Trying a New Variety

I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that for the last 20 years we have sweet potatoes that come up volunteer each and every year.  We never have to plant them and yet receive a nice harvest every fall.  It all started from composting one Beauregard Sweet Potato.  That one sweet potato expanded and multiplied.  To that, we added an heirloom variety called Golden Wonder, that we picked up from a guy called "The Barefoot Gardener" in Tennessee.  The Golden Wonders were prolific, producing a nice tasting sweet potato, but not as rich of a color and flavor as the Beauregard.  To add insult to injury, the Golden Wonder's crowded out the Beauregards.

Just to the east and north of us in a community between Evangeline and Iota is a farming family named Garber.  Everyone else around here grows rice.  They grow sweet potatoes.  I picked up a box of a variety they grow called Evangeline from our local feed store.  Admittedly, I purchased them to eat.  We made sweet potato fries, and I'll vouch for the flavor.  Yum!  But the other reason I bought the box was to attempt to get a local variety growing in our garden again.

No matter how thorough you are when digging sweet potatoes, you always miss a root.  From that root comes new sweet potato plants.  Here is a Golden Wonder growing up this spring.  My idea this year is to pull up 2/3's of these to allow room for the Evangeline's to get a foothold.

I picked out eight sweet potatoes from the box that were on the smaller side - we want to eat the big ones!  I also picked the ones that had "slips" or sprouts growing out from one end.

This sprout will grow out a vine.  Now you can put the sweet potato in water and the slips will grow out.  You can then clip them and they'll develop roots and grow.  I think I'm just going to plant the potato whole.  That's what we did with the Beauregard a long time ago and it grew without planting individual slips.  We'll see if this works.

I dug a shallow hole in the north part of the garden and planted the potatoes with the sprouts sticking up.

I watered them in and marked where I planted them with blue flags.

I'll keep a close eye on them.  We will hopefully experience a good growth of the Evangeline variety of sweet potato in our garden, allowing them to establish themselves so we can enjoy them year after year.

A Manicured Lawn

Someone showed me a funny meme the other day that showed a manicured lawn as compared to a beekeeper's lawn.  The manicured lawn was immaculate - not a blade of grass out of place, cut short.  Then the beekeeper's yard showed tall weeds and wildflowers.  So true!  We put off mowing our yard for a plethora of reasons.  First, the white dutch clover is flowering along with many other wildflowers, and the bees love them.  Second, our bees don't like the sound and vibration of the lawnmower.  They chase me and sting me.  Third, my lawnmower is broken and I need to try and figure out the electrical issue that won't let the mower blades engage.  Finally, we always like to wait and rotate the cows through the yard and eat the spring grass.  I think the record-setting year was one year when we didn't mow the grass until May!

For some of our long-time readers, I apologize.  This is a redundant post as we seem to make this post each and every year.  We have a Gallagher solar fence charger with some temporary step-in posts.  I break up the yard into different paddocks and unroll the poly wire using a ratchet reel.  Over the years, the cows have learned the sound of the reel clicking and, like Pavlov's dogs, they begin mooing LOUDLY when they hear the clicking of the ratchet reel unrolling the poly wire.

 And so it begins...  I moved Rosie and LuLu into the first paddock.  They excitedly run around, scoping out the various types of grasses, like you and I might scope out a buffet table.  They settle for the white Dutch clover first.  It's a favorite of theirs.

The cows have learned to have a healthy respect of the one strand of wire.  The solar powered charger pulses electricity through the line.  You only have to be stung by it once and you learn to avoid it.  I trust the charger, but I'd never leave the house with the cows in the yard.  I've learned to keep checking on the cows every few minutes.  One time after church, we were having pot roast and rice & gravy when someone came knocking on our front door to warn us that the cows were out!  Not good.  

We generally leave the cows in the paddock in the yard for a full day.  At the end of the day, they have the yard clipped down pretty good.  They we'll put them back in the permanent pasture, roll up the fencing, pick up the posts and set up another paddock right next to it.  Over the course of a week, the grass will be all eaten throughout the entire yard.  It won't look like the putting green on a golf course, but much better than before the cows grazed all day on it.

Preserving an Excess of Cabbage and Carrots

We have an overabundance of cabbage and carrots in the outdoor fridge due to bumper crops from the garden.  We've been cooking Cabbage and Sausage jambalaya, Egg rolls, steamed cabbage, roasted cabbage, coleslaw, Cream of Carrot soup, raw carrots, roasted carrots and on and on.  There's still a lot left, but we have a plan.

We've got a couple of recipes for lacto-fermenting cabbage and carrots that we always do, so we got busy.  First we are going to make a Korean sauerkraut (Kimchi).  It involves shredding cabbage, carrots, radishes, garlic, green onions and grated jalapenos.  We doubled the recipe to make four quarts.

