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The Houston Chronicle Declares the End of Winter!

February 1, 2012

Bishop Gardening, Spring, Vegetables , , , 6 Comments

Several times in my recent postings I have mentioned how mild this so called winter has been. Well, this past weekend the Houston Chronicle declared that winter is over! Just to cover their” paper derriere” they mentioned that February sometimes surprises us and that the official average last day of frost at Bush Intercontinental Airport is March 1st. I have been making my own observations on how the various plants in both my backyard farm and in the area have been responding. The results are mixed but the plant world seems to think that Spring is here!

Evidence that spring is here and winter (the winter that never was) has faded away include these observations;

  • The Ornamental pear trees have been in full blossom for over a week now
  • My strawberries are blooming like crazy –
  • I noticed plum and peach trees on sale at the nursery were blooming last week – Late January!
  • My potted pepper plants are still green and one has two bell peppers nearly ready to pick.
  • My overwintered upside down tomato plant is leafing out!

And low and behold,during  this morning’s walk through my garden I spotted an asparagus spear emerging up through the layers of leaf mulch!

My Meyer Lemon tree seems to be a little more reluctant to believe what is written in the paper. I looked closely at the tree this morning and although there is a  bit of evidence of bud formation, they are probably a week or two away from bursting open. It is not unusual for  lemon trees to blossom in February but today is just the first day of the month.

I need to get over to John’s garden today and thin the lettuce patch. I scattered about 4 different varieties in his bed and they found a home very much to their liking. They are thick, crowded and the thinning’s should be a nice addition to a garden salad. I will probably need to help his sugar snap peas continue their upward climb…. they seem to like his bed a little better than mine do…… I still get a few to eat from my yard but John should have many handfuls of the sweet green pods gracing his table soon!

I am being tempted………. not by whiskey ( well maybe a little) or younger women (hmmmmmm…..) insert a smile here as I pause to think…….Okay….I am tempted by many things but today the temptation at hand is about tomatoes!!!!! I want them and I want them early – before the brutal Houston heat sets in for the summer! I will wander down to Kingwood Nursery this week and see if the temptation will be realized… they carry both hybrids and heirlooms that do well in the local area…. If I get an early start and make provisions to shield the plants if, as the Chronicle noted, February surprises us…. I can be eating home grown tomatoes by the end of April – WOW!

TTFN

Bishop

PS – I have some 20 year old Pappy Van Winkle Whiskey and may be able to get my hands on the 23 year old this week – the whiskey!

Accepting The Award

January 26, 2012

Bishop Gardening, Versatile Blogger Award 5 Comments

I have been basking a bit in the warmth of a compliment passed along to me by a talented member of the blog community a few weeks ago – I have been nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award by Claire who has a fascinating blog under the label “Promenade Plantings” – wit, recipes and too much fun!

As explained to me; (1) I must list 7 random things about myself that you don’t know and (2) nominate other bloggers to receive the award.( note to readers – a little research seems to show that the number bloggers to nominate varies from 4 to 10. So, I will nominate more than 4 but less than 10, I hope you are ok with that and (3) post a picture of the award.

Hmmmmmm – Seven random things you may not know about me –

  1. In High School and during the first few years at UCLA I wrote poetry, usually linked to a one of my better – at least I thought they were better – photos. Looking back at the words I wrote – what was I thinking at that moment in time?????
  2. August of 1977 – I spent three days laying half way down asteep  ravine with a crushed pelvis and no water in brutal 108 degree heat. I came out half way down after rolling my old Bronco. The Bronco gathered no moss as it rolled to the bottom of the ravine. Thank you Jim Trout and Leonard Smith for deciding to walk down that hill and kicking of the rescue rather than a recovery.
  3. I dream of an idyllic life  – maybe on a small farm, gardening, raising poultry, maybe a couple of pigs rooting around and a back porch looking out over a small pond……….or – owning and running a small microbrewery…. I will have to drink on it a bit more, or is that think on it ????
  4. I fell in love with Rugby in 1973 – it is in my blood and yes I have given a little during the playing years I spent on the pitch. Off the pitch –  I do love having a beer with my mates!
  5. Some things are far too important to give up on…..the heart always has room to hold the love for family, regardless of how long they have been  away……
  6. I can stare into the dying embers of a fire for what seems like forever…… embraced by the fire’s warmth and remembering the many warm memories I carry in my heart.
  7. Lucky seven – my partner in life is the women(girl then) I first saw as a 16 year-old lifeguard in Jefferson Park(1967). She was this cute little swimmer, seven years younger &  hanging around the pool – totally unaware of my existence. She crept back into my life in the year following my 1977 life changing event noted above. Three days lying on the side of the ravine became the start of something very special and enduring –

