What’s Better than Garlic?

Why, MORE garlic, of course!

I spent much of the morning working on poetry unit updates for my lit classes (no rest for the wicked or for online teachers) and the late morning and early afternoon hours cleaning up the yard again, now that the last of the leaves have fallen.

My monarch butterfly habitat project went nicely today–all the milkweed pods on the southeast side of the house were dry and splitting open, so I gave a few to a bunch of neighborhood kids.  It’s amazing to me that something that was so ubiquitous when I was a kid is a novelty to kids now.

There’s nothing like pulling out a cluster of those delightfully silky floating seeds and running down the sidewalk loosing them into the breeze.  And even though they were a new treat for the kids, they were still as fun for them as I remember them being for me (yes, and they’re still fun for me).

If you’re worried about your tidy lawn being overtaken by milkweed, don’t.  If you mow them, they succumb quickly.  But if you let them grow, you’ll have lovely fragrant pink blossoms in summer.

And, you’ll be providing habitat for monarchs to lay their eggs.  Monarch butterflies only lay eggs on members of the milkweed family and their caterpillars only eat milkweed.  Milkweed sap is toxic, but it also tastes very bad (I’ve been told), so it’s not something that critters or people eat.

The nasty sap is what makes Monarchs unpalatable to birds, and that unpalatability in Monarchs is what also protects Admiral butterflies, whose looks mimic Monarchs.  Cool, huh?

But this post was about garlic.

My friend and fellow farmer (when she’s not working her butt off helping to save the planet for people who live here, which is most of the time) had some leftover certified organic seed garlic from Patti Bancroft, who was selling nice-sized bags of it at the Farmers Market Harvest Dinner.

She’d offered it to me, and it seemed like a good idea to get more in.  I’d only put in 72 cloves, which is pretty good, but once I started thinking about next year, I realized that I should be planning ahead a little better.

Seventy-two heads might be a good enough amount to eat for myself and for a few CSA members if I take them on, but when you plant garlic in the fall, you’re also planting your seed for the next fall.  If you don’t plant enough for both eating and re-planting, you either have to buy more seed or cut into your eating supply. And that’s pretty tragic.

So I got out to the farm and started manuring and turning the rest of the top bed in the east garden–the 2′ x 51′ space below the trellis that I didn’t get to yesterday.

You can see the difference between the turned area on the right and the unturned, manured section on the left.  Turning organic fertilizer into the beds in the fall is a good way to let the soil microorganisms get a head start on turning that manure into rich humus.

It also lets the mycelium (the webwork of fungi) recover, and that network works with the plants to help them get nutrients.  Mycelium is actually pretty darn fascinating–see Paul Stamets‘ work if you’re interested in all that great, geeky fungi stuff.

Once the manure was turned in, I grabbed H’s 100′ measuring tape and scrolled it out down the length of the bed about halfway between the trellis and the outer edge.  Then I started to plant–one clove per foot in the (yes, I’ll brag) gorgeous manured black earth.

I’m hoping that planting the garlic in front (south) of the trellis reminds me to plant the sugar snap peas (that’s what’ll go there next year, then cukes after that) behind the trellis this time.

For some reason I’ve gotten into the habit of planting peas on the south side of the east-west trellises, so when they lean toward the sun, they flop away from the structure instead of twining into it, as I imagine they’d do better if I planted the seeds on the north side.

But that’s why there’s a next year, right?  For trying to do things better.

I ended up getting in all of the seed garlic Kelly gave me–58 cloves in all (I had to wrap around the east end of the bed a little to get those last few in).  That brings my grad total garlic planting to 130 cloves.  I’ll rest a little easier about my future garlic supply now, and chow down on what I’ve got saved back for this winter!

 

A Day Off

Yesterday was gorgeous–74 degrees or so and sunny.  A perfect fall day.  I kept telling myself, since  I was trapped inside grading papers all morning and most of the afternoon, that it was actually a little too warm to work in the gardens.

Instead, I worked online down at the coffee shop–the furnace guys were here removing my original-to-the-house (built in 1951) furnace and putting in a spanking-new 95% efficient unit with a fancy air cleaner filter.  They were banging and wrenching and screwing (not that kind!) and singing of all things, so I headed out to a more concentration-friendly locale.

