More from less.

More from less. Isn't that what one goal of a kitchen garden might be?   In our constant experiment with this house and grounds, we attempt to maximize the output of the gardens and woodlots, while minimizing any damage to the forests and soils. In fact, we hope that every year's effort yields better soils and healthier woods.

Besides that important goal, (more than simple sustainability, we want environmental improvement), there are other factors we consider.  For examples, we want more yields of fruits and vegetables that we can eat all year. We enjoy our time out of doors and we think a garden should help draw us out, give us exercise, fresh air, and a little vitamin D.   We hope to also increase the diversity of what we grow and put away for later. And we hope to learn.

So this year, I plan to post photographs on this site that will show the progress of the season. I have little hope that anyone else will find this interesting. But I hope there is someone who might take a glance, exchange advice with us, and prevent us from making obvious mistakes. You just never know, do you?

April 12

Infrastructure!

I don't know why this is. But when I think of garden produce my mind quickly goes to fresh tomatoes. Sandy grows her "slicin tomatoes" in raised beds, just about ten good barefoot bounds off the porch where they can be picked quickly and eaten almost before they know they have been picked.   These beds are seven by twelve feet and about waist high. Yesterday I added the dark compost we have been making all year. Mostly veggie scraps, banana and orange peels, coffee grounds and oak leaves. Tomatoes love it.

We also use this old re-purposed stair frame as a place to grow herbs. Nothing brings out the taste of a great tomato like a little fresh basil. Sandy will be growing several kinds of basil here, lavender, thyme, parsley, mint, and other herbs in separate pots on this stand that also hides the rain barrel behind it.

This year we are reducing the garden by about half. Through intensive methods we hope to increase our yield by half again. How's that for an ambitious goal? You can see the prints of one of last year's garden here (outside the fence).  This photograph, below, is facing east. The garden is on a flat space on top of Sweet Gum Hill, sloping slightly to the south and east.

 Below, we can see a closer view also facing east. The asparagus bed (10 by 20 feet) sticks out into the lawn. It is in its fourth season and each year we get a bigger harvest. So we did not care to move the asparagus!   On the far left from this view, the north edge of the garden, there are six varieties of plum trees. They have been shaped into a "Belgian fence" which serves to hide the garden when their leaves are out. Along the north side of the garden, their shadow falls outside the garden space. Today I noticed their buds were just beginning to emerge.

The mounds in the center of the garden are for beans. We usually eat our fill until Thanksgiving, and put fifty or so quarts away for those long winter and spring months when green veggies seem like a distant memory.

Between the plums and the beans we have an early crop of snow peas which will climb on the fence and fix nitrogen into the richly composted soil. They will be our second taste of the garden, right after the asparagus, which we will start picking in a week or so if the weather cooperates. The snow peas will continue to produce until the beans come in, at which time we will replace that row of peas with climbing bean vines. The trees love the added nitrogen. We love the peas and beans.

Here below, there is a view from the east looking west. On the far left (the southern edge) will be the squash. We will have two varieties of yellow crookneck and perhaps several kinds of winter squash over there. 

After the squash is a bed of richly composted soil under the wire mesh between the poles. That will be a wall of cucumbers. Most of those will be pickle variety. Since they cast a deep shadow, that is where we are placing the rocky path. To the right of the rock path, this year we have the roma tomatoes for cooking. Behind that will be several rows of green, yellow, and red peppers. 

In the distance you might have noticed some tiered gardens. We are using those for raspberries. The red raspberries can be seen in the distance.  Yellow raspberries are in another tiered garden space beside the orchard.  Black raspberries are all around the yard.


Red raspberries just before bud break.

Two rows of grape vines, still dormant. 

April 16    Bud Break!

Cherry leaves and blossoms emerge. We have eight cherry trees of various varieties, combos of sweet, sour, red, black and yellow. The sweet reddish yellow fruited cherries seem to be first in the seasonal order.

