theinadvertentgardener

[theinadvertentgardener]

Randoms

Still working through my backlog of updates… here are some strays…

STAY OUT!

We've got our fence up. We expanded the garden north, south, and east this year to accommodate new beds (to be built), a watering system (to be built), new fruit crops (to be planted), a snaking hügelkultur mound (to be built), and a shed (to be built). We also added a pirate flag. Don't fuck with us, deer.

This car is plant taxi

I'm getting really good—and creative!—at tetrising my car with plants. Just please don't brake right in front of me.

They're coming!

Brood X is on its way. This little one showed up REALLY early for the party.

Arugula is pretty when it bolts

We've allowed one of our tomato beds to become completely overrun with arugula. Spicy and beautiful.

Rikki Ticky Tavi

Checking for ticks is a must after visiting the farm. Thanks to climate change, the tick populations have increased each year in our area. Caught this fucker on my belly.

I GREW A RADISH

I have a bad track record with radishes—one of the EASIEST crops to grow. This delicious morsel was sewn from old-ass seeds, and totally thrived. It was a little spicy, a little sweet, and just perfect. I wish to grow a thousand more just like it.

[theinadvertentgardener]

Time: reckoning with bad decisions

Mint. It's a great idea, right?

A few years ago, we added some shorter raised beds to the garden and INTENTIONALLY interplanted mint in one of our 8´ers. We 100% knew this was stupid at the time, but our past selves didn't have to worry about an 8´ bed o' mint. That's a problem for our future selves. Well, guess what?

After some fun in the sun, the mint bed got stupid. I love mint, but do I need 32 square feet of it? No, no I don't.

I've planted a few cuttings and will grow mint in smaller containers this year. I fully expect a battle, but the plan is to repurpose the mint bed for strawberries. Holy heck, wish me luck.

Here we go…

The mint bed has been weed-whacked (aside: just a delightful smell—freshly leveled mint), covered in paper and cardboard, and covered with soil. Without digging, it was not possible to get a deep layer of soil, so I'm hella nervous and there aren't even any strawberries in! Oh well, right? What's gardening if not a series of obstacles your less informed past self created for you?

I'm planting two varieties: Jewel and Honeoye—both Junebearers.

All done. Pray for us.

[theinadvertentgardener]

Time to get caught up

I've… uh… not been great about posting things in a timely manner. So, let's travel back in time over the past several weeks… Buckle up.

The long bed…

We dug this in-ground east/west bed last summer for our spillover tomatoes. It's not entirely uniform in width, and the boards I've used as a janky border are inconsistent in size. Let's just say this is one wonky-ass bed.

This year, we're planting potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, and some other stuff. The seed potatoes and sweet potato slips are here and ready to go in, so I'm prioritizing readying this bed first.

No perfect wins for the environment…

I don't have the budget to fill each bed with a perfect 1:1:1 ratio of compost, peat, and vermiculite per Mel's Mix recipe, but I am mixing unscientific/unmeasured quantities of compost + peat + perlite.

I had a chat with one of the proprietors of our favorite local shop about coir vs peat from an environmental perspective, and he dropped some knowledge that helped me better understand the complexities of each per environmental impact. Sparing any reader the burden of reading too many words, neither is ideal, but peat is easier to get right now. After our conversation, I've decided go with peat, and to be mindful while doing so. It's my plan that, with my compost kicking into high gear, barring future extensive garden expansion, I'll only have to do this once.

JFC this would be easier with two people

Mixing my raised bed media by hand is really tiring work. I might have bit off a lot to chew. It's going to be slow-going getting each bed ready to plant.

Let's get planting!

I'm so late getting things in, we've already got fruit starting on our plants. After everything it planted, I'll need to build and install something for the vines to climb, but that's an adventure for another day ;)

Bush bean seeds look so pretty! Edamame and Royal Burgundy pictured below.

Still a few items to add, but the bed is mostly planted. Bush and pole beans, cucumbers, marigolds, kohlrabi, determinate tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn. The bed still looks trashy, but now that it's not just a weed patch, it's trashy cute? Once I clear the tarps, it'll be straight-up bohemian.

