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.

Sulfur for blueberries

I put down about half a 50 lb bag of sulfur along the length of the back fence yesterday. I'm trying to get the soil pH more acidic, with the intention of transplanting some blueberry bushes there in the spring. I tried this last year on a shorter section and later in the winter. The result was that I didn't get it down in time and if I had actually transplanted them in the spring, I would have burned up their roots with all the fresh sulfur. I wanted to get it down in the fall this year but with no rain until just a couple of weeks ago, the ground wouldn't have absorbed it anyway. I hope it's not too late and that I spread it thin enough to do some good but thick enough to change the pH to the range that blueberries like.

Frosty the Halloween Man

We awoke this morning to the first killing frost of the season. 28 degrees F at 8:00 and a thick layer of frost on the ground. I neglected to get the garlic out yesterday. I hope I'm not too late.

Gar-Link

I love garlic. So much so that my wife has named me "Gar-Link" when I eat a lot of it. My favorite is in a hummus recipe that I make about once a month and share with my next door neighbor who is also can't get it strong enough. I make two versions, the one for me and to share and another for my family.

Anyway, today begins the garlic planting season. I ordered two kinds, both hardneck varieties, to plant this year. I wanted to have something from the garden that you can't get at the grocery so I went to Gourmet Garlic Gardens and picked out a variety from the Porcelain and Rocambole families. Bob, the owner and self-proclaimed "Garlicmeister", called before shipping to say that the Porcelain "Metechi" that I had chosen didn't do well enough to ship this year and he suggested substituting another similar one called "Georgia Fire". They're all new to me so I agreed. The Rocambole that I got is "Spanish Roja". I was really pleased with the size of the cloves and it looks like Bob did me right. We'll see next summer.

Today, I followed the instructions to separate the cloves and soak overnight in water with baking soda. I don't have any liquid seaweed but that would also be good, says the directions from Bob. Planting is tomorrow, about a week later than I planted last year but with all the warm weather and drought, I'd say I'm ok for waiting, maybe even better. I don't want it to blow all the energy above ground before the chill hits and have little left over to survive the winter.

Cover crops planted

In the potato bed- Alfalfa. In the melon/pumpkin bed- a mix of hairy vetch and clover. In the bean/tomato/pepper bed- field peas. The tomato/pepper bed will be planted in garlic for the winter. The salad bed by the deck and the one at the end of the garage are yet to be decided on.

Down time

I'm in the process of taking down the garden and getting ready for fall planting and cover crops. The last of the peppers came out of the garden last weekend and have been used for canning salsa.

Harvest dates

First tomato this year was a Cherokee Purple on July 15.  We might have had a few earlier but the deer have been a real nuisance.  However, you can see by this picture that the tomatoes are coming along nicely now.  This photo is of a Brandywine variety.

The green beans continue to produce, despite being ravaged by Japanese beetles.  They really seemed to love the leaves.

The giant sunflowers opened this week and are beautiful at the end of the deck.  I'll have to get a photo.  At present, they're about eight feet tall with flowers about a foot across.

The first melon was ready today.  It's an Earlisweet variety.  Sometime since last night when I last checked, the stem started to pull away from the fruit.  It tastes good but not as sweet as some I've had from other gardens.  I'm hoping the Athena variety will be really tasty.  They should begin ripening for picking soon, I hope. 

Let the harvest begin

Today was a the beginning of what I hope will be a good harvest from the garden. I picked harvested the rest of the garlic and have it hung for drying. The "Garden Sunshine" plants have been heavy with multiple peppers so I finally got around to picking them. I also ate one in a quesadilla for lunch and it was delicious. The fingerling potato plants have really started to lay over and brown up. At first, I thought I'd over-watered them but a friend told me that's just what they do when they're ending their growth cycle so I dug a good supply for roasting, along with some carrots, which have been ready for a few weeks. The green beans continue to produce in large amounts so I picked the trellis clean. My biggest excitement, however, was that I will soon have the first tomato of the year, as one of the Cherokee Purple variety has started to ripen. Despite getting the tomatoes in earlier this year, they've taken longer to ripen. I'm not sure if that's due to the drought or to the different variety. Last year the Stupice tomatoes were ready on July 4.

I also did some re-stringing of the tomatoes, which are getting very heavy now. I was convinced by a local farmer to try this method of stringing instead of staking but the result has been a big messy look and a constant struggle to keep them from falling over. Next year, I'm going back to the stakes.