Peaches!  We have twelve peach trees of various varieties. Peaches have such beautiful pink blossoms that you almost hate to see the blooms go and the fruiting start: almost.

The pears are also budding today.

Some of the grapes have buds, no bud break evident there yet.

The plums emerge leaf first with the blossom buds following shortly thereafter.  These six plums are being trained into a "Belgian fence," providing screening for the north side of the veggie garden. There are six different varieties of plum in this fence row.

Raspberries enter the season leaf first in the following order:

Yellow Raspberries

Red Raspberries

Black Raspberries, these days they are all around the edges of the property.

But the standard blackberry, native to this hill in a super productive variety we call "Hang On A Moment, I'll Be Right Wit Cha"  seems to lag all of the other berries into the new season.  Now, after the raspberries have moved into leaf, these blackberries are still dormant, just lethal sticks. In mid-summertime they will be the most lush and productive part of the garden.

A few days later. April 23    Here is a tour from the patio.

And then some focus on budding progress:

Peaches just waiting to blossom.

Plums, so pretty!

Itching to plant some seeds!

April 27      Buds burst into blossom.



Peaches

Cherries

Pears

Yellow Raspberries

Herb Garden now dominated by bulbs.  But wait 'till summer!

Red Raspberries

Kitchen Garden   Still awaiting asparagus. Then we'll plant some beans!

April 28       Peak Peach Blossom

And the woods around us are just beginning to awaken.

May 6     A return of wet weather.

Grapes are in bud break. Some are in leaf. 

Peaches    White fleshed varieties just beginning to blossom.

Sweet Cherries now in blossom.

Even Honeycrisp apples are now in leaf.

Up here we have a kind of wild cedar. This one is about six feet tall. Even the cedars bloom!

These blooms are bigger than golf balls, smaller than tennis balls. What kind of cedar is this?

The wild black raspberries are looking pretty healthy this year.

Asparagus beginning to shoot!   We had a few for dinner last evening. Can't wait for the feast to come.

The plum saplings on the garden fence leafing out.

Patches of peonies and irises looking healthy this year.

First line of defense against voles (nasty little seed eating critters). So when these wonderful rat snakes start crawling out of hibernation, we have another springtime celebration.

May 20    Color? is the question. Green is the answer.

First, a tour from the porch.

On the left is a bed we call Isenguard. An isolated cultivar of Saruman Irises surrounding bunches of dark blue Siberian Irises. You can see the first blossom of Saruman. In front of the swing is Sandy's Lilly collection. Wild ones, domestic ones, day ones, night ones. Tiger lillys, you name it,  all surrounding bunches of Black Eye Susans. That swing will be high rent reading space come August.

The veggie garden remains mostly unplanted.  We've been eating lots of asparagus. Otherwise, plantings of beans, peppers, cucumbers, squash, roma and cherry tomatoes...that's all SO NEXT WEEK!

Hard to say this. but starting to get a bit tired of asparagus.  You know, a guy should never complain about asparagus, fresh asparagus. But every night? Mid morning and evening, we get a handful. Just enough for a guy to stuff himself with two handfuls of fresh asparagus...every night. How many ways can you eat it?

 Raspberries (Red and Yellow) in the rock bed on the hillside. They need to be thinned out. But part of the fun of picking raspberries is Lymes Disease, right?

Sandy's herb garden taking off. Salad underway in the round bed. "Slicin'"Tomatoes as yet un-planted. Grapes in the background. 

Grapes in bloom, Iris cultivars between them. Can you think of a better combination?

Baby peaches!

Baby nectarines!

Some peach trees.

 Some new cherry trees.

 Cherries!

 New and young nectarine trees. The goal is to produce enough juice to make ambrosia (nectar of nectarine fermented and then, through a process of ice distillation, brought to around 15%.   A brandy like elixir, good for those long Winter nights of re-reading The Illiad!