Some thanks are in order –

Promenade Plantings – I mentioned Claire and her blog above – I love her writing style….recipes that broadens my meat and potatoes upbringing….Mom – no offense! I can’t nominate her for the award as she has already been tapped for the award – If I tried to renominate her it could result in double jeopardy and Alex Trebek would probably complain.

I follow and enjoy these folks and in doing so I dub thee Versatile Bloggers;

startingtobrew – I also post a beer brewing blog…..I may list it below….a bit of narcissism. This young lady periodically posts and adds some nice wit and humor to adventures with home brewing

Everything Is Homemade.  I began following this posting a long time ago…..she was gone for a bit after having a child and is now sharing great home stuff, recipes and life bits.

kiwsparks – Seeing the world through art-colored glasses – this is a recent add and it has been a very nice add to my expanding awareness on how small and connected this world really is. I find myself enjoying the artistic and poetic energy in these postings. We seem to share a strong gardening or rather growing kinship.

BeerCat Brewing and Babies – This a very recent find – It is amazing at how many women are stepping into the world of home brewing….Fun style of writing and talks about one of my favorite topics

The Iris and the Lily  A nice gentle and relaxing read….I really look forward to seeing how others view this wonderful natural world around us.

Erie Ale Works – Very informative and a great place to learn a little and see where creative home-brewers are taking their craft… Nice straightforward style.

The Yeast Factory – Another beer blog- what were you expecting? I love to read and learn from others and have picked up some nice tidbits here.

KKH Photos -Off The Desk – I have been considering expanding my photography efforts to make it pay for some of my purchases…..have learned a little here and I continue to peek in on a regular basis. Lots of energy here!

http://pappadeckerbrewing.wordpress.com – What a brilliant and witty guy! I really can identify with every word he writes. It is as if he has cloned my pea brain and captures all of my random thoughts about beer and brewing. I can’t seem to get enough!

hotbincomposting – Learning to better manage my bins. Great information site and cheaper than buying a book – and probably more current than anything published.

This award process seems to be a great way to bring others in to our circles as well as expand our boundaries… Now for a bit of humor – my favorite picture taken on my 60th birthday with that cute little swimmer from Jefferson Park.

Happy 60th Bishop!

TTFN

Bishop

Now John Has Worms

January 24, 2012

Bishop Composting, Gardening, Hand watering , , 4 Comments

I have been back home for a couple of days and finally got my hands dirty in the garden. When I was installing my friend John’s new raised bed over the Christmas Holiday I discovered a healthy bunch of earthworms, fat, busy and working the soil in his old bed but, the new bed is pretty much devoid of any sort of critters. The soils in the new bed were store-bought and pretty much sterile. My raised beds are teaming with worms of all sorts so I decided to infect John’s new bed with some of my own. The big guys I dug up in my garden for placement in John’s new bed are of two probable types, Lumbricus rubellus (red earthworm) and Lumbricus terrestis ( common earthworm) –  besides being good for my garden they are  excellent catfish bait in our local lake and river. I also found a few red wrigglers that may have escaped from my worm composting bins and went native. They tend to stay near the surface feeding on organic material and don’t do the heavy lifting and turning of the soil like their  Lumbricina  cousins. The composters are, Eisenia fetida, commonly know as manure worms….their favorite food, yum! A little known fact amongst the non academic types is that most of the common earthworm in US garden soils are not native – they arrived from Europe many years ago. Do you now know more than you ever wanted to about worms?……. they really are a fascinating subject. One more tidbit…..earthworms are detritivores – seems obvious to me now but I never knew their eating habits had a label. Detritivores, also known as detritophages or detritus feeders or detritus eaters  obtain nutrients by consuming detritus.