When I hit home at about 3:30pm, the difference in the air quality in the house was simply amazing!  But the Energy Star settings on the programmable thermostat leave something to be desired.  Since when is it a savings to heat the house to 70 degrees?

So, I’m working through the manual and will have to knock some serious degrees off those settings.  I know everyone called it a political misstep when Jimmy Carter told everyone to turn the heat down and put on a sweater, but for cryin’ out loud folks–turn the heat down and put on a sweater! Either that, or do some more jumping-jacks.

After yesterday’s intense grading work-out, I decided to take today off.  When my boy isn’t here, that means that I go out and work in the gardens at whatever speed I’m feeling up to, and I repeatedly tell myself, this is all I have to do. There is nothing more that needs to be done.

So, I finished pulling the bean vines down from one of the trellises and raked both sides of the bed, and I manured and turned half of it.  It wasn’t that much, really, but half this bed is about 100 square feet.

Working at a leisurely pace, I also pulled out the rest of the broccoli stalks and the lowermost row of eggplant and their cages.  That’s about all I managed, but it was my day off, after all.

While I was raking, I uncovered this little guy, but he hopped off to find better shelter after a bit.  There were actually mosquitoes out today–so hopefully he was getting a little something to eat before hibernation.

The only things left in the garden for us to eat are the mustard greens–but I forgot to grab a bag and go back and clip some for our dinner.  I did snap off a few last broccoli florets for H before pulling the plants, but it looks like leftovers are on tap for tonight–something easy so I can continue the lightweight theme of the day.

 

 

Lately…

I’ve been tempted to post an “out of office” note here–though knowing my own tendencies I would likely begin blogging three times a day simply because I said I wasn’t going to.  Instead of that, I’ll just say posts may be a bit more sporadic for an indeterminate length of time (and yes, I know they have been already).

This is the time of year when I feel that things should be wrapping up, closing down, getting put up and put away.  But the grind of life keeps up as always.  Coursework is heavy with critiques and grading, and the new courseware that we’ve been using has more than its share of glitches.

Yesterday morning, while attempting to send e-mails and grade papers, server errors kept cropping up and causing me to lose whatever I was working on at the time.  I finally gave up, called in a report to IT, and headed out to the farm for a couple of hours to work on fertilizing and turning the beds.

The physical work is a balm to me in stressful times.  I won’t say that I’m never out there grumbling to myself and hacking away at projects in a foul mood, but most of the time the stresses fall away as I see the results of my ongoing labor clearly, and know that the preparation I do now will lessen the spring’s burden.

Farming can, of course, be incredibly stressful when the transplants need to go in or they’ll die in their flats–when it’s not raining or when it won’t stop raining, when the weeds are waist-high, when the bindweed is taking over or the mower won’t run.

But this time of year, it’s no longer about keeping up with Mother Nature’s full-tilt growing season pace, so the work has more of a relaxed quality about it than in the spring and summer and early fall.

Working in the gardens this time of year is a meditation. It’s a time-out from figuring how best to deal with the new kitty we’re boarding for an indefinite length of time in terms of the jealous dog.

It’s a time-out from figuring out when I’m going to make those phone calls for DRA or deal with the ongoing grind of the dishes and laundry and meal preparation and dust and dog hair.

It’s a time-out from wondering when the furnace installers will call, and worrying that it won’t be done in time to get the rebates.  And wondering when I’ll have a half-day to sit down and compile the final grant report for the market, or the vendor list for the Department of Revenue.

It’s a time-out from stressing about massive grading projects and critiques and student evaluations in the face of courseware glitches and book issues that are out of my control.

It’s a time-out (sort of) from worrying about my boy and about how the upcoming custody evaluations and court case will turn out, even if I’ve convinced myself that I am doing what needs to be done–what’s best for him–no matter how it turns out.

And it’s a time out from feeling betrayed by a market vendor to whom I was a friend–invited into my home, fed, and comforted when she was upset–and who decided to start her own after-market using our signs and location without permission.  And then bad-mouthed me to the other vendors–saying I was “against” them.

I took a break from all that yesterday morning and was able to ferry manure to and turn seven beds in the space of a couple hours–there’s three more in that west garden to finish, and it looks as though I’ll have some left-over manure in that pile to use in another part of the garden as well.

