January 17, 2010

/Sigh it has been forever since I've been here.  Mostly I've been away spending time with the family and looking unsuccessfully for work.  The rest of the reason is that I haven't had much to say gardening wise.  I've been content reading my friend's blogs. 

Until tomorrow (hopefully), the only gardening thing I've done besides helping my eldest pick a carrot from the garden for dinner or a snack is to write an article for Patti's e-zine.   It was on indoor gardening under lights and should be coming out in February.  Tomorrow I hope to take some time to start some lettuce seeds to germinate and grow under lights.  It is time to do that finally.  I am not sure if I will use my self-watering window boxes or one of my soil blocks for these.  I wanted to use the window boxes for mint and other herbs this year to keep them from spreading, but I like the idea of being able to move the lettuce indoors if we get another cold front move in.  We've already had a week of 18 degree nights (never happens here).  It killed everything in the garden.  I would love to be able to bring in the lettuce on those nights if it happens again.



The real reason for my post tonight is that I'm excited to bake bread again.  Some may remember last year when I made a sourdough starter and tried my hand at no-kneed sourdough bread.  It worked ok, but I never really mastered it before my starter died.  I just wasn't consistent keeping it up. 

Well, my brother found a recipie for easy no-kneed bread in Mother Earth News.  It takes all of 5 minutes to make enough dough to last a week and make 5 rounds, pizza crust or other breads.  Do that once a week and know that the kids are eating healthy fresh bread.

Lastly, my brother and I are going in on our Territorial Seed order this year to save on shipping.  We did it last year and it worked great.  I don't really need much as I intend to just grow what we can consume, with any extra possibly put up.  I got more carrots, broccoli, lettuce, cauliflower, peas and some herbs.

I hope you are getting geared up for spring if it fits your climate, or at least planning for spring.  I expect to start posting again as often as makes sense.

Enjoy your garden!

September 7, 2008

Not really sure why I broke up these two posts, but there's just a lot going on, so make sure you check out yesterday since I just posted it, hehe.

This post will be about my garden and bread.  I'll start with the bread to make sure the gardeners actually read it.

I'm not sure what happened with the bread this time.  The dough did rise high up the sides of that Tupperware bowl.  However, when I turned it out on the well flowered board, it stuck firm and was messy.  As a result, the dough didn't fold as much as it was molded and squished into a square.  Even the dough blade got coated and sticky.  Grrr. 

I had hoped to try DoubleD's method (I've been messaging her countless times over the last two days, THANK YOU!).  She uses a clay baker, but upside down.  Her bell pot is down with the flat bottom as a lid.  I figured that's how she gets her bread so tall.  I've since figured that I was mistaken, it doesn't help much. It's just her vast experience.  I had planned on using a pyrex bowl, covered with my pizza stone, to recreate it.  Unfortunately I only have one bowl of that size, so I couldn't bake with it since I used it for the final proof.  The problem is that I couldn't preheat the dish and use it for the final proof.  Silly me.  So I went back to the old standby. 

And yet again, the bread stuck to the pizza stone.  I wonder if folks oil it or not.  Not sure.  It's just really annoying to have to scrape it off.  I did salvage the bottom crust this time though.  Unfortunately, it was think and a bit over browned. Again, not sure why.  Not particularly logical, but whatever.  It still tastes great!



It's also a bit hollow inside.  More experimentation is in order, and maybe some emails to Eric at Breadtopia.  And what the heck, it's only a little flour, natural gas and time.

So, now on to my garden.  I'll finish up this post with a garden tour.



I'm getting more and more tomatoes ripening, this nice weather really is doing the trick!



And see all the new green bean production!  I just harvested last week or so!



The cukes keep plugging away.  I even saw a ton of new females starting to form.  Soon I'll be able to play matchmaker again.

And for the grand finale, I was almost done with my broccoli that I'd harvested, you know, the one EG was drooling over.  Well, I think he flew over here and harvested it.  And didn't do a good job of doing so.  Look at it!



Sure enough, some coon got past my ancient Shake Away application and found the broccoli too tasty to pass up.  Grrr.  I was looking forward to it.  So I put down another layer of Shake Away.  If I can track back to the last time I put it down, I'll know about how long it lasts.

Enjoy your garden!

September 6, 2008

Saturday was tons fo fun.  We took a trip to the mountains and it was a beautiful day.  It was a perfect hike for the kids.  It was a 1.5 mile hike with a moderate climb using log stairs to get up in elevation, and ended at Franklin Falls.  The trip wasn't bad, we took our time so the kids could walk.  No stroller this time, which is a good thing due to the stairs.  I hope you'll allow me to share some great pics from the trip...



