just a drive by post...

The first harvest from my straw bale garden... a zuchini... dinner tomorrow!

And the purple coneflowers have started to bloom...

And at work, I was walking into an office for a pick-up, and a mourning dove took off on a paniced flight... Stupid bird had built her nest right by the front door of a business...

And that's it.

Not too exciting I know. I got off work and stoped by the hardware store - I walked in on the opposite side of the building as the nursery dept... I'm learning! - to get a bracket to replace the rusted out one that held the wheels on the lawnmower. Tried to mow last weekend and the wheels fell off...

Well they don't sell the brackets. They'd much rather I buy a new lawnmower than repair the one I had. So I had to go over an buy some little metal pieces that they sell to brace cabinets and I got home and spent a good hour rigging that thing, and I was sitting there feeling all proud of myself. Then it dawned on me... now I have to mow the lawn.

I knew there was a reason I claim to not know how to do these things...

later.

Ink caps and coriander...

Well all this rain has resulted in an absolute invasion of ink caps in the straw bales...

Sure, they're cute now... but by this afternoon they will have turned to black goo...

I don't really mind. My research on them says that while they're not edible, they're not poisonous either... their non-edibility is probably related to their general ickiness... even when they're in their cute adorable stage, you can't pick them... they fall apart and the heat from your touch begins the melting to goo phase... but their myceliums (ie: mushroom roots) are very busy converting the cellulose in the straw to something that the plants can use to grow, so I'll let them be...

Next year, if I do the straw bale thing again, and I probably will, I'm going to innoculate them with oyster mushrooms. I figure that if I'm gonna grow mushrooms, they might as well be edible.

And next, we have coriander.

Well, not exactly.... This is Vietnamese coriander (Persicaria odorata)

I use this to replace cilantro or coriander leaves in most of my recipes... primarily because I can't grow cilantro here... our summer heat makes it bolt to seed before I even get a decent leaf. They're a decent replacement, although they don't taste exactly the same... the flavor is a little deeper, with a peppery overtone, but it's close enough for all practical purposes. And while cilantro looses much of it's flavor when it's cooked, this doesn't...

Originally, I bought plants from the nursery, but you can't always rely on being able to find them... This is cutting I got from the grocery store.

If you go to Asian groceries, there tends to be a large amount of leafy greens. This, like most of the herbs, is sold fairly cheaply... usually 2 or 3 bunches for a dollar. The last time I bought some, I put a few stems in water to hold them, and they sprouted roots.

I know from experience that you can't just stick them in a pot and grow them though... the little cuttings will promptly lose their leaves and the stems will die back.

What I did was put them in a pot of soil then set the pot in a bigger pot that has no drainage and filled it with 3 or 4 inches of water. (Don't cover the top of the inner pot) Essentially your taking the plant from water to mud. Then after 3 or 4 days, I take the pot out of the larger pot, and let it begin to dry out... so now I'm going from mud to soil. And now, 2 weeks later, the plant has tripled in size and roots are growing out of the bottom drainage hole.

It's now ready to go into a hanging basket, where it will end up looking a lot like a Tradescantia ie: wandering jew, or out in the yard, where it will make a bushy viney kind of plant to about 2 feet tall.

Whichever, it will be getting more sun than it is now, and the undersides of the leaves will turn red and the top of the leaves will get dark half-circle markings. You can see the barest hint of them in the bottom close up pics.

It's closely related to smart-weed, a plant often found in abandoned lots, and occasionally eaten... not by me though. Here, in my climate, it can survive the winter outside, although after it begins growing in the spring, late frosts will kill it off.

By the way, this method of rooting works for other plants that don't transfer from cuttings in water to cuttings in dirt real well... some of the fibrous rooted begonias, impatients and basil come to mind...

just rambling on in the garden...

No pics today... I spent most of today in the garden doing more or less un-photogenic things... started my potato tires... it's a technique I've heard about before, but never got the gumption to try...

You get an old tire. Set it on window screening or landscape cloth, then fill it at least halfway with topsoil. Cut up one seed potato into 3 or 4 sets... then plant it in the tire.

As the potato grows, you keep raising the soil level around the plants by adding straw, lawn and shrub trimmings, etc...(Don't cover the growing tip! But the plant will send out new roots, which grow potatoes all along where it's covered) When the first tire is full... add another tire to the top and keep going... up to three tires total... When the potatoes are ready to harvest, the tires will be full of the potatoes, and all your straw and leaves and such will be compost. If you're using good rich stuff in there, up to a bushel in each mound... I've set two mounds, although the guy at the nursery wasn't happy with me buying 2 seed potatoes, he'll get over it... I'm going to see how it works out. I'll keep you posted...

I also have set out two bales... that's bales of hay. I wanted bales of straw, they're cheeper, but I ended up with hay for free so I'm not complaining. What you do with them is set them on the ground in the yard, with the baling wire going parallel to the ground... that way the cut end of the straw is poking up... then you put some sort of high nitrogen fertilizer on there. Most of the web people say ammonium nitrate... the problem with that is that that's the stuff that they make car bombs out of, so a lot of places won't sell it to someone who isn't a farmer... You can also use any lawn fertilizer, or if you're like me, and know people who have horses, you can put some composted horse manure on top... water it real good, and in a couple of weeks, it will have started composting good and you can plant things in it. You just stick a big knife or spade or something into the top of the bale, and wedge a tomato plant in it...

The advantages are 1) the cutworms and ground dwelling pests can't get up to your plant. 2) The straw really holds water well, and in this part of the country that's a big advantage and 3) you're basically growing in pure compost, and after what you're growing is done, you can till it in to the yard.

I've heard of it for the last few years, but I wasn't sure about it... then a friend of mines 80 year old father told me he remembered his father doing it when he was younger, and "that blasted mater got 7 foot tall, and we were eating canned maters all blasted winter..."

Well, with a hyperbolic recomendation like that, how could I not?

Now, they say on the web that you just sit the thing in the yard, and that's what I did, and that contact with the soil not only helps the composting process, but that the roots of your plant will go right through the bale into the dirt. But, with a little extra water, you can put the bales on concrete, if you are unfortunate enough not to have actual dirt around you.

Another friend of mine is looking into this for another reason... The only section of the yard that she can feasably put a garden in is low, and the clay soil gathers and holds water, making roots rot in the ground. She's thinking that 1 or maybe two years of about 20 bales, and she'll be able to raise some veggies, raise the soil level and get some badly needed organics into that clay... I told her it was worth a shot and it couldn't hurt... we're not talking about an area that raising the soil will interfere with some other drainage...

Anyway, that's been my day.

later...