After infecting John’s new bed with some of my finest specimens, I pulled a few weeds, thinned some of the plants that were crowding each other a bit and hand watered. I have always enjoyed hand watering, i.e., using a hose with a gentle sprinkling nozzle. Hand watering relaxes and soothes my mind. I have been tempted to lay drip lines and automate the process – and I still may eventually invest the time and effort to do it, but not any time soon. I really enjoy walking through my beds, seeing how well everything is doing (and sometimes not so well), noting what may be too wet or in need of a well-aimed spray from the nozzle. Automated watering seems to be a bit impersonal….missing that extra connection to the living and growing energy of the garden. I also like to see the daily changes, sometimes subtle but always there if you look. Like the tiny crack in the soil where a seedling is beginning to emerge or the daily elongation of the pea-pods emerging from the flower bud, or the bees busy visiting whatever happens to be flowering….and those cursed weeds!!!!….. God must have had a plan for them – maybe they are one of those life challenges thrown at us to see how we handle the irritation….My big heavy-duty propane torch sure makes quick work of those irritations around the far edges of the garden but is far too indiscriminate to be used near the planted beds. I remember going out to my friend Mike Rossi’s pasture many years ago and cranking up the heat with his truck mounted propane torch. We were trying to wipeout the invasive and pervasive Bermuda grass just  long enough for the more desirable grasses to emerge. It is a battle that can’t be won, but you can quickly shift the outcome a little more to your favor….for a little while.

More work done today on my new experimental growing system…….I will let the spud out of the bag soon…..and yes that was a hint!

TTFN

Bishop

A Worm Discovery

January 21, 2012

Bishop Gardening 5 Comments

See how the worms have been nibbling on the edge? click on the picture to see larger image.

I flew home today from Grand Junction, Colorado to a warm spring day……..but the calendar was way off….. January 20th is not a spring date! I thought I would dive into the garden and get my hands dirty but the day had other plans for me. Oh I did visit my garden as well as seeing how John’s was coming along. I am becoming a bit envious of the garden I have established in his back yard. The sun favors his beds significantly more so than the location I have been allowed to partition off from the main yard. Thank you dear! His young lettuces are well ahead of mine, the sugar snap peas are jumping out of the ground and the onion and garlic bulbs have found the beds to their liking. I planted some bunching onions from seed in his garden as well as mine…..one the same day. Well, in his plot the seeds are up and looking good and in my bed, well I am still waiting for their emergence.

So Bishop tells us about the worm discovery…..OK I will. I was tidying up the kitchen today and discovered some old and wilted lettuce that was begging to be fed to the worms. Let me set the stage for the discovery. A week ago my son Joe brought home from school an uneaten PB&J sandwhich….peanut butter & jelly just in case PB&J is a foreign term. My wife suggested that I share it with the worms. I thought about it for a couple of days – really I forgot about the suggestion until reminded by my wife. I wasn’t sure if it was proper fare for the worms but decided to see what would happen. Before I left on my recent  trip I noticed what seemed to be a cluster of worms congregating near the PB&J. When I looked today I noticed a similar cluster and what appears to be evidence of”worm bites” along the edge of the sandwich.  (see photo above)

So, how can I makes use of this discovery? Whenever I add a new bin filled with bedding and kitchen scraps trying to entice worms from the nearly finished bin up into the new one, it seems to take forever for them to migrate up into the new bin. I think I have discovered a way to accelerate the process. At the next bin swap I will make up a couple of PB&J’s and place them in the new bin. I could do some experimenting with either smooth or chunky peanut butter and try a different jam….this sandwich was smooth peanut butter and blackberry jam – seems to be working pretty well. Could be a long experiment… there are so many combinations to try….it could be years to discover the perfect combination………but maybe it is like horseshoes and hand grenades – getting close may be good enough!

Off tomorrow to see my son Ben swim against Texas A&M over in Baton Rouge. It should be a lot of fun and I always love to see him swim. It will be a quick trip and I promise to get my hands dirty upon my return Sunday.

TTFN

Bishop

Longing For Dirty Hands

January 19, 2012

Bishop Gardening , , 2 Comments

I am away from the garden since Tuesday morning… My only interaction has been to follow the weather reports to see how the plants and beds have been treated in my absence. Well, the reports indicate that we continue to have a spring like winter in Houston so all is well. I am fortunate to have a wife and partner in life that understands my love of the garden. She will peek over the gate and will sprinkle some water if things look too dry and I thank her for that. She will also snack on the berries when they are producing……her snacking sometimes diminishes the harvest available for my jam and jelly endeavors. It really is a small price to pay for her continued support.