Here is a view from the trial which followed Denny Creek up to the falls.  It is typical PNW beauty with the rock carved ravine with the trees growing out of the rock.  Very cool to share with the kids!



Here is he view down Denny Creek from the base of the...





Waterfall...  It was cool. Literally.  The weather was in the mid 70s but the water hitting the shallow pool created a permanent mist.  It was nice, but this next shot, the obliglitory shot of the "boys" proving we were there, shows that my eldest was getting cold after about 30 minutes playing in the rocky beach.



Really, the kids were actually having a good time, it just wasn't good to ask them to look directly into the sun to take a picture, hehe.  I was proud of my eldest, who is a bit "cautious" made it down a very trecherous carved rock path down to the creek floor.  It was damp and slippery, so I got a chance to teach him not to step on wet rocks and not to take a step until you had a solid foot under you.

That evening, my wife went to a Mariner's game and I started a loaf of bread for baking Sunday.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten my starter out overnight on Friday after I doubled it with barely enough room at the top to stir.  By the evening, I looked at it and found that the seal wasn't as good as I thought it was.  Not only did it burst the seam, but it spewed sticky starter all over the top of my fridge.  Man is that stuff tough to clean up!



After clean-up, I decided this time to experiment with a steeper walled bowl.



Enjoy the three posts!

September 5, 2008

Today was fun. Play date with the kids and the play group. I was the only father there so I did all the heavy lifting and pushing on swings.  Kind of tiring, but fun.



Today was simply watering the garden. Not sure why, but my water pressure has dropped off tremendously for no reason.  If my water usage skyrockets, I guess I'll know I've got a leak, but there's nothing running that we know of.  Grrr. I liked our pressure.  Without it my hose pressure is nada. 

I've got several tomatoes ready for harvest, but my brother didn't come over and trade me lettuce so I'm holding off harvesting them.  I figure they're helping to throw of the gases that will ripen more fruit.  It's a thought.

I did bake a loaf of bread.  However, due to the play date schedule coinciding with the bread process, I "adjusted" it slightly.

First off, I cut the 18 hour rise by an hour.



I also figured out that the big rise doesn't happen because the wide bowl.  Next time I'll use a steep sided bowl to make my bread so that may help the final thickness.

So I did the folding and 15 minute rise while we were getting the kids ready for the park and my wife went out and got cheap bread to feed the ducks.



I think it looks better than the first time at this point.  Unforunately, we left right after I put the blob in a bowl for the 1 and a half hour final proof. 



Three hours later, I preheated the oven and accidently flipped the dough onto the edge of pizza stone and the crock pot liner crimped the edge. 

Since the last time I got burnt bread (that still tasted good), this time I cooked it at 475 then dropped it to 450 like normal for the last 15 minutes.  This time we got golden brown perfect bread.



Looks good doesn't it?  Only problem is that the bread wouldn't come off the stone.  It was fused.  I tried for 15 minutes to scrape it off. In the end we just ate it off the stone, leaving the bottom crust.  It still tasted great!  I wonder if it was stuck because I washed off the crumbs from the last loaf an hour before I baked.  I decided then that I should get the silly cloche thing.  So I checked the net to see if I could get it cheaper than $40.  So I'm cheap.  The economy sucks and I would like to keep as much as possible.  Unfortunately I couldn't find it for sale on Amazon, Ebay or anywhere on google/yahoo.  Well I did find a link to Breadtopia's site.  So I checked there and found out the company that makes them. So I went to their site and go figure, the same thing cost $50.  Eric must get a special volume discount. 

So, we're going on a hike tomorrow.  It's steeper, but shorter.  We'll see.  Afterwards we'll swing by the outlet mall to see if I can get one of these things cheaper.  I don't think I'll get a dutch oven.  Too much work to keep it clean.  If I can't find it, I'll order it from Eric. He's been a big help and deserves it.

So, back to the garden, when do you thin?  This time I was tired of duds so I planted multiple seeds of lettuce and carrots.  Now I've got crowding and need to thin. I've got the first leaves but no true leaves, should I wait til that happens or pull the weakest now?  Thoughts?

Enjoy your garden and weekend!

September 4, 2008

Well, the kids are asleep and all 17 pics are uploaded to Photobucket and I'm jammin out to my mellow mix of music while I fit a busy, but fun, day into this post.  Join me will you?

