Lightning Strikes Twice

The skies were dark, but not ominously so. Lightning flashes could be seen far off in the distance but overhead all appeared to be calm. I had just locked the chickens up for the night and was sitting down at the computer, preparing to dig up some information on eggplants...and boom! A huge explosion shook our whole house. The day, having almost turned to night, was simultaneously lit up with a blinding red-orange flash, and then all was silent. A few minutes later, having realized that it was not our lovely neighbor firing off his cannon in our front yard, we looked for smoke and fire as it became obvious that a freak lightning strike had hit within a few yards of the house. We found nothing in the dark.


It was not until early the next morning that we noticed wood shrapnel all over our driveway and the neighboring bushes. Close by was a tree with a large splinter of wood that had been unceremoniously stripped from tip to tail. The same thing happened two years ago in August to a tree not thirty feet away. That tree was much larger and managed to live, this one will not. I will remove it for firewood next spring.

The Epicenter

It has been about as perfect a gardening year, weather wise, as I can remember. The temperatures have been extremely hot but we have had a decent rain every 2-3 weeks since spring...today included. We have used less water this summer than ever before, even with the close to 90-100° temperatures and an ever expanding garden.

The above picture depicts our gardens "epicenter". Isn't she a beauty? Yeah...not really. Filled with timers, modes, and valves attached to eleven hoses that stretch hundreds of feet and are attached to various soaker systems and sprinklers...the garden can literally water itself.

I set up this system a few years ago so that we could take a vacation and not worry about watering the garden in August, our driest month, it worked great. Depending upon the weather and particular location in the garden, I set the timers to water for a certain amount of time, when needed, at night. They turn on and off automatically or manually, and I am able to carefully control the amount of water I use. The timers were set up for the first time this year, a couple weeks ago, when I could no longer justify the time it took to manually water the gardens.

We use the soaker hoses on our tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, tomatillos, and the outskirts of the main garden. Everything else is still watered using overhead sprinklers that I hope to replace with soaker hoses over time. Some of our plants, like my "no water" tomatoes never get a drop of water. I have other crops that are deeply planted and mulched that I hand water once a week or so.

These little cherry tomato plants in the chicken run never get any water from me, and are just starting to produce a few nice little fruits.


Anyway, I like the automatic watering system and have cut my water output by at least half, perhaps even more this year, since setting it up. Hopefully as time goes on and I become more advanced in "no water" gardening I will no longer need to use it at all, but for now it is my best solution to water conservation in the garden.

Grow Your Own Laundry Detergent

We started processing our alternative laundry detergent the other day. For about 50 cents worth of cheap white vinegar added to our soapwort concoction we made enough laundry detergent to last approximately six months. I'm waiting for the plants to go to seed before making more this fall. My wife wrote a whimsical post Saponaria Officionalis...What? back in February with links providing more information on this wonderful plant.

In our ongoing endeavor to tread more lightly on the planet and focus our energies on the use of more natural products we are constantly experimenting with a wide variety of plants that can be used for more than just food sources. Only a few hundred years ago many people were much more versed in the forgotten art of self sufficient living, using natures vast array of resources to aid them as they went about their daily tasks.

My wife and I have "advanced" from chemically ridden cleaning products like Purex- free and clear, to supposedly better Seventh Generation laundry soap, to this↓...soapwort. Truly free and clear of man-made chemicals, and about as pure and natural as it gets.
We break down this perennial's second year roots, leaves, stems, and flowers to make soap. The leaves off first year plants work as well but the root is more potent.

First we cut and chop the various parts of Saponaria Officionalis into more manageable pieces.


Then it is added to the cauldrons to simmer for 5 or 6 hours breaking down the plants tissues, helping to release the sudsy saponins contained therein. We let ours sit overnight before straining the pale green liquid.


The next day you simply mash the leaves up and remove them, making sure to squeeze all the remaining saponins out. Then carefully strain the remaining debris. The hardest part is straining the liquid because it really does want to foam up quit a bit...pour slowly.



