Peas and Potatoes

Peas, peas, glorious peas! I am suddenly grateful the peas at the Druid Hill garden were eaten as the Fox St. peas have completely exploded. There are still more than a few plants blooming too, so if we don't destroy them picking the current crop, we might get another good-sized one. If we do demolish them (or decide we simply have had enough peas), they'll come out, and cucumbers and more beans will go in. I guess it's time to really hurry through our canned beans from last year.

And now, on to the potatoes. Neither of us have tried to grow potatoes before, but a few people at the Fox St. garden did last year, and it seemed easy enough. It was also hugely gratifying to pull the plants up too. So much so, in fact, that I have trouble trying not to peek (rip up and ruin, in other words) at our current potatoes. If I remember correctly, we chose the caribe and purple viking potatoes to begin with. According to Landreth's instructions the dirt should be raised around the plants after they are something like 8" tall, then again after they've grown a bit. Apparently this prevents the potatoes from growing out of the dirt. We are not sure if it actually encourages greater potato production by increasing root growth from the now-buried stem, but we're hoping that's true. Depending on how things go this year, we will do the experiment next year and just not bury a plant or two. As of today, the potato plants are huge, and are beginning to flower. I guess in a few weeks we could harvest baby potatoes, but for full-size ones we'll have to wait quite a bit longer. Might have to rip a plant up anyway just to see how they're doing...
While I'm on the subject of dirt, E and I recently realized that extra dirt is hard to find in the city. When you have a yard, you dig up some dirt, throw it on your potatoes, and there you go. When you don't have a yard (or a large enough yard, I guess), you go buy dirt from Home Depot (yeah, actually *pay* for dirt), bring it home in the truck, then dump it on your potatoes. Getting rid of dirt is also surprisingly difficult. So far, no solid plan there, except for some vague idea of a dirt swap between the chickens' bed and the garden. That, and perhaps driving the extra dirt to Mavid's.

Reminders:

• Do the experiment!
• Sweet potatoes
  

Worst cat ever

Garden cat, affectionately called "the worst cat ever", is a jerk. She bites, she picks on the other cats, she scratches the furniture, and she races around like a total lunatic. We, however, remain convinced that she likes us because she follows us around the house and occasionally sits near us. There is a competing hypothesis that she is just watching us, making sure we don't move in on her food. Recently, she has become more matted and well, stinky, than an animal should be if it's able to touch you, and so we've fixed that problem. Take that garden cat! You bite us, we make you look like an idiot.

Spring gardening

This year we have three garden plots: the long bed in the backyard (maybe 20'x4'), a private plot in the Fox St. community garden (oh, let's say 15'x4'), and after almost two years on a waiting list, a bed in the city garden at Druid Hill Park (a whopping 15'x10'). This gives us a grand total of almost 300 sq.ft., just you know, spread out a bit. Come to think of it, we are also sharing some space at Mavid's too (home to some revolting number of peas and beets at the moment). So four. Four gardens. Seems excessive, but more would be fun.

In preparation for all of this space, we splurged on seeds from Landreth's, including at least four kinds of tomato, and three types of beans, three or four types of squash, three types of cucumber (who knew there were so many?), several eggplant varieties, and a bunch of other stuff. We were generally successful with germination (thanks to E), although I think a few things just simply failed. Many of our seedlings have been transplanted, but there are others still growing and waiting for cold-weather crops to come and free up a little room.

The home garden: So far we have mostly summer crops in there -- a couple cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, eggplants, peppers, maybe a few other things. Basil, cilantro, and borage all seem to be doing well on the front porch, and we have so much mint right now that mojitos are definitely going to have to happen soon. (Pics will come eventually)

The Fox Street garden: Peas! Potatoes! Onions! This garden gets the ugly stuff (or at least, the stuff that grows underground or is not colorful enough to be attractive to the neighbors). Last year a lot of people lost their tomatoes and other common vegetables to casual pickers, and the kids pulled up all our carrots, presumably to see if they were done yet. The peas are going strong and I think we'll have a bunch of those within a week. The potatoes have been crazy, but I will leave that until I have a photo of them to share. Fun stuff though.



