eating and decided to put off getting bushels to can for another couple of weeks. Then, it will be time for peach jam, peach salsa and maybe some peach chutney. Not to mention the cobblers and pies. Mason's Nanny gave up the secrets to freezing excellent pies last weekend, so hopefully we'll be able to put some up and have a taste of summer in January (if they last that long...).

-Megan

Round Bales

2010-07-07T12:19:00.004-05:00

We use a lot of straw. If I had my druthers I'd have straw in every bed and wood mulch everywhere else. There would be no lawn, only beds and mulch. We'll get there eventually.

Last fall you'll remember we got 40 bales for free from a shopping center, but we're almost out of that. So we need more. Lots more. On Craigslist I found free rotten large square bales down in Purcell, but they're eight foot by three by three... I couldn't figure out a way to get them out the back of the pickup. The only solution I could think of was to get round bales. But here's the catch: we live on the wrong side of the county for wheat straw. Everybody and their brother bales bermuda grass for cattle feed out here. After a little more hemming and hawing, more waiting and more Craigslist checking Megan found round bales of wheat straw for $25.

From talking to the guy, I was under the impression it was in Minco (about 20 miles south of Mustang, which is just south of the city). After driving 6 miles of gravel (County Road 1230, if you care) it ended up being another 15 miles southwest of Minco. If you're keeping track, that's over 35 miles from where I work. So that's a 70 miles round trip for a bale of hay that I was excited about saving $10 on. The math didn't really work out in my favor, since I spent $10 on gas to get there. But the straw is great. It's dry, clean and relatively seed free and I'm very excited about mulching with it.

I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but it's as tall as I am. It weighs about 1000 pounds, but the F150 hauled it just fine. I was fairly worried about getting it out of the truck, but Megan pushed it out by herself just to see if she could do it. The first shove was tough, but the bale's kinetic energy did most of the work after that (it's simple physics, google it). It rolled right off the tailgate, bounced twice, and came to a stop in the yard. If you're going to repeat this yourself, I'd advise NOT attempting it on an incline, since you won't be able to stop it rolling down a hill which you'll never be able to roll it back up.

-Mason

EMT Tomato Stakes

2010-07-06T08:56:00.005-05:00

These are our EMT tomato stakes. It's a pretty simple system, really. The EMT comes in 10 ft. lengths, around $2 each. Mason took a hacksaw to them on a rainy day which resulted in 65 or so 7 ft. tomato stakes and 3 ft. pepper stakes. We got them in a bit late--about a month ago--and I had to do quite a bit of pruning as I tied them up. But, now it's quite easy to maintain by going out every or every other day with a ball of twine and tying up any growth spurts.

I did a lot of research before we chose a support system and, lo and behold, chose what most of that research had told me was the worst, least productive system of all. The plan all along was to use the Florida Weave, but our plants were much too large by the time we got around to staking to even attempt straightening them up with the weave. And I was a little leery of using a method that requires two people to maintain. I do a lot of the garden maintenance while Mas is at work and I was afraid that the supports would be even more neglected if it required waiting for him to come home to tie them up.

Overall, I think we're both pretty happy with this system for now. The EMT will last a lot longer than wooden stakes and can be repurposed when we can finally afford 100 of those incredible Texas Tomato Cages, i.e., when we win the lottery or inherit the family fortune or never.

By the way, the plants in the photo above were grown in our rope light propagation boxes. So, I'd say they were a huge success and highly recommend giving them a try, especially if you have some old rope lights in the attic and a bag of sand in the garage. It's really a very adaptive system that can be made to fit in to just about anyone's space. We will definitely be using ours again and I'm thinking about attempting winter lettuce growing with them as well.

-Megan

Garlic Harvest

2010-06-28T11:38:00.001-05:00

It rained several inches here the Monday before last (even more in OKC-up to 10"), so we decided to go ahead and harvest the first half of the garlic. We pulled up all of the Early Italian Red, with the exception of a couple of little scraggly stalks. The bulbs were pretty wet, so we laid them out on newspaper to dry in the garage. A few days later, I brushed the dried dirt off of the bulbs and tied them into bundles of four which were hung up to cure. They've been curing for two weeks now, so they're ready to trim and clean for storage anytime. The bundle above is the one that had the largest, nicest looking bulbs. We're saving them to plant in the fall.

We've harvested the last of the scapes from the Chesnock Red this week. I sent some to Mason's parents, made a big batch of pesto and sauteed them to add to some white bean spread. The bulbs will probably be ready to pull in the next few weeks. I'm not sure how the hardneck garlic is going to turn out; the stalks are a little scrawnier than the softneck. We'll most likely be growing them again for the scapes regardless.

-Megan

Tomato Progress

2010-06-25T11:44:00.008-05:00

White Currants-our earliest variety this year.

We were a bit late getting our one gallon tomato seedlings into the ground this year. Then, they were hit by a harsh hail storm that stripped every single bud and tiny green tomato to the ground. Most of the plants lost several limbs as well. Then, we took way too long deciding what method of support to use, finally deciding on 7 ft. EMT stakes, which required quite a bit of pruning. And now, it's already unbearably (leaf shrivelingly) hot outside. Despite all of this, several of the varieties are loaded with fruit that are just beginning to ripen. We've only managed to find a few ripe babies thus far, but it looks as though we will be getting some nicer sized fruits in the next few weeks. At the moment, our Principe Borghese and Black Plums are setting fruit exceptionally well. I'll be sure to keep track of the varieties that produce--if they can survive all of this neglect and abuse and still put out a bumper crop, they definitely deserve a spot in our permanent tomato line up.

Principe Borghese

Paul Robeson

Black Plum

Tomato Harvest Tally
Principe Borghese: 1
Mexico Midget: 5
White Currant: 20

Total Weight: approximately 3 oz.

-Megan

Canadian County

2010-06-13T07:01:00.002-05:00

Canadian County has a lot of pretty farmland. After salvaging some wood at this barn, we drove around a bit and found a lot of sweet little houses and nice pastures. I loved this abandoned house.

We also found a tiny little cemetery in the middle of a huge field down the street. There were only about twenty five grave markers and about half of them were for children under the age of 5. Most of the dates were between 1890 and 1920--homesteaders, no doubt!

Barn Scavenging

2010-06-12T18:49:00.005-05:00

We spent a few hours on Thursday afternoon salvaging wood from this decrepit barn out in El Reno. The owner is having to have it torn down tomorrow afternoon, so he put an ad on craigslist saying that all were welcome to come take whatever they could find worth taking. He wasn't sure of the exact age of the barn, but said that is was built sometime between the late 1800s and early 1900s. We weren't the first to respond, so a lot of the good wood was already gone. We still managed to find several pieces that we liked and thought were worth prying up or sawing out. The photo above shows a few of them. There were a few little pieces, like handles and knobs, that we were thinking we may be able to incorporate into pieces of furniture or our own barn someday. Mostly, it was just nice to get to walk around and explore all of the little nooks and crannies of a structure that old. If only we had thought to bring a ladder to get us up into the loft!

-Megan

Small Scale Grain Raising

2010-06-12T06:34:00.004-05:00

We've been watching them harvest wheat all week from El Reno up to Enid.

This week we've been making good use of our time in the car by reading Gene Logsdon's Small Scale Grain Raising aloud on the two hour stretches back and forth to Mason's presentations in Enid and Ardmore. This book is blowing my mind! I would have never imagined that you could produce a sufficient amount of grain on such a small amount of land. It's amazing what you can grow on only a few acres. It has always troubled me that our vegetarianism makes us more dependent on agribusiness than a dedicated meat eating homesteader. We buy a lot of lentils, chickpeas and grains, mostly in bulk. It's not always easy to find the origin of those products, and when it is, I find that they were generally grown across the country. It's a relief to learn that it is possible to sustain a vegetarian household on a reasonable amount of land.

We have access to another five acres the next town over. It would need a lot of brush clearing and other work, but now we're thinking of all of the new crops that it would be possible to grow there--dent corn, popcorn, wheat, sorghum, broomcorn, oats--and those are just the ones that we've read about so far. We are only 100 pages in, but I've already learned more from this book than I have from any other that I've read in years (with the exception of another incredible book I'm reading at the moment, Carol Deppe's Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties). There is too much fascinating information to list here, so I'll just say that I highly recommend it. The copy we are reading now is from the library, but I've already ordered my own.

-Megan

First Bulb of Garlic

2010-06-06T06:40:00.002-05:00

Our garlic isn't really ready to harvest, but I am so impatient that I've been looking for any excuse to pull up a bulb. Running out of store bought cloves while making BBQ baked lentils the other night was the perfect opportunity. This is Early Italian Red, a softneck artichoke variety that is (obviously) supposed to be early. The bulb was a decent size, but the skin was still thick and the cloves were very small. It was also very strong, though it is supposed to be mild when full developed. I'm interested to see when these will actually reach maturity.

-Megan

Wild Blackberries

2010-06-02T13:03:00.002-05:00

Remember these?
Those guesses were correct--they are wild blackberries and they are now beginning to ripen. I had my first handful this morning. They are pretty tart, but not unpleasantly so. I don't think we'll have enough to do any preserving this year, so we'll eat them fresh, on top of pancakes, or maybe with shortcake or in muffins.

Riker loves raw fruit and vegetables. Oranges, carrots, green beans--he'll try pretty much anything you're willing to hand over. He follows me up and down the fence line begging for berries, so I taught him to pick his own this morning. He caught on really quickly and grabbed several of his own as I was picking mine. I hope I don't regret it...

First Homegrown Blue Potatoes

2010-06-02T13:00:00.006-05:00

I know that our potatoes aren't even close to being ready to harvest, but I couldn't resist digging in to see how they were doing. I pulled back a scoop of hay and, as I reached in, these two tiny blues rolled out into my hand. I saved them until Mason came home from work and we each had one bite. Tiny, but delicious.

-Megan

Growing Herbs from Seed

2010-05-21T13:01:00.006-05:00

I have always loved herbs. Living in an apartment with no room for the traditional garden rows of tomatoes, peppers, corn and okra really solidified that love. Our garden in Dallas was about 40 square feet and consisted mainly of herbs and greens. There were little squares of kale, lettuce and basil, but mainly we had massive tangles of thyme, rosemary, chives and six varieties of oregano. So, while none of our dinners were homegrown, we at least had an occasional salad and could add fresh flavors to any of the less than fresh meals we found ourselves eating. They also made our little square of the courtyard the nicest looking (and smelling) by far. We stuffed as many plants as we could into the U-Haul as we left (they surrounded Mason in the cab), but still had to leave most of them behind with a newly interested neighbor.