When l get on the plane tomorrow at 6:00 AM in Grand Junction, Colorado, I will be on my way to getting my hands dirty again…..Yes I can wait but it sure is tough!

Note to wife, Grand Junction is becoming well known as a wine growing region as well as for their wonderful peaches….Lots of beautiful mountains nearby, rivers, lakes and forest…I could probably grow a nice garden/orchard here and we could have 4 seasons not the 1.5 seasons that we have in Houston….Just a thought Hun!
TTFN
Bishop

Ok – I Will Try The Turnips!

January 17, 2012

Bishop Gardening, Recipe 2 Comments

Three nice turnips on an 8 inch plate - ready to peel, boil and mash!

I have been looking to find some decent recipes for my turnips. They seem to grow like crazy here in Houston! Most of the recipes I find include turnips as a companion for the main portion of the recipe, i.e., stews…… I dove into allrecipes.com and found “Patty’s Mashed Turnips”….. I have been trying to curb my appetite for starches and refined carbs over the past few months. This recipe may help satisfy my craving for mashed potatoes. My daughter’s 27th birthday was a week ago and she asked for “meat and potatoes”, specifically mashed potatoes. I indulged in a spoonful at her birthday dinner and avoided loading my plate up! Lord knows I would have and could have put away a mountain of mashed potatoes – with garlic and real butter! I needed a mashed potato fix!

I picked three nice sized turnips from the garden…. I am plucking them at this size rather than letting them become large and pithy. I have also staggered my plantings so I have a good variety in size and age in the beds. I cut the recipe down to a more manageable size. What I like about the allrecipes site is the feedback section…. I usually read and make modifications based on what the practicing audience advises. In this case, most recommended cutting way back on the added milk when mashing……the recipe tends to be very wet naturally due to the high water content of the turnips. That is the approach I took. Boiled until tender, about 35 minutes, rinsed and then mashed. My only add to the recipe was a large clove of garlic boiled along with the turnips and mashed together with everything else. I used skim milk….not much but enough to provide the “right” consistency. I used a few tablespoons and that was too much….. also a teaspoon of butter, a little sea salt and ground black pepper to taste. Surprisingly good! So, I tried them and they were good enough to become a keeper recipe….. They are filling and low in calories! Nothing was wasted…the peelings, tap root and cap all went to the worms….they have to eat the remnants raw, but hey, they don’t seem to be fussy eaters.

I will still experiment a little. I read that some folks tried cauliflower along with the turnips. That seems to be a reasonable alternative…. and then maybe a 50/50 mix by weight of potato and turnip. This recipe can help my efforts to be/become healthier in 2012. I started my quest last July at 19.8% body fat, just under the recommended upper end for men. Last week I tested out at 12.1 % body fat and I feel like a younger man (is that right hun?)…..The lower end of recommended % body fat  for men is 10%…. That has now become my target. Portion control…and more activity!

My vegetable garden….a stress reliever, a place to experiment, the satisfaction of seeing the results of my efforts & sometimes my failures, a place to share with friends and neighbors….including the “cyber” neighbors looking over the “blog fence” into the garden as well as providing for the table. Pretty good stuff, eh! ……( I have been practicing my Canadian as I will be paired up with a lad from Alberta this week in my consulting work)

P.S. – I started another experiment in the garden today……..details later! Oh yes, today in my posts, I ate the turnip from top to bottom, well almost bottom…. I did cut the tap root off!

TTFN

Bishop

Harvesting The Worm P_ _p

January 6, 2012

Bishop Composting, Gardening , , 4 Comments

The bounty after screening

The “nicer” word for the harvest product is “castings” but I like to be as realistically accurate as possible.

I had ignored my silent workers long enough. It was time to see what was left behind in the bottom bin of my vermicomposting equipment. I use two big 18 gallon Rubbermaid  storage tubs. If you want to make your own, I would suggest using a more shallow bin. Live and learn is my motto….but it seems like I am relearning many of the same lessons. Hmmmmm. maybe I should mention that to the doctor on my next visit, the problem is I will probably forget to mention it!  Here is a link to a “How To Article” for building your own bins. I use a stacking process to get my little guys to migrate up into a newly prepared bin. http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/cowell124.html

If you want to try raising worms go to my first choice – Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm online at; http://www.unclejimswormfarm.com/ He has everything you need as well as commercially made equipment, advice and bags of worms….. They only ship in the US so if you are outside the US you will need to find or search for suppliers.