Straining the soapwort - look at all that foam! The bucket was only part way filled and already overflowing with suds. For whatever reason the pouring action really causes the suds to form.


Luckily, years ago we saved about 20 of these laundry bottles that we now use to hold our homemade soap. We add 2/3 cup vinegar, to prevent against mold, to each bottle. The vinegar also assists as a cleaning agent, a product I also hope to make myself sometime in the not too distant future.

There you have it, laundry soap grown next to the basil in our garden. Keep in mind that soapwort should not be added to pizza with the basil as it does contain toxic saponins. Regardless of what the many herb books, and herbal internet sites out there suggest, I would give serious thought to consuming this plant in any form for medicinal purposes...just my opinion. I'm formulating a plan to make a shampoo using this same herb, vinegar, and ground flax as a thickener...I'll make sure and share if it turns out.

Kimchi

We finally followed through on making some kimchi for my father's birthday. Week old Kimchi, a couple books on Native American medicinal herbs, and he was happy to say the least. We made some for the first time a couple years ago and it took me about five minutes to fall in love with it.

Kimchi is a somewhat spicy Korean delicacy made of various vegetables. The main ingredient in ours is salted (sea salt) napa, savoy cabbage, or bok choy seasoned with ginger, garlic, red pepper flakes, and onions. We then add a few other vegetables and let the concoction sit in loosely covered jars at around 60° for about five days to undergo lactic acid fermentation. The added vegetables can be anything you like, kale, carrots, peppers, cucumbers, corn even certain fruits like apples.

Like sauerkraut, kefir and other fermented foods we eat, kimchi is supposed to be very healthy. Full of probiotics due to the fermentation process, vitamins contained in the ingredients, and good bacteria, it is possibly a true "super food". Give it a try.


Basic Kimchi recipe -

Ingredients:

2 large napa or savoy cabbage

1 thinly sliced red pepper

6 cups of cold water

3 tablespoons of sea salt

1 tablespoon of fresh garlic, finely diced

1 - 2 tablespoon of fresh ginger, finely diced or grated

1/4 cup of fresh green onions, thinly sliced into 2" pieces

2 teaspoon of dried red chili pepper flakes

2 tablespoon chili powder

2 teaspoon of sugar

Directions:

1. Chop cabbage into 2" pieces

2. Mix salt in cold water

3. Place cabbage in gallon zip lock bags or tightly sealed glass jars, fill with salt water brine and place in refrigerator for 12 hours or overnight flipping occasionally

4. Drain and reserve brine

5. Mix all other ingredients with cabbage

6. Pack 1 gallon jar with mixture leaving 2" space at top. Pour reserved brine over the cabbage to cover.

7. Push a small freezer bag into the mouth of the jar and pour the remaining brine into the bags (you may need the extra brine later). Better yet, use another glass jar that will fit inside your gallon jar.

8. Let kimchi ferment in a cool place no higher than 70° for 3-6 days. The longer the stronger.

9. Remove the brine weight, add more brine to jar if neccesary and cap tightly. Store in the refrigerator where it will keep for a couple months.

That is the basic recipe we used on my fathers kimchi. The new batch we are making will include a little diced kale, radichio, Italian chicory and perhaps a little more red pepper and red pepper powder. We have not made this in years and it was fun to get back into it. We try to keep the salt content low and always use real sea salt when fermenting foods. Remember salt obtained from the natural evaporation of sea water is entirely different from modern refined salt and much better for you.

Learning To Speak Garlic

A few bundles of garlic and bulbils tagged and tied waiting to be hung up to dry. Some will be used for food other for next year's crop.