Now that the big gardens are nearly filled, we are both impatient to have our herb garden again. This time around, we have a much larger space right in front of the house. Mason's really rough estimate is that it is somewhere around 150 square feet. With this space, we want to attract as many hummingbirds, butterflies and beneficial insects as possible. We want to put in a few toad houses and build a bird bath. Mason would love to have a tea garden and I'm growing some ornamental peppers and climbing flowers. Moonflowers are my favorite and made our apartment garden the perfect place to drink limeades on summer nights. But, mostly, I envision it packed with herbs. I want them all! The problem is that having them all adds up really quickly when those little pots are $2-$4 a piece. We talked about it and decided that it just wasn't feasible to fill it with nursery plants all at once. That doesn't mean I haven't bought a few--I can rarely escape a nursery trip without at least one, but the bulk of what we will be planting we are attempting to grow from seed.

I have always read that growing herbs from seed is really difficult, so I wasn't expecting to have much success this year when we ordered several varieties from Baker Creek. It was mainly just going to be an experiment to see if anything at all would grow. The first round of herbs that I attempted were started in a 288 cell tray. A few of these sprouted, but only the basil thrived. In fact, nothing but basil survived being transplanted into larger cells.

This time around, I decided to just sprinkle a pinch of seed into a 4 inch cell and let the herbs grow undisturbed until they filled the pot. It seems to have worked really well. The savory and fennel got a little leggy and the chives took a while to fill in, but most of the pots are now full and ready to be transplanted at any time. I've got Wild Zaatar oregano, summer savory, Chinese chives, common chives, Russian tarragon, catnip, lemon bee balm, burnet, fennel and marjoram. Mason is going to clear out the remaining poison ivy (carefully!) this weekend so that we can start planting and I'll take some better photos once we get some of them in the ground. Now that I've had some success, I can't wait to grow more. I've been browsing the Horizon Herbs catalog and making lists of all of the things that I'd like to grow. I think I'll be making an order soon, so any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Tomato Man's Daughter

2010-05-07T07:01:00.002-05:00

My obsession with tomatoes is bordering on pathological. We couldn't pass through Tulsa on our way home from MO without stopping at Tomato Man's Daughter. The Tomato Man, Darrell Merrell, was a long time heirloom grower and seed saver. He passed away a few years ago, but his daughter, Lisa, has continued growing and selling their huge list of varieties. You can read more about them here and here. We were able to pick up a few of the varieties that we aren't growing ourselves, Paul Robeson, OP Sweet 100, Principe Borghese, Marglobe and Purple Calabash. She also had Dr. Wyche's Yellow Tomatillo, so we bought two of those. The plants are strong and healthy and starting to bud.

We've had a few plumbing issues this week, so we're behind in getting everything into the ground, but we're hoping to finish off our planting this weekend.

-Megan

Baker Creek Spring Planting Festival

2010-05-03T08:29:00.006-05:00

We arrived home today from Mansfield, MO where we finally got to see Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds for ourselves. We've been talking about making the trip up to Missouri for about 7 years, but never had the time/money/dog-sitters to make it feasible. One of the first things that we decided when we knew for sure that we were moving back to Oklahoma was that we were definitely going to the Spring Festival in 2010. After our first Mid-Del market day (which we considered successful despite spitting rain and parking quirks), we loaded up our packs and headed north.

We stopped in Tulsa at the Oklahoma Horticultural Study Group's plant sale and picked up some lemongrass and ONLY ONE tomato plant--a JD's Special C-Tex, which I had never heard of, but was on the top of their top 10 list. They had a great selection from Duck Creek Farms and there were about 20 other varieties I would have liked to get, but space in the car (not to mention the garden) was limited and required restraint.

We were intent upon camping, but, after a week of remodeling, heavy garden work, and babysitting one of the cutest babies ever, we gladly accepted dad's offer of a free suite in nearby Springfield. From there, it was only an hour drive to Mansfield. We set out on Sunday morning and drove through Mansfield, following the signs through winding streets and onto a long gravel road. We were pretty shocked at how beautiful it was in southern Missouri. Mason had never been and I hadn't seen it since I was maybe 12 or so. The village was amazing--rolling hills and bucolic pastures in bright spring greens.

We paid our $5 and began wandering around Bakersville. There were so many things to see that we found something new each time we passed. The sheer volume of plants in the vendor stalls was a little overwhelming, so we decided to save plant shopping for later in the day. My first purchase was from a woman selling multiplier onions at a tiny table near the apple fritter line (our second purchase!). The onions were brought to America from Germany by her great grandparents. I bought 24 bulbs that I'm thinking about adding to the end of the perennial bed. While I talked to her, Mason smartly got into the long line for apple fritters. They were frying them to order, so it was slow moving, but so worth it! We agreed that it was definitely the best fried dessert that either of us had ever had. The fresh strawberry lemonade was pretty terrific, too.

They have several heritage breeds of chickens, ducks and geese in various coops throughout the village. There is a little seed museum on the upper floor of the mercantile. The apothecary smelled incredible. But, the seed store, of course, was the best part. Wait, that's not entirely true. The fact that all tomato seed packets were on sale for $1 was the best part. Again, it was totally overwhelming. Mason helped me go through, row by row, choosing seed for fall tomatoes and next year's tomatoes and probably several years after that. I think I bought somewhere around 50 new varieties and stocked up on a few favorites. Obviously, they'll have to be stored in the freezer for a while--and I should have plenty to trade and share for a long time.

We bought several other things that I'll try to take photos of this week and post. I actually managed to be fairly practical and only ended up with two plants total--a $5 1 gallon pot of comfrey (which I've been trying to find everywhere) and a little $2 pot of malabar spinach, just in case ours doesn't come back this year. There is a lot more to add, but we've been working nonstop outside since we got home and I am too exhausted to remember it all right now.

-Megan

Wild Something

2010-04-26T08:16:00.002-05:00

I posted some photos of these plants on a forum and the best guess from the other posters was that they are wild blackberries. They are growing all over the fence line and popping up in all kinds of places around the yard. The buds just opened last week and they are now in full bloom. I'm hoping that they fruit and the taste is at least moderately good. If they aren't purely delicious, maybe they'll make a decent jam. Even if they are inedible, I'm sure the birds will love them.

-Megan

Garden Update

2010-04-26T07:28:00.006-05:00

I've been out in the garden pretty much all day every day for the last few weeks. Mason gets home from work and comes straight outside to get in a few hours until dark. We worked from 1-8 on Saturday after Soil Builders and from 8-8 Sunday cutting sod to make more room for new beds. Weeding the bermuda grass by hand has just not been possible for the amount of space we need in the time that we have. Hopefully, the sod cutter will be the last large piece of equipment we'll ever need in these plots. We're going to be a no-till garden and work on building the soil by adding as much organic matter as possible and utilizing several rounds of cover crops.

Our plots for now are as follows:
West Garden-26'x40' with (4) 4'x12' mounded raised beds and (4) 4'x20' mounded raised beds and a poorly planned double row of garlic running right through the middle.
East Garden-in progress for tomatoes.
Back Garden-in progress for other summer crops.
Perennial Garden-13'x40' partly shaded, partly full sun planted with sunchokes, rhubarb, horseradish and society garlic this year. We hope to add asparagus, more rhubarb, ramps, sorrel, Egyptian walking onions and whatever other edible perennials we can find.
Front Bed-100 or so square feet for herbs, flowers and maybe some mixed edibles like habanero and medusa peppers.

we need to add more lines to the pea trellis

our hay row for potatoes

a blue potato plant

monstrous garlic tops

buckwheat planted in our band of heavy clay

flowering kale

As you can see, we still have a lot of work to do in the next two weeks.
For now, we have broccoli that's finally starting to get some size but probably won't form large heads before it gets too warm, collards, kale and chard that are ready to begin harvesting, peas climbing up the string trellis, garlic getting huge, potato plants poking through all over the place, lettuce being eaten up by someone/thing other than us, buckwheat almost blooming and ready to be turned under, the first eight tomatoes in the ground, pots of strawberries, calendula and herbs ready to be put..somewhere, Ragged Jack kale that's going to seed (which I'm hoping to save), a huge pile of shredded leaves for mulching and tons (literally) of sod to roll up and haul off.

-Megan

The Natural Gardener

2010-04-07T08:17:00.003-05:00

Last month, we went down to Austin for a few days for a mix of reasons--SXSW guitar show, food bank visits, Wheatsville popcorn tofu, etc. We had one entirely free day and no idea what to do with it, so, after a bit of googling, we decided to make our way west of the city to The Natural Gardener. Neither of us had ever heard of it, but we are always up for a trip to a garden center.

For starters, they do have an impressive garden center--beautiful tools, bulk grass and buckwheat seed, loads of harder to find soil amendments, great books and SEEDS. Not only do they carry large lines of Seeds of Change, Renee's Garden and Botanical Interests, they also have a small selection of Kitazawa Seeds. I was on seed overload at the time (another post), so I was really attempting to restrain myself and keep Mason from having a heart attack. I managed to make it out without buying any, but I do regret not picking up a few of the Kitazawa varieties.

Outside, they have greenhouses and hoop houses filled with all kinds of plants. This photo is just one side of an entire house filled with tomato plants. About half of the varieties were heirlooms.

There is a little cottage they call the Microbe Brewery which houses an amazing 100 gallon worm tea brewer. It wasn't open at the time, but I did manage to get a blurry photo of the set up inside. We're going to work on the plans for something similar (but smaller) this summer and hope to have it in operation by next year. For now, we're just using a five gallon bucket and a cheap air stone.

They have a great demo garden with lots of little raised beds and square foot gardening info. The chard was already huge! It looked like they were using a lot of low tunnels and floating row covers, and it was definitely working for them. The gardens looked great.

Oh, and did I mention that they have DONKEYS? Yeah. I couldn't get close enough for a photo, but they have two adorable miniature donkeys that made us want donkeys even more (if that was even possible). They also have goats and chickens in nice little pens/coops in the middle of the gardens. And cats lazing around on doorsteps and tables. Basically, it's perfect.