As my little buddies consume all of my kitchen scraps they leave behind wonderfully rich castings. Once the bin has 8 to 10 inches of the good stuff in the bottom I prep the second bin with shredded wet newspaper and some and some good tasty treats to entice the little guys to migrate up through the 1/4 inch holes in the bottom of the bin. After two months or so the only things left in the bottom bin are the rich castings and a few stubborn workers that have not quite licked their platters clean….I guess if I were a worm I would be one of the stubborn ones in the bottom bin. My mother would never let me have the good stuff….dessert, until my plate was COMPLETELY clean! Isn’t that right Mom? She reads my blogs so I know that I will hear from her not long after this is posted. Something else Mom, the worms in the bottom seem to be a little chubbier…. could be one of life’s little lessons…Maybe I should have left a little more on my plate and passed up a few more desserts….. I still love you Mom!

The how-to article link above also shares a description for a worm casting tea. I have some friends here in Kingwood that brew this up this and use it as a foliar feeding fertilizer. I have yet to brew my own but have all the equipment. I have several aerators that I use to keep my bait alive while fishing…….they are battery operated so it may be beneficial to buy a small plug-in electric model.

I get odd stares from folks when I talk about my vermiculture and composting efforts. They consider me to be a bit odd. I guess maybe I am a little odd but I seem to enjoy my oddness. My daughter Ashleigh has helped a few times with the harvest and better understands my oddness. She was also amazed at how clean and odor free the process was. Virtually no detectable odor. I have my castings out and exposed to the sun’s heat to dry them out before storing. See photo above. I will make some tea this weekend but will pass on including scones and/or biscuits with the endeavor!

My other gardening activities include;

I added a single strawberry tower to John’s backyard. It will be a nice surprise for him when he returns from his Aruba vacation. I told his wife, Beverly, to not let him take her snorkeling on any secluded beaches!!!!….just a bit of dark and tongue in cheek humor!

While working in John’s yard I added a couple of rows of bunching green onions from seed and put in a single row of sugar snap peas. Both of these additions were in his original 4X4 bed. I also  thinned the radishes and turnips in the new bed. I must have been a little too liberal in my original seeding efforts. The onion and garlic bulbs, even though planted late, are emerging nicely. They seem to be benefitting from this mild winter – I am reluctant to call it winter – it just seems like a prolonged Fall or an early Spring.

I topped off one of my compost bins with shredded leaves this week and added an activator, prepackaged micro-organisms, to speed things along. I will add a weak water and molasses mix today as some additional food to get the pile heated up. It is amazing to feel how hot the process becomes …… literally cooking up some great garden food for the garden.

I added some spinach and Swiss Chard transplants that I had started from seed a month ago. The next 10 days looks like very mild weather so they should take off pretty quickly. I have some really nice looking turnips to harvest this weekend. I don’t find too many recipes that “feature” turnips, they seem to occupy the niches for added body in most recipes. I found one in AllRecipes that caught my eye, “Beef Stew with Ale”. A cup of diced turnips finds their way into the recipe and what really caught my eye was the word “Ale”. Must be a typo in the recipe though….the ingredient list calls for two bottles of a brown lager….hmmmm a big difference between the two…. If you try this recipe just use a good Ale, preferably a Brown Ale!!!! http://allrecipes.com/recipe/beef-stew-with-ale/detail.aspx

Enough for now – I changed up my post background, it seems to be a little easier for my old eyes to read…. I hope you like it.

TTFN

Bishop

New Year’s Garden – Much Better Than a Hangover

January 3, 2012

Bishop Composting, Gardening, mulching , , , 1 Comment

My New Year’s Eve celebration was limited to a couple of Samuel Adams Winter Lagers, I just love the shape of the glass – the beer is pretty good too- while waiting in the airport in sunny Florida. I was lucky enough to be with my best friend, my wife Kathy and our “favorite” youngest child Joe.  I dozed off on the flight back to Houston dreaming of getting my hands back into the dirt in my little backyard garden. I was planning the work needed to prepare for spring……and the crazy thing is, our spring weather may start at any time during January! This morning though, it was a bit brisk  35 F, about 2 C for you folks on the other scale….so I wore a sweater with my short pants and to the horror of my children – socks with my sandals!