The morning was a happy one after sleeping in only to find that we were the proud owners of a new Blendtec blender.  3 HP of indestructible power! MUAHAHAHA! Jen, bring it on! Will It Blend here we come! Um, well, maybe we should stick to the "Try this at home" side.  hehe. Here's a shot of me starting to make smoothies with it.



So far, I'm still working it out.  Maybe I'm filling it too much, or not adding enough water for it, or need to pulse it a bit at the end, but the top doesn't get the vortex I'm used to to make sure all the fruit is blended.  Time will work it out though. It still rocks!

So, after a fun lunch at the park with the preschool folks and kids (great fun was had by all), we came home and took advantage of the weather to wash the car.



Really, I didn't make my son wash the cars, he just played while I did the washing.  Afterwards, I watered the garden and took some time to snap some pics for you all.



I call this the wall of produce.  The beans are still not regrown enough to harvest, but I got 4 pounds out of them the other day.  And you can see several tomatoes ready to harvest.  Maybe I'll barter some lettuce from my brother's garden for some bread tomorrow. Oh, I'm getting ahead of myself.  But I've got cukes and tomatoes, just no lettuce for a salad...



Here's a close up of my tomatoes. You can see tons ready or close to ready, including some Momomatoes, which have been totally green to-date.  They have however, broken branches with their weight. I keep threading them back through the trellis to support them, but they keep coming out.  Grrr.



And here you can see the spinach doing well behind their shade to keep them from bolting in the late summer sun.  Not sure if it works but it's worth a try.  You can also see where I got poor germination and had to replant on the left.  The seedlings are just now coming up.  Behind them are my bush beans that I've not pulled, thinking they may regrow some more.  If not, they're fixing the nitrogen for me, perfect for helping the spinach grow huh?!

And behind the beans, I did a no-no and replanted peas after I yanked peas out of there a few weeks ago.  I don't have any other place to plant them.  So I mixed in compost and free fertilizer (aka Starbucks garden grounds), and replanted.  I don't know if you can see it in the picture or not, but I've got good sprouting going on.



Now I just need to take down that trellis and put up a single-bed one before they reach this trellis.  Come on cukes, tomatoes and beans... peter out already.  I don't want to yank healthy plants.



Speaking of cukes, look how they're overgrowing the onions.  Anyone need any green onions?  Come and get them.  We can't eat them fast enough and I want their spaces for more cauliflower.  Hehe  Can you see the tiny cukes growing? I've had great success hand polinating the female cukes. I'm impressed at my beginner's luck.  Here's what a few days growth will do for cuke growth...



Give these guys a week and they'll be ready to harvest.  I may just keep throwing them into the pot knowing that they'll not quite be as strong as the original batch.  Not sure.  But aren't they cute?!

And on the other side of the yard, here's the potato jungle that's finally showing some minor signs of dying.  Of course I've withheld water other than the rain we've gotten.  Not sure if it's premature or not, maybe DoubleD can lend some of her experience to this one...



Now the yukon golds I am pretty sure they're done, if there are any in there. I said the other day I dug down and found nothing.  I think I'll pull a board and see what I find.



Just think of seeing these two bins next to each other. Kind of a ying and yang.  Although, in the middle is a SWC with three little cantaloupe plants that are giving it their all to try to produce for me.  Way to go guys!



No idea why it's so blury.  But you can see the flowers beginning to open.  I just hope they stick around until the females show up to the dance!

Ok, now, if you're here for my garden, then go ahead and stop now and come back tomorrow.  If you're Susan, keep reading because I took your advice and am providing step-by-step shots of my bread making.  My mother tried my bread and took the rest of it home with her to share with my Aunt and Dad.  So we're out and I needed to bake more.  No problem, I wanted to try to get the process down so I get a light fluffy golden brown loaf. 

So last night I pulled my starter from the fridge and fed it an equal amount of wheat flour.  This morning I found this...



I couldn't believe how much it grew!  It nearly reached the top of the lid, more than doubling in volume.  Very cool.  Just what I wanted to see in my bread. 

So here's me starting with 5 ounces of wheat flower, about to add 11 ounces of bread flour...



You can also see where I mixed in 1/4th cup of deflated starter into 1 1/2 cup of my spring water.



This time when I added the slurry I used a spoon rather than a wisk.  I think it worked better.  Of course I finished up with working it with my fingers.



Then I covered the wet blob with plastic wrap and this time I set the timer for 18 hours.