These olive trees propagate themselves up here. Just stop mowing and you'll have a thick jungle of them in no time. But this time of year they are covered in tiny yellow and white blossoms that make the whole hillside smell like your favorite flower shop. I suspect we'll have a few more of these trees before we are through. 

Pears looking good.

Honeycrisp Apples taking their good time.

 The road to Sunset Knob.  Looks like the summer of black raspberries ahead!

 Want to see neighbors?  This is your best bet here on Sunset Knob. But the neighbors you are most likely to see are deer, turkey, groundhogs, hawks, rabbits, and a couple of horses that got out of a nearby stable. Can't really blame them. This is a nice place to munch alfalfa and rub noses with our neighbor's horses.

 Okay, so I was warned by someone who knows better. But I had to try. Muscadine (vitus rotafundia)  have still not broken bud. But "All hope is not lost, even unto a bishop's curse, where there yet can be seen one small bit of green."

 Our "agricultural method" is best described as a cross between Scotch Highlander Kitch Garden and what the German speakers call "Hugelkultur."  Then, once the garden is in place, we use French Market Garden intensive methods, without chemicals, to grow the food we'll be eating.
 The soil up here was heavy in clay and rock. So it took some planning and backstrain to make the rich soils we are beginning to enjoy. Here's how to do it:  Dig a hole any hole. Remove the stones and boulders. Move any clay you find to cover last year's then new garden. Stack the boulders in a boundary wall. Fill the hole with this year's yard and garden waste (the parts of trees you can't use for firewood, brush, rotten logs, lawn clippings, etc.) Next spring, add this year's compost made from mostly kitchen waste (coffee grounds fruit rinds, banana peels.) Then cover with an inch or two of the clay soil you take from between the rocks of your new garden.  That summer grow beans in the clay covering to add back some nitrogen. Then in the third summer grow anything you like. The soil will be rich and dark and fertile and already sitting there in your nice raised beds made from boulders. The above photo shows what this year's hugelkulture looks like. We also build mini hugelkultures around each fruit tree.

You can see this year's new Hugelkulture bed way off behind this raspberry bed.

There will be pickles this Winter!

Tour from the patio   May 30

Beds of Irises and peonies. 

Want to see this year's Irises?  Click or go here: http://www.petrulionis.net/2018/05/thus-begins-parade-of-irises-2018.html

Sandy's slicin tomato patch, salad bar, and herb rack.

Fruit trees:   Peaches, Nectarines, Cherries, Pears, Apples, Plums

The Garden of Eating

 Time to let the asparagus go to fern for the summer. We've eaten about a dozen full hands full and they were unbelievable!

 Along the south fence we have zuchinni, and salad tomatoes (red, yellow, black and mixed cherry and plum tomatoes.We also have the sugar plums (yellow plum sized) mixed into the asparagus bed.

 In the north-east corner we have some raised "huglekulture" beds full of Italian,, Roma, Paste tomatoes, all in determinate varieties.  Next to that we have planted a few dozen peppers, mostly bell, but several frying and banana peppers as well.

A bouquet of mid-summer.


June 20    A taste of Sandy's wild lily collection:

The lily collection, so far, includes varieties from the hillsides around here that span the spectrum from a pale yellow to an orange so dark that it is almost dark red. And they seem to be intermixing. 

We are learning about lily propagation and expect this collection to grow as we find new varieties. Until then, here's where we are in 2018.  

 This white with red edged lily is not one of the local wild varieties. But it sprang up in our yard and thereby volunteered to join the lily brigade nonetheless.

The gardens at mid-June:

 We are now in that wonderful phase of the year. The crops are in. The rain is plentiful. The fish are biting. The only cloud on the horizon is the seasonally too small stack of firewood that is not yet cut and ready.  I tell myself that the firewood can wait for a few weeks.

 Sandy's "slicin' tomatoes" look wonderful so far. This time we may have perfected the combination of compost, manure, clay, and wood ash. Only another month will tell...

