Growing an All You Can Eat Salad Bar

So much extra space on my double lot!

I moved us out to Roslyn last year for a variety of reasons, the biggest one was to be more self-sufficient and independent of financial constraints. Living in Seattle was doable with two tech incomes but after my late husband passed away and I was laid off, spending $3,000 a month on a mortgage felt obscene.

My two kids and I didn't need a house that big and I'd rather live in a smaller house on more usable land. Living in such an expensive area with horrible traffic and homelessness was becoming less appealing. And, since both my kids were homeschooling and I (up until the lay off) was telecommuting, I couldn't justify staying in Seattle any longer.

Since we've moved, my daughter started attending the local alternative high school and my son started his first job working in a local restaurant and graduates high school this spring. I walked away from the tech world and have been doing some part-time work in town for the bookstore/coffee shop. Both my son and I walk to work - I think I've filled up my gas tank three times since we moved here. The change in all of us has been quite huge given the strain that we've lived under for so many years, dealing with the specter of cancer. I don't believe we would have thrived as much if we continued living in Seattle.

Berry and asparagus patch

Moving to a mountain town has given us a vastly different environment with months on end of snow, but it is melting out and it feels like spring is coming fast! Along that vein I've brushed off the seed catalogs and we've started building and planning out what is to become what I hope to be a garden that will feed us through the spring, summer and fall and, with careful planning, freezing and canning, through the winter as well. Eventually I'd like chickens again, but we'll see about that.

This last week we started building out the beds and I purchased my favorite varietals of thornless raspberries and blackberries and some blueberries. I also picked up some purple asparagus and a number of different potato seed. My seed stock is complete and my biggest challenges at this point are:

1. Learning the new environment, microclimates in my yard and growing season (it's super short)
2. Dealing with different pests (bug, bird and mammalian)
3. Figuring out what grows well here and what doesn't (I'll have some experimental garden sections going)
4. Building out the rest of the garden
5. Determining how much coal in your garden beds is a bad thing (we live in an old coal mining town)

I'll keep trying to post on what we're doing and building. I'm hoping to address the coronavirus aspect of things in a near future post, especially given the fact we live in a state with things shutting down quickly. I'm dusting off my Adapting in Place hat and will share what we're doing along those lines as well.

It's hard to see what's going on in the pictures - I'll be posting more close up ones so you can tell what I'm doing a little better. I generally post more stuff on Facebook and Instagram than I do here, but I'll try to be more consistent.

Urban fruit orchard - what I'm growing

Honeycrisp apples

I've lived in my current house for about 13 years now and, over the years, I have planted numerous fruiting trees and bushes. While I love planting annual vegetables, I still can't get over the "free" fruit that comes back year after year with relatively little effort besides trimming back some branches. Well, some things, like grapes and my almond tree are a little more of a pain than not. But, for the most part, it's pretty easy maintenance.

For those of you in the Pacific Northwest, most of the fruiting plants I've purchased are from Raintree Nursery in Western Washington or Swanson's Nursery in Seattle. Both have a great selection!

Anyway, I wanted to give you a snapshot of all the fruit that I've got growing in my little urban fruit orchard:

THE TREES

3 x 1 Cherry. This tree has Rainier, Montmorency and another sour cherry grafted onto one rootstock. The birds generally pick the sour cherries clean off the high canopy, but I'm able to get the Rainier and more than enough sour cherries than we can eat off the more reachable section down below.

Rainier Cherry. I'm not 100% this one is a Rainier, but it looks and tastes like Rainiers. I planted it after lamenting how many sour cherries the above tree produced, but not enough sweet cherries! I keep it super short, maybe 7 feet tall.

Hollywood plum

Hollywood Plum Lovell. I love this plum tree, it produces some of the sweetest plums I have ever eaten. I also keep this one pretty compact at 8 feet tall.

Mini Dwarf Honeycrisp. This poor thing has been struggling to grow, but it produces a good 10 - 15 full-sized apples on it every year. It's our Charlie Brown tree of apples.

2 Columnar Apples - Golden Sentinel and Scarlet Sentinel. One of the columnar trees has stayed columnar, the other one is a huge sprawling crazy thing. I've let it go au natural because it produces way more apples this way. Both are really good eating apples.