Also, a tipi. We looked into getting a tipi or yurt when we lived on five acres several years ago. I'd still like to have one some day. This one was a great size.

The landscaping is really beautiful. It's much more wild and rambling than most garden centers would ever allow, which we both loved. I think that I read that they have about 4 acres. It was amazing to see all that they've been able to do on that amount of land while still making it seem manageable and attainable. All in all, we spent about 5 hours wandering around. We ended up with several of the ingredients we needed to mix up organic fertilizer, a 25lb bag of worm castings, 100' of bird netting, a bag of buckwheat seed that is already coming up in a few beds for a quick cover crop, a small succulent for the cat to rub her face on, and a little epazote plant just in case mine doesn't come back this year.

Catching Up

2010-04-02T07:56:00.004-05:00

We are so far behind in posts that it's ridiculous. Not only did we miss the March Can Jam due to double illnesses and traveling to SXSW to work a guitar show, we've also failed to blog about 1) digging the mounded raised beds, 2) literal tons of free mulch shoveled into the back of the truck, 3) sifting said mulch into large pieces for garden paths and particulate for the compost, 4) making our own fertilizer, 5) soil test results (not so good), 6) the planting out of peas, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, chard, lettuce, collards and kale seedlings, 7) a trip to The Natural Gardener in Austin (pictured above), 8) sweet peas sprouting up, 9) the fact that it's already spring!, 10) the purchasing of many, many more seeds by me to Mason's chagrin, 11) an aquaponics course at Urban Harvest, 12) new tools from the swap meet, 13) the potting up of over 100 tomato plants, 14) worm casting harvesting at Urban Harvest, 15) the planting of potatoes in hay, 16) several more rounds of seeds started in the rope light hot beds...and I'm sure that there are more bits and happenings that I'm forgetting.

Things haven't slowed down any at all (quite the opposite, actually), but we are both feeling better and have sworn to ourselves to keep this blog more up to date.

First Tomatoes

2010-03-05T07:48:00.004-06:00

This photo of our tomato seedlings was actually taken on Monday. They are much bigger now. I potted up around 30 or so on Tuesday, but decided that they were still a bit too frail and have waited on the rest. Today, I'll be potting up somewhere between 50 and 80 more. I started 8 of each variety because some of the seed was older, but that ended up being mucho overkill. I guess, if they all make it, we'll have plenty to give away to friends and family.

I've made some seed trades in the last week, so I'll actually be seeding a few more tomatoes today. I have no idea where we'll be putting them...

-Megan

Propagation Chamber

2010-03-05T07:21:00.002-06:00

This chamber puts every propagation shelf I've ever seen to shame.

-Megan

Potting Up

2010-02-28T08:23:00.005-06:00

Our first round of seedlings were ready to be potted up on Thursday. We pulled broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale and peppers from the tiny 288 cell trays and placed them in considerably roomier 72 cell trays. There are a few stragglers that weren't quite ready, and the leeks and chives are just beginning to sprout up, but everything else looks happy to have the extra space. On Wednesday, I started 21 varieties of tomatoes and reseeded a few of the peppers that didn't germinate so well. I also put in several herbs. The tomatoes are really coming up now--last night there were 4, but I found 20 this morning. I know that it will be a while before most of the herbs start breaking through, but the purslane that I seeded along with them had almost 100% germ after only 2 days. I'm pretty happy with the performance of our heat beds. I'll be really impressed if they can manage to coax out the herbs within the next week or so.

Our Plantings Thus Far
2/17
Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli
Romanesco Italis Broccoli
Copenhagen Market Cabbage
Snowball Cauliflower
Nero di Toscana Kale
Blue Curled Scotch Kale
Carentan Leeks
Paris Island Romaine (0% germ)
Chinese Chives
Common Chives

Fish Pepper
Red Mushroom Pepper
Serrano Pepper
Jalapeno Pepper
Anaheim Pepper
Orange Bell Pepper
Red Marconi Pepper
Red Mini Bell Pepper
Corbaci Pepper

2/24
White Currant Tomato
Green Grape Tomato
Fox Cherry Tomato
Tiny Tim Tomato
Coyote Tomato
Borgo Cellano Tomato
Black Cherry Tomato
Mexico Midget Tomato

Pink Accordian Tomato
Reisetomate Tomato
Arkansas Traveler Tomato
Black from Tula Tomato
Omar's Lebanese Tomato
Ananas Noir Tomato
German Red Strawberry Tomato
Wapsipinicon Peach Tomato
Black Plum Tomato
Black Aisburg Tomato
Black Russian Tomato
Carbon Tomato

Lemon Bee Balm
Burnet
Catnip
Marjoram
Wild Zaatar Oregano
Green Purslane
Butterfly Weed
Alaska Shasta Daisy

I'm trialing a lot of new (to us) tomatoes this year to determine which ones grow well through our hot summers and which we like the best tastewise. I also have 48 tomato plants and 12 pepper plants on order through the co-op. Since this was our first year growing from seed indoors, I thought it would be wise to have a back up plan.

Pre-Ordered Varieties

Sport Pepper
Quadrato d'Asti Rosso Pepper
Corno di Toro Pepper
Aconcagua Pepper

Cherokee Purple Tomato (2)
Evergreen Tomato
Lime Green Salad Tomato
Old Ivory Egg Tomato
Black Plum Tomato
Black Zebra Tomato
Green Zebra Tomato
Red Target Tomato
Chocolate Cherry Tomato
Green Grape Tomato
Snow White Cherry Tomato

We're off to check the soil and hopefully do some Bermuda digging, if it's not too wet. The peas need to be in the ground now, but it keeps snowing and the beds aren't even kind of ready yet.

-Megan

Why Heirlooms?

2010-02-20T07:33:00.003-06:00

I've been reading through some back issues of Mother Earth News lately (when I should actually be working...), and found this article yesterday. For anyone wondering why we grow mostly heirlooms in our garden, reading this should give you a good overview. The article is older, from 2000, but most of the information is still pretty accurate.

-Megan

February Can Jam

2010-02-19T19:21:00.007-06:00

Neither of us were all that into the Can Jam ingredient this month. We didn't see any carrots at the Farmers' Market and I stupidly forgot to check the Co-op list in time. We could have ordered them from Country to Town Market for $2/bunch, but instead we were stuck using grocery store carrots. Still, we fully intended to plow ahead and make the recipe for Dilled Carrots from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. They sounded tasty enough, but not anything to get too excited over. All of that changed when I saw this recipe posted by another can jammer at Put A Lid On It. I sent Mason a message at work that said "Carrot and Onion Sandwich Slaw" and he readily agreed that it needed to be made by us immediately. I hope that she doesn't mind us borrowing her entry. Our jars certainly don't look as nice as hers--and it's almost impossible to get a decent photo anywhere in this house in the evening (I'll try to get a better shot tomorrow), but I'm still very happy with the results of this month's project. We may seek out other carrot canning recipes in the future, but I'm pretty sure that we'll be sticking with this slaw.

-Megan

Dog Biscuits

2010-02-19T18:02:00.003-06:00

We're constantly forgetting to buy the dogs treats. Somehow, it just never makes it onto the list. I hate all of the gross crap that they put into them anyway, so I've decided to start making all of our own. I've made lots of different recipes in the past, but I want something simple and inexpensive for daily treats. I found this recipe that only has four ingredients, but have lived with Mason long enough to know better than to use the last of the peanut butter on dog biscuits. So, I threw about 3/4 cup of chickpeas and a handful of sunflower seeds in the food processor to get a "peanut butter like" consistency. I also made a little sunflower seed milk in place of the skim milk and added a bit of honey. The dogs went crazy for them!

-Megan

First Sprouts

2010-02-19T17:49:00.006-06:00

It's hard to get a decent shot of them, but our first seeds have sprouted! The Nero di Toscana kale, Blue Curled Scotch kale, Southern Giant collards and even a few of the Snowball cauliflowers have all sprung up after only two days of germination on the heated beds. I'm definitely a convert. Here's hoping the peppers and soon to be seeded tomatoes do as well.

The aforementioned burn out turned out not to be much of an issue after all. I pulled the lights up to find that only a small section (maybe 2-3ft) is burned out. They had been running a bit warm anyway, so I'm not going to worry with replacing the strand for now. We'll see how much longer the rest of them last before I decide whether or not to buy this brand again. It might be a good idea to get a couple of strands of another brand just to compare the quality, but that can wait until I find a good deal on them at a yard sale or the thrift store.

-Megan

First Seeding

2010-02-18T08:10:00.005-06:00

I seeded the first trays going onto our propagation shelf yesterday morning. Some of them are a little late, but it's been really cold here, so I don't think that things will be able to go into the ground as early as normal anyway. This tray has cooler season crops: Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Romanesco Italia Broccoli, Copenhagen Market Cabbage, Nero di Toscana Kale, Snowball Cauliflower, Georgia Collards, Southern Giant Collards, Black Curled Scotch Kale, Carentan Leeks, Paris Island Romaine, and, in the other corner, Chinese Chives and Common Chives that are covered because they need darkness to germinate.

Unfortunately, when I misted them this morning, it looked as though the rope light below that tray had already gone out. I'm going to go mess with it and see if maybe the connection just came loose or something, but I'll probably need to move the tray, pull it and replace it. The sand and plastic is still quite warm, so I'm not too worried about it for the time being. I just hope that this isn't typical of the brand of lights that we bought.

-Megan

Rope Light Heat Boxes for Propagation

2010-02-15T09:34:00.009-06:00

We spent an hour or so last night putting together our new system for providing bottom heat to our germinating seeds. I wrote a little about the cost of the set up in this post; it's the cheapest design we could find. The method is taken from this site, which I came across while searching "diy seed heat". Our set up is a little different than the link, but the concept is the same--using rope lights to warm a container of sand which sits below a container of seeds/plants. The basic idea is that the warm sand provides heat to speed the germination of the seeds.

I won a lot of 4 18' rope lights (not LED!) off of ebay for $20, after shipping. We bought three bags of play sand from the hardware store and Mason picked up a box, measuring 24x24x12, from Budget Box in OKC on his way home from work one day. Last night, we gathered our supplies and set to work. First, Mason cut the box in half horizontally, leaving us with two lidless boxes measuring 24x24x6. He also taped up the corners and cracks to prevent any leakage. The two boxes fit snuggly on one of our 24x48 shelves.

