Garden Update

Aside from running around and helping to tend to other gardens, my little container garden is doing well. I'm excited that I've been able to start a new project. I got the idea to do this from the archives of Aerogarden Mastery page. It is very easy and very basic so I hunted down a self watering pot, a big one, the one I have is 20" around and perlite and vermiculite. I thoroughly mixed the two bags of medium together, watered it thoroughly and then planted my carrot seeds straight into the moist medium and then gave it a nice spray of water with a spray bottle.


The medium and the bottom reservoir held nearly two gallons of water without overflowing. The reservoir was only about 1/2 full. It will be very interesting to see if this little experiment will work. The link above actually have pictures of how it worked out over several weeks and so I thought I'd give it a shot.

The kids had a great time!

My tomatoes are doing fantastic!

The sauce tomato came up first, but isn't producing as fast as the black plum tomato below. Both are doing very well except for some expected fungal problems that I expected after it rained nearly every day in the late afternoon for three weeks. I handled the fungus problems and we've been doing pretty good ever since. Though, there are just a ton of suckers that I'm having to remove.

Black plum tomatoes are a lot larger than I thought they would be. They are actually a nice good size. I've see blushes of color on the sauce tomatoes, but nothing as of yet on the plums. But very excited because there are just a ton of flowers.

But they will be red and ripe.

The tiny little banana's I got have exploded into these beautiful long wide leaves. It's amazing how much growth they have! Right next to them is the orange and it has tripled in size itself.

The blueberry (left right beneath the orange) took a pretty serious hit in a storm, losing half the plant to hard winds, but it has finally come out of the shock and is starting to grow again. The lemon is the only one that doesn't seem to have bushed out, the very light green one in the middle, but the leaves are just growing large. The pomegrante in the red container, has a lot of blooms and has long branches. The lime on the other side of the large carrot container, has also tripled in size and has a lot of new growth.

Everything is growing so well and there have been no set backs so far. I'm just waiting for my cherry tree to come in this fall so that the last empty pot that doesn't seem to want to stay up right anywhere can be filled with its own tree, too!

Dwarf Obsession

Black Plum tomato.

Heinz 1439 tomato.

Dwarf Tophat blueberry.

Dwarf Pomegranate.
Dwarf Meyer Lemon and Dwarf Lime.

Dwarf orange.



One of two dwarf bananas.

I got them and they have been hardened off and are doing very well. The banana's were a challenge, but I met that challenge! My tomatoes are very far behind as these are replants. I've been very busy indeed. I looked over my previous posts and realized that I have been seriously neglecting the blog!

My fear today is that we have high winds and heavy rains with tornado warnings. My banana's are newly out without being in full sun for a full day yet this week from all the rain. But they seem to be ok. But the rolling thunder and constant lighting of the storm that just rolled in as I type, makes me wonder if all my plants will survive this. We shall see. I was cleaning and didn't realize the sun disappeared until I heard the wind, by the time I got to the door to see, the rain and wind were already beating down. This is a good test I think. While they are in pots, they will spend a good deal of time outside and I will not always be here to bring them in when we get these sudden violent storms.

Or maybe I should go ahead and invest in that greenhouse I want before I do anything else once we buy the house. Either way, we'll have to get some strength in on these plants. They have already survived a pea and marble sized hale in two different instances in the past month.

All I can do is hope the bananas will forgive me.

juice

With my mini orchard started, I'm looking forward to the rewards of having fresh fruit at various times of the year. Like most people, I really enjoy fresh fruit, the satisfying crunch of an apple and the mellow flavors of blueberries. But, also like a lot of people, I also like the blends of juices that you can find at the grocery stores. I'm a huge fan of V8 fusion juices and others that are similar. I've found copy cat recipes all over for all sorts of juices but I came across this site on juice and the do's and don't's of it.

I never really knew that there were so many fruits and vegetables to be juiced! 38 fruits and 58 vegetables! I'm definitely looking forward to breaking out a juicer and trying out some of the recipes found on the site. There are quite a few and with the collection I already have from various places on the web, we'll be juicing like crazy. Which is not a bad thing. If it means the kids get their vegetables, then I'm all for it.

Finally!

All but one of my trees came in! The cherry will be shipped in September. I have been very scarce due to this. I've been observing and working with them. I never realized that shipping could shock a plant so. In the past two weeks I have learned this. I also discovered that I was fortunate to receive two banana trees tightly packed together in their little pot.

The pomegranate came out strongest. I actually have 5 buds on that little guy. The blueberry and pomegranate were transplanted and outside within a few days of them coming in. All of the citrus came out very strong as well. I was impressed at their ability to bounce back. Those went out day before yesterday. The only two left are the bananas.

