Hopped up

I did a second picking of hops today after dinner. The vines are incredibly heavy with cones, even more so than for the first picking. They seem to produce first up high and then work their way down the vine so that the highest ones mature first. I got about 8-9 quarts before just deciding to quit for tonight. There are at least that many more still on the vines. My food dryer wouldn't even fit them all in one batch so I'll have to store the rest and finish another day. These were the Cascade variety. The Brewer's Gold are looking good too but I haven't picked any of those yet.

My friend Chris, who is a master homebrewer, was kind enough to take the last batch and put them to use. His beer should be ready in about 2-3 more weeks if we bottle condition it rather than put it in his tap system. We used them as bittering hops during the boil and will also "dry hop" with them to add aroma to the final product, a light bodied IPA.

Honey Harvest

The honey extraction kit has arrived and so today was our first attempt at removing honey from the hive in our backyard. It's been there about a year and we've added additional supers to it over time so that the colony has a place to expand and grow. Now, it's time to take out some of the golden goodness that has accumulated while these female worker bees have been busy pollinating our garden.

My wife donned the bee suit last night to remove the supers and allow the bees to naturally go back to the queen in the brood chamber overnight. In theory, this will yield a super that is free of bees that can then be extracted the next day. In theory. In reality, it started to rain last night. The night became an exercise in trying to satisfy the conflicting priorities of protecting the honey from the rain and allowing the bees in the super to fly free back to the hive. We suceeded in keeping the frames dry but this morning there were a swarm of disoriented bees in the backyard and the super still had bees in it.

However, we devised a system where she brushed the bees off and then handed me the frame in to the garage, closing the door behind to keep out the swarm. We went inside to start processing frames and the bees went back to the hive. They were sticking around the honey rather than returning to the queen. Once the honey was gone, they went back in.

The processing was a lot of fun. We found that the best way to cut off the wax caps was by scoring it with a fork instead of cutting off with a hot knife. Two frames go in the extractor which is then spun to generate centrifugal force that slings the liquid honey to the outside and drains down to the bottom of the pail. This is then poured off and strained through cheesecloth to remove the wax. We found that letting the unfiltered honey sit for an hour let the wax rise to the top where we could spoon a lot of it off before filtering.

One honey super yielded about a gallon and a half. After filtering out the wax, this came to just over x jars.

A flickerstream of photos from this harvest is available here.

Losing my thrill (on blueberry hill)

With apologies to Fats Domino for the title...

Back in the winter, I planted 50 blueberry bushes of four different varieties (blue chip, jersey, berkley, and croatan) from Finch nursery in North Carolina. All made it nicely through the winter but in the last month or so, I've lost nine of the ten blue chip variety. I've emailed the nursery to get more information and hopefully, some replacements.

O Hoppy Day!

I made an early first harvest of the Cascade hops today after watching and testing them for little over a week to make sure they were close to maturity. Mature hops should show developed lupulin glands with the fine yellow pollen which holds their distinctive scent that is essential for brewing beer. A slight browning of the lower leaves of each bract is also a good sign. Most of mine were still mostly green so I know this is probably earlier than I should have picked. However, these vines still hold many undeveloped flowers and I anticipate that there will be another picking later in the summer. By removing these now, I can push the energy toward the remaining flowers. My two year old vines yielded just over one gallon of hops (about two 48 oz containers), much better than last year's meager first time harvest. Next year, I plan to do a better job of training and trellising as well as pruning the vines to max out the plant's energy. I've got the flowers drying in the food dehydrator now on the lowest setting, which is about 95 degrees.

There's a national hop shortage this year after a fire in the pacific northwest destroyed a warehouse last year so growing your own hops makes more sense than ever. Today's prices at Northern Brewer show that leaf hop Cascades are selling for $6.50 for 2 oz. My harvest today is worth $312 retail (without shipping). Not a bad investment.

Spring planting photo update

This post is both an update on today's planting as well as progress on what was already in the ground. We'll start with the new stuff:

1. Pole beans- two varieties (Cherokee Trail of Tears and Kentucky Wonder), staked on the trellis.
2. Cucumbers- Homemade Pickles variety (#155) from Cook's Garden, also staked on the trellis.
3. Asparagus- Last year's planting has basically failed so I ordered more crowns (Jersey Giant) and replanted the same bed, except for the places where two ferns had spouted from last year's "crop". Since I had to order 2 dozen crowns minimum, I decided to start another bed as well, this time in full sun. This was the bed I had planned to plant with melons so that may have to be scrapped this year. What I hope will make the difference this time around is soaking the crowns overnight before planting. We'll see.