Then, we coiled one 18' rope light in each box. The lights connect together and only one cord needs to run to the power supply. We probably could have done a better job of measuring and coiling it evenly across the bottom of the box, but we just spread it out to cover most of the box and started scooping sand on top to hold it in place. We covered each light with about three inches of sand, smoothing and leveling with our hands as we went.

With only three inches of sand needed to cover the lights, our seed flats fit perfectly into the box, with plenty of room to adjust our overhead fixtures as the seedlings grow. We cut a sheet of black plastic to cover the sand and set the cell trays on top of it. Mason plugged the rope lights in and we left them to go watch Big Love. An hour later, the cold sand was a little warmer than room temperature. When I checked this morning, it was noticeably warmer--probably warmer than necessary, but no where near burning hot. We'll need to get a thermometer and figure out how long the lights need to be on to maintain a good temperature for germination. If we can find the right increment of time, we can use a cheap lighting timer to turn them on and off automatically.

It's hard to get a decent photo, but it looks like this design is going to work for us. There are potential problems--rope lights burning out, sand getting moist, etc--that we'll have to deal with as we go along. But, I read numerous accounts of problems with heating mats, so I think we'd probably have had to deal with burnouts one way or the other. At least this way we can replace one string of lights for five or ten dollars without having to throw out the entire system.

-Megan

Seed Starting Shelf

2010-02-12T11:58:00.006-06:00

Well, you can't tell much from the photo, but we are slowly getting our propagation rig set up. Sunday night, we put together the steel storage shelf that we bought last week. I had hoped to buy something used, but we never found anything that was the appropriate size. At least this shelf is made in America. The boards are press board that we will need to replace in the next few years. When we do, we'll probably use planks of red cedar from the local mill. The structural support seems sturdy and should last a long time. We also hung some black plastic that we found in the garage up behind the shelf to protect the wall from water damage when we mist the plants. We finally got around to putting the fluorescents up last night. Right now, we can't afford to go the T5 or halide route, so we're using 2 4' T8 fixtures on each shelf. We put two 32 watt cool white lamps in each fixture, and it seems to be providing a good bit of light to cover the width of the shelf. For the moment, we're only using two shelves for growing, but I'm thinking about buying a few low profile fixtures to go on one of the short shelves in an attempt to extend our growing space.

Because the cost of large propagation mats is pretty high, we're going to be trying this system for providing bottom heat during germination. We bought a 24x24x12 cardboard box and cut it into two 24x24x6 trays. Each tray will be filled with a few inches of sand, a coiled rope light, a few more inches of sand, and topped with the seed flats and cells. I bought a lot of 4 18' rope lights from ebay for $20 shipped, the box was $4 and the two bags of sand were a little under $4 each. The total cost was under $35. If we decide to heat another shelf, we can use the other rope lights from the lot, another box, and two more bags of sand for a total cost of under $45 for 16 feet of heated growing space. The two large heating mats that it would take to cover that amount of space are 79.95 each, before shipping. If this works, we stand to have saved ourselves quite a bit of money.

What's left before planting? We need to fill the trays, get worm castings, mix up our medium, buy more flats and cell packs, and I need to finish the seed database that I've been working on all week so that we will know how many seeds of each variety to sow. Hopefully, we'll get all of that done this weekend and we'll be able to seed the trays next week.

-Megan

Growing for Market Event @ MWC Library

2010-02-11T09:42:00.002-06:00

The Mid Del Farmers Market and Buy Fresh Buy Local sponsored an excellent Growing for Market seminar at the Midwest City Library last Tuesday night. We had a really fun time, met some awesome new people doing the same sorts of things that we are and learned a ton of stuff.

Some of the presenters were:

Julia Laughlin - Head of the Horticultural Dept at OSU-OKC
Doug Walton - Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture
Robert Stelle - local certified organic grower, Sunrise Acres
Larry Hocking - local chemical-free grower, Berry Creek Farm

We really enjoyed Julia's presentation and it made us want to take some of her classes. I'd heard Doug Walton speak before at an event I attended at the State Capitol on Food Deserts, and he did not disappoint. The event was standing room only full and I'm very glad that we went.

On a related note:
The Mid Del Farmers market opens May 1st!

-Mason

Urban Farm Magazine

2010-02-10T11:31:00.003-06:00

I finally found a copy of Urban Farm! The Spring 2010 issue was on the shelf at the N. OKC Barnes and Noble this weekend. I've been working on setting up a seed database and putting together our seed starting set up, so I haven't had time to read much, but I'm impressed with the quality of what I have seen thus far.

-Megan

Homemade Larabars

2010-02-09T11:35:00.007-06:00

We used to be hardcore Larabar addicts, but haven't really bought them since they were taken over by General Mills. I always hating throwing out all of that packaging anyway. We were talking about the new flavors the other day and it reminded me that we still had about 10 pounds worth of delicious pitted dates in boxes at the very back of the fridge. We ordered them, along with a box of Jumbo Medjools as a Christmas present for Mason's Nanny, from Fernandez Dates. After shipping, ours worked out to less than $3 a pound--and they are the best dates that I have ever tasted. Mason agrees. They are soft and moist, h.u.g.e. and super sweet--so sweet that I can rarely eat more than half of one at a time. At that rate, we'd never finish them off, so I don't feel too bad about turning a portion of them into knock off Larabars.

Into the food processor:
15 large pitted dates
1/2 c. shredded coconut
3/4 c. almonds
any spices or extracts or zests that you like

Process them until they will hold together in a ball.
If too wet, add more almonds. If too dry, add more dates (or juice 1 tsp. at a time).

The first batch that I made was just dates, coconut and almonds. For the second, I added a few tablespoons of zest and a tiny bit of juice from a box of mandarins that Mason brought home yesterday. And the last was just dates and almonds with a vanilla bean for flavor. If you want to make one like this without the coconut, use one heaping cup of almonds to 15 dates. You may have to mess around with it a little to get the right consistency.

Each batch makes twelve bars that are a little longer than half the size of a larabar. Obviously, you can shape them however you like, but I find they hold together better in a smaller bar. I store them in containers in the freezer with a small piece of waxed paper between each layer.

-Megan

Bubbly Kimchi

2010-02-08T08:07:00.005-06:00

My first attempt at kimchi has been bubbling away on the counter for the last 4 days. It wasn't quite ready when we tasted it yesterday morning, so we're going to give it a couple more days before we try it again. I used this recipe*, but have it fermenting in a half gallon jar with an air lock on the lid, like we do for sauerkraut. It seems to be working pretty well. The kimchi is much more visibly active than any of our sauerkraut has been.

*I tend to ignore the questionable science, but his recipes are delicious. We made the jap chae last week and ate it for three days in a row.

-Megan

So We're Late...

2010-01-24T12:46:00.006-06:00

The Can Jam recipes were supposed to be posted by the 22nd. We just got to our canning project yesterday morning, but--wait--I actually have a really good excuse! We had planned on canning our grapefruit on Friday evening after Mason got home from work. I was supposed to get everything prepped and we would do the actual cooking and canning after dinner. Friday at around 10am, my grandmother called and frantically explained that her poodle had wandered off and she couldn't find him. His name is Curly, and he was my grandfather's constant companion before he died. He was a rescue, so we have no idea of his actual age, but he is getting pretty elderly. He's blind and deaf and has a very hard time finding his way around without my grandmother's help. He's been lost once before and was gone for an entire day before we found him stuck in a ditch down the street. It has been raining here, and she was worried that he might lose his strength and drown if he was stuck somewhere and couldn't get out. I threw on my wellies and got over there ASAP to help her look. We spent hours looking with no luck. As it was getting dark, we decided to call off the search. Sadly, I drove home and prepared for the worst. Just as I was pulling in the driveway, she called to say that the neighbor had taken a flashlight out to search and had found him collapsed in the stagnant water inside the tin horn at the end of his driveway. She said he was in really bad shape, so Dad and I both rushed over to help her figure out what to do. We decided he was in shock and had hypothermia, so we dried him with the blow dryer and wrapped him in several layers of blankets. It took a few hours to bring his temperature back up, but he seems to be doing better. He's able to eat and drink and has been walking around on his own. I'm so relieved for her and was glad to help, but it definitely put a hold on our canning plans. After walking through brush and worrying all day, I was too wiped to even think about it. Mason whipped up a quick dinner, and we went straight to bed. We had to be out of town all day Saturday, so we just got to our canning project yesterday morning.

There was a lot of debate about what to make for the Jam. We made marmalade last month, so we both wanted to try something new. Chutney sounded great, but we really wanted to take advantage of the delicious Texas Rio Star grapefruit that's in season and as close to local as citrus gets in Oklahoma. I couldn't find a grapefruit chutney canning recipe, so we talked and decided to try adapting something to work with our citrus of choice. The other day, I was reading another can jammer's recipe for a marmalade that she uses as a glaze, sauce for veggies and salad dressing base. That had never even occurred to me, but I immediately dumped some orange marmalade and sriracha on some leftover pad thai (delicious!) and decided we needed to make something similar--some sort of savory grapefruit sauce in the style of marmalade, but not as firm. It's basically an all purpose grapefruit sauce that we'll use on stir fries and the like.

I've read that if you save the citrus seeds in a little bag and let them soak in the pot with the other ingredients, they will release natural pectin into whatever you're making. Because we wanted this to be thinner than marmalade, I thought that would be fine. Well, it turned out a little bit thinner than either of us would have liked, so I think we'll add maybe a third of a box of pectin next time. Still, it thickened a bit and tastes delicious, so I'm sure that it will work great as a sauce. We used three grapefruits, the zest of two oranges, one and a half cups of fresh orange/lemon/lime juice, two tablespoons of fresh ginger, six large cloves of garlic, three dried red thai chilis, and a cup and a half of sugar to make a batch of four jelly jars. When we finish off this batch, I'm excited to try it again and hone the recipe a bit. And I promise we'll be on time next month!

Speaking of food deserts...

2010-01-21T09:36:00.002-06:00

Here's a video featuring the Blue Jackalope and a few other Tulsa based programs that are attempting to provide solutions to the lack of fresh, healthy food in inner city areas.