I agonized on how to handle these. I gave them almost a full week before trying to decide on how best to separate them without killing them both. In the end, I washed the soil from their roots, detangled them as well as I could without ripping all of their roots off, then repotted. They both seem to be doing well, but when I started the hardening off process, the leaves on the biggest one started to curl even though it was in a shaded area.

I have big concerns about that. I'm starting with an open window and then I'm going to try again in the evening to go outside again for a few days. After a week I'm going to try shaded cool mornings and see what happens.

I had no idea bananas were so picky.

Until next time and maybe some pics, too!

Multiple Fruiting Trees

Yea, I know. My obsession with dwarf fruit trees has again caused research and a post concerning it, but there is the thing: Last time there weren't as many of these out there and now that they are out there, I have to post about it.

The fruit cocktail tree is a very interesting tree producing a staggering six different fruits on the three including nectarines, peaches, plums, and apricots. Fairly amazing in my mind.

This is the graphic that accompanies this tree wherever I've found it, which are:

http://www.houseofwesley.com/detail.asp?pid=5556

and

http://www.directgardening.com/detail.asp?pid=5556

Both places charge the same price for the tree, but what I also found interesting was at the House of Wesley is the pear and apple trees. Each tree has 5 different apples or pears and they are both dwarf varieties, not growing over 10 feet. Lovely.

Excitingly enough, Direct Gardening has a citrus version. A dwarf variety that has orange, tangerines and lemons. I'm just loving it!

Now if only we could manage to get all my favorite fruits onto one tree.

Outside of fruit, while driving along one day I saw a Roses of Sharon tree with two different color blooms. I was surprised to see it and thought it was a fluke. I was wrong! I found this little gem and also a butterfly 3 in 1 and a red white and blue hydrangea. Completely awesome!

I was also surprised to find a site selling Mayhaw. This is not a well known fruit as it is a southern tree growing primarily in Eastern Texas, all over Louisiana and in Mississippi. I grew up on the jelly, ice cream and cobbler. I also grew up harvesting this berry. It is much like a cranberry and harvested similarly. We would get out in the boat and use a net to gather them out of the water and lay sheets around the bank side of the tree to catch dropping fruit, usually caused by one of the boys shaking the tree. It is a delicious fruit and tastes similarly to cranberry made into a jelly but is much different when eaten as ice cream or a cobbler. I found it at Aaron's Nursery.

These trees will have the same shipping restrictions for specific states. Most will not be available to the west coast and citrus producing states like Florida from these sites and specific searches will need to be local for those areas.

Ya know...

Now that the holidays are over we're back to planning for our up coming move to the PNW.  I'm very excited that we've going to be moving back up there and look forward to beginning to live a more simple life.  We've been looking into work from home projects, including work from home tech support so that we have more time for our children and more time for the work on the property.  I'm very excited about this prospect, it will mean a pay cut, but there will be less money going out with this: no parking, no huge gas bill and certainly no monthly business wardrobe updates, among other things.

I never realized it before, but moving is a huge hassle when you have a house full of stuff.  And we definitely a house full of stuff, specifically the kitchen.  We're a family that spends 80% of the time together in the kitchen cooking, baking, canning, eating.  And everyone contributes, my five year old made the stuffing for our Thanksgiving and did a pretty good job at it.  Because I don't like stuffing in anything larger than a quail for obvious health hazard reasons, it was easy for him.  But because we are a family that spends a ton of time in the kitchen, we have accumulated sooo many giggits and gizmos and gadgets that we scarcely have enough room for most of them.  And I am proud to say that not one of them is a uni-tasker.  But all of that stuff has to be packed!  Thankfully, we've slowed down on the freezer foods and one of two of our freezers is already lined with cardboard waiting for the contribution of kitchen supplies we'll be packing into it.  We've got one more freezer to empty before the kids are out of school in May so we're trying to keep it at a minimum so that we're not going to end up with a ruined mess when we pull into Portland for our short stay there and then on to Vancouver.

This move has renewed my want for easier things such as the tankless water heater, an aeroponic's system, and of course my obsession with dwarf varieties of fruit trees.  But while it has renewed that want, it has also kicked into gear the other things that we want to do.  Solar panels and wind energy to help get the green incentives that the government has offered and will continue to offer to help ween us off petroleum products and big energy consumption.

I'm taken back to a time when I was a kid when the most we picked up from the grocery store was a gallon of milk, a couple of loaves of "light bread", some cans of spaghetti and some top ramen (we loved ramen when I was growing up, it meant we didn't have to cook a huge meal).  Instead of tins with printed labels, it was jars with hand written ones in the cupboard.  Two large freezers were out in the shed, one for wild game we hunted, and the other was for slaughtered farm critters.  

