you know that place where we went that one time... with the guy who had that thing? yeah. that's the place.

Some friends of mine have recently bought property in New York and are working on transforming into what can be described as, for lack of a better term, an ecovillage.

My personal goal, then (or one of many, but an important one) is to supply their land with the plants they'll need to not only sustain themselves but also enough to turn a profit rather quickly. With things like tomatoes and peppers, this is easy enough, but the real challenge lies in the quantities of small fruit trees needed to start an orchard.

As all my fruit comes from local farmers' markets and is all organic and non-GMO seed, I figure that the seeds coming from my nectarines, peaches, plums, and cherries over the next few months (and Sharon's apricots, once she's back) would likely do nicely to start. Because of the manner in which fruit trees hybridize and pollinate, this also ensures a number of various cultivars, even beyond the expectation from saving several different varieties of each fruit.

Even preparing fruit tree seeds for planting can take upwards of six months, however, so here begins the long, long, long process of trying to save fruit seeds. First they have to be cleaned up. Then they have to be dried. Then they have to be temperature treated for several months, and then they can, at long last, be planted, where they will then take another several years before they produce fruit.

This, mind you, will present us with good rootstock, from which other varieties can be grafted-- and while the whole process is painfully complicated, it will, in the long run, be far less expensive than buying the trees further down the road.

So far, we're one plum and about 30 Golden Ranier cherries towards an orchard. I suppose now I have an excuse to buy those 50 lb. boxes of organic nectarines that I've had my eye on. :D

expect canned goods (and mourn my tomato plant)

While I had begun the process of staking most of my tomatoes in the last couple of days, there was one large one that I missed-- and apparently the wind took notice. I came home to find my tomato plant (one of the large ones that was already producing) broken in many places, and while I've now staked it and tied it up (with a little bit of Sharon's yarn-- sorry, but it's soft, so it won't hurt them, and he had to be tied immediately and there was nothing else with which to tie him) in a fashion that holds it all together so that it can heal, I'm really not sure that it's going to make it. There are no pictures, mind you, as it's all terribly upsetting. I will need to go today to get more stakes.

The others I got to before the wind set in-- but somehow I missed one.

One of the guys at work has tomato and tomatillo plants that he's giving away, and of course I volunteered to take some home. This, mind you, means that I'll now have five Brandywine tomato plants (it's an Amish heirloom variety) that I'll have acquired at absolutely no cost when I didn't even intend to grow this variety at all. It's a good variety though-- very pink, very good for storing. Not the best sauce tomato in the world, but I have other varieties for that.

not enough time

While I have started this entry with the intent to pick up on all the things that I missed yesterday, I really don't have time, as more important details about how my garden is lacking have come to light. After following the link on Lily's comment, I found that I'm not the only crazy soul desperately pursuing a rooftop garden. Yesterday, we established that all of Cuba is doing this, but that's another story entirely. This site has reminded me of the importance of getting things in the ground and doing it in a manner that's actually timely, and I will spend a chunk of tonight planting little lettuce seeds in the top of my inverted tomato planter so that I can have a full, bountiful harvest throughout the summer.

The old piano bench also needs to be filled with soil, but I'm waiting to borrow a drill so that it can drain properly.

My seedlings are likely affected by a lack of heat, so I'll take them inside until they start coming up and stick a heat lamp on them. Stupid northern California.

More tomatoes need transplanting, but I'm waiting for a reimbursement from work so that I can get more soil (and more of those nifty biodegradable pots!). You remember that cute little pear-shaped tomato that I mentioned yesterday? That's him to the right! Seeing this photo also reminds me-- I have another tomato plant that needs to be staked.

Some of my ornamentals need to be trimmed and others need to be investigated for pests (I think my cosmos have aphids, although all of my preventative measures seem to have kept them from my tomatoes), and I can start working on that tonight, but some will have to wait until tomorrow.

A local business has a desk they've giving away that I think would be perfect for the porch (for window boxes and also for keeping gardening supplies out of the elements), but it's a matter of deciding whether or not I want to make the effort to not only get it to my place but also somehow manage to get it onto the roof.

So many things to do-- if only the rest of life would stop interfering with my gardening!

there are so many other things... and they will have to wait.

