Garden Learning 2013

Every year, I take on several garden experiments.  Of course, I do the usual stuff since I like to have lots to eat, but the scientist inside me just can't help experimenting and trying new things out.  This way I can really maximize my yields by finding out what grows the best in the micro climate of my backyard.  I couple my experiments with some help from ye olde Google and whisk the summer away, playing in the dirt and expanding my mind.

Lifelong learning, baby.  Never gonna stop.

Last year, the experiments resulted on some successes and some failures.  Pumpuchini (aka saving seeds from a sugar pumpkin)- fail, Beets - mediocre, Peas in fall - mediocre, bok choy - awesome, etc.

(And just to clarify, my experiments include just trying out a new variety of plant, saving seeds from something I haven't saved seeds from before, or just trying a new way of growing something.)

This year I am trying a few new varieties of vegetables:
* Sweet pepper
* Eggplant
* Dry beans
* Fava beans

The pepper and eggplant seeds (as well as all my seeds for that matter) I got from a local seed company up in Bellingham and they are accustomed to growing in our cooler, shorter summers.  They produce smaller fruit, but I'm really excited to see if they work.  (So far, they have been slow to germinate and the ones that have, haven't done much.)

I decided on dry beans because I want to extend my eating of what I grow to past the summer and early fall.  I hardly buy vegetables during the summer which is great, but I want to really buckle down on preserving and canning so that I can enjoy my harvests all year round.  Dry beans will help me do that.  And who doesn't like a nice steamy pot of chili in the winter?  Imagine how much more delicious it would be if it was made with beans and tomatoes from the garden?  Mmmm, can't wait.

I got the fava beans because it is a plant you plant in the fall and harvest in the spring and early summer.  This is a great way to utilize my otherwise fallow planting space while also getting some nutrients back into the soil.  (Beans do that, you know.)  I need to do more growing in the fall and winter.

*I was going to try my hand at asparagus since asparagus is super delicious, but the root bundles (or crowns) that you have to buy and plant are expensive and you really need a ton of space to get a handful.  NOT worth my time or limited space.  Maybe later.

But the experiment I'm most looking forward to is my garlic bulbils.  Last year, I accidentally left my garlic in the ground too long which resulted in the scapes producing large amounts of these little purple balls of garlic at the top of the plant.  I didn't know what they were at the time, but it turns out they are garlic bulbils.  They can be planted in the spring to start new garlic plants. However, it turns out they won't produce garlic the first year.  I'll have to harvest them along with the other garlic, then let them dry until the fall and replant them.  I've read that a majority of them will then produce cloves the second year, with a handful still staying in bulb form.  These are pretty much guaranteed to produce big cloves the third year.  Pretty cool, huh?  I'm excited.  I'm still using my garlic harvest from last year, so if I can keep it up, I'll never have to buy garlic ever again!  I may even start to have extra so that I can share my bounty with family.  Garlic is great because it takes little fertilizing and little space for lots of harvest.

Don't mind the peas mixed in.  Can you spot the hazelnut? (I have no idea where it came from.)

The tall ones are garlic cloves planted in the fall, the smaller ones are the bulbils planted in the spring.

Wren House

Look at Shawn's project!  Isn't it adorable?  He's been talking about making a birdhouse for a while now, and last weekend, he suddenly just jumped up off the couch and declared, "I'm going to make a bird house."

So he did.

He looked up some plans on google, and after weighing the options, decided on the wren house.  (It's also suited for chickadees.)  Then he went through our scrap plywood pile and found some random pieces that were roughly the same thickness and went to measuring and cutting.

We just got a new hand saw that cuts really well so I think that helped in the motivation.  And we were tired of being cooped up in the house.

I helped a bit with the nailing together because it required more than two hands, but other than that, from start to finish this was all his own project.  It was so easy and quick, I think we're going to have  a few more birdhouses popping up around our yard in the next few weeks.

He painted it the same color of our house so it blends in.  We'll see if the wrens like that or not.

Here it is right next to one of our windows so we can spy on them.  We've seen chickadees checking it out here and there.  I hope someone moves in soon!

