And so it begins…

Seed starting time! Let’s start with a public service announcement. How many of you have seen this idea floating around Pinterest? Well, I am here to tell you several things, including this:

This was likely a staged picture. Tiny seedlings placed in rolls, picture snapped, water added later (hopefully). You can tell by the little bits of dried soil on the edges of the container. Here are what my toilet paper seed starters looked like, only a few hours after filling with damp soil and seeds:

Unrolling all over the place! A few actually fell apart. HOWEVER! That’s not to say that this idea is all wrong, because it still has merits. And all the rolls in the middle of my tray are still fine, due to being packed in tightly. Here’s how my setup looks this year:

I’ve had mixed success with starting seeds in the past, so here’s what I’m doing differently this year.

1. I chose cool-season crops that I can plant out in (hopefully) mid-to-late March in my hoop house, including lettuce, chard, kale, arugula and spinach. I’ll also direct-sow snow peas with them. (Don’t start tomatoes, peppers, etc. until mid-March.)
2. I started the seeds directly on the surface of the refrigerator top, which is nice and warm. As soon as most of them had sprouted, I put these trivets under them to increase airflow and hopefully reduce the temperature a bit.  They’re cool-season plants, after all.
3. Last year, my spinach never did sprout in this set-up, so this year I kept my spinach seeds in a damp paper towel in the refrigerator until they sprouted (6 days). I planted them yesterday; crossing my fingers that they’ll turn into baby plants.
4. As you can see, I added some tin foil around the edges to bounce the light around a bit; in the past I’ve had pretty leggy plants so I’m hoping this helps.
5. As soon as everything is sprouted, I’m going to train a very small fan on this area to increase airflow even more. This is also supposed to help in building strong stems.
6. Note: toilet paper rolls should be packed in very tightly or they will fall apart.

I’m also trying winter seed sowing again. It didn’t work for me three years ago, but so many people are doing this now that I can’t help but be tempted.

I’m sticking to native perennial plants (except calendula), all of which prefer to be cold-stratified before sprouting. If this works, these are going into my boulevard. Last summer, we laid cardboard and woodchips over our entire boulevard, so the prep work is done. We’re trying to keep this project simple. In addition to these natives, we’ll divide and add some of our existing front-yard perennials. I’m hoping to not have to buy more than a handful of plants. TRYING to keep things a bit simpler than last year!

I can feel it: spring is coming! And it’s not just me… we’re getting a well-deserved thaw in Minnesota this weekend too, and it is glorious. Speaking of that, time to shut down the computer and GET. OUT. THERE!

 

Recipe: oatmeal tahini cookies

Note the patient little hand, waiting, waiting for the cookies to cool off enough to eat.

We’ve been making a lot of cookies lately. I always crave them in the winter anyway, and now that we have 4 lunches to prepare every morning, it’s nice to have a little something homemade to throw in. We’re making hummus this week, so as long as we had to buy tahini anyway, we decided to try tahini cookies. Without further ado:

Oatmeal Tahini Cookies
2 c. rolled oats
1 c. whole wheat pastry flour
1 c. chopped almonds
1 c. sucanat (or brown sugar)
scant 1/4 c. evaporated cane juice (or white sugar)
1 c. raisins (we used half craisins)
3/4 c. tahini
1/2 c. butter
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda

Cream butter and tahini. Mix in sugars, then eggs and vanilla. Add the flour, cinnamon, salt, baking soda, and oats. Stir in the almonds and raisins last of all. Bake at 350 degrees, 8-10 minutes. Adam likes big cookies so his took the full 10 minutes. This made a  couple dozen large cookies.

This is a substantial cookie, one that could easily carry you through an afternoon of snowshoeing, for example. The tahini brings out some of the same qualities that you’d get from a peanut butter oatmeal cookie but without an overwhelming peanut taste. I couldn’t really taste the tahini in the final product, which is OK. Good stuff!

A note about sugars: we’ve been experimenting with sucanat lately. Nutrition-minded types recommend it because, among other things, it is minimally processed and therefore still contains some minerals and all the awesome molasses flavor. Sucanat caramel popcorn, for example, is AMAZING. Once again, I tried it for the nutrition but got hooked for the flavor.

 

In the bleak midwinter

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago

It’s a Christmas carol, but I find this song more fitting for right now. This winter has seemed closer to normal in terms of temperature (-14 degrees F in Minneapolis this morning), but we are sorely lacking in snow cover. Hopefully March will bring us closer to normal moisture levels.