We were a community of people trading and sharing and helping each other with the trials of failed crops, diseased farm animals, and older folks that couldn't do what they once did.  I was talking with my father last night and he was going hunting today with a couple of friends specifically to surprise someone with a deer kill because the man couldn't go hunting himself, even though my father has already killed two bucks this year and traded a side of one of them for a hog from a local farmer.  And when my father got out of his last surgery a couple of years ago and couldn't go hunting, this man brought him fresh deer and hog kills that were already wrapped and frozen.  He also said that he'd gotten a visit from a couple of others that came by only to grab a jar of jelly and he said he probably wouldn't see them again until they ran out or they brought by some fresh something-or-nother from their own garden.

There is a huge difference in that life from the one I lead now.  I'm still a hunter and a farmer but I'm very used to my city conveniences.  I like my 24 hour grocery stores and pharmacies.  And I also like the short amount of time to get from place to place.  Living where my father is it is a 40 minute drive to Wal-Mart that closes at 10PM.  Newp, I don't want to go back to that, I'm too spoiled.

But what I do want is a place that is out of the way with an couple of acres that we can develop for our chickens, quails and rabbits with our greenhouse and our raised beds and our mini orchard.  We're looking forward to being off grid and being one more person that causes less stress on the system that we currently have and maybe we can help to convience a few people along the way to join us.  And we're looking forward to going to the farmers market with our fresh foods and giving away the stuff we don't sell to a local emergency service for folks that can't afford to feed their families.  We're not trying to change the world here, but we certainly trying to get the movement started with the helps of thousands of others like us.

Thanksgiving has brought a lot of this out.  Our children want to know what the game plan is and we've got one.  They are just as excited about this move as I am and they want to get out there and get their hands dirty.  They want to experience these things and we want them to have these experiences so that they have a better understanding of dependance and independance.

Right now, I don't have pictures of my garden to post and I know that makes a huge difference for a blog (considering no one reads this regularly).  But once we're working on our little farm and the trials that we face and the failures and successes we have, everyone that we're going to miss on the east coast will be able to watch us grow.

Dwarf Crazy II

I have found so many dwarf varieties out there. I have found so far:

Lemon
Lime
Cherry (but dwarf for this still gets 20 feet tall)
Pomegranate
Orange
Tangerine
Kumquats
Banana
Grapefruit
Figs
Satsuma Mandarin
Blueberry
Apple
Pear
Plum
Peach

I know I'm probably forgetting something in there.

Most of these trees are very affordable for under $10 and most of the sites will ship for free if you purchase so much from them.

These are patio trees so all you apartment dwellers, buy a jungle for your balcony!

Happy gardening!

Saving Private Benjamin

It's all about the Benjamins and keeping his face firmly planted in my pocket. Gas prices, food supply costs going up, everything is getting much more expensive. It's frightening. For those of us that are cattle owners and chicken raisers with fresh eggs aren't safe anymore. Now they have to contend with the destruction of their property and the theft of their only ripened foods with every thing that hasn't ripened yet torn off the vine so that it never will. These types of sabotage are beginning everywhere. My father was going off on this very subject the last time I talked with him. Then another friend in a different state on the other side of the country complained of something similar.

We're already feeling the heat. I know in my own household we have a side of beef, enough chicken to feed a small country... twice and canned and dried foods hanging out in another room other than the kitchen (my kitchen is barely large enough to handle what we eat in a week. Virtually enough to get us through a year without having to pay higher and higher prices. And also being close with a community of people that have a cannery that we can use and purchase what we want to fill those cans with here. (Did I mention that networking is the key? I don't think I did, network, network, network!)

Point being that not everyone magically knows that there are systems out there that aren't government driven and thus don't need a list a mile long of things that prove you're you after you've been sitting in an office that doesn't have air conditioning waiting to give your story to someone that doesn't really care they just plug in some numbers and tell you that making $9.00 an hour is too much to get day care aid and its too much for full benefits, but they'd be more than willing to give you the whopping $35 for a month. Of course you took it because it would mean that is one more meal on the table and one night less that you had to worry about if you could serve anything more than just smoother fried potatoes.

But there are places out there that can help out!

http://www.angelfoodministries.com/ I've personally done this one and still do it. I have a friend that is a high class lawyer and she gets two. The idea here is that you spend $25 for a box of food that changes from month to month. The box has pasta, canned veggies/fruit, frozen pizzas, meatballs, breakfast stuffs. They have side boxes that are $17 to $18 a piece that are grill packs during the winter months and alternate stuff like 15 lbs of breaded chicken nuggets and a 5 pound bag of chicken. Steak. The list is long, so go look at their site to find out which church is handing it in your area. The $25 spent would be doubled for the same items at a normal grocery store. And if you need help to the car, that have handsome little boys and girls push the dolly out to your car. There is no obligation to do this service other than the funds. The only drawback on this is you have a small window to pay and then you have to wait for 3 weeks before you get it. So look it up, and get some help, and be happy!