Fuzzy little almonds!

Dwarf Almond - Nikita's Pride. This is a relatively new addition that I planted in 2017 and it's got quite a few fuzzy almonds on it this year. Last year it flowered but I didn't get any almonds. I'm hoping to see some production to write about later. It's a cold hardy dwarf tree that grows like wild, so I need to keep it under control more than I like or it will grow into our power lines.

Arbequina Olive. Oh boy, this poor thing. It's been in a pot for years to keep it from taking over the yard. Every year it produces a ton of tiny little olives, but nothing edible. If I plant it in the ground it will get up to 30 feet tall, so I keep it contained. It's more ornamental than anything.

Mini Dwarf Persimmon - Nikita's Gift. I love persimmons! This tree, like the almond tree, was planted in 2017. I finally have some baby fruit on it this year! I'm sooo excited to see what, if anything, I get off the tree this year.

Nikita's Gift persimmon

THE BUSHES

2 Triple Crown Thornless Blackberries. These grow like crazy and produce more blackberries than I can eat, freeze and can. The blackberries are huge (about thumb size) and are pretty seedy if you pick them too early. I whack them down every year and they still come back, guns-a-blazing, every time.

2 Raspberry Shortcake Raspberries. I love these little guys. They are short, thornless, tend to stay contained and are prolific producers. We eat a ton of these every year and I still end up freezing a lot.

Stevens Cranberry. This doesn't produce anything (yet), but one of these days it might. I'll keep you posted!

Quinault strawberry

Quinault Strawberries. I replanted my weird strawberry patch that's in an old sandbox 2 years ago with these everbearing strawberries. They don't produce a ton, but are enough to keep me happy.

Bluecrop Blueberry. This crappy bugger has taken about 10 years to produce anything of note. I love blueberries so I'm letting him keep his spot. I took out the other blueberry years ago out of sheer frustration from it producing only a few blueberries a year.


THE VINES 

Canadice grapes

Grapes - Canadice, Glenora and Catawba. I've had to reorient the first two of these varietals of vines since I replaced the fence they were growing on a few years ago. Last year they were just getting re-established and then struggled with powdery mildew on them, which seems to negatively impact their fruit production.

They were producing like freaking crazy before I moved them to the other fence, so maybe they'll recover and we'll have more grapes than we know what to do with them (like in previous years).

The Catawba vine I've had for over a decade and it has never produced anything useful. Just sad, sad grapes. I keep it around because it looks nice, but I regret it every year because it grows so darn fast.

Note: all of these pictures were taken end of May 2019.

Ash on my apples - harvesting food after a wildfire

Light ash fall - just the beginning!

With all the fires in Western Washington (and in other parts of the country where it's far worse), we are getting some ash fall in Seattle. Nothing like ye olde Mt. St. Helens eruption days, but still. Enough ash to make it look like a light snowfall.

It didn't exactly dawn on me initially, but now I'm wondering what's the best way to rinse the ash off my backyard fruits and vegetables? Some things will be easier to rinse off, like zucchini and tomatoes, but sticky fruits like blackberries and herbs like Italian flat leaf parsley might be more of a challenge.

I can wait for some rain before worrying about harvesting the apples. I guess when it comes down to it, it's not exactly any more harmful than grilling vegetables over a wood fire, but it will add an unwanted grittiness to foods harvested in areas in wildfire country.

For those of you in harder hit areas of the country with lots of ash fall from wildfires - what are you going to do to get the ash off your harvested fruits and vegetables?

Backyard mini orchard - 2017 update

Hollywood Plums

I think the last time I posted about my backyard mini orchard was back in 2011. So, it's about time that I update y'all with what fruiting things I've got growing these days.


Back in 2011 I had:

• 2 dwarf cherries
• 2 columnar apples
• 1 dwarf plum
• 2 blueberries
• 4 blackberries
• 1 dwarf nectarine
• 1 dwarf peach
• 2 dwarf pears
• 1 Peter's Honey Fig
• 4 blackberries
• 30 strawberries
• 3 grape vines

The fig sadly didn't make it

Over the years, things have changed up a bit. I ended up (due to tree disease) ripping out the nectarine, peach and pear trees. 