One of the best things about writing on this blog is that it forces me to learn more about what I do through reading and closer observation so that I can post, hopefully, factual information. Thus my horizons are expanded and perhaps someone else out there learns a little with me. If I come across as knowledgeable in some of these posts, beware, a few years of gardening does not make for an expert. I am green, you could say a gardening infant struggling to grasp the many and varied concepts involved in this most challenging of tasks. There are other bloggers far more insightful than I, some having more experience, others are just plain smarter. Tenacity is my talent, and an insatiable drive to learn more about that which I love. So, with that in mind, here is what I think I might now know about MY garlic.

My ever present assistant displaying garlic ready to be harvested. Can you believe I used to be a dog person, what's happened to me?


We harvested a little less than 1/3 of our garlic today, roughly 200 bulbs. The majority get a little less sun due to overhanging trees and will not be ready for another week or two. Once approximately half of the leaves have turned brown and the scapes have straightened out it is time to pick garlic. At this point the underground bulb should be separated into cloves and have a firm skin wrapped about them. We harvested Nootka Rose, German Porcelain, and Chesnok Red, the latter two being hardneck varieties and all three new to our little garden. "Mike's hardneck garlic", having long forgotten the original name, and a few elephant garlic plants make up the remaining 2/3 left to be pulled.

This is a nice specimen reflecting bulb separation and a good storage skin


A bundle of Chesnok Red being set aside for next year's garlic


Normally I plant one type of garlic sometime in September and harvest and dry them in early to mid August, paying little attention to the subtle nuances associated with the plant. This year, due to the various types we are growing, I decided to learn more so that I could speak, if you will, garlic talk. I learned that basically there are two types of garlic, hardneck and softneck both having different classifications.

Our three hardneck varieties are classified as rocambole, porcelain, and purple stripe. Rocambole garlic has a thinner skin, strong flavor, and the scape will often form a double loop. The porcelain type has a thick white skin, fewer larger cloves (ours contain 4 per bulb), stores well and also has a strong, sometimes hot flavor. Purple stripe garlic has striped colorful wrappers, milder flavor, and is supposed to be excellent for roasting. The hardneck varieties have a hard stem or neck and are known for their scapes and bulbils and have anywhere from 4-12 cloves per bulb.

Our softneck variety, Nootka Rose, does not normally (though two of them did) produce a seed head or bulbils. This silverskin garlic can be easily braided, has superior storage qualities, seems to have a much stronger flavor then its hardneck brethren, and produces many more cloves per bulb. Regardless of the information regarding storage, our original hardneck variety "Mike's" stored for a good 9 months last year. We planted the extras this spring and should be able to harvest them soon, they do not appear to be as large as the fall planted garlic though. One a side note, I did find the harvest of the softneck garlic to be a little annoying as the stems easily broke off and had to be carefully dug rather then easily pulled as the hardneck was.

Large bulbils formed on the head of one of "Mike's" garlic scapes

Small bulbils of the German Porcelain garlic


If allowed, the hardneck garlic will form pig tailed scapes that can be cut at an early tender stage and cooked for a delightful garlicky treat. We simply fry them with onions and morel mushrooms...ambrosia. If the scapes are left to further develop they produce bulbils of various sizes that can either be eaten or replanted in the fall or spring. These will produce a decent size clove in 2 or 3 years depending upon the bulbils size, we will be trying this with our garlic this year. Many an article states that if one cuts a garlic top before it develops into a scape the bulb will be larger, I have done this over the years and have yet to see a noticeable difference. This is perhaps due to good soil fertility, I'm really not sure.

A scape that is a little past its prime on a spring planted garlic


We will plant the best of these same cloves sometime in September depending upon the weather. In colder regions garlic is normally planted in the fall in order for the root to begin to develop, this helps the garlic get off to a good start the following spring. It's best to wait until just before planting to separate the cloves as this keeps the root bud from drying out allowing the garlic to set roots sooner.

Right now our garlic has been hung to dry or cure on our porch and will soon be joined by those that were left behind. This is where they will remain until we move them into baskets in a cool dry back room for winter storage, our garlic room's temperature is kept at around 40-45° most of the storage year. One of the nice things about heating solely with wood and pellets is that it removes much of the humidity from the air making for an excellent environment for the storage of garlic and squash.