Blue Jackalope Grocery & Coffee

2010-01-20T19:29:00.008-06:00

Occasionally I'll meet someone that I just instantly know I'm friends with. (My current hippie cubicle mate Joe is one, so was my homeboy Isaac [aka TrueSeed aka Dallas' second coming of hip-hop]... so was Megan for that matter.) Scott Smith, owner, proprietor, progenitor and visionary of and behind Blue Jackalope Grocery and Coffee in Tulsa is my new friend.

Scott's mission is as follows (more or less): revitalize the neighborhood he loves and make enough money to stay alive while doing it. The former he's got down pat, the latter is more negotiable. He's one of the driving forces behind the Healthy Corner Store movement in OK, and an advocate of food security through cooperative retail spaces. Scott and the volunteer crew at Blue Jackalope run the only shopping destination available to many residents of Crosbie Heights. There just aren't other grocery stores in the old North Tulsa neighborhood.

This year, Scott (in partnership with other Tulsa non-profits) is opening 5 more cooperative Healthy Corner Stores and a cooperative distribution center to harness group buying power. They'll all be in low income North Tulsa neighborhoods, they all take SNAP and WIC benefits, and they all sell real food, a lot of it local and most of it healthy. No beer, no smokes, no lottery tickets.

Blue Jackalope's very presence has already created change on the street. Since their opening, other stuff is starting to crop up: a community garden across the street and a bike collective next door. They have neighborhood barbecues on Sunday afternoons, punk/metal/folk shows on Friday nights and just general hanging-out-ness all the time. It's very laid back, low key, and filled with a mix of crusty hippies, old ladies and little kids from the neighborhood, and (like us) the occasional liberal food tourist come to check out what can be done for people who can't do for themselves when one person decides to act.

Oh, and the coffee? Fantastic espresso shots. Local roaster, nice machine, cool baristas - laid back hippies, not hipsters - smooth and rich crema. I had two over ice (my benchmark drink) and I very much enjoyed it.

If you do the facebook thing, theirs is here.

-Mason

Winter Harvest

2010-01-20T12:43:00.005-06:00

I've become unusually attached to this plant. It's a Cherry Bomb pepper plant that we bought as a little seedling from our local organic nursery in Dallas last April. It survived a crazy mid-summer hail storm and thrived through the Texas heat. When we moved at the end of August, it was quickly dug up, tossed in a five gallon bucket and thrown into the back of the U-Haul. It sat neglected for weeks (along with the butterfly weed, oregano and rosemary) before I even remembered to go out and water it, yet it still produced. I finally brought all of the plants inside just before the first frost and grouped them all on milk crates in the kitchen window. It's looking a little worse for the wear now, but we've been regularly harvesting hot cherry sized peppers indoors for the last two months. It refuses to stop producing. I've only watered it twice, but it doesn't seem to care.

The Cherry Bomb is a hybrid, which I didn't realize when I bought it. I try to stick to heirlooms because I think it's important to help save the lesser known varieties from extinction. Even still, I would have grown this hybrid again in a heartbeat---except that I found out that it is owned by Monsanto. Bummer. I'm hoping to grow around 10 or 15 kinds of hot heirloom peppers this year, so I'm sure I'll find another variety that is just as hardy and productive. I know that it's just a silly attachment to this one particular plant, but I will be sad to see it go (if it ever does...).

-Megan

Compost Shower

2010-01-20T09:11:00.003-06:00

I'm really excited about the prospect of building a compost heated outdoor shower like the ones in these videos. It's a fairly simple idea--coil 100 or so feet of poly pipe through your large compost pile as you are building it, connect that hosing to a simple outdoor shower rig, and take hot showers outdoors all summer long. I think it would also be great for giving the dogs their baths without clogging our indoor drain with hair. It looks like you could set up the entire system for well under $100, especially if you already have a fairly secluded place to shower. Because we're so close to our neighbors, we'd have to build a more private structure (more like the one in the second video) or plant some bamboo and wait a few seasons.

-Megan

Large Scale Composting

2010-01-19T12:12:00.004-06:00

I found a short Urban Harvest video on flickr that was taken a few months ago, so you can see some of what we've been working on with the Soil Builders. This is one of the larger mounds, but there are piles of various sizes all around the site that demonstrate the different methods of composting. As of this week, I think we've composted something like 30,000 lbs of food that would have otherwise been thrown away.

-Megan

Progress

2010-01-18T09:24:00.007-06:00

We managed to get a few of the things on our list accomplished last week.

-We did not start new sauerkraut, but have the cabbage to do so in the next few days. I'm going to try adding jalapenos, carrots and onions to a smaller jar.

-We tried to buy napa cabbage for the kimchi, but it all looked pretty rank. Since it's really no rush, we're waiting to find some that is semi-fresh (none at the farmers market, unfortunately). I hope to be growing some Asian cabbages soon, which will help.

-We're leaning heavily toward this lemon chutney recipe for the can jam. I'm also interested in trying this while it's still citrus season.

-After a short delay, the compost piles were turned and combined.

-The Baker Creek seed order is ready. It took hours to narrow it down to a reasonable size, but I think we've come to a good compromise. We are looking for a few varieties that they don't carry, so I still need to find sources for those.

-I bought a used SD1000 off of ebay to replace the one that I broke. The price was right and it has been a good camera for our uses. I thought about going with something newer, but we're in saving mode for all of the upcoming garden projects.

-We went to the Friends of the Farmers Market meeting and have been working on some new ideas for promoting the market and expanding our outreach and education projects. If you have any ideas, we'd be glad to hear them.

I realize that reading the to do lists of others isn't exactly fascinating. Without the camera, we had no way to document any of the things that we did this week, so all I've got is a dull recap.
-Megan

Dirt! The Movie

2010-01-13T08:36:00.005-06:00

We got a chance to see Dirt! The Movie at the last Red Dirt Soil Builders meeting. It was interesting to see the argument for small scale, organic agriculture from a global perspective. I think that a lot of films in this vein can leave you feeling a bit depressed after a viewing, but Dirt! makes a point of addressing how soil-centered agriculture can affect sweeping ecological and economic change in a relatively short period of time. City Farmer has a synopsis posted here.

-Mason

Tomato Grafting

2010-01-13T08:25:00.005-06:00

I bookmarked this video a few weeks ago and, of course, cannot remember who first blogged about it. It is an interesting process that I'm hoping to experiment with a little this season. I'm wondering if it would help some of the more cold climate type Eastern European varieties survive in our summer heat if they were grafted on to a very heat tolerate root stock like Arkansas Traveler. It would certainly be worth trying to see if it made for a more vigorous plant since I have an affinity for the saltier, black varieties that seem to grow better in more moderate summer climates.

-Megan

A No Work Garden

2010-01-11T11:52:00.006-06:00

I bought the Ruth Stout book How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back at a thrift store nine years ago, when Mason and I were still in college. It sat on the shelf for a few years until we moved out to my grandparents' old house on five acres in 2002. We wanted to grow tomatoes, so I pulled all of the old gardening books off of the shelf and spent a while thumbing through them. When I got to Ruth Stout, the others were shoved aside and this one was read cover to cover that day. I told Mason all about it and we decided to give it a try. After a summer full of the best tomatoes we'd ever eaten from the tallest, healthiest, least fussy plants we'd ever grown, we were full fledged converts--and we've never looked back. Even in our little garden in Dallas (where we couldn't find any straw) the plants were up to their ears in mulch. It works. It works really well. And it's easy. Which is pretty important if you're a couple of total slackers who happy to really like delicious home grown produce. I buy every copy of every Ruth Stout book that I see now because I know there will always be someone who needs to be saved from the pains of the never ending task of weeding.

After our tomatoes had died back and the bed had been covered with a thick layer of mulch, I decided to check the library for more Stout brilliance. I found a few other books and a VHS tape of a short documentary about Ruth and her garden. We watched it to find that not only was she a gardening genius, she was also one of the coolest people who ever lived. We were both blown away by her sheer awesomeness, but had no way make ourselves a copy at the time. After we moved, I checked the Dallas library, but they had already purged most of their VHS collection. I thought for sure that I would have my chance to copy and post it for the world once we moved back to Oklahoma, but found that they had taken their copy out of circulation (the jealousy of whoever found it at the book sale is overwhelming!). I feared the video was pretty much lost forever when one of the blogs in my feed (can't remember which, sorry) posted a link to this post on A Way to the Garden. I was so excited to rewatch this old favorite and I'm so happy to be able to post it here. She's one of my favorite people ever, and I think you'll understand why after you watch.

-Megan

Maybe We Should Try Actually Doing Something

2010-01-07T21:30:00.009-06:00

Well, we're back to the norm after a very long, very lazy Christmas break. Mason was off for two weeks, which is the longest holiday break he has had since we were in college. We had a ton of snow for this region around Christmas Eve (so much so that both family get-togethers were postponed) and the garden and compost piles are still completely white two weeks later. It has only gotten colder since, so we've used that as an excuse to be pretty idle around here. I have begun preparing our seed and plant orders, but that can hardly be called work. I'm thinking that it might be a good idea for us to make a list of things that we would like to accomplish each week and post them here. It might motivate us to actually do more than talk about all of the great projects we've been planning! It's really easy to spend all winter waiting around for spring, but there are a lot of things that can be done inside or in the garage right now. We're going to have plenty to do once it warms up, so we may as well make the most of the free time we have now.

This our first list. It's actually for next week, and we hope to have finished (or started...or at least started planning) each of these things by next Sunday.

1. start more sauerkraut
2. start our first batch of kimchi
3. decide on a recipe for the can jam (citrus this month!)
4. turn the compost pile
5. work on seed orders
6. replace our broken digital camera (my fault-ugh)
7. go to friends of the farmers market meeting

-Megan

Pozole – Sans Pigs Head

2009-12-08T22:13:00.005-06:00

One of my slightly obsessive long-term projects is veganizing traditional Mexican cooking. I'm not talking about greasy, cheesy tex-mex or "Baja-inspired" California fresh-mex. I mean real, traditionally-prepared Mexican home-cooking. In the pursuit of this, I've made some slamming corn sopes (both spicy/savory and sweet), gorditas, salsa and guacamole. Additionally, Megan's handmade flour tortillas are of the finest quality.