Oh, and here's a house finch and northern flicker in our front yard just for good measure.

Mycorrhizae (My-core-rye-zay)

The other day I was turning a bit of the soil in my garden boxes and noticed a large amount of fungal growth or mycelium just beneath the surface.  There was so much in fact, that I had to take pictures of it.  It looked really cool and some of it was white, while some of it had a bit of an orange tinge.

See the hyphae? So stringy...

I immediately ID'd it as a fungal growth, but unlike mold which is totally gross, this was really pretty and didn't smell at all.  I really hoped that it was mycorhhizal fungi, so I did some research.  Though I'm still not a hundred percent on what it is exactly, I'm hoping that that's what it is.  Either way, I welcome it with open arms into my garden soil.

All natural soils have billions of fungal cells, sometimes making up 50-80% of the biomass of soil.  Whoa. They are there to decompose the organic matter and release the nutrients that are trapped in the organic stuff back into the soil for use by plants.  Mycorrizal fungi in particular create symbiotic relationships with plant roots, onto which they attach themselves, and provide the plant with a high water and nutrient absorption rate since it basically increases the plant's root mass.  In return, the plant provides the fungi with carbohydrates since fungi don't have photosynthetic powers.  (This is just the quick and simple explanation.)

Pretty cool huh?  It's believed that as much as 95% of plants have some sort of mycorrhizal relationship so these little guys are super important. 

Ah, nature.  You're so wonderful.

Buzz Buzz

You hear a lot these days about the plight of the poor old honey bee.  They are dying by the billions due to pesticides, herbicides, and global warming... all that bad stuff that humans are creating.  Along with these horrifying tales you also hear bits and pieces about how important bees are to our survival.  As the main pollinators of plants that produce the fruit and vegetables that we consume each and every day, the collapse of the bee population is no good for us.

One of my dreams is to keep honey bees.  The rewards are many: happy pollinators for 16 miles around (that's how far they can go), fresh honey, and good feelings of helping an important species thrive.

But I haven't gotten around to that yet.  It seems like a lot of work, and to be honest, the idea of getting stung enough times until the bees get used to your scent is not a sacrifice I am willing to hurdle just yet.

So I'm doing the next best thing.

Mason bees.  Have you heard of them?  They're super cool and a great species to welcome into your garden for those less willing to endure the pain of honey bees.

Mason bees, also called orchard bees, are solitary, meaning they don't have colonies and all females are fertile.  They lay their eggs in beetle holes made in logs or hollow twigs.  They are great pollinators and the best part is that they don't sting unless they get squeezed.  They are safe to be around and are just as good at pollinating your plants and fruit trees as honey bees.

Oh man, they're so cool.  Read the article regarding how they lay their eggs.  Why is nature so amazing?

So Shawn and I made some Mason bee homes this weekend.

It's so easy, you can do it too.

First we found an old weathered 4x4 and some pieces of plywood from our old scrap wood pile.  Next we cut 2 pieces of the plywood: one for the back of the house which will be used to anchor the house to the fence, and one for the roof.  Then we cut a piece of the 4x4 off at an angle so that the roof part would be slightly slanted for rainwater runoff.  Then we drilled a bunch of holes into one side of the 4x4, 3 and 1/4 inches deep, using a 5/16 in. drill bit.  Then we screwed on the back and the roof and we were finished.  We attached it to a fence post next to our garden boxes where it will get lots of sun, and stood back and admired our handy work.

Very little measuring went into this project.  You can get much prettier mason bee houses for $30 at nurseries but this one was free AND made out of scrap materials.

We did make one mistake though.  After we had made three of these, we realized that the 4x4 we used was cedar.  Cedar has a strong odor that repels insects.  Luckily, it was a weathered piece of wood and I think after a year of so being in the weather again, the holes will eventually lose their smelly-ness.  So hopefully next year we will have some renters.  So if you're going to do this, make sure you use hemlock or fir instead of cedar.

They're so easy to make, we'll probably be making more here in the near future.  Using the correct materials, of course. 