I dug up the fig because it was over a side sewer line, removed 2 blackberries because 4 was waaaay too many, removed one grape because they were super seedy (and we replaced our fence that it was growing on), removed 1 blueberry because it just wasn't growing, and most of the strawberries died off over the winter (who knows why).


So, here we are in 2017 and I've got:

• 2 dwarf cherries
• 2 columnar apples
• 1 dwarf plum (Hollywood)
• 1 blueberry
• 2 thornless blackberries
• 3 strawberries
• 3 grape vines

And I've added since 2011:

• 1 super dwarf Honeycrisp apple
• 1 dwarf almond tree
• 1 Sudachi lime tree
• 1 cranberry 
• 1 super dwarf persimmon
• 2 thornless raspberries
• 1 arbequina olive

Fruit Production:

Right now I'm up to my eyeballs in blackberries and I'm pulling off the Hollywood plums since they are just about done for this year. I love this plum - the fruit is fantastic tasting and the tree is self-pollinating. I keep it about 8 feet tall, just so I don't have to reach too high for the fruit. I've also got some residual blueberries on the bush and I'm holding off on harvesting the apples until this weekend. I'm planning on canning some apple pie filling and applesauce.

What kind of fruiting trees/plants are you growing? What just didn't work out in your yard?

I think I'm 90% blackberries

Blackberry crisp!

'Tis the time of year wherein I'm inundated by far more blackberries than it is possible for one human to consume. Last year my daughter helped out with eating the blackberries but, for some reason, this year I've been left to my own devices.

I swear that about 90% of my body cells are being fed by a steady diet of Triple Crown Thornless blackberries and I still can't keep up with them. So, not surprisingly, I've been freezing them on sheet pans and storing them in gallon freezer bags to make this awesome blackberry crisp. But, mostly I'll be using them in my oatmeal when fruit and berry season slows down.. 

Triple Crown Thornless blackberries

I had a similar issue with our raspberries and have several bags frozen as well. I'm certainly not complaining! I've been relying on the fruit produced in our yard this year since I didn't really plant a garden until late in the season (it was really unseasonably cold here up through July) and broke down four of my raised beds and need to rebuild. 

The only vegetables I grew this year were garlic, zucchini, lettuce and tomatoes. It was a record low for me. I did make up for it by planting a fall garden, so we'll see how that goes since it's been very warm here since the beginning of August.

My fruit trees and bushes have been humming along producing loads of cherries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. The time for apples and plums is almost upon us, but more about that later!

How are your fruiting plants doing this year?

Yeah, I know I've been MIA - I can't make any promises, but maybe I'll post more than a few times this year!

Big, Fat Sausage Finger Blackberries

This is NOT my creepy hand.

Good grief, if there's one thing in my backyard that produces more food than we can eat, it's our  blackberry bushes. We have one Triple Crown thornless blackberry bush that produces immense, phallic looking blackberries. They aren't the sweetest things but, then again, maybe it's because I'm always just so excited by their big, black juicy ginormousness that I get flustered and pick them too early.

We have two other thornless blackberry bushes that aren't quite so prolific and not nearly so intimidating in the size department. I don't remember the variety, but they hold their own and are sweeter and less seedy. Right now, the three bushes are literally covered in unripe berries and buzzing with bees like you wouldn't believe. I'm really tempted to remove one of them and replace it with another of the Raspberry Shortcake plants that I got last year that produces nicely. But, I just can't bring myself to rip one of them out. (Or, for that matter, a few stupid pear trees that are unyielding and need to go.)

We, literally, still have about 5 gallons of blackberries in the chest freezer from last year. My intent was to make blackberry jam during the winter months when it was cold out and a more reasonable time to do some canning, but I just never got around to using all of it. My favorite recipes are Blackberry, Rum and Black Pepper jam and Blackberry, Hatch Chile and Tequila jam so you'd think, with all that liquor, I'd be more inspired to make some jam.

Anyway, sensing the upcoming onslaught of this year's blackberries and my already getting behind in the eating department, I picked a big batch of them yesterday morning and dropped them off at the neighbor's house. This year, I won't be hoarding them. At least, not yet. They were a little tart because I probably picked them too early cause, well, you know.