I have reached a curious point in my gardening escapades where I have a little extra soil but nothing ready for stage 1 transplanting (demonstrated to the right). I have transplants ready for stage 2 transplanting (typically the final transplant), but I lack both the necessary volume of soil and extra containers into which to transplant things. I planted a variety of seeds what must have been two weeks ago, but nothing has come up yet, despite my best efforts to keep the seeds moist at all times. I'm sure that I'm just trying to rush germination, but something really should have come up by now. Once upon a time, they were little seedlings (mind you, this photo is from late February/early March), so it's sometimes hard for me to believe that the hulking behemoths that I currently have came from these tiny things.

My Russian heirloom tomato plant has a couple more tomatoes on it, and the ones already there are getting larger. This guy is a Black Plum, and he now has a grand total of six tomatoes on him, including one not pictured here (the photo is over a week old) which is shaped just like a little pear. It's kind of obnoxiously cute. Around the base of the plant, there are marigolds, which are the little bits of orange in the photo.

I just finished three stage two transplants last week-- two tomato plants, which are all of a mystery variety, although I hope that at least one is my treasured Genovese tomato, and the other that I transplanted a week ago is now overcoming its sunburn.

For the first time since all this tomato nonsense began, my tomato plants have gotten to the point where some need to be restrained, and I have long sticks holding them up (or down, as the case may be).

The potato leaf tomatoes seem to be coming in fine, despite my previous concerns about blight and countless other potential disasters. I'm starting to accept that perhaps they just look funny because that's how they are, but it's taken at least four months for this decision to be reached. Unlike the plum tomatoes, these Hillbilly Tomatoes, which I chose largely for the name and only partly for the colour, are short and round when they first come in, and I now have upwards of ten between my two plants. The one featured to the right looks particularly odd because it is growing upside-down for some reason completely unbeknownst to science itself.

In the past week, the garden has undergone a minor revolution: basil has been dug up and transplanted near new tomatoes, a squash plant has a much larger home of its own because it needs the space for all the flowers coming in, and tomato plants and a pepper plant have been moved to much larger containers so that they're able to start producing soon. My old piano bench, which previously held all of my smaller transplants, is now only 2/3 full, and before long, it will hold a variety of lettuces. Back then, however, one section of it looked a little something like this:

the peanut gallery strikes again.

Apparently Cuba, when faced with a food crisis and a lack of farm-able land, decided to take the problem to a higher level... and moved their gardens to the roofs of houses. A similar movement is taking place in San Francisco, and while they're getting a smaller start (presumably due to a lack of funding), the people over at Victory Gardens have the right idea-- despite having misspelled "victory" in their page title.

In Oakland, City Slicker Farms is working to provide fresh food to residents and is even willing to setup and maintain backyard gardens for low-income residents, while the Spiral Gardens have turned what was once a railroad yard into an urban garden that provides food for the elderly and those of low-income. The latter provides an interesting statistic on their site: during WWII, backyard gardens produced 41% of the nation's vegetables.

If, during a time of war, the nation can do what's necessary to get by, why can't we do it in a time of-- oh, wait. This is a time of war, too! Come on, people! Let's get with it.

Further worthwhile urban sustainability reading can be found here:
A day in the Chicken Park - San Francisco takes back a piece of the pavement and gives it to... chickens.
A Katrina survivor begins urban gardening due to new toxicity concerns in the area, and a local organization helps him (and so many others) get started.
Recent studies show that eating locally (while still a great idea in terms of sustainability and with gas prices being what they are) is not as important to the planet's survival as people cutting back on eating meat and dairy, although local eating can help educate while strengthen communities and local farms, which, in turn, can change the way America views its food.

the truth about potash

Potash (K₂CO₃₎ is a really great word, isn't it? I particularly love the fact that it's one of those words that, unless you've heard someone in the know pronouncing it, you constantly have to worry about saying wrong. (For the record, it's pronounced much like pah-tash).

If you're interested in organic gardening, potash is likely one of those things (like epsom salts) that you're eventually going to get to sprinkle on the soil around your plants... just make sure that you sprinkle it on the soil, as I learned the hard way.

Potash, a potassium compound usually derived chemically, mechanically, or as a byproduct of wood-burning, is a great chemical supplement for soil-- and it's organic. It can be crystalline (in which case it's usually white or off-white and looks and feels like very fine sugar) or powdery (in which case it's almost always grey), depending on the purity of its derivation.