Today is grey and sprinkly, but tomorrow and the next day–most of the rest of the week, actually–looks sunny and full of possibilities for more clean-up and turn-over in the gardens.

If I can make it through another grading project today (and maybe put away the Halloween decorations, do some dusting, put some market papers in order, figure out what to make for dinner early enough that it’s not a last-minute freak-out, maybe rake some leaves?), tomorrow might seem just a little more manageable.

 

Manure and Garlic

Manure day!  At first our neighbor Kathy (who boards horses) and I talked about loading my truck, then she’d bring some loader-scoops down while I was shoveling out the truck-load–saving a bit of gas and wear on her machine.

Waiting for a load--Cosmo likes to help

But that manure was WAY wetter and heavier than I thought it’d be.  Last time, we got maybe four or five scoops in the back of the truck–this time we could only put in two and the poor little S-10 was riding on the axles.  And last time it was lofty and easy to pitch, too.

Clearing out load #2

Shoveling it out was killer.  Kathy probably came and went with more scoops four times while I was struggling with the muck-in-the-truck.  Jeez.  But she’d known it was going to take me some time, so she just kept going back and forth, bringing more fertile goodness to the gardens.

Piling it on

In the end, I had two nice-sized piles in the garden plus the second load of manure in the truck that I shoveled directly into the northeast garden beds and dug in right away.  Once I finished with that garden, I planted 72 cloves of garlic.  It’s always a tug-o-war with how much I want to plant and how much I want to save for winter eating.

Fertilizing the northeast garden

I even threw a few extra heads from my eating stash in my coat pockets just in case I needed to fill out the row.  Garlic is just one of the many crops I grow–but it’s a staple in our house. I treat it more like a regular vegetable than a mere flavoring agent, and when I use it in a meal, it’s fairly common for me to use 2-3 cloves at least.

So garlic-planting is about making sure I’ll have a fairly decent supply for myself, and some for next year’s CSA members (yeah, I’m thinking about a few) without taking up too much garden space I’ll need for the bazillion other crops I’ll be planning and planting.  In the end, I usually end up buying some extra from other local growers.

Last compost turning of the season?

I also threw in a few shallots I found intact down in my basement yesterday–those went in a smaller bed in the west garden.  The last project of the afternoon was to turn the compost again–adding a smattering of manure between the layers.

The day ended with a very hot shower to work out the kinks from all the shoveling and digging–I’d thought Advil would be in order, but I woke up the next morning feeling pretty good.  It always seems it’s the extended computer screen time that gets me kinked up–and not the heavy lifting and digging.

If it ever stops raining again for a few days, I’ll get more of those beds dressed and dug in–and the field sanitation isn’t even done yet in all of the gardens.  It’s all a race against freeze-up now–at this point I’ll dress-and-dig first to have spring beds ready right away, then worry about clearing the rest of the gardens if I have time.

At this rate and with this weather, it’ll be Thanksgiving before I get it all done!

 

Putting the Beds to Bed: Farm Edition, Part Two

Good field sanitation isn’t my favorite farm chore of the season.  It’s just not that much fun to take down, clear, out, compost and burn everything it took all season to build up.

Cleared-out West Garden

But it’s far from a thankless task.  In fact, it’s probably the number one way to make the gardens seem like a promise rather than an insurmountable chore the following spring.

I went out on Monday to start the process of clearing out, and yesterday I did a little more.  I don’t even know if there’ll be enough time before the snow flies (and stays) to finish all of the gardens, but I’m biting off little two or three hour chunks of work when the weather is decent.

Cleared-out Northeast Garden

I started (and finished) the northeast garden yesterday, which wasn’t a huge task because almost half of it is in perennial strawberries that I previously weeded.  The tomatoes and okra stalks were pulled for the burn pile, and the chard stumps went in the compost pile before the three open rows (about 2 x 25′ each) were raked and smoothed.

Then there is the east garden–the biggest garden that needs clearing of this season’s debris.  The central garden is slightly bigger, but that was fallowed this season, so it only needs a final mowing.

East Garden Project

There are six rows total–the second of which (sweet peppers and eggplant) I cleared before taking this image.  After I took the image, I started on the top row–snipping off tomato and pole bean vines and raking up fallen fruit and leaf debris–transporting it all to the burn pile.