And, for those of you who believe my brain is permanently lodged in the gutter, I must remind you that I managed to make my way through an entire post on cucumbers yesterday without any salacious comments.

Feeling ducky - backyard ducks

Sure, the name of this blog is Crunchy Chicken and not Crispy Duck, but bear with me. You see, I've been jonesing to get chickens for oh, about 8 years now. Generally, it hasn't worked out, mostly because of a variety of circumstances but I think a lot of it has to do with the cost per egg and the work involved.

I have a real hard time justifying the hundreds of dollars of investment in getting a decent chicken coop set up such that those chickens sure as chicken shit better be laying golden eggs. I can get local, free range organic eggs quite readily around here. Sure, they aren't $1.99 a dozen and more like $5 a dozen, but if you add in the cost of chicken feed, home grown eggs, amortized, are probably going to cost me $5 an egg.

I don't have any handy chicken coop designer on retainer around here, so I would have to buy one premade and, from what I've seen, you are looking at anywhere between $500 for a basic coop to over $1,000 for something fancy. I don't fully expect the chickens to live primarily off of kitchen scraps and our yard isn't big enough to feed them with bugs and such. So, there would be a heavy reliance on chicken feed. In other words, expensive eggs. Obviously eggs aren't the only reason to keep chickens, but they make for fairly expensive pets.

Anyway, I was thinking ducks. Super slug eating ducks. They would do perfect around here and have minimal requirements with housing since they, well, are ducks. Many people don't bother with traditional housing for more temperate areas and some just get a doghouse in case of inclement weather. Although it sounds like most of the time the ducks don't bother with it.

Ducks have a lot less health issues than chickens and many breeds are more prolific at egg laying. Plus the male ducks don't crow like nobody's business. From what I've read, a pond is optional as long as the birds have access to water when it's really warm out and, even then, a wading pool would suffice.

For those of you wondering about the duck eggs themselves, as long as you get a breed (they also have bantam duck breeds!) that doesn't lay enormous duck eggs, they will be more or less equivalent to chicken eggs. Duck eggs do have more protein in the whites and more fat in the yolks so they are richer when used in baking and, of course, richer when eating them straight up. A favorite springtime meal is fried duck eggs over roasted asparagus with shaved parmesan and fresh ground black pepper. Mmmm. But, I digress. Ahem.

I wouldn't embark on Project Duckworks until next year if we do decide to, but I wanted to know if any of you out there keep backyard ducks? Any city ducks out there? Oh, by the way, those Indian Runner Ducks (pictured above) are super cute.

Related books:
Storey's Guide to Raising Ducks: Breeds, Care, Health
Barnyard in Your Backyard: A Beginner's Guide to Raising Chickens, Ducks, Geese, Rabbits, Goats, Sheep, and Cows
The Complete Guide to Small Scale Farming: Everything You Need to Know About Raising Beef Cattle, Rabbits, Ducks, and Other Small Animals

Pastured meat rabbits

I've spent far too much time recently researching meat rabbits, breeds and methods of dispatching them. In the past, I've looked into breeding rabbits for fiber, mostly thinking that Angoras would be more up my alley, particularly since the whole processing aspect of meat rabbits is still beyond my comfort level and I know I would be the one left to doing the dispatching.

I'm not entirely new to rabbit husbandry since I had a bunch of bunnies in my childhood. I like the idea of rabbits for fiber, but it's hard to acquire Angoras in my area, and I'm not sure that I have the gumption to knit anything up with the fiber. That is, of course, after mixing it with wool and spinning my own yarn with it. The manure aspect of rabbits certainly intrigues me as a good compost for the garden but, as of yet, I have done nothing regarding raising rabbits. It's been all talk and no action.

I'm also most likely cursed with the only two children on the face of the planet who hate rabbits. For whatever their reasons, they sure ain't sharing them with me. In any case, how did I come about looking up meat rabbits again? Well, my foodie brother was discussing his plans for doing a big Easter event (much like his Poultrygeist event in October with ducks) which, not too surprisingly, involve rabbit as one of the course ingredients. I suggested perhaps raising some rabbits on his behalf as long as he did the dispatching.