Some garden bloggers post about how much they enjoy the break. What I’ve come to realize is that I need physical activity—the more difficult, the better—to truly feel happy and sleep well. Three seasons out of the year, that’s no problem. In the winter, however; not enough exercise… not enough light… and insomnia starts to become my reality.

I have rediscovered how much I love running, though, and it’s helped. I’ve been running home from work at least once per week. It’s a nice 4.5 miles through south Minneapolis and saves me a $2.50 bus fare (I’ve been wimping out on the winter bike commuting this year). There was a time in my life when I would go to the gym and work out; that time has mostly passed. With my schedule, it’s easier to exercise if I can also accomplish another task at the same time, e.g. commuting.

A kite festival on a frozen lake in the middle of January: totally normal for Minnesota.

Our lives are changing rapidly right now. Of course, they’ve been changing rapidly since the kids were born, but it feels different now. I used to look forward to each new step. “Soon we won’t need to buy diapers anymore!” Now, I want everything to slow down. My Kindergarteners have been reading to me every night for the past couple weeks. I want to cherish this moment, and maybe that’s the gift of winter: I have time to do so.

We also made good on a plan we committed to a couple years ago: we finally got rid of our television completely during our Christmas break. We’re not screenless, though. I bought a new Mac last fall, which will finally enable me to occasionally work from home and start freelancing again. So the Mac is doing double duty as work and entertainment, and I don’t miss the television one bit. I don’t want to make a blanket judgment on TV watching—I do it, too (currently working our way through season 4 of Battlestar Galactica on DVD). But quantity matters—a lot. The average American is now watching 34 hours per week of TV. No wonder we collectively have no time for cooking or gardening!

Honestly, for me, TV cannot compare to the excitement of gardening, fermenting, reading, running, cooking, or baking, anyway. The movie is NEVER as good as the book, right? So, I’ll get off that soapbox.

Seed inventory time. I don’t have to buy very much seed this year. Apparently I went completely crazy with seed buying last year; I don’t even remember using some of these!

It doesn’t feel like it outside, but spring is ramping up. I’m adding master gardener volunteer activities to my calendar already, and plan to start my first seeds of the season in two or three weeks. I’m also excited and anxious to see what happens to the hundred or so new perennials I added last summer. My back yard will hopefully look very different this spring. I’m also starting to outline my 2013 garden calendar.

I’m not really sure what the point is, of this post, but I guess: I’m here, we’re getting through the winter, staying mostly healthy, and this too shall pass. Without winter, how can one truly appreciate spring? What are you most looking forward to?

Garden Plan 2013

Here we are, my favorite post of the year! My detailed garden plan for 2013, click to enlarge:

Oh, how my plans have evolved over the years (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012).

I’ve been very focused, the past two years, on trying to grow a GREAT variety of things in my garden, but now that I’m a more experienced gardener, I want a nice-sized crop. I’m no longer excited about having grown one single eggplant fruit. Give me at least 15 of something or forget it.

With that in mind, I’m taking 2013 off from all brassicas and root vegetables in the main garden. I have had bad luck with both—brassicas due to their long growing season and root vegetables due to my very rocky soil. My main vegetable garden has a very short season due to the peak of my neighbor’s house. It blocks the sun in all but the highest summer weeks.

I’ve also learned a lot about hoop house gardening, and this year will try to take my mini stock tank hoop house to the next level. With that in mind, I’m planting only very early spring things in March (weather permitting). These things will definitely be done by July 1 or so, when I will look to the fall and get greens and other such things started for fall harvests. My biggest lesson from 2012 in the stock tank was that I need to start the fall plantings earlier, giving them a chance to get good-sized before the cold and dark set in.

I grew both shallots and green onions from Mother Earth Gardens “starts” last year, and loved them. I plan to do that again. Garlic is already in the ground. I wish it had some insulating snow on top to protect it from the -20 degree F winds blowing over our area today, but… well hopefully it will be fine.

After pickling jalapeno peppers last summer and LOVING the result, I plan to grow quite a few more hot peppers this year. I’ve made room for 12 plants, and will get a variety of peppers when I make my annual pilgrimage. As for tomatoes, I’ll grow six plants again on the trellis, but will decide which varieties when the catalog arrives.

I actually have quite a bit of seed leftover from last year when I apparently went completely insane with seed, so I’m going to re-use wherever possible (yes, many seeds are still viable after a year or two). This means we’ll be enjoying “Maxibel Haricot Verts” again this summer–they are a spectacular bush green bean.

