Living in Season

Changing my blog address

I'm coming closer to leaving this Typepad site because I couldn't obtain the URL address for Living in Season. (Someone else has it and actually uses it.) So a couple of months ago, I started a new one with Wordpress.org. It's taking me a fair amount of time to figure out the features, but since it's finally looking respectable I'm going to jump to it full time.

You can now find me on: http://www.thebackyardbounty.com  This will keep you posted on our current projects, as well as what's happening in the garden and soon-to-be chicken yard.

To keep up with my writing projects, go to: http://www.amygrisak.com

See you there!

First tomato grafting attempts

Yesterday I grafted my first tomatoes using Brandywine on top of Maxifort rootstock. It was 18 days from seeding, and they were tiny. The silicon clips I purchased from Johnny’ s Selected Seeds are form stems up to 1/16 of an inch. Like I said – tiny! But I wondered if these were too small so I only did four.

  I used a razor blade dipped in a bleach solution in between cuts, and sliced each stem at a roughly 60 degree angle. It’s an odd process contrary to typical plant practices. Usually, when I lop the top off of a plant I don’t expect it to grow again. I slid the Brandywine top on the Maxifort rootstock in the clip lining up the angles as best as possible. They were challenging to handle without crushing or getting dirt all of the stem, which I was trying to keep clean. I placed them in 4-inch pots, and set them in the sink filled with a couple of inches of water so they drew up the water from the bottom as Donna from Baker’s Produce in Wadsworth, OH recommended. (I saw grafted tomatoes at their place several years ago, so I’ve been emailing Donna for advice.) After a light misting, I placed a plastic grocery bag over them and set them aside.

   I must admit. It wasn’t looking good at first. All of them looked pretty haggard. This morning offered more promise, though. One is probably not going to make it; two look so-so; the fourth is probably going to be okay. One out of four isn’t too bad for a first try. I’ll graft a few more tomorrow using slightly larger plants, and we’ll see how they go!

Preparing for peas

I wrote this post about planting peas and other spring projects in my new blog The Backyard Bounty. Yesterday I set up a couple of Wall-O-Waters in the garden to warm the soil for a few days before I plant Burpee "Earlieena' peas several weeks earlier than normal. I've used Wall-O-Waters for tomatoes early in the season with plenty of success, but I've never tried direct seeded crop. I got the idea from talking to Bob Pfister, the manager at the Wall-O-Water company in Kalispell, Montana when I interviewed him for an article I'm writing about early season tricks. He said his fiancee has peas growing in containers with them, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

   Actually, I'm going to experiment. I planted a dozen pea seeds in containers in the greenhouse that I'll transplant when they emerge, plus I'll direct seed peas inside one of the Wall-O-Waters later this week. This is a milder than normal spring, but it would be great to know I can squeeze a few more weeks of peas in the season, particularly since Sam eats them like candy.

   It was blustery, but warm, yesterday so I spent a little time in the greenhouse. I need to begin transplanting - and it looks like I'll try my first grafting attempts this week - but I'm dragging my feet since I don't want to carry in the extra trays at night. Oh well, by the end of the week, I'm sure I'll have to find room for about 8 trays instead of five. It's temporary. Before long I'll set out the heat mat in the greenhouse to accomodate at least a few flats of cabbage and other cool season crops that will tolerate the nighttime temps.

   I did transplant the lettuce I started a month ago in the ground in the greenhouse. The soil is so dry in there, but I doused them thoroughly and expect they'll take off. It's good that the batch of spring greens I bought at Sam's Club last week will hopefully be my last for many, many months!

Honey supers for sale on Craigslist

Since we can barely walk through our garage between strollers and beekeeping equipment, Grant is trying to reduce a bit of the clutter by selling a stack of honey supers. There are 11 shallows with fully drawn comb that have been used for about 3 years. We don't have as many hives so he hasn't used these for several seasons. He's asking $220 for all of them. These are great for anyone expanding their apiary or starting new since they're ready to go, and having fully drawn comb will save the bees time and energy when the nectar is rolling in and needs to be stored.

You can see his ad on Craigslist.

Our climber... or, why Mommy is going gray

John is walking a few steps at a time - he obviously thinks it's much better to crawl - but he has no problem with climbing. I probably should buy stock in hair color.

 

 

Inspecting the 'Mount Royal' plum

 Last spring I planted a ‘Mount Royal’ plum against the privacy fence in order to try my hand with the espalier technique. I didn’t prune and train it, as I should have, and I’m kind of glad I didn’t. We experienced a rough start to the winter, which took a toll on many trees.

