Keeping up with the Millers

Not to be outdone by the Portland Miller farm, the Pak Choi planted in the garden last week has sprouted, and the peppers planted indoors have finally sprouted. I'm sure harvest is right around the corner. Not a great picture, but if you look close you can see a bunch of cute baby chois in between the two stakes.

Garden Progress

This weekend has seen some real progress on the garden. Here's what it looked like on the morning of 4/2.

Recall that the area on the left side of the picture had much less snow on it than the area on the right side. Over on the right side, sporadic hairy vetch plants survived the winter, but their spring progress has been less than enthusiastic. More towards the left side, not only did the vetch survive, but the "annual" grass and weeds survived. There were two main expected benefits to the vetch, one is that the "vigorous" growth in the spring would out-compete the weeds. Unfortunately, this vetch didn't seem to get that memo because both the grass and the weeds are growing faster than the vetch. The other benefit was nitrogen fixation. To check on that, I pulled up a vetch plant to look at the roots.

Those little round nodules are where the symbiotic bacteria live and do their fixation. Since there seem to be a good number of those, it seems likely that they are doing their job.

However, they won't be doing their job for much longer.....

Yes, I finally gave in and decided to till. The thing that really changed my mind is that the no-till works best when you have permanent beds that won't be compacted by walking on them. Because of the space constraints in my backyard, I don't really have enough room for permanent beds. I will have to rotate the location of the plants from year to year, so I won't really be able to have permanent beds. The other thing is that the vetch wasn't really doing its job of suppressing weeds and the longer I let the weeds/grass get established, the harder it will be to get rid of.

Thanks to Dave and Amy for letting me borrow their tiller, and thanks to my lovely wife for taking some of these pictures. Personally I think she should have been the one doing the modeling in these photos.

Before tilling I did spread out the modest amount of compost I had. I had started the compost in the fall and put a good amount of stuff in then, but I hadn't put much in over the winter. I did turn it over with a shovel a few times, but I wasn't really expecting it to be ready this spring. It actually looks like pretty good stuff, but after spreading it out, there sure wasn't much of it.

After tilling, I watered the soil and then planted all the snow peas, about 1/3 of the Pak Choi, Rainbow Chard, Arugula, and Green Onions areas. Also, the Onion sets were scheduled to go in next weekend, but since the weather report is looking so warm, I decided to plant half the bulbing onion area.

Not having much experience with many of these veggies, (or at least their seeds) I was surprised at what some of the seeds looked like. For instance the tomatoes. When you see tomato seeds in an actual tomato they are little round disks that look like they have a gellatinous envelope around them. The tomato seeds I planted last week were tiny irregularly shaped disks with fuzz on them. The Pak Choi was little tiny hard spheres. The onion seeds looked like very fine, rough gravel. The weirdest was the rainbow chard. It looked like popcorn-sized kernels with sharp spiky protrusions on them.

I was debating whether or not to still put down newspaper to suppress weeds. You're supposed to put something down on top of it to help keep it moist and keep it from blowing away, but mulch turns out to be kind of expensive, and the two places I went to didn't have any straw. I started to put down newspaper anyway, but it turned out to not be a very enjoyable task. I ended up just putting it down in three small areas of the garden that I thought might be the most likely to have weed problems. Then I sprayed it with water to weigh it down and help it stick to the dirt. I expect that if there is any significant wind in the next week or so all the paper will end up in the corner of the yard.

Oh, and one other thing. The seeds I planted last week are starting to sprout. Two of the three broccoli seeds sprouted. Somehow 7 out of the 6 tomato seeds I planted have sprouted. Yes, I realize that doesn't make any sense. An extra one must have snuck in there somehow. It looks like several of the pepper seeds have germinated and have sent out roots(they were planted very close to the surface per the instructions). So far, so good.

It has begun!

Gardening season is upon us. Well, indoor growing season anyway. I started some of my vegetable seeds. Seems a bit early to me, but I was recently mocked for not having started my indoor plants yet. I started 4 pots of peppers, 2 pots of tomatoes, and 1 pot of broccoli. They are all in 4" peat pots that can be directly transplanted into the ground so that hopefully there will be less transplant shock. Additionally, I planted half of the peppers in peat pellets that I put into the 4" pots with potting soil. Some people say they are really good for starting plants. We shall see. They are basically discs of compressed peat moss that are encased in some sort of mesh that looks suspiciously like nylon. When you put them in water, they expand to be about 1.5" wide and 2.5" high. They are at least fun to play with.