Not in any way being of latin descent, my information in this endeavor comes via Rick Bayless (no, it's not cheating - he's the expert) and an amazing site called Rolly's Mexican Kitchen. Chronicling the family foodways of a Mexican-American ex-pat named Rolly Brook, now retired back to Mexico and living with his extended family, Rolly’s work on real Mexican home cooking is (from my web research) unparalleled.

In preparing for the now regular "Taco Bar" (my mother's words, not mine) xmas eve at my parent’s house, I decided to try my hand at pozole, or hominy stew. I pulled from a number of other web resources obtained by searching "vegetarian pozole", but there's just not much out there.

Traditionally, pozole is a hominy based stew made with pork stock obtained by simmering a pig’s head in a large pot for five hours. Clearly, I'm not all that interested boiling animal skulls, so I've substituted chickpeas (or garbanzos, if you like) and Meg's veggie stock. Some alternative recipes I looked at used pinto or black beans, but I prefer chickpeas, and they’re just as traditional and proper an ingredient.

Vegan Pozole
(easy way - tested and guaranteed, but a touch of a cheat):
-----------------------------------------
Chile Colorado (pot #1 – 4 quart pot):
Dried Chilies - 4 ancho, 2 pasilla, 2 gaujllo, 2 arbol (bought from the local supermercado, about $1.25)
1 onion, quartered
1 head of garlic (not a single clove, a whole head - trust me)
2 tbsp dried mex oregano
1 dried bay leaf
2 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp salt
2 quarts water

Soup Base (pot #2 - giant stock pot):
2 giant cans White Mexican Style Hominy
1 giant can garbanzo beans
1 quart veggie stock (homemade is better, if using store bought, use less salt)
1/4 cup Braggs Liquid Aminos
2 tbsp olive oil (seems like a lot, I know, but this makes A LOT of soup)
1 tbsp salt (maybe more, maybe less - the hominy soaks up A LOT of it)

Ensalada (to top):
lime quarters
finely diced white onion & chiffonaded epazote (dressed with lime juice)
finely sliced cabbage (dressed with olive oil and lime juice)
julienned radishes or turnips
sliced avocado
finely chopped cilantro (if you like)
tostadas

Seed the chilies, discard their tops and tear them into medium size pieces. Wear gloves if you're skin is super sensitive. Only the arbols are very hot, but always take precautions when working with hot peppers. Skin and quarter the onion then peel all the garlic cloves and cut them in 1/2. Put the chilies, onion, garlic, salt and herbs in a pot with the water and boil until the onion and peppers are completely soft.

While this boiling, open the cans of hominy and garbanzos. Drain the packing water and rinse the contents thoroughly. Dump the cans in the large stock pot along with the veggie stock, the brags, the salt and the veggie stock. Set this on medium heat to simmer.

Remove the chile sauce from the heat, fish out the bay leaf and pour into your blender. (You'll probably have to do this in two batches, unless you have the world's largest blender). Blend until totally smooth. If you have a Vitamix like we do, you won't need to strain this chili liquid. If you have a regular blender, you'll need to use a medium coarse strainer to get out all of the woody bits of oregano and the tough chunks of pepper skin.

Pour your bright red chili sauce into the large stock pot, stir and let simmer for about an hour. Technically the soup is ready eat anytime, by the longer it simmers, the better it tastes - up to a point. I would advise against letting go longer than two hours, as the canned garbanzos and hominy will begin to break down.

When it's ready, ladle into bowls and top with the ensalada of your choice. I recommend a little of everything. Don't get lazy and forgo the salad, it's absolutely key.

Vegan Pozole (more traditional way - untested, theoretical and time consuming, but ultimately more rewarding and sustainable):
----------------------------------------------
Same as above, but with a different soup base:

1 lb dry Hominy
1 lb dry Garbanzo Beans
4 quarts water

First, soak the hominy and garbanzos overnight in enough water to cover them plus two inches. The next morning, pour off the water and rinse the beans and hominy. Put the beans and hominy together in a large stock pot with 4 quarts of water. Bring to a hard, rolling boil for 5 minutes, then cut the heat back down to a simmer. Leave on the stove, uncovered at low heat until they're soft and tender enough to eat. This will probably take 7 hours. No, that's not a misprint. I said seven hours. Find something else to do while this is happening. When they're ready to eat, strain them out and proceed with the rest of the recipe.

-Mason

Can Jam!

2009-12-07T09:18:00.006-06:00

All of this canning excitement has caused me to spend way too much time on the computer. My search history for the last two days reads: marmalade recipe, marmalade canning, grapefruit marmalade, lemon marmalade, lime marmalade, lemon jelly, canning lemons, canning citrus, citrus chutney, etc.
In all of that researching, I came across a project that we are really excited to join. Tigress' Can Jam is a year long canning challenge, beginning in January, that will focus on one in-season fruit or vegetable each month. I think it will really push us to try new recipes and keep in practice with canning. If you are interested in participating, sign ups are open until December 22.

-Megan

Orange Marmalade

2009-12-06T07:01:00.004-06:00

It's been over 8 years since Mason and I last canned anything. In 2001, we found that the fence of our college rent house in Norman was covered in the tiniest wild grapes. They were unbelievably sour, so we harvested a huge basket of them and toted them all the way out to my grandmother's house. She was a canning expert with a storm cellar lined by jars of delicious garden produce. Honestly, we didn't do much other than get in the way, but we came home with a dozen or so quilted jars full of wild grape jelly to give out as gifts that Christmas.

I've been thinking more and more about canning over the past few years. As I've visited the farmer's market, read books like Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and blogs like Little Homestead in the City, and joined the Flickr groups homesteading and A Slow Year, my interest has grown to an almost unhealthy obsession. Whenever a favorite fruit or vegetable is perfectly ripe and delicious, Mason and I will talk at length about all of the ways we could be canning it to prolong the season. But, despite good intentions, it has always been just talk. Last year, Mason's awesome mom and nanny gave me a water bath canning kit for my birthday. We were so excited! I checked out several canning books from the library and we made lists of all of the things that we wanted to preserve...and that's about as far as we got. Perpetual procrastination and outright laziness got the best of us again and the canner was never even unboxed.

After our move, I was determined to use all of this newfound kitchen (and garden) space to get serious about canning. Mason was preparing his apple program at work, and we decided that canning applesauce would be the perfect project to get us back into canning. And we tried, we really did. I searched for hours online, sending him the phone numbers of local orchards, most of which were defunct. We managed to find one local apple source, but they weren't selling by the bushel. By the time we had decided to break down and buy the most local apples at the grocery store, the season was pretty much over and all of the good apples were gone.

Neither of us could stand to go another year with nothing canned, so we decided that our best option would be to buy American grown citrus from an independent grocery and use it as "canning practice" to prepare us for when we are (hopefully!) drowning in home grown produce next season. So, marmalade it is. And we'd forgotten--or maybe never known--how fun canning can be. We spent last night listening to Christmas music while we zested, peeled, sliced, cooked and canned oranges. I wanted to take photos of the process, but we'll need to get some better kitchen lighting first. This is the excellent step by step tutorial we used. It was such a good time that we've decided to make it a Christmas tradition to can as much citrus as possible each December. Texas grown Rio Star grapefruits, my absolute favorites, are next on the list. After a bit of cleaning, I'm going to spend the day collecting recipes for marmalades, chutneys and whatever else I can find. Suggestions are welcome!

Oh, and I forgot to mention, our cost came out to $1.58 per jar. I'm going to try to keep track of our expenditures here so that we can figure out how much we've saved by canning over the year.

-Megan

First Frost

2009-12-01T19:47:00.004-06:00

We had our first frost this morning. Thankfully, Mason brought the last of the potted plants in last night--oregano, rosemary and the scraggly cherry bomb pepper plant that, despite consistent neglect, is still producing like mad. Everything out in the garden was pretty frozen when I took these photos, but they seemed to thaw nicely when the sun came out this afternoon. All of our fall crops can tolerate (or even like) light freezes, so we're not too worried about the weather. As long as it doesn't get too cold too soon, we should be harvesting veggies up through the holidays.

-Megan

Safer Seeds

2009-12-01T08:46:00.001-06:00

I have strong feelings about Monsanto that I'm not going go into in this post. I'll just say that we do everything that we can to avoid all Monsanto products. If you're interested in the reasons why, here are a few links:

Millions Against Monsanto
The World According to Monsanto
The Future of Food

We buy most of our seed from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. They have an insane inventory of amazing heirloom varieties; it took us over an hour to narrow down our tomato choices alone. I've been really happy with the customer service and germination rates of the seed we've bought over the past few years. While we plan to make our major order from them again this year, I've decided to do some research on other ethical, non-gmo seed companies as well.

I found this list of Monsanto-free seed companies and cross referenced the companies with the reviews on Garden Watchdog. The following list is comprised of the safe companies that have the most positive reviews. I haven't ordered from most of them, but I'm hoping to support a few this year. If you have any personal experience with any of these companies--or others I should know about, I'd love to hear about it.

Botanical Interests
Bountiful Gardens
High Mowing Organic Seeds
Horizon Herbs
Kitchen Garden Seeds
Mountain Rose Herbs
New Hope Seed Company
Sand Hill Preservation Center
Victory Heirloom Seed
Wood Prairie Farm
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

-Megan

Tomato Bob's

2009-11-30T10:34:00.004-06:00

Tomato Bob's is great. I like that they are small, family owned company and have a nice selection of heirloom seeds. What I really love is that they have 25 cent seed sales on various varieties throughout the year. My order from last spring germinated well in our apartment garden and even better in the fall garden here in OK. Several seeds that I've been interested in growing are on sale right now, so I made a small order last night. Of course, I'm a glutton for tomato seeds, so I had to grab some Mexico Midgets, too.

Oh, and they are now carrying seed for the world's hottest pepper, Bhut Jolokia, which rates at over 1,000,000 Scoville units.

-Megan

Meet Our Dogs

2009-11-29T18:15:00.009-06:00

We share our acre with four awesome dogs.
Comet is 10, Riker and Wylie are both around 5 and Digby is 8 months or so.