Another program is called SHARE is similar to Angel Food. Angel Food is hosted by the Baptist community here, Share is done by Catholic Charities. I found a site that has them listed.

Support your local farmers! The Farmer's Market is something to be praised and cherished. Without those wonderful souls toiling away for several months growing the food they wish to share with others, we would always be stuck with getting foods that are solely stored at the grocery store. I certainly don't want that!

Buy in bulk. You can buy a pound of this or 10 pounds of that, invest in a seal a meal and vacuum them up and tuck them away in your freezer. I buy all my culinary herbs in bulk. I have pounds and pounds and pounds of this stuff separated out in more manageable sizes because we cook with herbs and spices so much that it didn't seem feasible buying a tiny jar of it at the store when I could order it by the pound for the same price or less for a pound a piece.

Buy a freezer. Please. Buy one. They aren't that expensive. I have a 5 cubic foot one that ran me less than $135. I bought another one a 7 cubic foot and I spent $180-ish. I make fewer trips to the store, spend less money on full priced items and more on sale items because I can afford the luxury of not purchasing it if it isn't on sale because I have dinner sitting in the freezer at home. But to keep it filled, I have to buy. I just make the choice to go only when I know the sales are going on.

Having said that, buy a side of beef. Mine came pre-vacuum sealed so all I had to do was load it into the freezer. It will take a family of 4 (with several large bbq's going on) about 9 months to eat one 12 depending on the size of the beef. I immediately thawed out the a bunch of hamburger and started making meatballs as my first set of prepare ahead meals.

Buy on sale: I buy 16 ounce bags of frozen vegetables when they are on sale like that, I can't pass it up. I cook up several bags at a time and can what we don't eat (or just vacuum seal it and drop it back into the freezer in family serving sizes).

Plan your meals before you shop. If you do this, you will buy what you need instead of just tossing stuff in the buggy that looks good. Planning gives you a game plan. Your in, your out and you spent only what you needed to spend.

Check out the farms in your area. If any of them are apart of a co-operative, buy into it. It will enable you to get the freshest foods during the growing season and most of these will have more than just fruit and vegetables. Eggs, honey, milk... it just depends on the farms in your area. Once you've researched and picked out one, talk to them about your needs so that you can come up with a way to make not only you happy, but the man that is toiling away in the hot sun, too. He gets capital you get fresh food. Not a bad way of buying locally and helping to keep a farmer on his farm.

Check with your local extension. They will usually have information on farms and such around your area. Check with your local government who probably fund such things so they would be able to point you in the right direction.

And still there is growing it yourself. It is not as expensive as some people think. Dwarf citrus trees go for about $12.99 a piece with breaks if you buy two or more. I've seen all sorts of dwarf varieties: Blueberries, orange, lime, lemon, tangerine, pomegranate, fig, banana, cherry, apple, etc. None of the dwarf varieties I list here get above 6 feet tall and can remain in their planter. Container gardening in general is fairly easy to do and with some trial and error, can yield immense crops in small spaces. If you're pressed for space, grow your favorite ones or perhaps the ones that are most expensive so you are paying that much less every month your garden produces.

Happy living!

Dwarf Crazy

I'm going dwarf crazy. I keep coming across dwarf varieties that are affordable, will never get so tall that I can't harvest from them, and I'll be able to either keep them in containers or plant them in the ground.

I found this dwarf cherry tree. The name cracks me up. Mighty Midget Cherry Tree.
And this Northpole Red Apple. It doesn't have branches, the fruit is on spurs.
Then there is this graphed tree, it has plums, peaches, apricot, nectarines on one trunk. Unfortunately, they will only sell to retailers.
And I struck gold when I found this site, they have dwarf varieties of lime, orange, lemon, tangerine, pomegranate, fig and banana. They also have an apple tree that produces four different types of apple at different times in the year. And they are very affordable.

The cool thing about the citrus varieties is that even if you don't live in Florida or California, you can still have fresh citrus (not that you can buy from a catalog and have the citrus trees sent to you in those states). You just must take care to get them in before a killing frost hits. I was thinking of a green house just for the citrus trees would be a good idea.

I found a dwarf variety of rosemary and seem to have misplaced the link. And then there is just the ton of dwarf varieties of all manner of flowers, gardenia and the like.

For the urban backyard gardener, space is everything. Fruit and nut trees tend to be tall and shade most of the yard. But that isn't a reason to not have fresh fruit every bit as much as fresh vegetables. The dwarf trees solve this problem if one can make the space inside during the winter so as to protect tender citrus trees.