I don't plan on putting the tomatoes or peppers into the ground till mid-late may (they like to be warm), but the pots are pretty big, so they should be fine till then. I expect to plant a bunch more broccoli (hopefully 6 plants in total), but I'm going to do them in succession, so I'll plant a new one each week.

I did make some minor modifications to my planting dates spreadsheet and my garden map. The biggest change being that I think I can plant my brussels sprouts after my peas in the same spot. I'm not sure exactly when peas finish producing, but I know they are an early crop and I'm not scheduled to plant the brussels sprouts till mid-june. I could always start them indoors for a month or so if the peas are still producing. With the extra room I gave the potatoes a bit more elbow room and expanded the size of the broccoli and kohlrabi beds. A link to the planting dates spreadsheet can be found in my last post. A link to the planting map can be found here. Each square is 6", and south is at about 11 o'clock on the map. Gray areas are likely too shaded to use, black areas are effectively the borders of the area.

Maybe I don't need a tiller.....

First, here's what my garden currently looks like:

The snow melted from left to right in the picture, so the stuff on the left side has had more time to start growing. There is a some vetch starting to grow, but it looks like the grass is starting to grow, too. Ugh, that will be a pain to get rid of. There are also a few holes dug into the ground. Animals are going to be a concern since I don't have a good way to keep anything out of the area. I saw a possum in the backyard once, but the most common animal I've seen has been cats. Hopefully they will do a decent job of patrolling the area. Maybe those holes are just from a cat using the yard as a litterbox. Probably wishful thinking, though....

So I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to get my hands on a tiller to turn over my garden this year. I considered buying a new one, buying one on Craig's list, renting one (as I did in the fall), borrowing from one of the two people I know who have one, or turning the garden over with a shovel. It turns out they are pretty expensive new or used. Seems kinda crazy to buy one to use it once a year. Renting one was a big pain last year because I didn't have a good way to transport the tiller. The same applies to borrowing one. Turning it over by shovel concerns me because there will (theoretically) be a well estabilished patch of hairy vetch that may not die if it is just turned over. None of those seem like real good options to me.

I'd heard about no-till farming, and I decided to look into it a bit more. Basically, you don't till the soil at all, and any soil additives are just added to the surface. Its talked about in hippie circles as being beneficial because tilling disrupts the biological activity in the soil, as well as killing beneficial earthworms and beneficial fungi mychorrhizae. It seems to be gaining popularity in large commercial farms because less soil is lost to erosion and there is less evaporation so less irrigation is needed. There are a few negatives, though. It takes longer for "top-dressed" soil additives (like manure) to work its way down into the soil and decompose, weeds are (arguably) more problematic, and the soil amendments can be washed away and cause pollution. I don't expect to be using too much soil additives, so that shouldn't be a problem, but the weeding is a concern. In small scale gardens, large amounts of mulch is often used to conrol weeds, and as it decays, it is beneficial for the soil. The big question, though, is how does it affect crop yeilds? There seems to be contradictory studies about that, but I found one that makes a case for it depending on geographical location(and rainfall), which make some sense to me. You can look at a summary of the study here. Basically, where I live, they suggest that no-till should produce similar, or slightly lower (less than 5%). I suspect that 5% is probably insignificant compared to the mistakes I will make as a first year farmer.

Another benefit is that I realized that the hairy vetch is supposed to be cut down and/or tilled under in late April, just as its beginning to flower. The two reasons for that is that it maximizes the amount of nitrogen that the vetch adds to the soil, and as the plant expends energy flowering, it will be less able to re-sprout after being cut down. According to my planting calendar, I'm supposed to start planting some stuff starting April 1st. If I don't till, I can deal with the garden in patches, cutting down the vetch and planting sections of the garden as it is needed. At this point, I'm leaning towards trying out the no-till method.

The weeds do concern me, though. Not only will there be more weeds without tilling, but the vetch will be less likely to be killed off by just cutting it rather than tilling it. I may have a solution, though. From what I've read, newspapers are great at keeping down weeds. 3 or 4 layers of newspapers will not only block out light, but physically prevent weed sprouts from poking through. Then some type of mulch or compost is put on top of the newspapers. When you plant vegetables, the paper is just pulled back from that spot, or a hole is poked in it for the vegetable. I wonder how well rain would get through, but poking some extra holes would probably help that. Sounds like a bit of a pain to put down the paper, but probably worth it in the long run. I guess its no more work than renting a tiller and turning over the soil.