Upcycling success

Two years ago, we purchased a mini greenhouse.  It was a great buy.  Without it, the cucumbers last year wouldn't have happened and all the seeds wouldn't have gotten the good start that they get every year.  The only problem with this little greenhouse is that the cover was made out of plastic.  And what happens to plastic after it sits in the elements 24/7 for over two years?

It breaks down.  Falls apart.  Goes to shit.  Plastic is really dumb that way.

Sad holey plastic.  Not to be confused with holy blessed plastic, which doesn't exist.

Which is really annoying.  The front panel and the top part had fallen apart so badly that it was like nothing was there.

This left us with three options - 1. Buy a new cover.  2. Buy a whole new greenhouse. Or 3. Somehow make a new cover.

#3 was, in my opinion, the only reasonable and sustainable option that I would even consider.  Duh, I'm the queen of reusing and I hate plastic with a burning passion.  Besides, a new cover would just fall apart in a couple years and buying new stuff is just not in my nature when another option is even remotely possible.  Any reason not to buy plastic is a good one in my book.

So the first thing that needed to be done was to salvage as much of the old cover as possible.  I removed the front and top by cutting out the panels and leaving the reinforcement ribbon and figured the rest was in good enough shape to last another year.  This kept the shape of the cover while leaving an edge for me to sew the new panels onto.  I also took out the zippers from the front panel to use again.  Next, I dug up an old shower curtain from the old place and cut out two pieces to fit the two panels I had removed.  Then my sewing machine and I had a little weekend afternoon date.

Presto, new greenhouse cover.

It probably doesn't let in as much light as the last one did, but it lets in enough, and the heat is really what is nice about a greenhouse.  My seeds that I started last month are resting comfortably in there and probably really enjoyed the crazy summer weekend that we had.




Hooray for upcycling!

Down with plastic!

High-five!

Stretching and Yawning

Have you been outside???  It's lovely.  Really lovely.  This is the weather that Seattleites like to hide from out-of-towners to prevent too many people from moving here.  You know, that's why it rarely happens.

 

Anyway, I've noticed that every year, I write a "spring is here" post as if it's a surprise that nature is cyclical and that winter has an end.  But when the winter is long and dark and boring like it is around here, I guess it does seem like it's never-ending by the time February rolls around.

Why skip it this year?

So without further ado...

Spring is here!  The daffodils I planted are up and shining bright, and the tulips are beginning to open.  I've been hearing a red-winged blackbird on my runs and all the dead-looking plants are budding and little green leaves are poking their tiny heads out.

I've been planting seeds like crazy, the greenhouse is almost full, and we've even done some landscaping.  Our brains are full of plans to further beautify our yard and the season of full weekends and dirty fingernails is in full effect! 

It feels pretty damn good I must say.

I used to do this regularly as a child.  This is what I got from 2 shovel-fulls of dirt.

Blog 2.0: Gather 'Round for Story Time

Hello friends!  How have you been?  First of all, thanks a bunch for letting me take my little break.  Not that you gave me permission per se, but if you're reading this right now, you haven't dumped me from the very busy schedule of your eyeballs, and trust me, time from your eyeballs is precious.

So here we are.  I'm ready to write.  Spring is here and I feel ideas sprouting and growing in my head.  I have several projects in my queue, and am feeling refreshed and renewed.  I don't know how much this blog will be different from before, but I feel better about it.

Love me the beach.

Our trip to Costa Rica was AMAZING, by the way.  It feels cheesy to say that the amazing-ness was so profound and that it changed my life, but a lot of things have the ability to change one's life so it's not entirely untrue either.  There were many moments during the trip where I was brought nearly to tears of joy/excitement, and I can say that I've never been anywhere that was that far away from home that, actually feels like home.  I was uncontrollably weeping to the point of embarrassment on the plane ride home, and we can't wait to find a moment to go back.

Love me the jungle.  See the bridge we crossed earlier?

Sure, some of you may be thinking: well duh, it was vacation, no one wants their vacation to end... which is also totally true.  But there was something about this trip that was more than that.