 We have been eating salad for most of the summer. And it looks as if there is no end in sight to the Romaine, Chard, Mescala Mix, and bib spinach, at least until it gets very hot. For now, a belly full every evening...

 Grapes are in their third and forth year. Looks like we should be expecting a nice haul of white Cayuga, black Valient, and seedless Concords this year.

 This will be the year of Peaches and Nectarines.   Apples and Cherries were too attractive to the deer. We have constructed deer trip wires, hung aroma therapy, and aluminum foil scare-em-offs, all to no real avail. But recently we got a new member of the family who has taken it on herself to chase every deer and rabbit to the edge of the yard. She takes chipmunks, squirrels, voles, and groundhogs very personally. So far, she seems to be the answer. We seem to have saved most of the apple and cherry trees for future seasons. This year we will have to decide what to do with all of the peaches and nectarines. (Not a real problem, of course!)

 The raspberry haul will be heavy this year.

Asparagus canes are chin high and thumb width. Next spring will be even better than this year!

 Pepper (bell, banana, and others) are in the top center of the above photo. Roma/cooking tomatoes are to their right. On the left is a jumble of zuchinni and beans. Cucumbers are already climbing the trellises. On the far right can be seen the cherry tomatoes.   Everything looking good so far.

 A closer view of the Roma tomatoes.

 The cherry tomatoes.

 Raspberries everywhere.

June 28   Just weeding and waiting. (And picking gallons of raspberries.)

 Slicing tomatoes in the raised beds are a couple feet tall and look great!

 Greenbeans, staggered ten days or each bed, are coming in thick, just as they should do in "Market Garden" style intensive techniques.  The ends of each row have a squash plant (spaghetti squash on the right of the above photo, zucchini on the bottom.  Beyond the beans you can see the pepper plants and the Roma Tomatoes in the distance.

 Cucumbers on the trellises between the clay colored poles.   Yellow Crook Neck Squash in the center trellis. And cherry tomatoes on the far right.

All around the yard, buckets of ripe raspberries are ripening; black ones, red ones, and yellow ones.


Tour from the patio on July 4th

The kitchen garden on July 4th

Spagetti Squash along the fence. Greenbeans in the center rows. Peppers and Tomatoes along the back.

 Spagetti squash growing into the asparagus bed.

 Our chief of security will take the tour from here.

 Chipmunks, squirrels, and rabbits are the main threat to these gardens.  Well, Japanese beatles and hornworms are the true threat. But they are not much fun to chase.

 Cucumbers along the center trellis  Yellow crook neck along the left most trellis.

 Raspberries are coming in now.  buckets and buckets of red, black and yellow.

 Sandy's slicing tomatoes still a few weeks out from ripe.

 Still getting a good haul of lettuce and other salad greens.

 Will be a good year for grapes.

 And peaches.

 No pears this year...probably a late frost to blame

But berries!  The berries are flooding us out.

Tour from the patio on July 12

August 20

I have not updated in a while.  Pretty busy mowing and cutting firewood. We are smack in the middle of harvest season.   Frozen and eaten so much crookneck squash, spaghetti squash, and cucumbers that we can not bear to look at more. Sandy put away several dozen jars of sweet and dill pickles and is now struggling to keep up with the hampers full of green beans that need to be snapped, processed and then stored. Looks like another winter of beans! 

While she snaps beans, she is also cooking down soup pot after soup pot of tomato sauce. We got quite a harvest of saucing tomatoes this year. It is still happening to the tune of about a bushel every day. And we can't allow ourselves to cook the slicing tomatoes. Instead we slice those. Still we have too many to eat ourselves and have been giving all kinds of tomatoes away because  the Lakota saying is pretty wise: "The best place to store a surplus of food is in your neighbors' stomach."

One batch of tomato sauce.

                                                   We save the slicing tomatoes for slicing!