I’m also letting go of trying to grow vegetables in Rowan and Anneke’s stock tanks. They simply don’t get enough sun for anything beyond nasturtiums. I’m going to let them each pick out a variety of shade-loving annual flowers this year, and I think some fairy gardens may sprout.

My question for you: do you think acorn squash will work on a completely vertical trellis? Or am I dreaming too big?

Garden planning and seed starting information

My garden plans for 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012
My 2012 garden calendar (2013 planning dates, coming soon)
Starting seeds without peat or plastic
U of M Extension seed starting guide
U of M Extension: planting dates for vegetables (highly recommended)
U of M Extension: a whole bunch more information about vegetables

Rabbit Damage

The rabbits. They’re especially destructive in winters like the one we’re having, with little snow cover. The day after Christmas, I saw this:

One of my brand new viburnums with obvious rabbit damage—stripped bark and disappearing twigs galore. Obviously, my cut-in-half hardware cloth hoop did little to protect this plant. Since Christmas was over anyway, we took down the Christmas tree, clipped off all the branches, and used it as heavy mulch and rabbit-blocking aid.

I looked under the branches today and it does seem to have helped. I did the same thing with my blueberries, whose size had already been reduced by 50% by the time I got to them.

They were very small to begin with, having been eaten to the ground last winter. They spent all of summer 2012 just trying to get re-established.

Things look even worse in the raspberry patch. If we don’t get significant snow cover soon, all canes will be eaten to the ground. A fresh dusting of snow today covered a truly astonishing amount of rabbit scat that was visible after a thaw last week.

On the other hand, should I be thanking the buns for trimming the sprouts next to my sickly crab apple tree?

Many plants withstand a little rabbit damage. This established currant bush is a good example. You can see some bark nibbling going on, and maybe a handful of twigs eliminated, but for the most part we’re good here.

Here also, some minor damage near the bottom of a red-twig dogwood. It needs trimming every year anyway, so I’m not worried about it.

What to do about this? The most effective way to prevent rabbit damage is by blocking them, but blocking every single precious plant in my landscape would make my landscape ugly. Rabbits are one of the reasons why I chose stock tanks for my back yard container gardens, so I’ve found some creative ways around them.

The other big thing that we need to address is this:

The previous owners of our home built a large deck about 4-6 inches off the ground right behind our house. I’m guessing it didn’t take the rabbits long to move in, and they were well-established—with several entrances and exits—by the time we bought this house 6 years ago. Then we started adding in all kinds of rabbit delicacies to the previously-sterile landscape, supporting the population even further…and… well… this problem is multi-faceted, suffice to say.

The one shrub they have no interest in: my magnolia, with its fantastic fur-covered toes that hold within them the first flowers of spring.

Killing rabbits is not a long-term solution to this problem. In any ecosystem—the inner city is definitely a unique one—if you remove a part of it, others will fill that niche. Translation: other bunnies will move in to a newly-vacant rabbit mansion under our deck.

So the next step is going to have to be: remove the habitat. I’m not excited about the expense of removing the deck and replacing it with a patio, but it’s got to be done. Will it get done this year? That remains to be seen.

What are your rabbit strategies? This is a problem I’ve been dealing with for quite some time:

Protecting baby plants from rabbits (summer 2012)
Rabbit damage, spring 2011 (after a VERY rough winter for the rabbits)
Me 1, rabbits 0 (protecting early spring tulips and strawberries)

The Grocery Budget, 2013 edition

It’s become an annual tradition for me to review our grocery budget around New Year’s. At first, it was about gauging whether our garden was really saving us money. What I’ve come to realize is that our gardens (especially our fruits) allow us to eat really grandly (and healthfully), on a budget. It’s all a matter of perspective of what you want to put in your body and how much effort you’re willing to make, in the kitchen and the garden.

Anyway! There’s a major difference about our 2012 grocery budget. One year ago, we started using mint.com to track all of our expenses. IT ROCKS. Pulling the stats for this post took approximately 45 seconds:

There you have it, a simple pie chart showing that groceries are, far and away, where our food-related spending happens. When I first started looking at the stats, it looked like we had spent about $300 more in 2012 than 2011. But on closer inspection, I realized that if I just looked at Seward co-op, where we get almost all our groceries, we actually spent a tiny bit ($100) less. The other $400 or so was from other grocery stores around the states of MN and South Dakota, where we traveled in 2012.

I think it’s safe to say that, more or less, we held the line on grocery spending for 2013. Mint was a big part of making that possible—it tracks your spending automatically, and you can sign up for text messages when you exceed any of your set budgets in any given month.