Again, not too surprisingly, he was fine with that. He's very interested in knowing exactly where his ingredients come from, and learning how to process rabbits, chickens, goats, etc. is something he has no problem with. So, it looks like we might have some sort of matched interest here.

While looking up meat rabbits, I ran across a number of sites mentioning pastured rabbits, most likely originating from the practice done at Polyface Farms (Joel Salatin of Omnivore's Dilemma fame). Basically, you keep the bunnies in a sort of chicken tractor that gets rotated around so the rabbits have access to fresh clover, grass, weeds and the like.

This is supplemented with traditional rabbit pellets and hay, depending on the time of year. I thought this was a very interesting idea in that it not only is a money saver, but the rabbits are more likely producing a healthier meat and are generally happier hanging out in the grass during decent weather.

Images from Simply Abundant Farm and Weathertop Farm.

It's avocado time!

My brother, who lives in San Diego, recently sent us pictures of his backyard avocado tree I think, mostly, to taunt us. You see, he doesn't like avocados in any shape or form, but my husband, myself and my other brother, Darryl (who also lives in Seattle), love them.

And the ones he grows are a thousand times better than the ones you get from the store. Better than the ones we could get even when we lived in California. Which should surprise no one. Backyard avocados are like homegrown tomatoes, there's just no comparison to store-bought ones.

So, while the avocados are in no way local to us, he sometimes ships up a box of them and I have a hard time bringing myself to discourage him of this practice, particularly since they go out to three families.

Anyway, this year he has over 100 avocados on his tree. Which is why he titled his email "Avocado Pr0n". And, indeed, it is.

What's your guilty out-of-region fruit or vegetable pleasure?

Planting a fall and winter garden

Just because summer is almost at its end doesn't mean you have to shut down your gardening opportunities. If you live in a very cold northern clime, hoop houses, row covers and cloches can help to extend your season. If you live in a warmer clime, well, this post probably isn't too applicable, but I'm sure these vegetables will grow where you live as well.

There are two things to keep in mind when planting crops for fall and winter harvest: temperature and number of hours of daylight. You can only fool some veggies so much before they just decide to either give up or overwinter.

Yesterday, I prepared one of my beds for my fall and winter crops. I dug out all the radishes (most were too puny and bolting to keep around) and all the red onions for storage. I left the row of tomatoes in the back as they are still going strong. I added in a couple inches of compost and then went to town planting my winter hardy crops.

Since our first frost date around here is at the end of November, I found the vegetables that had a growing period of 60 days or less to make sure they were mostly "finished" before frosty weather arrives. I also ordered a number of winter hardy types last year and got those out.

What I ended up planting were some Napa Cabbage that I bought as seedlings over the weekend as well as spinach, kale, purple top white globe turnips, beets, broccoli raab and sugar snap peas.

I'm curious to see how successful they'll be. Since we are still having warmish weather at least for a little while longer I'm hoping they'll get off to a good start. Early next month is when I'll go totally bonkers planting garlic. It was such an easy success last year that I want to plant a whole lot more for next summer's harvest.

I also am freezing the tomatoes (for making sauce later) as well as shredded zucchini (4 cups from the one I picked yesterday) for making bread when it's not so hot out. I just need to remember that I have them in the chest freezer.

By the way, here's an interesting article from the New York Times last week about finding local wheat and growing it yourself: Flour That Has the Flavor of Home. It makes me want to plant a patch of wheat in my front lawn.

Anyway, are you planting anything for fall/winter? If so, what?

Backyard Booty: Vegetables

This is the second installment of the Backyard Booty series. Today I want to talk about all the super exciting vegetables I'm growing this year.

Okay, most of these I grew last year, so there aren't too many surprises, but since I know better what grows successfully in our maritime location as well as what vegetables we'll actually eat, I know things will be more productive this year.

Anyway, here's the list so far (number of plants in parenthesis).