At the rate I’m working, this garden will take at least two more sessions to finish.  Then there’s the north central garden and the hilltop, which may only take a half-session apiece.  Hilltop is half perennial berries and almost completely mulched; north central is already mostly cleared of vegetation, but needs final weeding and raking.

Today is rainy and chilly–not an ideal day for this sort of work.  Since it looks like I’m getting manure early next week, I’m working against somewhat of a deadline, but I can always dress the cleared beds and pile the rest to spread as I go.

I’m actually enjoying it much more than I thought I would–taking my time and making the process of field sanitation a deliberate meditation on the year.  Except for the sounds of combines in the nearby fields, it’s quiet out there, and the summer greens have given way to a palette of reds and golds and browns.

Today I’ll work inside though–there’s still produce (even tomatoes!) left to process, and something delicious from the oven (maybe involving some of those thirty pounds of apples in the basement) will make a dreary day into a cozy one.

 

Putting the Beds to Bed: Farm Edition, Part One

According to MSN’s Careerbuilder page, farming and ranching is the fifth most dangerous occupation in the U.S.

Rest assured dear readers, I am not in that much danger–I don’t use big machinery that could tear off my arm (well, maybe the chipper-shredder could), and I’m not going to get trapped in a grain bin.  I’m also not using dangerous cancer-causing chemicals.

But I am using horse manure, and it looks like I’ll be able to get a good amount of it next week.  That means it’s time to start clearing and cleaning off all the beds to ready them for their blanket of good, fertile sh*t.  If I can get the whole garden top-dressed before winter really sets in, I will be a happy farmer indeed.

I headed out to the farm this afternoon at about 4:30, and didn’t leave until the sun was down (which was only a couple hours–seasonal day length and all).  Still, I managed to get most of the thirteen beds in the west garden ready for their dressing.

The west garden is kind of my baby–it’s the part of the gardens I started in, when H and I were simply decade-long friends and he offered it to me when I was looking for a higher and dryer area to grow for my CSA.  Before we fell in love and he let me take over the whole garden area, then added a few more to satisfy my planting addiction.

[Happy sigh break.]

OK, so out of those thirteen more-or-less permanent beds in the west garden, only three are still sporting green growth.  Well, maybe three and a half.

The one long row that spans the edge of the garden is in perennial green onions, so that’ll stay just as it is.  Then there’s the leek bed that’ll be cleared this week before our final farmers market of the season, and the bed of random reddish onions I’ll probably dig for the last market, too.

The half-bed is one that has a couple much-munched kale plants that may make a comeback now that the bug pressure is lighter.  It would seem a shame to rip those out when they’re still alive, so I simply scattered that bed with seeds from a marigold plant I dug up to encourage volunteerism next year.  It’s the smallest bed anyhow.

The rest of the beds got a clearing and raking today, and all the trellises were relieved of their vines–pole beans mostly, but also the Red Currant tomatoes.  The tomato vine and hot pepper plants went into a burn pile that’ll be the future home of compost once the diseased or questionable plants are reduced to ashes.

A few of the lower beds were already cleared of vegetation–two that were fingerling potatoes, one that held yellow onions, a spring lettuce bed, the Brussels sprouts garden.  The lower ones are a little harder to rake–the soil down there is really clay-ey, but at the top of the garden it’s a more reasonable loam.

Those beds just got raked and relieved (AGAIN) of their sprouting Canada thistles.  I didn’t mind so much about the thistles today because there’s a decided lack of green material for the compost pile–they’ll do nicely.

I found myself wondering just how many buckets of thistles have got burned up in the compost pile this year–I just keep digging them every month or so, thinking they’ll eventually stop coming.  I know I’ve thrown at least a dozen packed-full five gallon buckets into the pile, and that might be a conservative estimate.

Anyhow, that garden is pretty much ready for the manure, but there’s still several to go.  The big drag will be cutting out and dragging out all the diseased tomato vines from the east garden, plus yanking out and hopefully chopping the rest of the broccoli plants.

At least the northeast garden will be a simple task–half of it is strawberries and I weeded those out a couple of weeks ago, so only okra stalks, and very few tomato plants, and kale stumps are left.  I’ll cover all that in the next couple of editions of putting the beds to bed.