Lastly, the melons and giant pumpkin have really started producing in the last week or so. I'll have four melons ready to pick this week and the main pumpkin on the vine has quadrupled in size in the last three days.

Buzzin' busy

My wife the beekeeper said it's past time to check on the bees again so last night she donned the gear and we lit up the smoker for a trip to the hive. We've been keeping them well fed and hydrated with a sugar water solution. They go through a full Mason sized jar about every two days, quicker if it's dry which it has been lately. She opened up the hive and was pleased to see that not only are the bees pulling out the cones but several have already been filled with honey and capped off. This will be their winter food source so this is a good sign of the health of the hive. We don't want things to get too crowded and risk the collapse of the hive so we're going to order a "super" to put on top of the hive body. This will give more room for them to expand and put away more honey, except that when we're ready to harvest, we'll take from the super and leave their original stores alone.

Oh, Deer Me!

We've seen what I assume is this same deer in our backyard several times for about a week now. Our yard seems to be a convenient cut through from the timberline across the street and down our fence to the park and on to more coverage. I wouldn't mind at all being the deer highway, except that this Bambi stops to "munch on our garden" as my three year old puts it. She's particularly fond of the tops of tomato, pepper, and strawberry plants. The fencing keeps her out of most of the garden but some is still exposed through the gateway and along the edge. I went to Southern States on Saturday to get some kind of anti-deer product (I hear bear urine is good but a little tough to come by) but they were closed. I'll try again next week.

A Date That Will Live In Infamy

I saw the first Japanese Beetle of the year today.  The invasion has begun.

Garlic on the (land)scape

I went out this morning to check the garden and noticed that the garlic has put up scapes.  I had looked for this about a month ago but then was told by a farmer at the Abingdon Farmer's Market that soft-necked varieties don't have scapes, only the hard-necked kind.  Either I planted something different or got some incorrect information.  I've written Ellen at Beagle Ridge Herb Farm where I obtained the garlic for planting to see if she can help clear up the mystery. 

A snapshot in time

Here are some photos to log how each item in the garden was doing on today's date so I can compare progress in future years.

Choppin' broccoli

My broccoli plants had huge leaves but weren't producing any of the good stuff. I was willing to wait it out but then the bugs attacked and started eating holes in the leaves. I didn't want to risk an infestation on my other plants for the sake of something that might not produce anyway so I pulled the broccoli (bugs and all) and sent it to the compost heap.

Then I noticed a small black mite-like bug on my potato plants that was also causing some tiny leaf holes. Following the suggestion of some Master Gardener friends, I sprayed the leaves with a soap/oil/water concoction in an effort to kill the bugs. I guess we'll see how it goes.

Oh, the big news is that it's finally rained a little in the past week or so, the first significant rainfall in about six weeks. The paper says that from January to May was the worst drought in our region in 118 years. I've been watering the garden so most everything is still looking ok but the giant pumpkin has definitely suffered under the drought and heat. It's still healthy but nothing like what it might have been under the best conditions.

Gimme Some Sugar

Come on now
Gimme some sugar
Gimme some sugar
Little honey bee
-Tom Petty, "Honey bee"

We are now the proud caretakers of a backyard hive of honeybees, thanks to my father-in-law and the good folks at Brushy Mountain Bee Farm. Hopefully, this will provide us with a source of honey and the bees will help pollinate the garden and the other flowers in the yard. We (and by that I mean my wife) successfully hived a swarm of bees that arrived today in the mail. She grew up keeping bees with her dad as her 4H project so she knew what to do after a little refresher reading. Her dad gave us one of their old hives and with a little TLC and some new replacement parts it was refurbished and ready to go. The swarm arrived today in this box, complete with a separate container to house the queen. The bees are collected around it so it's hard to see in this photo. The plan is to let them get acquainted with their new hive and then check on them in a week. Luckily, that will be Memorial Day weekend and my father-in-law will be visiting so he can get to see inside the hive and tell us how they are doing.

Parade of Peppers

UPS just delivered another round of peppers for transplant that I had ordered from Burpee. These are The Godfather variety, one that I had last year and really liked. It's an Italian frying pepper, more sweet than hot. I liked them in quesadillas and the occasional salad. Like the last batch, I took them straight to the garden and transplanted them. It's about to rain so they should be welcomed to their new beds with more moisture than they've had in the shipping box for the last few days.

