A Day's Harvest: Dinner And Dessert

What a gorgeous day to be in the sunshine, picking veggies and fruit for dinner! Thanks to my car being in the shop, I had a preview of summer vacation today, and it was lovely. As are the pickings:

Today I brought in strawberries, peas (unshelled in the photo), asparagus, a few snap peas, and broccoli. 

To these items Kirk added some fresh pasta and a creamy Parmesan sauce:

A delicious pasta primavera!

Minus the strawberries, of course. These we snacked on during the afternoon, and the kids polished the rest off for dessert. Maybe next time I can hide some to save for more strawberry ice cream.

Predator Protection Trial And Error

This spring we tried a few new things to keep our crops safe from animals and insects that would like to swipe more than their fair share. One promising idea was using plastic fruit containers to keep squirrels away from our ripening tree fruits. But after all of our blustery days of downpours this month, most of those containers ended up on the ground:

I wouldn't mind just snapping them back in place, but the real problem is that they often brought the fruit down with them. I'm not sure if this is a flaw in the system overall, or more of an issue with apricots being kind of delicate in hanging on the tree (at least, this has been true for us--it's not the first time we've accidentally knocked one off the branch before it was ripe). 

Alas, the only one we have left on the tree is this one that never made it into a container in the first place. I thought about removing the remaining containers last weekend, but decided to ride out the experiment instead. 

Oops.

It could well be that this idea would work better for tougher fruits, and ones that are farther along in their development. I haven't seen any signs of squirrels near these trees so far, though, so I think I'll stay my hand until we notice any damage. It could be that the presence of a cat is enough to keep them at bay, since this isn't such easy pickin's anymore.

Another idea that had some problems:

This is the little toothpick fence we tried to keep cutworms away from our leeks. This Pinterest-sponsored idea was that the toothpicks would keep the cutworm from wrapping around the leeks. As you can see, this did not work. 

Now, to be fair, there are plenty of leeks with toothpicks around them that were not eaten, but we also don't have a whole bed full of cutworms, either. So while I guess that I can't be entirely sure it's not been effective on the other leeks, my gut feeling is that this isn't the way to go, especially given how tedious it is. Collars all the way from now on.

I also think we'll cool it on the winter cover cropping, since these are likely to harbor the larvae that overwinter and emerge in the spring to eat everything up. I'm sure the chickens got most of them, which is why we haven't lost more than just a handful of plants to these guys. In the future, we'll have a smaller area of winter cropping to make sure that the chickens can get a good amount of time on those spots to eat grubs and till the soil thoroughly for us, which will probably be our best protection of all against cutworms.

Looks like the lesson here is to use your animals to help you garden: cats vs. squirrels, chickens vs. cutworms. Thanks, guys!

The Grape Trellis

The grape trellis is finally finished, and the vines have been trained and pruned. Things are finally taking shape:

We're training the vines in a pretty classic style to have a central leader with arms trailing out along the trellis on either side (known as a 6-arm kniffin). You can see here that this vine only just reaches to the top of the second rung this year, but in the future it should have three arms on each side fanning out from the center. (You can also see that we attached a new rain gauge to one of the posts--it has gotten a workout recently!)

The posts of the trellis are 4x4 pressure treated (sorry, but cedar was like five times as expensive, and we like to pay the mortgage regularly) posts. They are 8-foot posts, three feet of which are sunk into the ground. Kirk dug a 40 inch hole and backfilled it with six inches of stone for a base, leaving five foot posts. Then he repeated that step eleven more times--LOTS of digging, and I didn't help with any of it. (Too busy pulling weeds.)

We used beefy bamboo poles for our crosspieces, since we had it leftover from some fencing from the Red House. It's free and should be very sturdy. To insert them, Kirk drilled holes in the posts, then predrilled the bamboo and locked them together with a 3-inch screw. The poles are set 16 inches part from each other.  

At the center path, there is an extra post and some small crosspieces on either side to form an arbor. Eventually we will cap it with a little roof so the vines can grow up and over, making a little doorway over the path to the lawn. We'd also like to attach a small bench to the posts on either side of that little doorway. We left room to do so, but that project will wait.

This view of the trellis from the lawn gives you an idea of where the arbor part will be. Imagine a peaked roof spanning the path and bridging those double posts. Also, imagine two small benches facing each other under that roof on either side of the path. 

Best of all, it looks like we should get some grapes this year! Last year we had to pick off our baby grapes to get the vines established, but this year six of our eight vines look like they will bear fruit. We just might be able to make the leap to a No Buying FRUITS and Veggies Challenge by the end of this summer!

Flower Friday: June 14, 2013

When it rains every day, it's hard to get out to bring in flowers--way too messy when they are dripping wet. Only two new arrangements this week, even though there are lots of flowers in bloom outside.

Foxglove and peonies.

Delphinium, valerian, globeflower, yarrow, and columbine.