 

Digging Parsnips in the Rain

Tomorrow is our next-to-last market in Vermillion, so I thought I’d get out and dig those parsnips now that we’ve had some frosts and freezes.  There are still leeks out there, too, and I took in about twenty more of the biggest ones. I dug some horseradish, too.

I was whining on Facebook the other day about how it seems I’m always cleaning my house, but it never seems to actually get clean (and certainly doesn’t stay that way even if it gets close).  This may be why: a constant influx of muddy produce.

Actually, the leeks and parsnips are still sitting outside in the rain where I took this image.  I’m going to pull out one of my produce “dish tubs,” transfer the parsnips to it a few at a time, and attempt to wash some of the mud from them in the sink.  Then I can dump the muddy water out the side door instead of standing in the cold rain washing them outside.

I don’t know how many of these parsnips I’ll bring to the market tomorrow–I scored many of them with my digging fork while trying to get the super-long roots out of the saturated ground.  A few of the nicest ones will go to my one CSA member, and I get to keep some too!

Apologies in advance to my regular customers if you don’t get any parsnips from me this year–they were a trial crop after all.  I have seen some nice, freshly-dug looking parsnips showing up in the produce section of Jones’ lately.  They look a lot better now than they do after sitting around in their wax coating for months.

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with the parsnip harvest I got (not having planted many, and having “weeded” a number out, not realizing how long they took to germinate), and I’m planning to grow quite a few more of them next year.  Their hardiness, late maturity, and (of course) tastiness make them a good addition to my list of major crops.

Even though it’s recommended to give them a deep, friable “carrot soil” when planting, they’re a lot better than carrots at plunging deep in our clay-heavy loam.  Of the two new carrot family crops I grew this year (the other being celeriac), parsnips seem to me a better bet in terms of a long-season fall-harvested crop.

 

Decorating for Fall? Buy Local!

I am hearing from a lot of local producers that they’ve got a glut of pumpkins and gourds this year.  I’m also seeing a lot of great-looking ornamental corn, tiny pumpkins, pretty squash, and other great decorative fall produce.

The only problem is, a lot of those producers are having a hard time moving their lovely pumpkins, squash, corn, and gourds this year.

While some of that might be due to the poor economy (maybe fewer people are pulling out all the stops on decorating this year?), I would guess that a lot of folks are picking up their fall decorations shipped in from other regions and perhaps even other countries–maybe even some of the same folks who are buying their local food weekly at farmers markets.

Why is it important to buy produce that you’re not actually going to eat from local farmers?  For pretty much all the same reasons you buy that local food–supporting local farmers for one.  Building the local economy, for two.  Encouraging good stewardship of your local and regional land resources for three.

You see, a lot of those local pumpkins, gourds, and ornamental corn are grown in the same soils as your local food.  The time and energy investment in those decorative fall crops can be just as intensive as food crops, and the farmer relies on income from selling those crops just the same as income from food crops.

And while I don’t ever encourage our patrons to think of a farmers market as a place with 24/7 low-low prices, I have noticed that the prices on pumpkins, gourds, and other holiday produce are very competitive with those at the local groceries and the big box stores.

We at the Vermillion Area Farmers Market have just two weeks left in our regular season, with our last market on October 22nd–just a little over a week before Halloween.  Many of those fall decoration crops keep very well, so you can stock up and be pretty darn confident that your decorations will last through the Thanksgiving holidays.

Won’t you support your local farmers and buy your holiday decorations from those same folks who bring you the great local food you’ve enjoyed all season?

 

Pre-Freeze Harvest Notes

I managed to get a few images of the pre-freeze harvest Friday after critiquing student essays and heading to Sioux Falls to pick up M. Usually there’s a bit more than 24 hours between the first killing frost and hard freeze, but that wasn’t the case this year.

Thursday morning I went out to harvest for market, and all the peppers and eggplant and tomatoes were fine.  Friday afternoon, they were limp and soggy-looking.  But there were still some frost (but not freeze) hardy crops to pull in before the temps hit the mid-to-lower twenties, as they did Friday and Saturday nights.

This is the first year I’ve grown Brussels sprouts.  They were one of the few vegetables I absolutely hated growing up–mostly because all I ever had was the frozen kind in some sort of fake butter sauce.  Blech!

