Super Bowl Gardening!

 

It's a quiet week for gardening  here.  Cold and dark, and I'm at work during the daylight hours.  Then it started to rain.  Normal January weather for Seattle, but I'm not making any progress in the garden!

It is a fun time to be in Seattle, though, with the Seahawks playing in the Super Bowl on Sunday.  12th man flags are everywhere, and people wearing their Seahawks gear all week.  When we were out at Grazies last weekend a young couple changed the words to a song we were all dancing to to "Seahawks!"  I have completely forgotten what song it was, but we all cheered wildly and took up the mod.  And everyone is talking about the team, the game, analyzing players and strengths, talking more about the weather for game day in New Jersey than here.  Our office, and I think every workplace in the city, is having a Super Bowl party on Friday afternoon, so I went out and got a Seahawks jersey to wear. Shirts and hats were flying off the shelves, probably the best thing to happen to Macy's in the last week of January for years. It's all great fun, and it seems to me that that is the spirit of the whole city this week.  Best place to be a football fan in the country!

It's hard for me to settle down and be serious about growing food and being more self-sufficient, but we're still planning a few things.  I'm hoping to get some indoor space set up for starting some seeds sometime in this festive weekend.  On Saturday I'm going to pick up our order of 40 pounds of chicken from Zaycon Foods https://www.zayconfoods.com/  We'll have to package it all in small packages and get it in the freezer Saturday afternoon.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to do some digging or clearing done Saturday or Sunday morning.  I'll let you know!

Tonight I made broiled chicken and a vegetable stir fry with onions, celery, garlic, zucchini, tomato and parsley.  I didn't enjoy it quite as much as usual, though, because I could not help but be aware that all those vegetables must have come from somewhere a very long ways to the south of us.  If I had a truly fantastic garden I could expect to have some onions and parsley this time of year, but none of the rest of it.  If I had to depend on what I grew, I'd have to can or freeze the tomatoes and zucchini, not sure how celery would fare. Or eat carrots, potatoes, parsnips, squash, and greens all winter long.  I'm thinking about that for a goal another year, using this year as a base line and to just start thinking about it.

We buy local produce from farmer's markets a good portion of the year, but it is still so tempting to drop into one of our huge shiny supermarkets and pick up any vegetable or fruit imaginable in the dead of winter.  We've all read about vegetables and fruits being bred to stand up to travel, while sacrificing taste, or about the high use of pesticides and artificial fertilizers in the big agri-business farms.  I care about those things, but I am more motivated now by just wanting to grow my own food, or buy it from someone within a few miles of me.  Just to see if we can do it, if we can survive on our own.  That's my food for thought this week.

Have fun, and GO SEAHAWKS!!
 

Climbing the Mountain

Whoa - I am so sore from hauling blackberry vines, clipping them in pieces with big clippers and small, bending to pick them up, and dumping them in the yard waste barrel.  This evening at dinner I couldn't get the cork out of the wine bottle, my  hand was so sore.  How's that for dedication?

Actually, I haven't been that dedicated and didn't get nearly enough done this weekend.  No trees pruned, no seeds started inside.  Those blackberries are already really boring, and I'm already discouraged with how many there are and how long it takes.

It struck me this afternoon that the instructions to beginning mountain climbers to not look down, just keep your focus right in front of you, are just what I need for this task.  Don't look up, don't look at how much more needs to be done.  Just focus on cutting these canes in front of me.  Cut them in 12 inch pieces, bend down and pick them up, put them in the grey plastic container.  Start over.  If  I look up, I'll be paralyzed with fear of never getting done.

I have one hopeful gardening fact:  Norm tells me our goal is to grow 1,000 pounds of food this year, not 2,000.  Hurray!  I feel like we're halfway there!

One scary observation:  I was out in the back yard in the sunniest time of the afternoon, and the sun never hit the middle of the yard.  I'm afraid the trees have grown up too much and we won't get enough sun.  I'm hoping as the earth moves into its summer path, there will be more sun.  Or, we can cut some trees down or something. I knew I shouldn't have looked up.

Time Off

January 25, 2014

Gardening chores await this weekend, and it is even sunny!  I'm planning to prune some trees, load up the yard waste with more blackberries, and start some seeds inside.  Perhaps ambitious, in that I have 3 classes of Macbeth essays to grade as well, but we'll see how far we get.  In the meantime, some music notes!