The first batch of garlic curing on our porch


Well, in brief, that's what I have learned about my garlic thus far. In years to come I hope to become not only more proficient in the growing of garlic but knowledgeable in the various facets of home grown garlic production. The eventual goal being to develop a more consistent garlic bulb that not only keeps well but has larger, more pungent cloves for cooking.

The flower of an elephant garlic, not a true garlic but actually a type of leek

An Abundance of Berries

We have been picking raspberries daily now for almost two weeks. The seedy and uniquely flavored black raspberries come on quick and are gone within a month, they're my favorites. While our everbearing red ones produce from mid June all the way into the first part of October on a good year. The hearty fall gold berries are just beginning to show and will also be available well into early autumn. Most of these berries will be frozen and used with kefir to make morning smoothies and the occasional dessert (crisp)...yum. The fresh berries are included in our salads, wild huckleberries are especially good that way.

This is one of the best years we have had for the various raspberries we grow. It helps to take the sting out of the total lack of currants this year, almost all of which were knocked of the bushes in an early spring hail storm. Although we should have some blackberries this year they also felt Mother Nature's harshness this past winter as heavy wet snow took its toll on them, breaking many of the canes. I should have cut them back more as I did with the raspberries.

Is it obvious yet that we love berries? I could live without a lot of things but never berries, be they from the wild or our garden. Nutritionally speaking raspberries and all berries for that matter are high in various vitamins and antioxidants, but don't forget to use the leaves as well. Raspberry leaves contain, calcium, potassium, magnesium, iron, B1, B3, E and many other beneficial constitutes.

Raspberry leaves have been used by Native American woman and others throughout history as an aid in childbirth. Not only for humans this is supposed to be an excellent herb to use on pregnant animals as well. Apparently it tones the uterus, improves contractions, and helps restore numerous vitamins, minerals, and is a rich source of easily assimilated calcium for the mother and newborn.

We have begun using the leaves in salads and teas for the vitamin C and calcium content. I am a big believer in vitamin C that has been derived fresh from plants. Truly, a little raw garlic, French or wild sorrel (high in C), and a few Oregon grapes eaten every day or so and I can't remember the last time I had a cold or flu. At this point I don't even shy away from others that are sick...watch, now I've surely just jinxed myself.:)

The young leaves are best used fresh but can also be dried for later use. We dice them up and add them to our daily salads or steep a few leaves in boiling water for tea. Like clover, this also makes a really great sun tea (wild huckleberry leaves can also be made into a fine healthful tea).

Peppermint and sage steeping for this morning's tea.

Black raspberries or black caps also grow wild throughout Northern Idaho and my backyard. I am very careful to keep them away from my garden variety as they sometimes carry diseases.

The fall gold berries can be very productive and have a great flavor.

In the below picture I am standing next to the thorny fall gold berries, some will get 9' or taller. Picking them can be a real challange.

Spilanthes, the Toothache Plant

Another one of the new herbs we are growing this year is called Spilanthes, a warm weather perennial also known as the toothache plant. The leaves and flowers contain natural pain relief agents that numb the gums when chewed helping to relieve toothaches and mouth sores. The herb is also reported to have significant anti-inflammatory properties, may help prevent Lyme disease, work as an immune system enhancer, and can be used as topical treatment for wounds and skin irritations. The list goes on. The more I look into this interesting little herb the more useful properties I uncover.