I think I will tell you a story of one of our adventures from our trip.  So gather 'round the fire kids, (since spring in Seattle still requires a fire,) and listen close.


When we arrived in CR, we drove out to the Pacific Coast to a tiny little town called Playa Grande.  It's a little beach on a tiny peninsula, and the whole beach is a leatherback turtle reserve.  Leatherbacks are the biggest of the sea turtles and nest between November and February.  The hotel where we stayed is the only one directly on the beach, and is considered an ecohotel since they are really careful not to disturb the natural area with their presence.  Unfortunately, nesting season technically ends on Feb 15th, and we got there on Feb 17th.  Ah well.  The beach is off limits after dark though, so hatched turtle babies can get to the ocean, and late egg layers can still do their thing.  We were bummed that we barely missed the Playa Grande turtle tours, but we later found out that our guide who led our estuary tour, Jonathan, also "does turtle tours" on another beach.  We told him we were interested, and he told us to meet him in the hotel restaurant at 6:15 the next evening.

When 6:15pm came along, Jonathan led us down to the dark parking lot (dark because the hotel can't have a lot of lights on the beach to distract baby turtles,) where he introduced us to his friend Carlos who "works for the national parks."  Carlos seemed nice but shy, and didn't seem to speak English very well.  It was too dark to see what he looked like but he had the darker complexion of a native Guanacastan.  Oh, and he was on a scooter.  We stood around feeling confused for the next few minutes as Jonathan ran around, and next thing you know, Jonathan is saying bye to us and we are instructed to follow Carlos on his scooter with our rental car.  Shawn was a little wary about driving at night, but whatever.

So off we go.  Carlos leading on his scooter, a family which consisted of an older couple, a younger woman, and her preteen son in a sedan following him, and us bringing up the rear in our Diahatsu BeGo (a mini SUV.)  We drive out of Playa Grande for about 10 minutes, and after a quick right turn, Carlos suddenly pulls off onto the side of the road.  He gets off his scooter and comes and tells us in broken English that we are at his house and he needs to go inside for about 5 minutes and whether he could drop his scooter off and ride with us.  We're a bit surprised, but agree.  We laugh about this while Carlos is in his house, but true to his word, he comes back in 5 minutes and hops into the back seat.  We turn around and we are back on our way.

He tells us to take a few turns, and about 3 minutes later we end up on an unpaved dirt road.  This road is pretty darn bumpy.  We take it nice and slow to make sure the family doesn't mess up their rental behind us.  Meanwhile, Carlos starts talking.  He asks us about what we do, what life is like for us at home, and then tells us about his two sons, one of them who plays the trumpet...  The conversation is a bit slow since we are trying to communicate in broken Spanish and his broken English, but we are having a great time.  He even pulls out his flip phone and plays some Tipico brass music for us to hear what his son plays.  Throughout this whole 20 minute conversation we continue to drive down a one lane dirt road.  It is pitch dark and there are very few signs of civilization around us.  If Carlos wasn't so friendly, I would have been worried about our safety.

Then Carlos instructs us to take a right.  With this he also adds, "this road is really bad."  Ha.  But it's true.  It's much worse than the last road that I thought was bad.  Now we have to go really slow.  Shawn has to navigate the potholes and ditches, and the already shot suspension on our rental is squeaking like the dickens.  After 10 minutes of driving probably a half mile, we finally end up in a clearing on the beach.  There is a small parking lot with a big van that says "turismo por estudiante" on it and a couple other SUVs and cars.  Carlos immediately tells us to turn off our lights as we're parking, and we get out to meet our companions and make our way to the beach.

Now let me tell you about this beach.

It is PARADISE.

The stars are out, the temperature is perfect for the skirt and tank top I'm wearing and the sand is still warm from the sun.  Carlos instructs us to stay put while he goes to look for turtles, then disappears down the beach.  We start talking to our tour companions and find out the older couple is from Bend, Oregon and their daughter and grandson are from Bainbridge Island.  Crazy.  Looking around there are about a dozen or so other people hanging out down the beach, clearly here for the same reason.