We started the weekend last night with going out to two places to see our favorite local music groups.  First we went to the Willows Lodge in Woodinville, where The Side Project plays most Fridays from 5:30 to 8:30.  Absolutely sublime vocals by Suzie, wonderful guitar and vocals by Ben, and beautiful stand-up bass lines by Adrian.  Check them out when you can!  See Facebook link below.  They have a unique sound - part country, part folk, part pop.  Every song has their own twist, and I like their original tunes the best.  They've started playing at the airport Mondays, play at Wild Vine Bistro https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wild-Vine-Bistro/129994877044422 on Wednesdays, many other places around town and private parties and weddings.  Okay, we're Side Project groupies and see them most weeks at least once!

https://www.facebook.com/tspbandband

After that we headed on over to Grazies in Bothell where my favorite group, the Michael Powers trio, was playing their once monthly gig.  Michael is a virtuoso jazz guitarist who makes his living playing music in Seattle.  Eddie Ferguson on bass and Ronnie Bishop on drums.  These guys are pros, incredible musicians, and the place was hopping last night!  We are incredibly lucky to have him come out to Bothell and play in this small lounge a mile from our house!  Check him out - you won't be sorry.  Friday and Saturday third weekend of the month, 7:30 - 10:30. 

https://www.facebook.com/MichaelPowersMusic?fref=ts

Back to gardening later today! 

Keep growing!

January Gardening

It is that hopeful time of year, when you first notice it staying light later every day.  The sunsets in December and early January are gorgeous from my Seattle office building, but now I don't see the whole spectacle because it is still a little light when I'm leaving at 5:00.

But still, it is absolutely dark by the time I get home, and too dark in the morning, too, if I might want to get a little yard work in on a weekday.  After having 4 days at home, I'm itching to get back outside every day.  It will have to wait until the weekend.

And I know January in Seattle, especially this year, is a far cry from January in much of the country.  No snow so far, and it hasn't even rained for a week or so.  Daytime temperatures are in the 40's, even a couple days in the 50's.  Still far too cold to plant anything, except in a greenhouse or a hot box or possibly a cold frame, none of which we have at the moment.  So what kind of gardening is there in January?

We'll start some seeds pretty soon, and I tell everyone about all our seeds and where we got them.  We bought from all new seed companies to us this year, many of them small, local companies.  But that's a big organizational project I'm saving for another day.

Today I'm in a January of dream gardening.  It is hazy and cloudy out, and could be considered a dreamlike state - although actually it's pollution and we're under an air stagnation advisory.  No, I'm daydreaming of humongous zucchini plants, pungent tomato vines dripping with red fruit, bees buzzing around the flowering herb garden, and me wandering through the garden, perhaps plucking a few weeds, and harvesting an armload of vegetables for dinner.  Ahhh - such a sweet dream!

Grey Kitty not particularly amused at having his January dreams interrupted by a photo shoot.

Blackberries!

January 21, 2014

So, today I was corresponding with one of the people I bought seeds from this year and who offers a weed killer recipe you can make yourself, that is non-toxic to people and animals, but that kills weeds when you spray it directly on the weed.  We wanted to know if it would kill blackberries before we shelled out the money for the recipe, so I sent him an email.  He replied that he couldn't imagine wanting to kill blackberries, because he loves them, and actually wants to increase his blackberry patch.  Obviously this guy does not live in the Pacific Northwest.  Even non-gardeners here are well aware of how this plant spreads and takes over everything.  Come August and September we're likely to see lots of people picking buckets of blackberries along trails and roads, in ditches or in empty fields.  I don't think any of them wish they had those blackberries in their own yard! 

But it did get me thinking, which got me Googling.

   An innocent looking Himalayan Blackberry just blooming...

Himalayan Blackberries will produce a 15 foot square impenetrable mass of canes 10-15 feet high in a couple of years.  They need water in their growing season, which is spring and early summer, and we have plenty of rain then!  The first year canes don't produce berries, just lots of growth.  The second year canes produce berries, and then die, leaving behind a mass of hard, brittle canes.  In addition to propagating by seed - which itself is incredibly long-lived and viable even a couple years after falling - they produce new canes from the roots AND by "daughter plants."  The long, long canes (20 to 40 feet) fall in a long arc as they grow.  When the end reaches the ground, it takes root and starts growing another cane straight up.  Some of them grow up and land back in the briar patch they started in, which causes the impenetrable nature of the patch.  Second year plants grow laterally as well as vertically, and each of those long laterals can also produce daughter plants.  The old roots can form root balls a foot or two in diameter. 