P4: Pruning plastic, planting potatoes

We're approaching the last frost date and I took a bit of a look at the weather map and decided to chance it. Up came the rest of the plastic that had been warming the beds for the potatoes, pumpkin, and melons.
I put out the french fingerling potatoes from Seed Savers that arrived a few days ago. They've been resting under the grow light to get them to sprout at the eyes before going in the ground. I could have done this about two weeks ago but they only shipped on May 1. I'll save some for my own seed stock next year and try to give them a head start by going in April.
The giant pumpkin has been in the ground for about five days but under the cold frame where it appears to be thriving. In fact the automatic opener arm has slipped a couple of times and its gotten a bit wilted when the top didn't open as it should. A little air, some water, and that Dill's Atlantic Giant bounces right back to looking good. If I were going for a world record, that stress would be a no-no but 1500 lbs is probably out of my range anyway.
I put in two varieties of melons, Earlisweet Hybrid and a couple of Athenas. Managing all the vine growth is going to be a challenge this year but I'll figure out something.
Oh, I almost forgot, I was outside today harvesting the worm compost and applying as a side dressing when UPS pulled up with an order of Ancho/Poblano peppers for transplanting that I had forgotten I had ordered. They never even got inside the house as I took them straight to the garden and put them out.

Bitter lettuce in April

I fixed a salad last night with the florellenschluss lettuce that's been going gangbusters in the cold frame. I've had the automatic arm to keep it from overheating during the day but with the weather warming up, it's still getting too warm in there and the lettuce started tasting bitter, particularly near the base. So today, I pulled off the cold frame to keep the temps down and hopefully extend the green season. The good news is that the cold frame is now covering two tomato and two pepper plants out in the garden with enough room still in between for me to use for hardening off seedlings.

Wildflower I.D. 101

While cutting the lawn today, I noticed a huge explosion of small yellow wildflowers in my neighbor's yard that have just begun to come up in my backyard. I picked a sample and keyed it out using Newcomb's Wildflower Guide. I'm still an amateur when it comes to botanical identifications but the key led me to believe that the plant in question is either downy or fern-leafed false foxglove, members of the genus Gerardia in the Figwort family. Can anyone confirm if this is correct from the picture?

Update: A friend with the Beagle Ridge Master Naturalist Chapter confirmed that indeed I am a complete amateur with flower I.D. According to her (and Newcomb's agrees), it's a common buttercup (Ranunculus bulbosus).

Heirloom tomatos, melons, pumpkins, and pole beans

I got a gift yesterday from my wife's coworker who passed along a couple of tomato seedlings (Pruden's Purple and Powers Heirloom) . She took home my extra asparagus crowns that wouldn't fit in our garden. Good trade. They're resting inside right now but will be going to the garden soon.

I'm getting a late start on seedlings for melons and pumpkins but I just got enough room under the grow light to get them going. The melons are two varieties: Earlisweet hybrid and Athena. I planted the Earlisweet last year but a very wet May and the cucumber beetles did them in and I didn't replant. The Athena is a new variety to me but a local organic grower of note, Anthony Flacovento recommended them in his newspaper column and I thought I'd give them a try.

The pumpkin is a Dill's Atlantic Giant. This is the the variety that all world record holders have been grown from for the past ten years or more. A new record was set last year, just over 1500 lbs. I'm planning to tend it well but nothing like the love they get from the world class growers. I just want a giant pumpkin for my kids at Halloween. I'm betting I can get to 200 lbs. or better. We'll see.

Finally, I set out some pole beans, Blue Lake F1 variety. I soaked them briefly in innoculant slurry and direct seeded them to the garden after cutting a hole in the black plastic around the already-installed climbing trellis.

The Big Day

This was the big day outside that we've been waiting for. The weather was pretty and temps were not too hot. Just right for getting outside. I put in the strawberry plants that have been growing under my indoor light and then covered them with a floating row cover (Agribon 19). I used wire hoops that I made myself from heavy gauge wire from Home Depot. This was much less expensive than buying the pre-cut wire from the row cover catalog. I also constructed a trellis for the pole beans to grow on, using three prefab climbers that I attached in a triangle using plastic computer cable zips. Finally, the bee hive that was gifted from my father-in-law and repainted this winter went outside, resting on a brick base to keep it off the moisture. It's still without frames and in need of some additional parts before hiving a swarm. We may not even get a swarm this year since there is a national problem with Colony Collapse Disorder. Before finishing, I also put out two broccoli plants.