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.

It's apple season!

Pic courtesy of 2CookinMamas

I have two huge apple trees on my new property here in Roslyn, WA. One that bears sweet, eating apples and one that bears more tart, baking apples. In spite of cutting the trees down considerably before I moved in (so I could comfortably walk around the yard without whacking my brains out), they are still very prolific producers of apples.

So, what have I been doing with all those apples (besides just eating them) since I moved in at the beginning of October? Not enough to keep up!!

Apples in the dehydrator

1. Dehydrating - The first batch that went into the dehydrator was from the tart tree. I did toss the apple slices with a little sugar and a lot of cinnamon. Those dried apples lasted about a week due to my 17-year-old's voracious appetite, so today I'm doing round two. This time I'm drying a mix of the sweet variety and the tart ones as well. I also threw in some pears while I have it running.

2. Roasting - I've been roasting the tart apples alongside onions, sweet potatoes, carrots and a variety of meats like chicken and beer soaked brats (Oktoberfest!). I have to say, I'm not a huge fan of roasted apples, but I'm sure I'll keep trying. I think next time I'll add them later in the roasting time so they are not as squishy.

3. Canning - Next week I'll be making and canning apple butter in the slow cooker. I haven't done it yet because I haven't yet had the gumption to peel, core and cut 6+ pounds of apples.

4. Baking - In an effort to use up some apples, I embarked on making an apple cake last week. It didn't use up as many apples as I would have liked, but it was very good nonetheless! I'm planning on baking a Dutch Apple Pie this Friday, which I'm looking forward to!

Apples!

5. Squeezing - Okay, I know cider pressing isn't like orange juicing, but we're going to have a big cider pressing party here in the new week or two. We're not big into drinking apple juice or cider, but I am planning on making apple pie moonshine with the results of the cider pressing. I'll be reporting on the success of that project. Word on the street is that it's fairly potent stuff.

6. Finishing of the hogs - My friends (and ex-next-door-neighbors from Seattle) now own a small farm in Ellensburg. Among their many animals are four pigs that they are finishing on apples and other fruits. They've been making a weekly trip to come and grab all the dropped fruit from my yard, my next door neighbor and my boyfriend's apple trees. In exchange, I've been getting eggs from their chickens. There seems to be an imbalance in this deal, but I'm not going to point it out!

What's your favorite way to use apples?

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.

Help! We've got apple maggots!

Looks like an apple!

My new partner, Daniel, owns a property in the Cle Elum area of Kittitas County in Washington (I mentioned the area in my previous post about checking out rural properties). You'll be hearing a lot about the projects we have going on over there, but as spring is upon this mountainous area, we needed to get on top of the fact that the apple tree on his property was severely infested with apple maggots last year.

I looked into a number of different options but went on the recommendations from our local nursery and that was to start with apple maggot traps and lures. Once we have signs of apple maggots, we will spray the trees with what they recommended, Bonide Fruit Tree Spray. However, the fruit tree spray we got isn't exactly the most organic thing I'd want to use, breathe in and, ultimately, eat.

So, we are running into two problems right now:

Quarantine areas of WA

1. Identification: How do you identify apple maggots on the traps versus all the various other little flying bug things that are getting stuck to it? I'm assuming pictures of adult maggots on the web are what I'm matching the trap corpses to?

and

2. Organic Options: When they do show up, what's a good (or several) organic alternative so I don't have to be concerned with what I'm ingesting both fresh and preserved?

What do you use to treat apple maggots (and coddling moths while we're at it)? I've never had apple maggots before, so I need your help!!


Warning: this post has affiliate links and all that.

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?

A cold hardy lime that I haven't yet killed

I am a notorious citrus tree killer. I admit it. It's not that I'm trying to kill all of them, it just happens. I think I've gone through at least three Meyer Lemon trees and one Kaffir Lime. And possibly a Key Lime. None of them ever flowered or produced any fruit.

Look at them baby limes!

My husband, at this point, is very doubtful of my abilities in citrus. So, last year when I enthusiastically brought home a cold hardy Sudachi Lime that I could plant in the ground and leave outside year round, he was less than excited. He thought I was nuts. I believe there may have been some eye rolling. This was a year ago.

But the lime tree is still alive! And living outside! In the ground! And, lo and behold, it has about 10 baby limes growing on it. He's still doubtful. Granted, the plant is only about two feet tall and they may not survive, but I'm fairly confident this time around that I'll be enjoying some lime based beverage soon. A very small lime based beverage since the fruit only gets about as big as a golf ball. But I'm not picky. I've got limes!

Have you had any success growing citrus - keeping them outdoors in the summer and moving them indoors or just keeping them indoors? Of course, if you live in the south, I'm assuming you have more citrus fruit than you can possibly handle. And, I'm incredibly jealous.

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!