[theinadvertentgardener]

Sit with your plants

It's so refreshing to just sit in the garden—I especially enjoy doing this on work breaks. It's important too, to check—really survey—the garden. Pests are always trying to pull fast ones on you.

I absolutely would not be growing cabbage, lettuce, Brussels sprouts, squash, or broccoli if I weren't working from home and able to keep a close eye on things. So I guess that's a point in the coronavirus column?

Well, that took off

I planted this broccoli in a pot with mostly not awesome soil pretty much as an afterthought, and it's ginormous compared to the broccoli I planted with intent (and ample space) in the raised bed. Huh.

Other fun stuff:

I'm just letting this volunteer calendula battle it out in this brutal, cinder block cage fight.

Peas are just beautiful. I almost always don't have my shit together enough to do any cool weather crops, so I am so totally pleased with myself this year.

[theinadvertentgardener]

Finding our own pace…

We’re balancing a lot of other lifestuff while trying not to lose complete sight of gardenstuff. Doing a little transplanting and bucket brigade backyard prep here and there during work breaks.

Reduce, reuse…

I’m up-potting seedlings as I work my way through pantry items… I’m driving my spouse insane with my container repurposing.

I’m not a plant hoarder… you are!

Most of our baby plants spend their days hanging out in the bucket zone. I’m hoping to be ready to transplant into our farm garden within a week and a half, and start actively arranging the bucket garden. The catalpa that lords over our backyard is still filling in with leaves, and so I don’t mind waiting a tad longer to figure out this piece of the puzzle—I don’t want to have to be rearranging buckets for sun once they are filled and heavy and have huge plants spilling out of them.

This dog is a fox.

He’s not in focus, but he’s just so cute. Turned around to find him perched like this, just looking around.

[theinadvertentgardener]

Is it meta to be reading “Holes” while shoveling dirt?

Finally starting to learn that things don’t have to be already perfect in order to get started, and that it’s OK to break things apart and work toward them over time. Long story short, I hope this is the last year I ever have to buy a ton of compost to amend our beds.

The ultimate plan is to mix this compost with some other nice stuff like perlite and coir and straw, and then top dress our beds before planting. Throughout the season, I’ll add mulch and grass clippings to keep the weeds under control.

[theinadvertentgardener]

Isolation activity #44: starting seeds

Last year was a weird garden year for me. The majority of our started seedlings died after we were invaded by fungus gnats, so we purchased a lot of our plants—many of which were types we had never tried before. Summer is the “busy season” at my workplace, but this time around, I was navigating it for the first time after being promoted to a management position. I often had to stay late instead of visiting the garden, or didn’t have the energy for the garden, or was too cranky for the garden. I was basically no help at all as the season drew to a close, when we normally harvest and process most of our peppers. We never saved seeds from many of those “new” varieties.

Between continuing work stresses, new hobbies/interests (clay!), life changes (I got married and my dog died unexpectedly last month), and the fact that my spouse and I NEVER agree on how to plant and manage the garden, I have been dwelling in garden ennui, dancing dangerously close to taking a year off.

Last week, while making a batch of hot sauce with frozen peppers from last year’s garden, I noticed that we had a number of those “new” varieties frozen with their seeds still intact. So, I removed the seeds, went on with the sauce making, and rekindled my desire to, at the very least, plant some stuff and see what comes up.

Working from a list in which I tried to reconcile what we want to grow with how much space we currently have (spoiler alert: the math doesn’t work out), I started with the seeds from our frozen peppers, before digging into other varieties from our cache.

I’ve got thirteen more pepper varieties to go (plus, some tomatoes and tomatillos), but we’ll need more newspaper pots made before I get those started… With a shelter in place going into effect tomorrow, we’ll have plenty of time this week to make those pots, start more seeds, and ready our lights for newly germinated seedlings.

[theinadvertentgardener]

Isolation Bread: a return, and Baguette De Richard Ruan from Daniel Leader's “Living Bread.”