We like to use a big wooden masher tool to bruise the cabbage and carrots and get the juices flowing.  You would think that an enormous stainless steel bowl would keep the contents inside, but we made quite a mess in the kitchen with bits of vegetables flying all over the place.

We tightly pack the kimchi into wide mouth quart-sized Mason jars.  The juices from the crushed cabbage and carrots coat the kimchi.  We also add salt.

Finally, we add 2 tablespoons of whey to each jar.  The whey is a by-product of making yogurt or cheese, and it is a preservative.  

Kimchi is put together.  Now we'll do Ginger Carrots.  We began to shred carrots and a bunch of ginger.

We've got loads of carrots to shred.  Our food processor got a work-out today.

All the carrots and ginger was dumped in the big bowl, and I once again got busy with the potato masher, working and working to crush the carrots and release the flavorful juices.

We spooned the gingered carrots in 2 quart sized Mason jars and added 2 tablespoons of whey in each jar.  For both the kimchi and the gingered carrots, it's real important that your vegetables stay beneath the liquid.  We purchased some glass weights that work perfectly for keeping the kimchi and the carrots below the level of the liquid.

We'll leave these on the kitchen counter at room temperature for about 3 days and then we'll transfer to the fridge.  It'll keep there for months and months and, believe it or not, gets better with age.

Very tangy, fizzy, and flavorful.  Very healthy for you, too!  We still have more cabbage and carrots.  I told Tricia that she should make a carrot cake!

What Happens When You Rush Things

Gardening is an inexact science.  You win some and you lose some, and you definitely learn along the way.  For planting the spring garden, I use the average last frost date for our zip code.  Our average last frost date is March 22nd.  If you plant on March 22nd, you have only a 10% chance of getting a frost and injuring or killing your plants.  You can also use the Early last frost date.  That date is March 3rd.  If you plant on that date, you have a 30% chance of injuring/killing your plants.

Sometimes, I subscribe to the "you gotta risk it to get the biscuit" mentality.  I could gamble and plant early, right?  What could happen, really?  So, I pushed things this year, planting the snap beans, cucumbers, squash and cucumbers around March 10th.  Well...  Just so happens, it got down to 34 degrees.  I thought, incorrectly, that things would be okay.  We have lots of trees, the plants were mulched, they would make it.  I was busy doing other things and I didn't even go out and cover them.

All the plants were damaged!  Let's take a look.  Here are the snap beans.  The leaves are burned from the frost.  Fortunately, fresh new growth is being put on.  They'll be stunted, but most of the beans are going to make it.

But look at the cucumbers!  I have 3 varieties planted on a cattle panel trellis.  The cucumbers are hit a lot harder than the snap beans.  Honestly, I think I'll have to replant ALL of these except one on the very end.  I don't know how it avoided the damage.  I will wait for 3 more days to see if any new growth appears.  Then if nothing happens, I'll pull the trigger and replant.

This third photo shows the severely damaged squash, including hills of zucchini, straightneck yellow squash and crookneck yellow squash.  This right here was my main reason for rushing things.  I figured if I got a really early start, I could avoid the squash vine borers.  This pest usually kills all of my squash.  I theorized that by getting a jump on things, I could make a big harvest of squash before the onslaught of the SVBs.  The squash was absolutely beautiful, with big, healthy green leaves.  They would have been blooming in a week.  Then the temperatures dropped and all of the big leaves turned brown and died.

But I'm hopeful.  I see fresh new green growth.  There's an old adage that says, "That which does not kill you, makes you stronger."  If there's any truth to that, perhaps we'll have a strong squash crop.  We'll wait and see.

Finally, in the garden in the side yard, here are my butternut squash and spaghetti squash.  Burned by the frost? Sure.  But these plants will live to fight another day!

There are significant benefits to getting things planted early.  You get plants that produce prior to fighting the high heat and bug and pest pressure.  But there is significant downside risk that may cause you to have to replant everything.  Fortunately, I don't think that is possible.  However, I'm pretty sure I'll be replanting all the cucumbers.  I will try to rush things and plant early again, I'm quite sure, but next time, I'll cover all of the plants.

The Last Hurrah for the Broccoli

The big broccoli heads have long been harvested.  About every other day, I walk down the broccoli row and snip off the florets.  We've had broccoli in our fridge non-stop for at least a couple of months because of this.  All good things must come to an end.  But it's not really the end, is it?  When the florets aren't harvested, they flower.  Beautiful yellow flowers fill the garden.  Broccoli seed pods are forming and when these ripen and turn brown, I'll save a multitude of seeds since these are non-hybrid.  It'll soon be time to remove the broccoli plants and plant another crop, I'm thinking peppers, to fill that spot.  The broccoli flowers, apart from being pretty, attract our honeybees which are located just west of the garden.  During the day, bees dart this way and that around the broccoli flowers.