Now for the updates:
1. Blueberries- almost every plant has buds or blooms. Of the 50 plants, only one appears to have died from the transplanting this winter.
2. Hops- The Cascades that are growing on the kids play set have gone crazy. I'm wondering if I need to thin them so they will produce more flowers or just let them go and see what happens.
3. Broccoli- Coming along very slowly, just like last year when we never got a crop before it bolted. I may have put this out too late (again). I also noticed some holes in the leaves but didn't see any bugs. Something may be feeding on them at night.
4. Garlic- Incredibly successful growth in the last few weeks. No scapes have appeared yet but I'll be ready to prune them when they do so as to put more energy into bulb formation.
plastic mulch. I'm not sure what I did wrong here but if they don't perk up, I'm ready to move them and reclaim the bed for something else that will
5. Strawberries- a big disappointment. Only three plants survived the winter, despite the grow better.
6. Pumpkin- Dill's Atlantic Giant- I put out two plants this year and have had the cold frame on one of them. I need to mix up some liquid feed (nitrogen) to get them started but haven't had time yet.
7. Potatoes- Two varieties, French Fingerling and Peruvian Purple. Both have lunged out of the ground and appear to be doing great. They're the most successful looking bed in the garden.
8. Peppers and tomatoes- I opened up the Wall-o-Water insulators today by filling them the rest of the way to the top. I also staked them with the new rainbow spiral stakes that I bought this winter.
9. Fennel- It appears that fennel will grow nicely in a container but I've never seen it growing before so I don't know really how it's supposed to look.
10. Rhubarb- another amazing launch out of the ground. I just planted this a few weeks ago and it's already doing great. Despite the temptation, I'm going to do what "the book" says and resist the urge to harvest until the second year to let it get well established.
11. Perennial herbs- The mint will probably be big enough to harvest some for the first time this weekend. The sage is taking over the bed and is about to flower. Same for the hyssop. Oregano seems to be slowly spreading as is the thyme. The Lavender seeds never sprouted so I'm glad I bought a small plant for the container garden. This soil is too rich for lavender anyway.
12. Peas- Sugar snap peas have emerged much better than last year, even being in the same spot. I'll keep a closer eye on them than I did before.
13. Carrots- Touchon and a purple variety that I can't recall its name at the moment have been slow to sprout. From the nearby hole, I think a pest has found them tasty.
14. Flowers- It's not the vegetable garden but the iris and carnations are blooming as are the peonies at the back door. It's all quite pretty.

Lastly, a few other updates:

1. Water barrel- I bought a water barrel at the Garden Faire and finally got it installed last weekend. It filled quickly but I can see that I need to elevate it higher to get the pressure I need for watering the beds that are slightly uphill.
2. Finally, I noticed this pile of feathers in the yard. Either a raptor got lucky with some prey or a bird got very unlucky with the power lines overhead.

You Bet Your Asparagus

I had the pleasure of getting to meet Mike McGrath of public radio's "You Bet Your Garden" when he came to town last week to speak at the Garden Faire. Our local NPR station, WETS, hosted a member event reception at the Abingdon Farmer's Market. Also on the bill were local musicians Susan Brown & Friends to provide the entertainment. We munched on some refreshments provided by Kelli Mehl and enjoyed the music. The downside was when McGrath told me that I've probably lost the asparagus that I planted last year since only a couple of spears have emerged. I'm bummed to have to wait another year to establish the bed, assuming I can still find some crowns to replant.

New penthouse

My wife checked the beehive last week and found great news. The super (that's the top box above the brood chamber) is full of honey after a winter of feeding them sugar water. The colony seems very healthy and ready to have a go at the spring pollen. The danger is that with the super full, it may be too crowded and you risk some of the bees leaving to find another place to live. We don't want that to happen so today we put together another super and put it on. Now the bees have a brand new vacant penthouse to fill up with furniture (or at least honey).

A man and his eggbeater

I got out today to make some more raised beds for the vegetable garden. As you can see, the tiller attachment for the weed whacker looks like an eggbeater on steroids.

If you'll notice, the area behind me which was lawn has been tilled as well. The eggbeater couldn't handle this job so I rented a tiller from the local supply house and turned the grass under. This will be my pumpkin patch for the season as well as some cucumbers for pickles.

Side with the Seeds

"Side with the Seeds" isn't just a track off the newest Wilco record. It's also what I did today with the help of my four year old son. He and I got out the seed starting kit, some sterile soil and the seeds that we had saved from last year's garden. Today's planting was the first of the year. Instead of using plastic cells, this year, I decided to go with peat pots, which can then be planted directly into the ground without disturbing the root system when they get removed. It's early yet to start too much but we did several varieties of peppers and tomatoes, which will go outside in the wall-o-water protective insulator when it warms up a bit. We also started some yellow onions. All these are now under the light in the laundry room. Let the growing begin.

Blueberry planting

I received my order of blueberry bushes (bare root) late yesterday via UPS. It took me about an hour to plant all fifty today, along the back fence, to form a hedge eventually. I started at the bottom of the hill with Croatan, then Berkeley, Jersey, and finished at the top with Blue Chip. The temperature today was about 38 degrees during planting and it's forecasted to rain tonight and tomorrow which should be good to soak them in.

Blueberry order

I made my order today for blueberry bushes from the good folks at Finch's Nursery in Raleigh, NC. I have a 150' row along the back fence and the idea is to create a hedge o' berries. These bushes will grow to about 8' eventually, which is perfect for the visual barrier as well as for harvesting. On the advice of the nursery, I picked four varieties that should do well in my zone. Croatan is an early to mid season producer (10 of these). Blue Chip is early but a bit shorter (10). Jersey is for the late season (10). Berkeley varies early/mid/late depending on the date of the last frost in spring (20). As you can see, a total of 50 plants at 3 foot intervals, should just cover my 150' row. I ordered three year old plants so that they will be up to size and production that much quicker. Blueberry season is from mid June to as late as September. The bees are going to be excited to have all these blooms to work on this spring and summer.