I grew the heirloom purple variety called Rubine, and while I’ll probably grow sprouts again, I won’t grow this one.  I’m generally not super-picky about uniformity in a crop, but after seeing how incredibly variable this one is, I think I might try something different next year.  But they are pretty!

Storage of Brussels sprouts was something I’d read about, so I proceeded according to that info–hacked off the top with a machete, then swiped the blade down the side to remove the remaining leaves (without hitting the sprouts).  Then I pulled the plant out of the ground, shaking soil from the roots, and removed the remaining leaf stalks.

The “sprout logs” are now on a tarp in the basement, hopefully to ripen/enlarge the remaining tiny cabbages.  My basement’s a little warmer than they’d probably like–I’m wishing I had a root cellar for these and the roots crops.

I also dug out the few carrots I managed to get in this season.  They went in a few months ago, after the salad mix was done, and after row covering them, I pretty much left them alone.  What seed was good germinated and grew well with all our summer rains this year, so I ended up with a little tub full.

Lastly, I dug all of the celeriac out of the mixed row of that and parsnips.  I would not recommend planting your celeriac and parnsips together, by the way, because their foliage looks almost exactly alike.  I only transplanted that celeriac into the parnsip row because I’d thought the parsnips didn’t germinate.

Well, they did–it’s just that they take forever.  So, when I got a little ways down that row, I saw the little parsnip plants here and there, and since I’d already gotten some celeriac in, I just filled in the empty spaces.

Luckily, the celeriac crowns look different than parsnips’ as the roots swell and enlarge.  So, I’m pretty sure I got all the celeriac, and I only pulled one parsnip by mistake–and only because it was so close to one of the celery roots.  After whacking off all the leaves, I ended up with a couple buckets full of the mild-flavored vegetable.

Once the soil on those roots dries a little, I’ll be able to shake them off a bit and get a better idea of what’s there.  I also kept a bucket of the choicer, more tender leaves–they have great flavor for soups and stews.

Now all that’s left in the gardens to harvest is leeks and parsnips–and a few greens that may or may not handle the frigid temps under their row covers.  I’ve still got a lot of clean-up to do, but coursework and cold have limited that work for the past few days.

Next week looks cold and rainy (maybe snowy) as well, so I hope I’m able to get out and work a little more yet this season before the gardens get snowed in for the winter.

 

Here Comes Winter!

In between critiquing a gazillion composition essays, I’ve been running around outside the house, clipping bunches of herbs from the home gardens to throw in the dehydrator.

I also pulled in the volunteer buttercup squash and am looking closely at whether or not to harvest a bagful of nasturtium leaves, beet greens, and other tasty edibles.  Yeah, I’d better.

It’s going to be in the twenties tonight, and we may have an inch of snow by morning.  While the Black Hills has gotten snow in the previous couple of weeks, we in the Southern Paradise of the Dakotas have mostly seen rain, some chilly nights, and a smattering of patchy frost.

Even last night’s low of thirty-one didn’t really do too much damage on my protected street, but tonight it’ll all be over even in the most protected outdoor areas.

This is it for us–while the leeks, root crops, and protected greens will probably be OK, we’re looking at a full weekend of highs in the forties and lows approaching twenty.  Hard freeze!  It’s time to give up on anything you were thinking a blanket or row cover would save–this is serious cold.

I’ve still got about six essays left to get to before I can head out and take a hard look at the farm.  I’ll probably just dig the rest of the celery root and what few carrots I managed to get planted this season.

The leeks and greens can stay out, but the remaining Brussels sprouts might also get pulled and stored in the basement.  I’m feeling pretty good about accomplishing most of what needs doing before the coming flakes–I’ve been keeping on top of the weather and pulling what needs pulling.

Yesterday at the farmers market I bought a big box of nice-looking apples, so I’m looking forward to a few more leisurely canning projects–green tomato apple chutney, applesauce, and other recipes to fill the house with warmth and spicy scents.

Next week it looks like I’ll have a helper to get the backyard cleaned up, the gardens put to bed, and the basement a little more under control–hopefully the snow will have melted and we’ll have a little sunshine for those final outdoor projects of the year.

That is, besides the shoveling.