I’m naturally inclined to be a homebody, so isolating in response to the pandemic is, so far, not much of a change for me. Though, moving to a remote work situation, and eliminating pretty much all activities/hobbies/distractions outside the home, has me feeling like I finally have room to let some back-burner interests creep back into the realm of the definitely doable.

Of all the new projects I’m opening myself up to, the first I’ve chosen to tackle is to bake bread regularly. I have flirted with bread baking at times in the past, but I always get out of the habit for one reason or another. Anyhow, it’s been a while…

I had Daniel Leader’s “Living Bread” ebook on loan from the library, and picked Baguette De Richard Ruan as my bread ice-breaker.

I genuinely like to follow a recipe exactly as written the first time through, but I’m also prone to improvisation, plus, I discovered I was not 100% set up to make the recipe without deviation. 

My King Arthur’s bread flour has a higher protein content than the recipe calls for, so I swapped out 50 grams of bread flour for AP. I did not do any science or math to arrive at this amount… sometimes I am kind of an idiot.

My house is dark AF, and I snap bad pictures on my space phone. The first step involved mixing the flour and most of the water, and then letting the dough rest for 45 minutes. 

Then, I added yeast, salt, and remaining water. The dough was transferred to a lightly oiled container for an hour. 

Did some fancy folding, put the dough back in the container, and refrigerated it overnight.

After a long nap in the fridge, I took the dough out to rest for 45 minutes at room temp. Then I divided the dough into rounds weighing approx. 350 grams apiece to rest, covered, for 30 minutes. 

Here’s where I decided to deviate from the recipe again… While the rounds were resting, I watched this video on making baguettes and decided I would ignore Daniel Leader’s final shaping instructions. I also couldn’t stop myself from interrupting the rounds’ rest time half-way through, folding each into a first shaping shape. I knew when I did it I could be seriously fucking up the bread, but for some reason all the precision and waiting involved in baking brings out the worst in me.

The 30-min timer went off, and I shaped the baguettes and placed them on floured parchment for the final 45-min proof. 

I scored the baguettes, stuck them in the preheated oven, and added ice to a cast-iron skillet to create steam. The oven should have been preheated with the skillet and a pizza stone, but my stone cracked in half a couple years ago while making focaccia, so I improvised again and used just a sheet pan. 

The bread did not look done when the bake time had elapsed. I assume this is because I wasn’t using a stone, and thus, the oven temp should have been higher. I increased the oven temp to 550°F and baked these for an extra 15-min or so.

So, my baguettes could have been more consistent in size and shape, but they still look pretty dang good. The crust has excellent snap, the flavor is surprisingly deep, and the crumb is decent, especially considering how much I veered from the recipe. 

I especially enjoyed them with this date killer of a coconut/ginger/garlic/chile condiment I whipped up. 

[theinadvertentgardener]

Started to date

started on 2/12:

Peppers Bhut Jolokia (5) Biquinho Hot (5) Black Hungarian (5) Corne De Chevre (7) Fatalii (7) Fish (4) Miniature Chocolate Bell (4) Jalapeno Traveler Strain (7) Joe's Round (4) Red Cap Mushroom (4) Red Marconi (7) Serrano Tampequino (5) Syrian Three Sided (4) Tabasco (4)

started on 2/17:

Peppers Ancho Gigantea (7) Ausilio Thin Skin Italian (7) Black Hungarian* (7) Bulgarian Carrot (7) Caloro (5) Chervena Chushka (4) Cyklon (7) Georgia Flame (3) Hot Portugal (5) Italian Pepperoncini (5) Wenk’s Yellow Hot (5)

Tomatoes Beam’s Yellow Pear (2) Black From Tula (3) Black Icicle (4) Black Sea Man (4) Black Vernissage (2) Cherokee Purple (4) German Pink (4) Gold Medal (4) Green Grape (4) Green Vernissage (2) Japanese Black Trifele (4) Jersey Devil (3) Kellogg’s Breakfast (3) Martino’s Roma (4) Mexico Midget (4) Paul Robeson (3) Royal Chico (4) Ukranian Purples (4)

started on 2/24:

Peppers Aji Charapita (5) Banana (5) Carolina Reaper (5) Cayenne (5) Chocolate Seven Pot (5) Cubanelle (5) Dave's** (5) Golden Marconi (4) Lemon Drop (5) Shishito (4) Small Reds from Mel’s Garden** (2)

* apparently I lost track and started Black Hungarians twice (the second time around, I clearly figured we’d need fewer than I initially did). Whoops! Looks like we’ll have a lot to spare.