Tomorrow morning after breakfast I'll bake bread for lunch!  I can't wait. This time should be better! If you're wishing you could smell and taste the bread through the computer, it's easy, make your own!

And above all... enjoy your garden!

September 3, 2008

Well, today felt wierd.  The weather's great and I've got the next few days off.  I can't believe I've got a summer!  I don't know what to do with myself?

Tonight was a race to get to preschool orientation.  This is the first year both my boys will be at school, just not in the same class.  Logan is chomping at the bit to get back, and I heard from his friends parents that they're anxious to play with him, which was good to hear.  And Owen is so ready to go to school, he already knows the songs and even knows his way around the school (shh, he's not supposed to have been there), hehe.  Anyway, the new parents are great overall, tons of new folks, which is important to us as my wife's the chair of the board. 

Anyway, my mother reports that the blackberries are ready to start to pick, so I'll get out the machette and help her this weekend.  I can't wait to harvest away and then hack back a third of of the bramble to start the three year pruning cycle!  My main concern is that Mother Nature will give us enough harvest to keep us in my favorite jelly for the next year.

Researching local Freedom Gardeners I found a novice homesteader (Sandygogreen) in Woodinville that's really going all out right off the bat. Brave of them, but increadible results.  Ah to work in the software industry.  I love what they've done with their property.  It's going to be amazing when it's all teaming with life!

I also found the Shibaguyz of Seattle that have nearly 30 containers in their townhome back yard getting local and national attention.  Pretty amazing!  In reading up about them, it seems there is a movement to revive Victory Gardens.  Though I like the PTF folk's Freedom Gardens moniker better, a rose is a rose.  I also found that our state's Senator Maria Cantwell is on the agricultural committee that controls things like gardens nationally.  I may very well drop her a note to make sure she knows the benefits of growing at least a portion of your own food and trying to eat locally (otherwise known as the 100 foot and 100 mile diet).  Apparently if every family in the U.S. ate one meal a week locally, we'd reduce our dependence on foreign oil by 1.1 million barrels for every week that happened!  Very cool.

So, this weekend I've got off, and I hope to harvest blackberries, more cukes, beans, tomatoes, onions and broccoli.  And maybe I'll pull a lower board and check for potatoes.  Not sure.  I will defintely install my hoop cover brackets on my beds and cut my plastic to fit for ease of setup later.  You never know when a frost will hit once October rolls around.

On the pickling front, the pot smells JUST like dill pickles now, which is a very good sign since it's only been a week, not a month. 

As for my bread baking, my mother tried my bread and loved it, so she took home the rest of the loaf to let my dad and aunt try it.  That means I need to bake more.  Great! I was looking forward to perfecting the process to get the best results.  If first you don't succeed, try, try again, and gain weight from all the "failures", hehe.

Well, it's late, so off I go.  Enjoy your garden!

September 1, 2008 *Bread Post*

Today I woke up at 7 and started my baking process.  It had been just over 18 hours and although the bread hadn't risen quite like the Breadtopia video, but it was either toss it and start over next weekend or give it a go.  I chose the later.  This is a separate post because today was insanely busy and productive, and Susan wanted a step by step pictorial.  You asked and you shall receive... besides, this isn't exactly a gardening post.  Ignore it if you don't care about bread making.

First, I turned out the blob onto the well floured board...



So far so good.  Then as the instructions said, i flowered it and pressed it out into a rectangle.



I sure hope all my pics today don't turn out blurry.  This is annoying.  So after this, it was easy to fold into thirds, then half the other way, and then cover with plastic.



Then, since I didn't spend money on a rattan basket, but did run out and get wheat germ to sprinkle on a towel and then put into a bowl to give it the basket shape... creative I thought.



After an hour and a half and preheating the oven and my make-shift la cloche made out of a pizza stone and a crock pot liner.  I worried the whole time that it would break being empty, but it held.  Funny thing is that the silicon oven mits stuck to the liner great when cold, but they slipped off at 500 degrees.  Boy was it hard.  I need to get something better.

After 45 minutes of baking, I threw it on a cooling rack for a few hours...



Unfortunately, it came out a bit dark and a bit flat.



But it still tasted great!  And based on DoubleD's comment, flat happens here.  And I thought I let it rise overnight too long.  Anyway, it's worth trying again.  That is, after this loaf is done.  It's a keeper!

Good luck with your own bread, find out more at Breadtopia.com!