COMET

RIKER

DIGBY

WYLIE

-Megan

Spoiled Straw: Your Friend, My Friend

2009-11-28T18:16:00.003-06:00

Yesterday, or as it will forever now be known: Rotten Pumpkin Day 2009, is over. We loaded lots of wet, sprouted bales of hay and loads of stinky pumpkins (in fairness, Meg did most of the smelly part, her dad I just threw hay into trucks, so I really can't complain). So what did I decide to do today? Why, buy some spoiled straw of course! I'm clearly a glutton for bale-based punishment.

While we were out buying an American made garden hose, hitting up Mary's Swap Meet and the farmer's market, we stopped by Bethany Country Store. They happened to have spoiled mulch straw for $3 a bale, so I bought six (the most the Ranger can hold). I'll probably go back one day after work and pick up more, as it's a good price and you can never have too much mulch. I'll be very upset if I find out that you scooped me and bought it all.

-Mason

With this axe, I thee smash!

2009-11-27T17:53:00.000-06:00

We picked up a huge load of pumpkins and hay from a local shopping center today. They had used them for autumn decorating and were going to throw them out to make room for Santas and snowmen. There were 37 bales and about 80 pumpkins and gourds. We're pretty sure the hay is bermuda, so it won't be going anywhere near the garden. Right now, we're using some to cover the bare ground in the compost pen. There were 8 or 10 regular pumpkins that we'll be able to preserve. We'll puree the flesh and freeze it for pies and soups. The seeds will be roasted and scarfed immediately. The rest of the lot will get smashed to bits on a less rainy day and added to the compost pile along with 15 giant bags of leaves from my aunt and uncle's house.

-Megan (the title is Mason's, of course)

It's Ready

2009-11-24T21:05:00.002-06:00

After three weeks of fermenting, the sauerkraut is ready to eat. I replaced the air lock lid with a regular one and stuck the jar in the fridge. We both agree that fresh sauerkraut is miles above the canned stuff that we've bought in the past. I think that the flavors will continue to develop until we've finished it off (which won't be long). I've been meaning to start a new jar, but haven't gotten around to it with all of the Thanksgiving prep. There are so many additions that we'd like to try that we may need to start more than one.

The Wild Fermentation site says:
Add other vegetables. Grate carrots for a coleslaw-like kraut. Other vegetables I’ve added include onions, garlic, seaweed, greens, Brussels sprouts, small whole heads of cabbage, turnips, beets, and burdock roots. You can also add fruits (apples, whole or sliced, are classic), and herbs and spices (caraway seeds, dill seeds, celery seeds, and juniper berries are classic, but anything you like will work). Experiment.

I think we're going make the next batch with onions and garlic, then maybe carrots with kale and spinach, bok choy with turnips or any other veg we have ripe in the garden. Perhaps we'll eventually be brave enough to move on to other fermentation projects like pickles--or kimchi (!).

-Megan

Compost Pen

2009-11-21T17:34:00.003-06:00

There is an old pen in the southeast corner of our acre that stretches for about ten feet along the back fence. In total, it measures about 10' by 12'. It's been disused long enough that there was a 10' tree growing in the middle, with thick 3'-4' brush all around. We surveyed our land this weekend and decided that this pen would be the ideal place for our compost pile. Well, it would have been ideal if we hadn't had to cut down trees, clear brush and (carefully) eradicate poison ivy. It took us about 4 hours, but now we have a great place for compost that is easy to protect from our digging dogs whenever we're not around to monitor their scavenging. Thus far, the pile consists of three month old veggie scraps moved from our daily bin, free coffee grounds from various shops and a truckload of leaves picked up from the side of the road.

-Megan

Co-ops: Not just for Hippies

2009-11-19T17:54:00.001-06:00

I picked up our Oklahoma Food Cooperative order from the Midwest City drop-off point tonight, and I am very, very pleased.

Among our ordered items:
Earth Elements Country Fried Wheat Nuts
Primacafe Fair Trade Organic Mexican Chiapas Coffee
Snider Farms BBQ & Jalapeno Peanuts
George's Apiary Lemon Spun Honey

All of these products were great, but the bbq peanuts were the star of the show. Perfectly seasoned, fresh roasted and delicious, these OK grown beauties would make George Washington Carver proud. I have a feeling they'll be the first thing we'll run out of. We should have bought a larger bag, as these won't last the whole month.

Meg's favorite were the Fried Wheat Nuts - they're like Corn Nuts, only not made out of chemicals. Super crunchy and fresh, we'll be ordering a much larger bag of these as well.

I'm not through the coffee I have right now, so I can't report on the Primacafe, but having tasted it at my parent's house, I can vouch for it's quality, balance and flavor.

The spun honey. Have you ever had spun honey? I hadn't either, but you're missing out. It's a singular phenomenon that is difficult to describe. Think of crystallized honey, but creamy instead of crunchy. We bought the lemon, but I don't know that it really needs any extra flavoring.

Right now there's less on offer through the co-op than in the spring and summer. Many of the growers in the co-op are out the OSUOKC Farmer's Market on Saturdays so our order wasn't as big as it could have been. Our friends that consume meat and dairy have more off season options, of course.

Seriously though, those peanuts are outstanding. Maybe that's what I'll get everyone for xmas.

-Mason

Planting Garlic

2009-11-12T17:15:00.001-06:00

My order from Hood River Garlic came in quite a while ago, but I'm just getting around to planting it. I ordered a half pound each of Chesnock Red, a hardneck variety, and Early Italian Red, a softneck. Hardnecks grow long, coiling scapes, are supposed to have great flavor and are rarely available commercially. Softnecks are more common, but are known to grow well here, are good keepers and can be braided before being hung to dry. The communication and shipping from Hood River was great, and they sent more cloves than expected. I spent about 20 minutes this morning breaking up the bulbs and another hour or so planting them. They should be ready to harvest sometime in June or July.

-Megan

"I am a Bison for the County..."

2009-11-11T14:14:00.001-06:00

Instead of camping all week while I'm off, we decided to split the difference - half camping/hiking, half garden work. After our first trick-or-treaters in years (there weren't any kids in our old apartments), we capped the Halloween weekend with Meg's birthday, some yard work and three days in the most beautiful place I've ever seen.

The Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge is just north of Ft. Sill in Lawton, OK - 90 miles southwest of Oklahoma County. It's run by the US Fish and Wildlife service and they're very serious about conservation. They have bison, longhorn cattle, elk and white-tailed deer in a 60,000 acre park. Only 1/3 of the refuge is accessible to the public and only a portion of that is campable.

We spent our first day screwing around, going to the vistors center, driving up to the top of Mt. Scott and getting our campsite settled. We hit the backcountry trail on day two, hiking 9 tough miles of incline, valley and boulders. In some places the trail wasn't very well marked, and we ended up pretty far off. I'm fairly sure we were following an elk or bison trail, but we eventually wound our way back to the main route. The mile up Elk Mountain should have been easy, but the elevation (and the fact that we were already tired) made it more difficult than we'd expected. We hit the top and were headed to an outcropping when Megan whispered "Stop. Turn around.". I froze and saw a huge bison grazing by himself 20 feet to my right. We were quiet and moved slowly so he didn't see us, or if he did, he didn't see to care. It was amazing to be so close to something so huge and wild in it's natural habitat.

Later that afternoon on the hike back to our car (on the right trail this time) we were stopped in our tracks by Boulder Valley. Neither of us have ever rock-climbed before so the prospect of climbing down through them all was daunting and (for me) a little terrifying. We picked our way down, and Meg shot this picture of me to get a little perspective. Unfortunately, the "bigness" of it all can't be captured by our lens.

The scale of the Wichita Mountains helps put into perspective my sense of man's relevance in the universe. To stand on a giant rock, 200 million years old and know that it will remain in place another 200 million years after I'm dead and gone is a sobering experience. Other people might find that thought depressing, but I take immense comfort in it.

On a lighter note, we saw prairie dogs!

-Mason

The Sauerkraut...

2009-11-09T18:01:00.002-06:00

isn't ready yet. We tested it today, but it is much too mild. I think that we'll wait a couple of weeks before tasting it again. No odor yet whatsoever, though.

-Megan

Clean Air Fermenting

2009-11-04T16:25:00.000-06:00

Our first attempt at fermenting our own sauerkraut did not go well. We were living in a 700 square foot apartment that was basically just one big room. Now, I really, really love sauerkraut, but after about three weeks of waking up to that smell, we gave up. It had permeated every inch of our living space. You could smell it over the Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap while taking a shower. We began to feel that we had taken on the odor ourselves without being able to tell. It was a problem. The entire bucketful was tossed in the compost and we welcomed the defeat.

Now that we are mostly settled, I'm ready to give sauerkraut another try. I was fully willing to resign the bucket to the garage and wait the additional months that the cold would add to the fermentation time until I saw this. I immediately went searching for more information and found this tutorial posted on the Raw Freedom board. The photos are no longer there, but using the description and the photos here (her macadamia nut ranch dressing is amazing, by the way), Mason managed to figure out what we needed and put one together. I decided to go with 1/2 gallon wide mouth jars instead of the gallon size of the original. This means that I'll be able to put it straight into the fridge when it's ready. Our total cost to make 6 half gallon fermenting jars was just under $17.

The cabbage has been in the jar now for a few days without a hint of sauerkraut in the air. I'm not convinced that it will work as quickly as the original site says, but it seems to be a more convenient system either way. Mas is working on a tutorial with photos for anyone who can't quite decipher the one we referenced. I'll post an update when we have our first taste test.

-Megan

Butterfly Weed

2009-11-02T15:34:00.000-06:00

This butterfly weed has been through a lot. I bought it in April as a spindly little seedling from an organic nursery in Dallas. It was planted in one of the cinder block holes around our apartment garden and grew to be about 2 feet tall and a little bushier by mid-summer. Out of nowhere, we had a crazy hailstorm in July that destroyed about half of the herbs in the raised bed, stripped every leaf off of my 10 foot moonflower vines and completely beat down the butterfly weed. It just looked like a few little stumps sticking up out of the ground. We were sure that it was a goner. Wrong. When we dug everything up for the move in late August, it was about 3 feet tall with tons of new stems poking out everywhere. This one plant dwarfed everything else in the garden. The roots had grown down through two cinder holes and into the hard packed clay below. It took both of us yanking on the stems to get it out. A large percentage of the roots and several leaves were lost in the process. I was pretty sure that would do it in, but we threw what was left in a bucket of worm castings and tossed it in the back of the U-Haul, just in case. All of the plants suffered severe neglect during the first few weeks of September. We were so busy unpacking (and dealing with a WICKED case of poison ivy) that I'm not sure if they were watered more than once the entire time. We lost a few, but the butterfly weed just kept growing and blooming.