What's growing In the garden - May 2015

I have gotten a really late start in planting my food garden this year, but I'm finally making some progress after a few weeks of weeding and planning. I know it's always fun to see what other people have growing, so I thought I'd compile a full list for you.

So, to make a long story short, here's what I've got planted and growing so far in my Seattle urban backyard:

Fruit
Sweet cherries
Pie cherries
Columnar apples - Golden Sentinel and Scarlet Sentinel
Mini dwarf Honeycrisp apple
Pear - 2 varieties: I finally have my first pear this year (damn rust)
Blueberries
Raspberries
Blackberries - I pulled out one bush as I get waaaay too many berries every summer
Pineberries - kind of like white strawberries that taste like pineapples
Strawberries
Plums - Hollywood
Grapes - 3 varietals - not great for eating, but good for jelly!
Rhubarb
Arbequina olive
Lime (indoors)

Vegetables
Onions
Leeks
Garlic
Green onions
Green lettuce
Red lettuce
Green beans
Shelling peas
Collard greens
Sweet corn
Yellow summer squash
Cucumbers
Asparagus

Herbs
Rosemary
Oregano
Lavender
Thyme
Italian flatleaf parsley
Cilantro
Sage
Chives
Bay

Other
Chickens (2) - my old ladies are still producing about a half dozen eggs a week

To be planted / transplanted this weekend
Carrots
Pumpkins
Corn
Tomatoes
Basil
Peppers
Watermelon
Cantaloupe


Phew! I think that's it. I still have a 4' x 4' raised bed of space to do some more planting in a few weeks. How is your garden going so far this year? Anything producing yet or is it still too cold?

Plant therapy aka fruit tree splurge

After Monday night's edible landscaping action at Sustainable Ballard, coupled with a conversation on gardens over at One Green Generation, I got a little excited and decided to head over to my local nursery to check out fruit trees. I have some money burning a hole in my pocket that I got from a writing project so what better to do than reinvest in sustainable, edible plants?

Well, from there I enlisted myself in a little plant therapy and stocked up for the season. I've been wanting to get these trees for over a year now and, well, there's no time like the present.

I ended up getting an Arbequina Olive tree that I'll keep potted to control how big it gets. While it takes 200 olive trees to make a decent amount of olive oil, you only need one to cure your own olives. I probably won't be harvesting enough olives in the next few years to produce any amount of significance, but I have plans to cure them myself. They are quite bitter without curing, but curing gives them a mild, smoky flavor.

I also got a tea plant, or Camellia sinensis, as I was inspired by Ingela and her tea plant at the meeting. I'll prune it to keep it at 4 feet tall and about as wide since I don't want a gigantic tea shrub. My husband loves tea and even though I doubt what I make will end up being anywhere near his favorite Earl Grey, at least his source of caffeine will be extremely local. I might try experimenting with tiny amounts of bergamot oil to create my own Earl Grey Lavender blend.

While I was at it, I picked up two columnar apple trees: a Northpole and a Scarlet Sentinel. The apples on these trees grow along the main branch and they pretty much grow straight up, although you can get them to spread a bit. Mature columnar apple trees average eight to ten feet tall and only about two feet wide. The fruit on them is normal size, but the tree itself takes up much less space.

Oh, and I may have picked up a few broccoli starts.

As usual, I'll keep you up to date on how the plants are doing and how the curing and tea making end up going.

Latitude defying lemons

I've always been jealous of my family's tropical fruit trees. Mind you, they live in San Diego, so the climate is just a tad bit different than up here in Seattle.

I never thought I could grow lemons up here until I ran across an ad for a Meyer Lemon tree. I had been mulling over the idea of getting one for a year before I finally plunked down for one early this summer.

It's a little bitty guy and has about 6 or 7 lemons on it. When I bought the tree, the lemons were all green - in fact, everyone thought it was a lime tree and I found myself accidentally calling them limes, too. The color and look overwhelmingly made them look like limes. Well, in the last week or so, they've started turning yellow and some of them are close to being ready for harvest. They've also been sporting these neat little white and purple flowers for the last month or so.

Meyer lemons are thought to be a cross of lemons and sweet mandarin oranges, so they aren't as tart as your "classic" lemon and have a fragrant, edible skin. It is native to China and is commonly grown potted as an ornamental plant. The benefit to this is that, in colder climes, you can take it inside during the winter to protect it from low temperatures. So, even though it is cold tolerant, it needs to be inside during the winter to prevent damage.

If you are interested in growing your own Meyer lemon tree, but don't know what to do with them, then check out this list of "100 things to do with a Meyer lemon" from the L.A. Times. If you can't find a local nursery that carries these trees, you can readily find them from nurseries online. Meyer Lemon Cardamom Ice Cream anyone?

Now, if I can only figure out how to grow an avocado tree and I'll be set.