It supplements soil with potassium, which is absorbed heavily by some plants and less so by others-- although a potassium deficiency can often look somewhat like a measure of plant diseases, and should be ruled out systematically.

After going to my local ecology center, I found the potash in the bins with the other organic compounds used for garden care, and I found that there was, in fact, no scoop for it. After looking around and surmising that there would be no easy solution to this, I decided, in a feat of sheer brilliance, to break apart and scoop the stuff with my hands. When I left with my 2.5 oz. of the stuff, the tips of my hands were yellow in some spots, brown in others. Washing them fixed this, of course, but that was my first clue how caustic the stuff could be. The other came later, at home, as I sprinkled some potash on my young tomato plants. Some sprinkled on the leaves, which happens often when one casts salt compounds a little too quickly. When I came out the next day, however, I noticed something very strange indeed: the individual grains of potash had turned yellow and were actually burning the tomato leaves. Spots towards the ends of the leaves were black and withered where moisture and gravity had caused the salts to gather.

As it turns out, when combined with water, K₂CO3 and its chemical cousins become caustic, and they'll eat through what's in their path (the leaves, my hands) until they become so dilute that they're ineffective and, ultimately, it washes away. The kicker, though, is that K₂CO3 will actually pull moisture out of the air until it reaches a caustic state, so unless in a covered container, you're going to have a problem.

The moral of the story? Make sure your potash goes on the soil, not the leaves.

welcome to the village green preservation society

If you've started a garden by following my method, wherein you plant things, forget to label, and then have to plant everything over again to make sure that you're not missing this year's crop of pickles-in-training, you're likely to have a surplus of a lot of random things. This, of course, begs the question, "What exactly am I supposed to do with ten pounds of ?"

I thought that now would be a decent enough time to answer that question, so I will... in alphabetical order.

Bean (shelling) - shell and freeze.
Bean (string) - wash and freeze in pod.
Beets - can be juiced, dehydrated, pickled, or canned.
Cabbage - I hope you like saurkraut, which is easy enough to make if you don't mind the smell. you can also make kimchee, which is packed with painfully large amounts of vitamins and nutrients (more on these later)
Carrots - first off, carrots keep for months, but if you somehow have extra, they can be juiced, sliced and canned, grated/sliced and frozen, thinly sliced and dehydrated (try marinating for a potato chip alternative)
Corn (grinding) - take it off the cob, dry it out, and grind it down. in big pieces, it's hominy, slightly smaller pieces, it's grits, and too much smaller, and you have corn meal on your hands. it keeps for a loooooong time.
Corn (popping) - you shouldn't need me to tell you that you'd take it off the cob and then pop it later when you're ready to eat it.
Corn (sweet) - remove from the cob and freeze. you can also throw it into cornbread or muffins and then freeze those.
Crookneck squash - wash, dry, slice and freeze or thinly slice and dehydrate (try marinating for a potato chip alternative)
Cucumbers - best when pickled, as they'll keep indefinitely, and pickles are easy to make, but can also be juiced.
Eggplant - wash, dry, slice and freeze. If you're planning on making eggplant parmesan, go ahead and slice, salt, bread, and then freeze.
Lettuce - you're pretty much screwed, because it's not going to keep. just eat it.
Pepper (hot) - can be dried and ground (see chipotle or chili powder) or stuffed, breaded and frozen for an instant party snack
Pepper (sweet) - can be dried and ground (see paprika) or stuffed, breaded and frozen for an instant party snack
Soybeans - you can wash, dry and freeze them in the pod, shell them and freeze them, or make soy milk or tofu. (they'll get their own entry later)
Tomatillo - Mostly good for salsas, the tomatillo can also be pureed and canned for those nights late in the winter where you're craving something to spice up your homemade enchiladas.
Tomato - where to start? you can can and make tomato sauce, paste, diced tomatoes, stewing tomatoes, pasta sauce, pizza sauce, salsa... or you can slice and dehydrate, sun-dry, or juice.
Zucchini - wash, dry, slice and freeze or or thinly slice and dehydrate (try marinating for a potato chip alternative)

I know you're thinking, "But if I store all that extra food in my freezer, I won't have to buy vegetables for the rest of the year!"

Yes. That's the idea.