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.

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!

October strawberries

I can't believe it but my day neutral Tri Star strawberries are still producing berries. Apparently, according to the website where I bought the plants last year, day neutral strawberries will produce in an ongoing fashion from June until frost which, around here, won't be until sometime in November.

In the meantime, I'll be enjoying all those yummy strawberries!

I've also got quite a few sugar pie pumpkins that are ready for picking, some zucchinis that hopefully will continue growing and be ready in a few weeks and I'm still hoping that all those figs on my little tree will keep growing and ripen soon. Since we're expecting a bit of rain over the next week, I harvested a bunch of tomatoes to ripen indoors since many of my tomatoes are splitting when we get heavy rains.

As for preserving food items, I've been dehydrating apples and hope to get some from our neighbor's tree to dehydrate some more and hopefully make some pie filling. I'm also freezing the tomatoes that we are not eating for making tomato sauce when I have enough to do so.

Are your gardens still producing or are they starting to slow down?

Crazy raspberry lady

I was at our grocery store the other day buying 1/2 flats of berries from a local farm (they deliver daily!) when a man asked me a question about the raspberries. Well, let me tell you he got an earful!

After chatting for a few minutes, discussing how long they'll last, what to do with them, how to freeze them, what kind of deal this was, etc. he said, "Wow, you know a lot about raspberries!" I was somewhat embarrassed, but just answered, "Well, I'm the crazy raspberry lady". Of course, my cart was filled with two half-flats of blueberries ($5.98 each!) and two half-flats of raspberries and nothing else.

I was thinking of making jam, but just wasn't in the mood. So, instead I've been freezing and drying the berries that haven't been making their way into our mouths. I freeze them on cookie sheets and once they are frozen I pack them into Ziploc freezer bags and suck the air out with a straw. I've been doing this for the last two weeks so I think I finally have enough berries to last us for a while.

Blueberry jam

I went on another canning expedition over the weekend and made 13 jars of blueberry jam. I was really hoping to go to one of the organic U-pick farms to pick our own blueberries, but we have had just too many things going on the past few weeks that I was worrying we would miss the blueberry season altogether.

So, I compromised. I bought two big flats of blueberries from the grocery store. They weren't exactly local (I missed out on when they were offering those), but at least they are in season and I'll try not to beat myself up too much because now I have all those glorious jars of blueberry jam.

I tried some (blueberries must have more pectin in them than strawberries because it seems like they set up a lot faster) and can't decide which one I like better - the blueberry or strawberry jam. They both have their merits!

Of course, since we hand picked our own strawberries, I have a much nicer memory associated with the strawberries, rather than just picking them up from the store. But at least I got the canning done that I wanted too.

Thornless blackberries are coming into season, so hopefully we can do our own picking of those. The prickly blackberries that grow like weeds around here are too hard for the kids too pick.

Whatcha plantin? - April 15th

Hopefully things are warming up for you guys out there. This weekend I planted:

*Olympia blueberry highbush
*Bluecrop blueberry highbush
*Tristar strawberry plants

*Berggarten sage
*Dark leaf oregano
*Italian parsley
*Marjoram
*Santo coriander

I would be tending to my newly delivered tomato plants, but they are all dead. More posts about that tomorrow, when I am done weeping over them.

Blueberry and strawberry plants

I'm so excited! I ordered some blueberry plants today to be delivered in April. They are extra large bareroot plants so I'm hoping to have some fruit this year if all goes well. I ordered one Northland blueberry and one Olympia blueberry.

The Olympia blueberry is described as "very sweet & especially flavorful. Medium to medium large fruit, ripening midsummer." The Northland is "very productive, mid-sized berries, very sweet. Yellow-orange fall color, yellow branch color, compact bush."

I ordered them both from a local nursery. I also ordered a whole heap of strawberry plants. More specifically, I'm getting Tristar strawberries. Tristar are a day-neutral type of berry, which means that they fruit continuously throughout the summer. This particular variety has its heaviest yield in autumn.

I picked up the book, The Berry Grower's Companion, from the library today, so I hope to get some hints and tips on properly preparing, planting and growing my new plants.

I'm sure I'll be posting my progress on these plants and what I do with whatever bounty comes out of it!