I like to watch the bees hard at work pollinating, flying greedily from one flower to the next.  You can hear the buzz as they work.  What an industrious creature is the bee!

Busy as a bee!  You can see why that phrase is repeated.

Stay tuned for more reports on the bees.  We've got lots to tell you.  Bees moved back into our hollow column on the side porch.  We also have a couple of swarm traps set in the yard.  Finally, we'll be attempting on our second try to make splits.  More to come on all this later.

One Call, That's All

We are down to the last 20 square bales of hay up in the loft.  That's about a 10 day inventory.  We rolled out the last round bale of hay in early February.  The spring grass that's coming up in the pasture is being gobbled down just as quickly as it comes up.  I planted seven rows of turnips, so we're supplementing the cows and goat's hay and feed with turnips and turnip greens.  Probably this weekend, I'll put up the temporary electric fencing in the yard and let the cows graze down the winter grass and white Dutch clover growing in the yard.  It's a stretch to get us to spring when the grass comes in.

So for 'insurance' I called a friend that we always purchase our round bales from and on Saturday morning, he delivered 10 round bales to us.  We rolled them off of the trailer and lined them up ready to be rolled out to the cows and goats.  We may not even need these bales until late fall this year if the grass comes in, but it's best to have them just in case.

You can't just leave good hay exposed to the rain, sun and weather and expect to have good bales for your animals if you don't protect them.  Our old tarp made from a recycled outdoor billboard lasted 20 years before it deteriorated.  Time for a new one.  I went to the outdoor advertising office to inquire about buying one.  I found our that they don't sell them.  Somehow or another (thank you, Lord!) at the end of the conversation, the gentlemen kindly had me drive around back, and I loaded a HUMONGOUS tarp (recycled vinyl outdoor billboard) into the back of my car to take home.  As it turns out, I used to go to church with a nice lady that worked there at the billboard company.  

I got the sign (tarp) home and Saturday night I unrolled it and covered all ten bales with the new tarp.  The tarp should keep the hay well-protected and dry until we need to uncover and roll them out.  I need to do a better job of weighing down the tarp with something to keep it from blowing off of the hay in high winds. 

There's only one downside about the tarp:  It's the sign advertising the services of a personal injury lawyer.  "Hurt?  Call the hurtline."  "Call So and So and Get it Done"  "One call.  That's all."  Everyone's gotta make a living, I get it, but these guys are a prime reason why no one can afford car insurance.  I wish they'd all go away.  Since I don't want to see the ambulance chaser's face everyday telling me "no fee paid unless settlement is made," I think I'm going to flip the sign upside down tomorrow.

Besides the bright yellow sign is a little too gaudy.  The back side is white, I think, and will blend in a little better instead of standing out.  Have you ever wondered why billboard attorneys use signs with yellow, red, and black on them?  Studies have conclusively proven that billboards with yellow, red, and black backgrounds are the most eye-catching signs.  They grab your attention at high speeds because they contrast with most surroundings.  Red communicates urgency and excitement and passion, studies show.

Yeah, I'm flipping the sign over with the quickness.  We (and the cows) like a more peaceful, pastoral atmosphere.

Radishes - A New Way

Radishes are by far the easiest thing to grow in our garden.  They grow fast - and they'll get away from you.  Before you know it they are HUGE.  These are so big and ugly!

We eat them in salads, but mostly, we make a spicy radish dip.  We take about six of them and mince them up in a food processer along with 6 cloves of garlic.  Then we'll throw in a block of cream cheese.  Finally, we'll add salt, pepper, chili powder, paprika and some habanero pepper flakes.  That's it!  It makes a perfect dip for dipping cut up carrots into or we'll spread it on crackers or french bread.  It doesn't last long.  It has become a family favorite.

But when you have an over-abundance of them, you've got to look for new ideas.  We'll try lacto-fermented radishes, much like we do with carrots, cucumber, or cabbage.  First we sliced up the radishes in little chunks like you might do when making pickles.  Then you make a brine by adding 2 teaspoons sea salt to 2 cups water.  Then we added 1/4 of whey that's leftover from yoghurt making.  That acts as a preservative.  We add some garlic cloves to the bottom and then pack the jars tightly with the cut up radishes and pour the brine over them making sure the radishes are submerged by placing some glass canning weights on top.

We leave the jars at room temperature for 5-7 days and then place them in the fridge.  

We'll likely make more radish dip, but thought we'd add this to our radish repertoire.