Yesterday was the 2nd day of the new year and a warmer than this morning. I knocked a few things off of my to-do-list. I have been anxiously waiting for the asparagus ferns to die…..they didn’t cooperate so I wacked them off – to my Australian friends, Geoff, Charles and Alan…do not manipulate the word wack….I know what is running through your brains, so, stop it right now! – back to the asparagus…I then top dressed with some good aged compost from my bins….2011 vintage, and then added a 3-4 inch layer of leaves to help smother the weeds- those nasty little buggers that can take over the bed if not managed.

I finally got around to removing the green bean vines and poles. It took just a few minutes and I don’t know why I waited so long….maybe it has to do with my usual tendency for procrastination ….as I wrote those few previous words I felt a little guilty because – here  I am, sitting on a half-finished project for a “paying” client and I am filling my free time with random & rambling thoughts. The paycheck for the real work is 60 days or more out into the future and the “fun” I have writing is my  immediate gratifcation…….I think I am contradicting some of the advice I have given my children…I have told them to work hard and not focus on the “instant gratification” sought out by so many!!!!! Sorry kids, you need to get a little instant gratification every now and then…it helps you smile! Dad also says…….don’t over do it!

Oh yes, the beans….. That bed, a 4X25 foott bed, is now sitting mostly idle as it is shaded most of the day. I had overseeded it with buckwheat in the early fall as a green manure. This bed is loaded with earthworms……to the delight of my 16 year son, who is a fishing fool! Fortunately he doesn’t fish day and night which could wreak havoc on the worm population! The winter solstice has come and gone allowing the shade to begin  creeping southward to start warming up the entire garden area. I also managed a quick courtesy call to John’s garden beds, I  watered, weeded and added some compost to the original bed. John, FYI – turnips and radishes are already up!

The photo below right  shows a good portion of my main garden beds. Unseen in this photo are two , 4X8 foot beds behind me, one of which has the asparagus and just beyond the fence along the back fence is a bed with 75+ strawberry plants….all ground level so the slugs and rollie-pollies can have a tasty snack in the spring. It really is a competition between me and the bugs to save the berries….chemicals would kill the critters but they would also find their way into my strawberry jam…I can’t have that, so, I am willing to share a little. You can just make out the edge of my compost bins to the left, also on the left are the strawberry towers, some blackberry vines, a potting table at the far end, a bit of storage to the right and lots of bare spots waiting for more seeds and warmth. The left photo shows a bit of what lies outside the gate to my dirt paradise. On the right side is one end of the ground level strawberries against my back fence. For some reason Sam Adams wanted a little more exposure so it is at the bottom of the post…..(I couldn’t figure out how to remove it without buggering up the post)  TTFN – Bishop

John Doubles Down

December 26, 2011

Bishop Fall, Gardening, Vegetables , , Leave a comment

The New and the Old......side by side.

Christmas Eve santa wandered into John’s backyard and doubled his garden space…..Cold and rainy evening but Santa wandered off to his appointed rounds a little damper but also feeling pretty smug about the clandestine delivery. The seeds and bulbs would have to wait….too many stockings to fill, cookies to eat and glasses of milk to drink!

On Christmas Day Santa showed back up at John’s house in his everyday Bishop Decker, friend and neighbor, disguise to plant a few seeds and tuck away some left over onion and garlic bulbs….. not too sure about the timing for the bulbs but it is better than letting them wither away. I suspect that the mild “winter” we are in the midst of may work in our favor. I planted some lettuce and carrots in a surprise pattern. So what is a surprise pattern????? I mix about 4 – 5 varieties in my little seed spreader, shake them up and scatter across the designated area. I recently used the technique in my beds and I see lots of seedlings popping up…..too early to see which varieties. I plan to thin them after they are well established and should have a smorgasbord of lettuce and carrots to pick. I added some radish seeds, beets & turnips to his winter bed. It should be fun to see what he does with the harvest!

My last-minute gardening efforts before heading off to Orlando for my son Joe’s soccer tournament included adding a spring to my gate to aid in “self” closing and a support cable to the gate doesn’t sag so much. Looks good and closes so smooooothly! While out in the garden this morning I was able to snack on the so very sweet sugar snap peas…..yum! My asparagus ferns are nearly ready to cut back so they will be very high on my to-do list when I/we return from Orlando. I will need to spend an hour or so with garden gnome tasks over at John’s yard…pulling weeds and laying down a layer of leaf mulch to suppress or at least slow the growth of the weeds. I gave him a book titled, “The Organic Kitchen Garden” book to stimulate his creative side…he really is an excellent cook –   the grin on his face as he was flipping through the pages warmed” ole” Santa’s heart!