After 20 minutes, Carlos comes back and lets us know a turtle was currently making her way up the beach.  So we wait.  Apparently we need to give her some time to settle in before approaching her.  When we are able approach her, Carlos explains in his all-of-a-sudden-good English, we need to stay out of her line of sight at all times and remain very quiet.  He explains a little bit about the nesting habits of the black turtle and we get excited.  After a while, he leads us over to where she came out of the ocean to see the tracks that she left on the beach.  This is where I almost lose it for the first time of the night.  The trail is about 3-4 feet wide and it's awesome.  You can see where her flippers dug into the sand and the line her heavy belly made while she struggled up the beach.  I have a thing with tracks and trails.  The natural mystery of it all just gets me going.  So we follow it up the beach and, though we have to stay about 30 feet away still, if we look hard enough we are able to make out a dark mound up near the grass line that is digging around.  We still need to give her time to settle into digging.

So we wait again.  There are about 30 people on the beach at this point.  We sit down and I start playing in the sand like a child.  I bury my legs a few times, watch it fall through my fingers and get picked up by the perfect breeze, and just enjoy the feeling of it between my toes.  We watch the stars, discuss whether a light on the horizon is a star or a boat, and eventually take a wee nap.  Seriously, it was kind of a long wait.  Then Carlos tells us we can get closer.  Now we are able to get to within 6 feet of her, and we watch her dig.  There are a few other tour guides around and they set up a red light for us to see her better.  One of us explains that she has chosen a bad spot with too much grass and will likely not succeed tonight.

After watching her a few minutes, Carlos tells us there's another turtle down the beach.  We go over to see her but have to stay 20 yards or so away since she's still looking for a place to start digging.  This one's under the trees so we are told she, too, will likely not succeed and will have to come back the next evening to try again.  Ten minutes of rooting around later, she suddenly turns around and starts back toward the ocean. This is the second moment I almost lose it.  Watching her make her way back to the ocean, for some reason, made me really emotional.  Seeing a creature that is likely older than I am, who lives 99.999% of her life in the ocean, lugging her heavy body down the sand after failing to lay her eggs just made me sad but inspired at the same time.  Once she passed where we were standing, we lined up behind her and just followed her all the way down to the water.  It was just such an amazing sight, I don't think there are words to adequately explain the emotions I felt.

After seeing turtle #2 back to the ocean, we went back to turtle #1 to find that she had officially decided that the "poor spot" she had chosen was good enough to lay eggs.  For the next half an hour, we watched her ever so carefully dig a smaller deeper hole with her back flippers, within the large hole she had made with her front flippers.  It was adorable how delicate, slow, and precise she was.  Leave it to a mama to take all the time she needs for her babies.  There was a biologist there who started helping her out, so that the sand wouldn't fall back into the hole.

Then she was ready to lay.

(You can see two eggs drop at the very end.  Unfortunately, the stupid lady who forgot to turn off her flash made the biologist angry and he turned the light off.)

It was surreal.  How much longer will we be able to see something like this?  With all the development and habitat destruction happening on beaches all over the world, the days are numbered for our prehistoric friends.  I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to be there and share in two very different moments with 2 different lady turtles.  I know they don't give two shits about the fact that I was there, but I felt special that they decided to come up the beach on that night.

On the drive home, our car was a bit quieter, but Carlos mentioned that he also sells coconuts.  I had been wanting one since we arrived in Playa Grande, so he said he would meet us at the hotel the next morning before we left for the next leg of our trip. 

This is when my favorite picture of our trip was taken.

We WILL find Carlos when we go back.

We were happy with our delicious coconut, and happy to support our new friend who was instrumental in the amazing experience from the night before.

So there you have it.  Sorry for the lengthiness of the story, but it was such an amazing four hours that I just felt like I had to tell it and attempt to share the strong emotions that were flooding through me that evening.

Stay tuned for more Urban Hobby Homesteader 2.0!

All the best,

Hana