** Dave’s Chilis come from peppers we rescued from Mel’s brother Dave (his garden turned into a delicious dinner for a family of deer two days after he planted several years back). The peppers were labeled “Capsicum annuum,” so I have no idea what they truly are, other than delicious, prolific, and a staple of all our gardens since. When we sat down to start our seeds this morning, we couldn’t find any Dave’s seeds. I’m sure they’re around somewhere, but since they weren’t where we expected to find them, we decided to carry out an experiment. We started 5 pots with seeds from peppers we have dehydrated for powder, and we started 2 pots from an envelope labeled “Small Red Peppers from Mel’s Garden.” We are fairly sure the envelope has an original batch of saved Dave’s seeds (which may not be viable based on age anyway), but we won’t know until they grow.

[theinadvertentgardener]

February 22–24, 2019.

In which if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck… we start to see the beginnings of the first sets of true leaves on our seedlings, and a tree weed grows sprouts in Brooklyn the leftover dirt in our grow tray.

[theinadvertentgardener]

February 20–21, 2019.

In which seedling be popping up left and right, I get OBSESSED with root hairs, and whoops! That order I placed from Baker Creek when I meant to just replenish our Ghost Pepper stock arrives and now I have to reconcile the sheer number of varieties we need to start and then fit into our garden. Extra beds, anyone?

[theinadvertentgardener]

NEXT-LEVEL GARDEN NERD SHIT

While making a planting list for our 2019 Farm Garden plan, I had a totally awesome and extremely nerdy idea…

I’ve just started a catalog of our seeds in an Excel spreadsheet. Not sure if I’ll keep this exact format, but I’m entering in the name, species, origin, year procured, days from transplant, description, and any personal notes (I’m also keeping track of specific traits like heat level in peppers). 

I’ve decided to start with peppers, and then I’ll duplicate the format and catalog everything else—tomatoes, eggplant, summer and winter squash, cucumbers, flowers, herbs, brassicas, etc. I think this will take a long time, and I’ll probably abandon the project before I get to the end, but if by miracle/divine intervention I succeed in completing the spreadsheet, my hope is to keep it updated from season to season, to make planning much more of a snap.

[theinadvertentgardener]

February 16–17, 2019.

In which we move our lights up to our newly converted shower stall grow space, we start more of our peppers (OMG I THINK WE STILL HAVE LIKE 10–15 VARIETIES TO GO) and *most* of our tomatoes and all of a sudden we’re out of table space (¯\_(ツ)_/¯), and I admire the lush appearance of our soilless media while wondering whether I’ve made something our plants can actually grow in.

[theinadvertentgardener]

February 9–12, 2019.

In which I ogle Growing Trade Pet & Plant’s shelves while standing in line to buy something to the tune of $120 worth of the most awesome shit for DIY soilless media, stupidly decide to mix said soilless media after starting a pull-ups program cold (it took three tubs and GD my arms are so tired), and we start our first seeds for the 2019 farm garden.

[theinadvertentgardener]

March 7–9, 2018.

In which we start our peppers and tomatoes, I learn the hard way that I am more meticulous about naming/labeling than is my partner in crime (note the pepper she just calls “thick wall”), and, as a cruel joke, my newest seeds order arrives from SSE moments before I leave to go out of town for a week.

[theinadvertentgardener]

March 5, 2018.

In which my horticulture class visits a campus greenhouse to observe and diagnose plant health issues.

[theinadvertentgardener]

March 4, 2018.

In which I mix my own soilless medium from coir and vermiculite (so I’m feeling pretty proud of myself RN), and I glitter like I’m made of gold.