The newly planted strawberries are “leafing” out – yee-haw!!!!!

Now off to pack my bags….

TTFN

Bishop

“Strawberry Towers Forever”

December 12, 2011

Bishop berrries, Composting, Fall, Gardening, mulching , , 1 Comment

Did I get the Beatles song wrong….. Strawberry Fields Forever? It just sounded like a good title and “towers” has such a nice ring to it.

I have been wanting to provide “all y’all” with an update on my strawberry towers experiment. It seems to be working pretty well…… even though I still think the 3 inch pipe is too small. The plants weathered the first freeze with no apparent injury. They are looking very healthy and I can’t wait until early spring when they begin to blossom.  The strawberry shown above was picked on February 14th, Valentines Day in 2010. It wasn’t until later, in fact someone sent me a note about the nearly perfect heart shape of the berry, that I noticed the shape. Too bad that I didn’t notice it when I took the picture because I could have said that I had planned it all along. I think it does pay to tell the truth…… that way you don’t have to remember what the lie was!!!!! Click photos fo a bigger image.

The towers seem to be supporting the growth of the transplants pretty well.  The receptacles at the top seem to work well for watering. Gravity takes over and down it flows. I had my good friend John swing by this past weekend and I showed him the experiment. I think he agrees with the idea of testing the 6″ set-up. I will use 6″ PVC drain pipe for phase two of the experiment. Over the Christmas break I will gather up the materials and put it into action. Photos to come.

John has a 4X4 bed that I put in his backyard 2 years ago that needs some attention. I told him that I would be over this next week and clean up the 2011 season remnants and install another 4×4 adjacent to the original. I know he wants one because he installed the irrigation piping to accommodate the expansion…..isn’t that right John? Seems like a good “how to” posting for a future blog. We have one significant challenge. John has his Golden Retriever “Pismo” hooked on vegetables, so much that she harvests ripe tomatoes for him. The next step in her training is to bring them up to the patio and leave them for the family. Unfortunately she loves homegrown tomatoes a bit too much!

My wife is out in California helping to manage some family issues. She saw the post on the turnips and wanted to know if I really ate them….Absolutely! I placed a nice pork loin in the crock pot with turnips, onion, garlic, potatoes and cabbage….wish my carrots were ready….that would have topped it off nicely……. So, yes hun, I ate them and they were excellent!

Plans for this week –

The fall leaves are falling….go figure! – I have to thank my mother for her help with my leaves and the leaves around the neighborhood. She “surprised” me with a nice machine to suck up and shred the leaves as well as chip branches up to about 1.5 inches in diameter.  Wow, mom I have to tell you, it works great. I have been able to deeply mulch one bed with shredded leaves and I have designs on several more. Any excess will find their way into my compost bins.

I fed the worms yesterday and I see  it is time to harvest their rich castings….now some people might refer to it as worm poop – castings sounds so much cleaner and more proper. I am continually amazed how well they do their work even when I don’t give them to attention that I should. Diligent critters they are!!!!

Seeds need to be planted……..More lettuce to replace what my son’s dog zeroed in on…..just doing what dogs do but she could have dug her holes somewhere else. More beets, more carrots, some spinach & chard, sugar snap peas, maybe some bok choy, turnips and a another row of radishes.

Six inch strawberry towers and find a source of winter strawberry plants to finish up the project.

Non-gardening……with my wife gone I have laundry, dishes to do, floors to mop, Christmas decorations to organize …… I am not sure how she finds time to do all that stuff. It kind of gets in the way of my gardening, wood-turning, fishing, bicycling, beer brewing/drinking and  coffee with my buddies down at Starbucks…….. in fact she contacted me at Starbucks this morning and cut my visit short……but hun, I am not complaining, wink,wink!

A note to Jane…..I loved the lemon curd you gave me a year ago and I have a bunch of Meyer Lemons ready to provide their juice for my curd making this week. I will see if I can work that in between some of my lingering tasks. Maybe I will wait until after the curd is done before mopping! John….I still think I can handle the expansion …….. what else can I defer???????

TTFN

Bishop

 

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