   I hadn’t looked at the tree yet this year until my friend, Chris, told me she thought she lost all three of her plums, incuding an established ‘Mount Royal.’ Chris is an exceptional gardener who is on top of everything that needs to be done in the garden, so if she loses something I’m very concerned.

   This evening I took a closer look at the tree. While there seems to be a significant amount of damage, I’m confident most of it is alive. I need to prune and train it sometime soon, so we’ll know for sure.

Little brownie baker

It's been one of those days, and chocolate was high on my list of must-haves. So, I whipped up a batch of brownies this evening. Sam "helped." Yep, the boy has my sweet tooth, I'm sorry to say!

 

 

Let the seeding begin!

(I'm starting a new blog called "The Backyard Bounty" that will eventually replace Living in Season simply because I can't drop the "Typepad" addition in the web address. There's already a .com out there, and it's nothing like what I do. So, I will double up posts to some degree until I make the final change.)

Tuesday Sam and I seeded a container of celery, two of 'Copra' onions, one 'Goliath' sweet pepper and one 'Goliath Griller' Anaheim type pepper.... oh, and another of buttercrunch lettuce because I killed the ones I started at the beginning of the month. (I put them in the greenhouse during a nice day last week, and the door froze shut by evening. They spent the night in the cold, and didn't pull though.) It's a little earlier than normal, but I'm striving to have plants set out earlier this spring than last year. Lord willing, we won't have sub zero temps at the end of April or a couple of feet of snow. I'm ready for  "normal" spring with a final frost date of May 15 and no more freak storms.

I have a lot of people ask me when to start their seeds in the house, and my best piece of advice is to pull out the calendar and grab your seed packets. Most of them (with a few exceptions) will tell you how many weeks before setting them outside you should start them. For example, tomatoes typically recommend 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost date. However, since I'll set many of mine out in late April or early May, I need to have at least some of them planted in early March.

On the other hand, there are a number of fast growing plants that shouldn't be started too far ahead of the game. Squash are one of them. I have a friend... actually two of them... who started them way to early. By the time comes to set them out, you have gangly plants on your hands. They can survive, but since they can be fussy about transplanting as it is, it's better to have a stocky, sturdy plant.

Below is a sample of Sam and I planting a few peppers yesterday. We're still working on the technical aspect of it, but hope to be able to demonstrate a number of gardening methods throughout the season.

 

 

Questions answered about the whole foods course

Wardeh sent me a link that answers many of the questions people have concerning her 14 week class on whole foods on her GNOWFGLINS blog. There's still time to enroll if you're interested in joining this 5 month long session. She is accepting new students until 5 pm. PST on Monday, Feb. 22.

It's going to be a fascinating course. We're learning techniques that are completely old-school: sprouting grains, fermenting, making sourdough, soaking whole grain flour for baking... there's a good reason she calls it a Fundamentals course. Even though I cook most everything from scratch this is certainly going to kick it up another level!

Taking an eCourse in whole foods from GNOWFLGINS

 

I'm excited to try my first eCourse on learning how to prepare whole foods. Wardeh Harmon, a Whitefish native who now lives in Oregon, is the woman behind the GNOWFLGINS blog (GNOWFLGINS means "God's Natural, Organic, Whole Foods, Grown Locally, In Season") where she talks about getting back food basics, which is the goal of this course.

This is a five week course so it won't be an overwhelming amount of information dumped all at once. I'm looking forward to learning how to use sprouted grains and seeds, plus work on my sourdough technique (which has been a struggle for me lately for some reason - I'm hoping she will help me figure out what I'm doing wrong), and learn how to make kefir! She also has a lesson on how pickling. I'm a fermentation nut so this should be fun. There's always something to learn!

To sign up or take a look at the GNOWFGLINS Fundamentals. If you would like to sign up, the deadline is February 22 because the fun begins on February 23. Hope to see you on the Forums!

Kokanee for dinner

Grant went fishing today to try to increase our pike supply in the freezer, but didn't have much luck. He did come home with a lovely Kokanee salmon, though. This was a nice one. I know we would've been doing backflips if we caught one this big on Bitterroot Lake in the Flathead.

It's a good thing he caught it because I wasn't able to cook the turkey as I planned. I hate to handle poultry when I have a baby hanging on my leg, and John didn't give me the chance to pop it in the oven. (The corned beef was another story. That only took 30 minutes.)

I like to slice onions and place them inside of the fish when baking it, but Grant prefers it without. So tonight I put in a little pat of butter, salt and dill. Then I baked it at 425 for 25 minutes. It was perfect. Very creamy flesh, almost buttery. Excellent meal! Grant's hoping to head back to try to sack up some more before the ice is off at the end of the season, but I suppose we need to be careful not to smoke our fish before they're caught!