Keeping in mind that it seems like every herb has a massive list of highly questionable benefits, I must say that having chewed one of the leaves it does numb one's mouth, the cone shaped flowers are especially ...uh, let's just say interesting. I would describe the feeling as that of consuming the children's fizzy Zotz candy with a numbing effect, and then you start to drool...green. Apparently the flower head is a little more potent than the leaves. The dried flower is supposed to remain effective for over a year. I think I will dry a few of the flowers and test them on the next victim of a sore throat I come across...that would most likely be my grandson. Oh William! I have something that could cure that right up.:)

On a side note, this herb was easily grown from seed and transplanted into the garden. Sometimes you order these herbs and they can be a real chore to get started, stevia is always that way for me. Spilanthes seems to enjoy the same growing medium as basil and I've read it can easily be propagated from cuttings, I may give that a whirl next season. Yes, it's worth growing again as I can really appreciate an herb that actually lives up to some of the magical ballyhoo that has been proclaimed about it.

July 22nd Garden Pictures

Click to enlarge four nectar seekers riding a wild cow parsnip.↓

As the week progresses we will be closing in on 100° temperatures. The food gardens have been thriving with growth and if they make it through these hot spells and into August we may be in for a really good harvest this season. So far I have never had any issues with the weather in August and always breath a sigh of relief once we have reached that mile mark. The weeds are now under control and need only be pulled occasionally as we stroll through our little oasis in the trees.

The tomatoes, let me rephrase that... one of our tomatoes has finally ripened. As was the case in previous years the extremely hardy yet delicious Bloody Butcher tomato was the first to cross the finish line. They are an heirloom indeterminate plant whose fruit ripens quickly and are probably my favorite all around tomato for all the above mentioned reasons.


This section of the garden contains around 47 of the embarrassingly ridiculous number of tomato plants we are attempting to grow this year.


The Painted Mountain corn all adorned in tassels is doing well, while the Blue Jade is off to a rather slow start. Will this be the year Mike (that's me:) has planted corn that not only grows tall and green but also forms an edible grain? We shall see.


I've had to plant and replant the cabbage a bit this spring but it is looking good now. We are growing Ruby Ball, Derby Day, Savoy Perfection, Copenhagen, Danish Ballhead, and Late Flat Dutch this year. The picture below is where the majority are grown but like the tomatoes we have them scattered in various locations all over the gardens.

This beauty is from my own saved seed, and is a cross between a couple unknown cabbages. It was one of the two cabbages to survive winter storage in 2007 and was planted last spring and allowed to form seed, as I did not plan on saving seed from them my records regarding variety were nil.

Someday I may make my own website just so I can get the pictures to show properly. This once nice shot depicts a row of beets, celery, celeriac, and garlic.

Same crops, different angle.

Strawberries, Belgian endive, Purple Peacock broccoli, and a few sunflowers.

The row below is dedicated to seeds, the front part is comprised of various salad greens and further back there are carrots, beets, Umpqua broccoli, celery, Belgian endive and other plants becoming seedy. It was a real mental struggle to dedicate a 50' row in the main garden for seed purposes. I'm glad I did, but watching a entire row just sit there knowing it will only produce seed at the end of the year is definitely challenging. I think that pretty much every row in our gardens have a couple plants set aside for seed saving, that's how I normally do it. Don't be fooled by the onions in the pictures, they are not for seed they're bolting. ugh!! No big deal though, this row was planted with set onions and it's mostly the red ones that have chosen to bolt?

This section contains flax and onions grown from seed, not sets, for winter storage that thankfully are not bolting.

Litchi tomatoes, purple & green tomatillos, and ground cherries are doing well except I mixed up a few of the tags and we seem to have a lot fewer ground cherries and Cape gooseberries than I had originally planned on. Oops.

Squash, zucchini, and a few kohlrabi.

Cucumbers, Mexican sour gherkins, peppers, eggplants and the last of the afila peas drying on the vine...for seeds.

My assistant keeping an ever watchful eye on the red Belgium peppers and me.

We are still harvesting kale and broccoli for the freezer. The jar contains clover sun tea in the making.

And last but most importantly a parting shot of our seedy salad garden with raspberries and blackberries at the far end. Then there are the sunchokes, potatoes, herbs, beans, and a whole lot of other veggies that will have to wait for another post...Ay yi yi.