Planting dates

The vegetable seeds have all arrived. All except the green onions (aka spring or bunching). Turns out those slipped through the cracks and I never ordered any. Hopefully the local garden store will have some seeds when I go to pick up seed potatoes and onion sets. There are, of course, way more seeds of each type than we will be able to use on our small homestead, so if anybody wants some, let me know.

I've tried to take a stab at a planting time table for the vegetables this year. Some of this is based off of the back of the seed packages, some is from internet searches. Some of these dates may not work out, but thats why I'm recording this stuff, so that I can make adjustments as needed for next year. Here is my best guess at planting dates. I tried to copy-paste the info and also to import it as a pdf, but both of those options failed, so I'll just include a link. Anybody should be able to view it.

Rutini Malbec - 6

Today's wine review is for the 2007 Rutini Malbec from Argentina.

I'm not a big fan of the smell. In fact its downright obnoxious. It smells a bit like paint thinner or turpentine with a hint of alcohol and grape. The color is extremely dark purple. You don't want this stuff on your white clothes. The flavor, however, is much better. I would say it has pleasant (moderate) amounts of sourness, tannins, and dryness. Using my wine wheel, I sense hints of black currant, black pepper, bell pepper, and oak. Overall a very good tasting wine.

Jaime says it has an earthy, oakey aroma. She says "its a decent red wine."

Peter gives this wine a 7 out of 10. I'd give it an 8 if the odor wasn't such an affront to my delicate nostrils.

Jaime gives this wine a 5 out of 10.

mmm....cheese

Homesteading is rather slow during the winter. All we have to do is sit here, mend clothing, eat pemmican and biscuits, and slowly burn through all the firewood that we chopped this summer.

Ok, thats just how I imagine it would be, but things have been a little slow around here in terms of post-worthy activities. I do, however, have a food-making related experience to share!

For christmas Jaime and I received a cheese-making kit. We finally got around to making some of it superbowl weekend.

Yes, thats me stretching some mozzarella cheese! The basic process for making mozzarella is to add citric acid and rennet(an enzyme originally extracted from veal stomachs, but now collected from bacteria) to a gallon of milk. That causes it to curdle, and separate into the curds (semi-solid protein clumps) and whey (semi-clear) liquid. After that, the curds are separated out and then heated and massaged until it becomes solid-ish. It only takes an hour or so to do.

The first attempt I strictly followed the instructions, but it didn't curdle nearly as firmly as they showed in the picture, even after waiting 4 times as long as I was instructed. Rather than just giving up, I used cheese-cloth to try to squeeze out as much whey as possible and hopefully only be left with good curds. That seemed to work since it got much more solid. I then stretched and worked the curds into a cheese-like material(see above picture). However, it never got to the consistency of normal cheese and if it sat for a while it would basically just turn into a puddle. I tried to put it in cold water like you see at the grocery store, but the cheese and water merged into one disgusting mess. The instructions said to make sure you don't use ultra-pasturized milk because the high heats used for that process will de-nature the proteins in milk and it won't curdle. The Wegmans milk I used clearly said "pasturized" while some of the Wegmans half and half said "ultra-pasturized", so that probably wasn't the cause, but I decided to used different milk the second time just in case.

For the second attempt I used Byrne Dairy milk. I've said before that Byrne Dairy milk and ice cream taste much stronger than regular dairy products. Not sure what they feed their cows, but their ice-cream is quite delicious, and I highly recommend it. Ironically, when I just looked up Byrne Dairy on wiki, it says they recently built an ultra-pasturization facility near Syracuse. Anyway, the second time I used Byrne Dairy milk and twice as much Rennet as the recipe suggested. This time it curdled significantly firmer, and close to the firmness that they showed in the instruction booklet. To separate the curds I just ladled them into a bowl. Then I heated and streched the curds as I had done before. It got firmer, and seemed to be at the point where it could be peeled a little bit like string cheese, so I was happy. I formed it into different size balls and even a few twist shapes. Later that night I served some of it at a Superbowl gathering and got one positive comment on the "delicious buffalo mozzarella". I stored most of it in tupperware in the fridge, but I didn't want to put it in water/brine because I feared the same thing would happen to this batch as happened to the first. The next day the shapes I had made were starting to merge together, but still tasted quite good. By a week later it had all merged into one smooth puddle molded to the shape of the tupperware. We used it for some home-made pizzas and it still tasted good, but I really wish it held its shape.

I'm guessing that I need to either heat the curds to higher temperatures while I stretch them, or just stretch them longer. If anybody has any experience with this, please let me know what I'm doing wrong.