August 31, 2008

Good day, good day.  The weather cooperated, though I didn't get much done in the garden.  I did dig around about a foot down into my yukon gold bed and didn't find anything.  I was afraid to dig too much so I gave up.  Whatever's in there will hold for a while so I'm going to let them cook a bit more.  I may even cover them to keep the rain from providing irrigation. 

But good news, I found flowers on my cantaloupe! Tomorrow they should be big enough to tell if they're male or female.  Of course they should be male first, followed by females a few weeks later.  But you can bet I'll be hand pollinating any female flower I find!



We also were hoping to pick some berries or maybe harvest some plums, but their not ready yet.  DoubleD's right when she says in years past we'd have harvested all there was to harvest by now.  Here's to hoping there will be plums and blackberries to harvest this year. Without it, there will be no PB&J sandwiches for a year, for my kids or I.  Yep, I regularly eat them for lunches or even dinners if I get home way late.  But I can't remember when I've had store-bought jam or jelly, and I'm not going to start now.

Speaking of preserving, we did harvest five more mini-cukes for pickling.  Then, for the larger ones, we cut them into fourths (wedges) and started the pickling process.  To begin with, we mixed up the pickling spices from a recipie found on the net and raiding my mother's and brother's spice racks.



The only things we're misisng here is Mace (whatever that is), and dill seed (we figured we had fresh).  Then we cut up the cucumbers...



The next step was to layer cucumbers, spices and dill.  But wait, I've got to show you my farmer's market dill find (thanks to my brother for calling me to tell me about it). It's so tall it took two pictures to get it all in, hehe.





That's right, they were 3 feet tall and my house smelled like dill even before I started marinading.  So here's one of the layers of pickles to be...



Note that we threw in six cloves of garlic from my brother's garden, then came the thick layer of fresh dill.  I had more than needed so I laid it on heavy. Why not?



So, now that mix is marinading in vinegar and that mess for the next 4 weeks in the garage with a plate weighed down to keep it submerged. It says it will have foaming and scum.  So in anticipation of that, my corn pot (I'm not needing that this season /sigh) is resting in a pastry/cookie sheet.  The mix smells great!  Much better on my wife than the bread and butters did.

We also would love to can some beans since I've got far too many to eat for all three of our families.  But all my mother's canning books say you need to use a pressure cooker to preserve any veggie without acid in it.  We don't have a pressure cooker. Anyone experienced with preserving know of a way to can beans or the like without a pressure cooker?  The last thing I need is MORE kitchen tools.

Anyway, in case you thought I just sat around eating bon bons the rest of the day, I also started making a loaf of no-kneed sourdough bread.  And my mother is pleased that her white flour starter is 90% ready for her to take home.  But since you're probably tired of the progression shots, here is the current finished product. 



It needs to sit under plastic for 18 hours.  Tomorrow morning I'll do the final proof and bake it!  I can't wait.  Tonight I thought of something. We've got that rosemary plant that's taking over our yard. I bet that would be great in sourdough bread.  The possibilities are endless.  Now if only I can bake it without my make-shift cloche breaking on me.

Also, I took a few more pics of my garden.  Enjoy...

Here are some tomatoes that are almost done...



And here is a funny S'shaped broccoli plant that grew leggy behind the cauliflower.  It's twin we harvested tonight and I essentially boiled it in the microwave along with some frozen corn for the rest of the family and it was very tasty!  Yay!  It may not be as healthy as lightly steaming it, but if I'm eating it, it's better than nothing.  Same will go for the beans thanks to the peanut gallery!



And here are Judy's marigolds.  Funny that my brother hadn't heard of marigolds as an amazing companion plant. But they're pretty also.  At least I think so.



However, if they're supposed to draw in bees to pollinate anything, it's not working. hehe\

Lastly, I've been hanging out at Freedomgardens.org with some new local and not-so-local garden buddies, most of whom are either existing or homesteaders in training, so I'm learning a ton.  Anyway, there was talk about clothes lines for drying laundry, and how they're hit and miss in the PNW where it can rain at a moment's notice.  Tough to get your clothes dry if they get wet.  Here's what we've done to dry almost all our shirts, pants and some other laundry.



It was a quick re-build after my father grabbed a hold of it to keep from falling off a ladder, ripping the old one from the ceiling.  It works. Cheap PVC desigend to fit a very small laundry room! 

Yeah, I know, this is a gardening blog, so why am I bothering with making bread, pickles and saving energy.  Tis the season for saving money and preserving what we grow. 

Hope you enjoy it!