The Druid Hill garden: As I said above, this is mostly full of cold-weather crops at the moment. Unfortunately something awful ate all of our peas, so they never really made it above three inches. (We ripped those out and did beans instead.) Otherwise we have a couple types of lettuce going, radishes, broccoli and cabbage that will probably do nothing, beets, and chard. Maybe some collards too. We lost our arugula, broccoli rabe, and bok choy after a few warm days when they bolted. Ah well. At least the chickens enjoyed them. We've begun transplanting some summer stuff in the barer spots in this garden too, with more to follow soon.

A few chicken videos for your amusement

1. The helicopter noise. I love this sound. Princess makes it when she's fussy with us for changing the coop around. The other chickens kind of whine. Also, chickens eat anything (here, it's pine shavings). It's impressive.

2. Smacky-lips drinking.

Snow cat!

Pete sneaked out when E opened the door to say something to me.Pete looked around for a moment.

Pete did not like what she saw. Apparently warmth and dryness win over precious freedom.

Snow chickens!

Sadly it seems a lot of snow had been blowing into the coop. The chickens were not at all pleased about this, and were quite squawky when I took away the bucket they had been standing on. (On really cold days we take out a bucket full of hot water for a little extra heat. Otherwise they tend to just pile on top of each other - impressive when they're all sitting on the roost.) I added a bit more straw and E suggested some plastic over the window and door, so they should be nice and dry for now.

A pretty egg

Surprisingly the chickens (with the exception of the Chairman) have continued to lay through winter. Today's haul included a nice speckled one. Curious what causes the speckles - usually there are only a couple; the lovely egg below is unusual for our chickens.

We're douchebags. There, I've said it.

After we get over the shock of paying $130 for a chicken's vet bill (details to follow), we're buying this. Then we're going to make this. Ordering seeds for our garden tonight, probably from here (local company with a massive collection of heirlooms). Tomato plants (and an apple tree?) on the (living?) roof. I give up - time to just embrace it.

Catching up, part III: The chickens take a walk

Princess came to us with a clipped wing, and in an effort to give her a break from the other chickens, we let her wander around the back yard on occasion. Almost immediately she jumped up into the other garden bed and began rolling about in the dirt. As this was revoltingly adorable, and she seemed to be enjoying the experience, we decided the other chickens should be allowed the same privilege. We inexpertly clipped the chickens' wings (just the primary flight feathers, nothing awful), and unceremoniously tossed them out into the great wide backyard.

Not only was this a field trip for the chickens (who occasionally enjoy a little walkabout every couple weeks or so -- at least while we don't have a productive garden), E got to try out his bird handling skills. Bizarrely enough, if you hold a bird upside down by its feet, it completely freezes. Then again, these are also animals that are immediately fooled into immobility when you cover their heads too, so perhaps it's not so surprising after all.

Catching up, part II: Canning

Much like the rest of the world, E and I did a bunch of canning* over the summer. We bought all sorts of produce at the farmers' market*, and made it tasteless and potentially poisonous by boiling it under intense pressure in little glass jars. At one point we actually had so many cans to process at the same time we bought a giant pressure cooker that fits a whopping 10 quart jars or 20-odd pint jars, or something like that. (It's also supposed to produce chicken stock in around 20 minutes, but that doesn't consider the time it takes to build up or release the pressure. Still, a major time saver.) Thanks to a couple fantastic books, particularly this one, we had very easy, straightforward recipes to work with, and successfully (so far at least) canned diced tomatoes, roasted red peppers, corn, lima beans (a bit disgusting looking with all the starch floating around in the jar - at least we are hoping that's what it is), and really good salsa made from seconds bought on the cheap.

Before:
After:
Reminders for next year:

• We have already used all of our diced tomatoes -- could have done 10 quarts easily.
  
• Way fewer roasted peppers, or find some suckers to take them off our hands.
• Do some creamed corn as well as whole kernel; the most delicious thai shrimp soup in the world looks simply nasty with whole kernel corn and doesn't have as nice a texture. Or stop being lazy and use a blender.
  
• The salsa recipe (from the Ball book, I believe) could use more jalapenos and cilantro.