For all of these reasons, there is no way that I'm going to let it succumb to the terrorism of these yellow aphids. Today, I've spent a few hours reading about organic ways to control them. Of course, ladybugs are ideal, but I haven't seen any and don't have time to make an order. The next best thing seems to be spraying them off with a strong stream of water. This is working pretty well for me. I hold each leaf and spray off as many as I can. It's time consuming, but I feel like I owe it to this plant after all it has put up with in the last year. I've sprayed it twice now, and there were maybe only 25% as many aphids the second time. It's still blooming and putting out new shoots. I'm hoping that a few more sessions will do the trick. I've read that it's best to leave the foliage on for the winter and not prune until spring. I'll just mulch it heavily in November and hope to see my new favorite perennial blooming again in a few months.

-Megan

Platt National Park

2009-10-26T15:05:00.000-05:00

(travertine creek via jason daniel brown)

For us, hiking and camping comes second, right after growing food. A strong motivator for leaving Dallas was the distance to outdoor activities - hiking in North Texas is just lame. Our other constant obstacle was the dogs. With no one to watch them it made anything but day trips almost impossible. Back here in our home state, we have access to some of the most beautiful trails in the mid-south, and someone to watch the pups while we're gone. This weekend we drove two hours south to Sulphur, OK - home to the Chickasaw National Recreation Area (formerly Platt National Park).

We camped overnight, cooked potatoes and corn over the fire, swam in a freezing cold stream, hiked the trails and generally had an amazing time. As it's fall, the park is thick with deer and they're mostly unafraid of people. The second morning we walked 1/4 mile with a family of them watching us and following after. The doe and fawn seemed especially interested in our activities while the buck kept more distance.

The swimming hole was deserted so we spent almost an hour in 60 degree water before I couldn't feel my toes any more. The rush and high was incredible, and I understand why people join Polar Bear Clubs now. I also drank from the famous sulphur spring, just to say that I had. Obviously, it didn't taste very good.

In some ways I regret having waited so long to take advantage of Oklahoma's natural beauty, but I also recognize that the old me probably wouldn't have appreciated it as much as I do now. We'll be going out again as soon as we can, I'm taking a full week off at the beginning of November to hike and garden. We haven't decided where to go yet, maybe Robbers Cave, maybe the Heavener Runestone, maybe the Ouachitas. There's so much to do back here, I don't know how we'll fit it all in.

-Mason

Made in Oklahoma

2009-10-15T14:52:00.000-05:00

As an early birthday present to me, we just bought our membership to the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. I can't wait to make an order. We'll have access to over 2600 items, all made in Oklahoma by 125 different member-producers. The cost is a one time fee of $51.75, which buys you one share of the co-op.

Things that I'm particularly excited about:
-fresh, natural peanut butter
-organic white wheat berries
-soap made less than 7 miles from our house

-Megan

Jefferson's Favorite

2009-10-05T14:12:00.000-05:00

(heirloom apple display via century farm orchards)

My passion this week is Heirloom Apples. At work (as a Nutrition Educator at a non-profit), I'm having kids taste 10 different varieties of apples and talking about their origins, uses and propagation methods. My research into heirloom and antique cultivars has further steeled my opinions regarding homogenized corporate agriculture and the depth of the food security hole we're all in. A century ago, American home orchardists grew over 7,000 distinct apples. Today? Only 150 survive, 135 of which are not grown commercially. 15 kinds of apples. That's what you can buy in grocery stores: a pitiful handful of our great-great-grandparent's bounty.

To do our part in heirloom preservation, we're buying apple trees this winter. After much searching, reading and debating, we've chose Century Farm Orchards of Reidsville, NC. They grow a wide variety of old southern heirloom apples, are family run, get great reviews and seem to genuinely love rare apples. We're considering:

Arkansas Black: Originated in Arkansas around 1870. This apple is a good keeper and can best be described as “hard as a brick”. The tree is quite disease resistant. The fruit is a reddish-purple, almost black, with a hard, yellow, crisp flesh. The fruit begins ripening in late October and can be stored well into the winter months.

Newtown Pippin: Also called Albemarle Pippin or Yellow Newtown Pippin, this apple is said to have originated on Long Island, New York in 1666 as a seedling brought from England. According to Lee Calhoun in his book Old Southern Apples , it is “one of the truly great apples of the South, which grows to perfection in certain soils in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia..... most notably in the upper Piedmont and mountains.” More so than other apples, Newtown Pippin needs a loamy, friable soil to produce a high quality crop. In the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, this apple was highly prized and often exported to London where they brought premium prices. This apple was planted by both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson at their respective estates. Fruit is large, skin yellow with a pink blush, and the flesh is yellow, firm, crisp, juicy, and subacid. Fruit ripens in October, and it stores quite well, often improving in flavor upon storage.

Esopus Spitzenberg: Originated in Esopus, New York before 1800. This apple was said to be Thomas Jefferson’s favorite apple. Though a northern apple, it can produce quality fruit in most areas of the south. In numerous apple taste testings at Monticello in Virginia, it has consistently ranked high. Fruit is yellow with red. Its flesh is yellow, crisp, juicy, rich, and aromatic. Begins ripening in September.

Mary Reid: There are many apples that are known only to a small community or to a family. These varieties have been handed down through generations due to qualities that made each worth keeping. Mary Reid is one of these varieties. It was grown by several families in southern Caswell County, N.C. where I grew up. As a child, I thought everyone had a Mary Reid tree. It was partially through the efforts of my aunt that this tree still exists. It is a good eating apple, fantastic for cooking, and it dries well. It is medium in size and can vary on the same tree. Its skin is green with a definite red on the sunny side, and it sometimes has stripes. Its flesh is white, fine grained, and somewhat tart. It ripens from late July into early September.

Ashmead Kernal: This apple is not a southern apple, but it is an heirloom and I think it is so unusal that I had to place it somewhere on the web site. This apple originated in England around 1700 and was brought to the United States much later . It is a small apple that is completely covered with a thick russet. The flavor is shockingly sweet and acidic and could almost be decribed as "fireworks for the palate". However, the apples are eratic in size and small and its apprearance somewhat unusual, hence it will never become a commericial apple. But, it you have room for a great little apple, try the Ashmead Kernal. Ripens the last of September into October.

We may choose to plant two varieties per hole (instructions here). If so, we have room for four different cultivars. Since these trees will take about three years before they start to bear, getting them in this winter is a priority. Next season, we'll add pears, peaches, figs and cherries, but some old southern apples will do nicely for now.

-Mason

Fall Crops

2009-09-26T13:41:00.000-05:00

I sketched out a rough garden plan on paper last week, but it got wet and pretty filthy when I tried to refer to it while planting. I came back inside with a soggy mess and a vague idea of where I had planted what. Next season, I'll definitely be doing some laminating. While it was still fresh in my mind, Mason worked out this much nicer, much easier to read garden chart using an Open Office spreadsheet. Because we've yet to mulch out the paths, there are a few mistakes where I planted all the way to the fence line, but it shouldn't be too much of an issue. We've got: spinach, radishes, lettuce, mesclun, carrots, collards, swiss chard, parsley, bok choy, pak choy, kale, peas, onions, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, leeks, beets and kohlrabi. Some of this seed is a little old, so we'll see what comes up and what doesn't. I think we're both just shocked that we got it planted on such short notice. If anything at all actually produces, I'm sure we'll be ecstatic.

-Megan

Fencing on the Cheap

2009-09-18T12:18:00.000-05:00

I forgot to mention that I did most of it in the rain...

After tilling and weeding, fencing the garden has become our most pressing project. A decent fence is an absolute necessity for us with four dogs racing through the yard all day long. My two main concerns are cost and utility. That is, I want to keep the dogs out at the lowest cost possible. Our first thought was rabbit fencing, since chicken wire is too lightweight and cyclone is too expensive. We made the trip to Tractor Supply, where were disappointed to find them out of stock on everything we wanted. After an hour of walking around in the store I eventually decided on running 4 strands of electric fencing wire around t-posts. While this system won't keep little bunnies out, it does deter the dogs from running through the middle of the rows. At a total cost of only about $50, it was probably 1/4 the price of a traditional garden fence.

The system worked beautifully for the most part. My wrapping technique improved drastically as I went on, so the top lines are (unfortunately) stronger and tighter than the bottom. Because of this, Digby (the little one) can slip between the bottom two wires in a few places, but he's not the one we were worried about doing any damage. Next time, I'll sink wooden posts at the corners, concrete them in place and use one piece of wire per side instead of running it all the way around.

There's the possibility, of course, that it won't hold up over the winter. If we go with something stronger next season, we can use the same posts and will only have to pony up for rolls of fencing. The long term goal is a permanent wooden fence made from scrap of some kind, possibly split rails carriage bolted to 6 foot wooden posts.

-Mason

Fall Garden

2009-09-15T11:40:00.000-05:00

We've been digging frantically for the last week in hopes of getting a plot cleared out in time to put in some fall crops. We chose an open, sunny space on the east side of the backyard. The 25'x25' bed is now free of bermuda (for the next five minutes or so), but could use a lot of amending. We're planning to go ahead and plant the seed that we have while mulching heavily all fall/winter. Hopefully, we'll have a big load of compost to add in the spring.

This week, we need to figure out the most practical fencing solution and get the seeds in the ground. The majority of the seed is from Baker Creek, along with random impulse buy leftovers and several little 25 cent packets I ordered from Tomato Bob's last spring. Off the top of my head, I know that we have various radishes, mesclun, asian greens, peas, spinach, onions and carrots. I made a garlic order with Hood River Garlic this week and we still have one little pepper plant that made it through the move. We're trying to keep really low expectations of this planting by thinking of it as an experiment to help us learn more about our soil and test different gardening methods.

-Megan

On A Little Land

2009-09-05T09:30:00.000-05:00

We're merging blogs. Our move to Oklahoma has inspired us to narrow our focuses to the food, diy electronics, gardening and general homesteading projects that we've got in the works around the acre. We'd like this blog to be a record how much we can do for ourselves and how far we can stretch a little land.