If you'd like to see this life cycle up close, just come over to our place and we'll let you pull some up and chop them to pieces.  It is remarkable how just one plant can spread so far.  Remarkable and scary, when you consider the hundreds of plants there are in our yard.

On the other hand, blackberries are delicious!  They could add a lot of pounds to our food production goal.  But they would take over the entire yard, and I want to have some lettuce, peas, carrots, beets, pumpkins, etc., etc.  I gather in other places there are other kinds of blackberries, which perhaps behave like civilized raspberries, and which you would want to increase in your yard.  That's not the kind we have.

The lesson for me?  Don't assume everyone has the same experience I do!  I know I can learn things from this guy, who has great patience and determination in saving heirloom seeds, and then generously sells them for a good price.  And he can learn things from me as well.  Keep on listening and learning!  Just be sure to credit your own experience first and foremost.

Here are some links to blackberry information.  Lots of stuff I didn't know before - but all showing even more reason to want to kill all the blackberries in our yard!





http://alienspecies.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/eng/species/himalayan-blackberry

http://www.kingcounty.gov/environment/animalsAndPlants/noxious-weeds/weed-identification/blackberry.aspx

http://lakewhatcom.wsu.edu/gardenkit/unwantedpests/Blackberry.htm

  A stem tip growing roots.  Looks like an alien, right?

http://www.nwcb.wa.gov/detail.asp?weed=111

Many more interesting sites, just a Google search away.

Keep on growing!

First steps: reclaiming the land

January 20, 2014

This is actually the second day of our garden project.  This spot used to be a vegetable garden.  Then for many years it was a dahlia garden.  The last few years, however, we got busy with other things and didn't grow anything here, although we still had some dahlias in other areas, and we really let the whole yard go.  Our project for the year is to grow a LOT of vegetables (i.e., a ton, literally!) and transform our suburban yard into a mini-farm.



The first step is to reclaim the garden areas from blackberrries.  Here I am pulling a 40 some foot blackberry vine out of the middle of the soon-to-be vegetable bed.  Yikes!


Here is Norm tamping down the THIRD yard waste container of cut up blackberry vines.  Our hands and arms are so sore from dragging out vines and cutting them up!

I cleared out our 2 compost bins, and was happy to find a decent amount of compost we'll be able to put on our first beds.  I filled up two barrels with some of the leaves in the picture here, will dump them into the compost bins when I empty them.  By that time we're sure to have plenty of green stuff to add, and compost will be cooking.  Back in the early '90's I was one of the first King County Master Recycler/Composters!  Not sure I ever really mastered composting, but I know enough to get a decent compost pile started.

Our new cat, Megatron, is helping with some blackberries, too.

Megatron, or Mega as we usually call him, is a HUGE cat!  He came in our cat door a couple weeks before Christmas - just at night at first, to grab some dry food and sometimes sleep on an old cat bed I put down for him by the door.  He warmed up to us gradually and now follows each of us around and is the most affectionate, sweet cat we've ever had.  He's not really very helpful with blackberries, but he's willing to hang out with us when we're working outside, unlike the other two cats, Grey Kitty and Cleocatra.  More about those two in another post.

We have some Italian Prune trees on the south side of the vegetable beds that have gone a little crazy with seedlings the last few years, and are also covered with ivy and blackberries.  We want to clean them all up so they will start producing again.  If any of you have had Italian Prune trees, you know they produce bushels of fruit in late August or early September.  Definitely will help with the pounds-to-a-ton count.

Here's a picture of Norm in a tunnel of plum, blackberry and ivy.  Whoa - that's out of focus!  Sorry about that, but I still think it's a cute picture.

As you can probably tell, we're both more than a little out of shape...  One extra benefit of all this gardening is it is a good way to get in shape.  I figure if we have a blog about growing a ton of food and getting in shape, we'll have more accountability and more chance of success.  Right?

More in the next few days.  In the meantime, a parting shot of Norm and Mega.