Tomato (3: Black Krim, San Marzano, Sweet Million Cherry)

Kale (2)

Lettuce (4)

Broccoli Raab (4)

Broccoli (3)

Red onions (12)

Carrots (16)

French radishes (16)

White Lisbon bunching onions (16)

Garlic (6)

Spinach, Viroflay (2)

Zucchini (3)

Sugar snap peas (2)

Sugar pie pumpkins (3)

Potatoes (French fingerling; Yukon gold)

This weekend I'll be planting some beets. We used the tops and the bottoms last year quite regularly, but I won't be growing as many of them. My broccoli plants are looking fantastic and I can't wait to try homegrown, fresh picked broccoli to see how it compares to store bought.

Did you know that broccoli leaves are edible? That's right, just prepare them as you would any other green, like beet, collard or turnip tops. Harvest and prepare only young, tender leaves as older, tougher leaves often develop a somewhat bitter taste.

I'll be keeping the spinach going since we ended up eating a lot more spinach last year than the lettuce, mostly since it's a hardier plant and can withstand aphid invasions better.

Last year my zucchini was a total bust (I know, WTF?) so I'm expecting this year to be inundated by acres of zukes. I'll be freezing them in batches for making tons of bread next fall and winter. I also will be planting more pumpkins since making my own pumpkin puree was incredibly satisfying and it gets used for so many things.

I'm not bothering with peppers, watermelon or any other heat-seeking plants. This summer is supposed to be hotter than normal, but last year was such a disappointment I don't want to relive it again. I still have a few other things to plant and a lot more of the things already in the ground to keep enough going to last through the summer.

What about you? What are you growing veggie-wise this year?

(By the way, I'll have an ant update soon.)

Backyard Booty: Fruits

This new series, Backyard Booty, will not be a montage of pictures of my ass. Sorry. Instead, it will be a description of what fabulous edibles I am growing on my urban homestead.

This edition is all about the fruits. I, of course, will be updating this as I add new fruits to the mix. I have grandiose plans, but not a whole lot of time lately. Couple that with some severely wacky weather. For instance, we've had winter temperatures up through May and this weekend it's supposed to be 90. WTF?

Anyway, I haven't really added anything yet this year to the fruits but I do hope to eventually dig out some more rose bushes to add in dwarf apple trees. What I really want to plant are grapes, both table and wine, I just need to scrape up some space for it.

Here's what's growing this year so far:

4 x 1 Cherry Tree. What this means is that 4 types of cherries have been grafted onto one tree. This is great for urban yards where you don't have a whole lot of space to make sure you have enough cherry trees for cross-pollination at the correct time o' year. I bought this last year at Rain Tree Nursery.

Dwarf Negronne Fig. I also bought this one last year. It's minuscule, but it is supposed to get about six feet tall if I let it. It's currently less than 2 feet, but it's trying real hard to produce fruit. These trees are great - they produce fruit twice a year. I just need to be patient or buy a more mature one to supplement my figgy needs.

Blueberries. I have Bluecrop and Olympia varieties. I have space for more, but I just haven't had a chance to go out an get some more. But I'd like to add two more bushes for maximum blueberry action.

Tristar strawberries. Oh, how I've been patiently waiting for you strawbs. I planted these last year and this year am suppose to get some sort of strawberry bounty. I have about 16 plants, which sounds like a lot but it isn't. The Tristar grow well for this region, and produce all summer long. So far, we have flowers going to town, so I'm hoping it has survived all the late snow. Go, strawberries, go!

Neighborhood booty. Not that these are growing in my yard, but I have some neighborhood bounty that I'm hoping to take advantage of this year. One neighbor at the end of the block has a plum tree that hangs quite a bit onto the public sidewalk. Last year I availed the tree of all the fruit that was created a public nuisance/hazard by dropping fruit onto the sidewalk and attracting bees and yellow jackets. Not sure if this is legal, but no one said anything! My next door neighbor has an apple tree. I'm fairly sure they aren't eating any of the fruit off of it because, well, I'm watching them. Mwwoohahaha!

Down the road there is a ginormous fig tree that is on the public parking strip. I daydream about camouflaging myself and making a midnight foray to steal fruit from this very mature fig tree. Maybe this year I'll have the huevos to collect some.

Farther afield. A friend from work has an orchard in Central WA. I'm hoping to save him again this year from an overwhelming amount of organic peaches, apples and whatever else I can get my hands on.

What kind of fruit do you have growing this year?