My only criticism of Mint is that neither my credit union nor my 401(k) provider hook up well with it, eliminating some of the convenience factor. But for the most part, I like it. It’s helped us set up our monthly budget and now we’re using it to help achieve some financial goals (made possible by the kids being in full-day Kindergarten instead of daycare).

I should note: we spend a MUCH greater percentage of our income on groceries than average Americans. It’s a conscious decision and I have no regrets about it—on the contrary I feel lucky to have the option.

Enough about budgets, let’s talk about food. Adam’s been watching The Mind of a Chef on PBS, and the kids and I have been reaping the benefits, including this homemade ramen. He didn’t use a recipe, but based it loosely on David Chang’s descriptions of authentic Japanese ramen. It involved cooking pork and chicken bones, and some oxtail for good measure, for 24 hours, along with some onions and other random veggie trimmings. He removed the bones, then boiled it on the stove to reduce it by half, and also cooked some kombu in there for a while. We poured the finished stock over cooked Japanese noodles, and enjoyed it. Immensely.

Book review: The Resilient Gardener

The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times

by Carol Deppe

The title of this book is a bit heavy-handed; I probably wouldn’t have looked it up if my favorite permaculture blog hadn’t recommended it.

Yet, her broad definition of “hard times” resonated with me. Would your garden survive if you were unable to water it for two weeks? Weed it for three weeks? This concept was brought home to me long before I read this book, when Adam had a random injury in August that left him unable to do any lifting for well over a month. I had to do everything during that time, and it was both eye-opening and exhausting.

So, what if I, the primary gardener in the family, get a random injury? Or what if we have a drought and the city imposes watering limits (a very real possibility, actually)? I actually think these two questions should be asked about ANY landscape, not just a food-producing one.

Before I go any further, I should outline my recommendation regarding this book. Choose whichever of the following best applies to you:

1. If you live in Willamette Valley, Oregon and garden at any scale: BUY this book.

2. If you live anywhere else, and own or have access to acreage and have a desire to increase self-sufficiency by raising some staple crops like corn, beans, squash, or potatoes: BORROW this book from the library. (You may end up buying it.)

3. If you do not meet conditions 1 or 2: well, borrow it only if the topic really interests you.

This book suffers from the same problem affecting nearly all gardening (especially permaculture-oriented) books I read: warm climate-itis. The upper midwest is just a whole different ball game in gardening (though that’s not all bad, either).

Still, there are some useful nuggets in here. Here are a handful:

Plant spacing for resilience. Deppe grows corn, squash, beans, and potatoes enough to be self-sufficient on them as well as sell at market (i.e. she grows a shit ton of all four on acreage). The Willamette valley gets very dry in summer, but she grows most of her crops with little to no irrigation. She achieves this, in part, by increasing plant spacing to even double the amount recommended on the seed packet.

Timing. Because her region has rain at specific times (lots in the winter but very little in the summer) she plants strategically so that crops that need more water are maturing at the time when her region tends to get water. (This does not apply to the upper midwest, but still worth noting.)

Potatoes. She outlines three strategies for planting potatoes: hilling up, trenching, or growing in mulch, with details about how to determine which strategy is best for you. My own potato tower experiment was not successful, but I think that hilling up is probably a classic Minnesota potato strategy for a very good reason.

Ducks vs. Chickens. Deppe’s chapter on ducks offers a great comparison on determining whether you should raise ducks or chickens, and how raising fowl can have a dramatic effect on your resiliency. They can be a great choice if the land you live on happens to not be ideal for growing vegetables or fruit. Unfortunately they are not a choice for me right now, because of problems with obtaining a city permit.

Corn. Deppe has a real fondness for the lowly corn plant, and this book has great in-depth information on types of corn (flour, flint, dent), reasons and how-to’s for growing each, seed-saving and breeding techniques, and even recipes. As a person who is gluten-intolerant, she has a keen interest in providing high-quality non-wheat flour for herself—there are several interesting gluten-free recipes in the book.

Beans. One of the shortest chapters, but Deppe still manages to make a nice case for growing drying beans, and offers advice for those of us who still romanticize the old interplanting corn, beans, and squash myth. Deppe’s answer: it can be done, but mind your spacing and choose varieties that are suited for it.

I would love to think that someday Adam and I might be able to afford to buy a handful of acres somewhere in Minnesota or western Wisconsin. But since we likely wouldn’t be able to live there for many years, what crops (if any) could I realistically grow on this fantasy land, which I would only visit once per week in the best of times? Deppe’s book gave me LOTS of ideas to dream on, for now.