homegrown: planting a strawberry pot

My son loves strawberries, but it is very hard to find local organic strawberries.  I have always been reluctant to plant strawberries in my garden because I am not organized enough to figure out what section of my garden to dedicate to perennial fruits or vegetables.  After all these years of gardening in the same place, I am still dragging my heels on that commitment.  So we opted to plant strawberries in a strawberry pot and a hanging planter this year.

We mixed some compost into some potting soil I had.

I put the enriched soil into the bottom of the pot to about 2" deep.

I found an old 1 1/2" diameter pvc pipe and cut it to size.  I drilled holes to line up with the openings of the strawberry pot.

I placed this pipe in the center of the pot.  This way I can fill the pipe with water to ensure that the plants lower in the pot get enough water.

I filled in soil to the bottom of the first openings.

Then gently separated out each strawberry plant.

I placed strawberry plants into each opening and filled soil around them making sure not to bury the crown.

I filled in soil until I reached the next set of openings and placed more plants in  and continued to do this until all the opening had one plant inserted

I filled the container to the top with soil and a bit of the pipe was left at the top so soil would not fall through.   

 I placed three plants in the top of the planter, and now we are waiting for the plants to grow, flower, and provide delicious organic strawberries for us to enjoy!  I'll let you know how it goes.

A couple of side notes:

• We used ever-bearing strawberries for our planter so we could enjoy fruits for a longer time.  You can also try to find a variety that does well in containers.
• You can store your planted strawberry jar in an unheated garage or basement to allow the plants to go dormant.  They will continue fruiting as long as they have that dormant period.

homegrown...a peek into our midsummer garden

Here is our garden midsummer, we are always a couple of weeks behind everyone else.  I don't strive to have the first tomato of the season.  We've had some setbacks, but things are coming along.  It is so helpful to have a good perspective on gardening.  I try not to get too attached to things being a certain way (try...I do try).  We have mostly a no-till garden in raised beds.  This works best for us growing as we do on a rocky creek bank.  To get the beds ready for planting I add compost to the top and use a digging fork to lift the soil without turning it over.  Then I rake smooth.  This retains the natural composition of the the soil structure and keeps all the helpful critters beneath alive and well and happy.

By far, the crop that has done great through drought, flea beetle infestations, and a very hungry groundhog was the swiss chard.  I guess groundhogs don't like chard.  We do.  

The radicchio, however, was a prime target for the groundhog.  The odd thing is that I had a little fence around the radicchio for the longest time when I first set out the plants.  I babied these along for so long I could sense their vulnerability.  But at one point, it didn't appear that we were having any hungry visitors to our garden so I took the fence down. silly me.  But fortunately, despite being eaten almost to the ground, they are coming back and heading up nicely.  I think we will have radicchio and fennel salad at some point afterall.

We have some baby zucchini coming on finally.  Our drought situation really slowed everything down.  It was almost as if everything was deciding whether it worth the effort to grow if there was no rain.  I had those thoughts as we were having to water every day at first by carrying 5 gallon buckets of water from the creek and then we got smart and borrowed a submersible pump. I would really like to have a rope and washer pump at some point.

The dinosaur kale is finally growing faster than the flea beetles can eat it.  I had almost given up on this crop completely.  Anyone have a flea beetle solution?  I will be getting beneficial nematodes to help with next year's situation, but if someone has a way to get rid of adult flea beetles, I'd love to hear it.

Speaking of beetles.  I found this guy 5 feet up a butterfly bush.  I'm not sure what he was doing there.  

This is Jude's little garden plot.  He has a lot growing in a very small space.  Radishes, beets, purple beans, lemon cucumbers, bird house gourds, marigolds (that he picked out and bought with his own money).  I'm wondering how that trellis will hold up with all that wants to climb it.  You can't see them, but there are little bubble bee garden ornaments in there and on the right hand side you might be able to make out a dragonfly that we put in to scare away the groundhog so they would stop eating the beans.  And what seems to have worked for the whole garden, was stringing a line of aluminum pie plates at groundhog level along the side I was pretty sure that he (or she) was entering.

The best part of gardening is reaping the harvest.  We chopped all this up for our dinner last night and braised it with a little bit of olive oil and salt.  Simple and delicious!

How is your garden growing?  I'd love to hear...

:::

If you haven't heard, Lisa has launched a great project for all of us who love to garden...

homemade and semi-homegrown...chinese cabbage, fennel, and daylily salad

I recently read someone say they have a hard time thinning seedlings in their garden.  Well, I have a hard time actually harvesting plants...I mean look at this beautiful fennel.  I've been growing it for months, but I finally decided I better start harvesting some of my veggies before the groundhog (who loves radicchio and beans) eats everything.  So I made a really great salad adapted from this recipe.

We've been eating these wild daylilies in our salads and stuffed with hummus.  They are really yummy that way.  If you haven't tried daylilies, you really should.  They are subtly sweet and crisp.

The chinese cabbage is from the grocery store.  Ours was eaten by flea beetles beyond what I was willing to ignore and eat anyway so it was a green contribution to our compost.  I just used a half a head for this recipe and sliced it into thin slices.

I chopped up the fennel bulb into smallish pieces along with some of the leaves.

I picked the petals off the daylilies (I used three flowers).

And sliced them into thin strips.

I sliced a garlic scape from the garden into small pieces.

I cut half a granny smith apple (all the way from Chile...I keep these on hand for green smoothies but I can't help but think about how far they travel to get to my blender or my cutting board) into julienne strips.

The dressing consisted of 1 tsp. of mustard

juice of half a lemon

(thanks to my assistant juicer who said, "I can do this.  I learned how at school."  

That's the kind of learning we do at our Montessori/Waldorf Nature school.)

and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil whisked together

The results were fabulously flavorful.

enjoy!

Here is another yummy salad recipe with fennel which I might have made if a certain groundhog would not have gotten to the radicchio before I did!

homemade...bunnie boats

Ever since the green smoothie challenge, I've been on a semi-raw diet.  I'd say 2 or 3 days a week I'm all raw.  The other days are 2/3 raw with some cooked foods in the mix.  Many days Jude and I enjoy raw or semi-raw lunches together.  The one pictured above includes a recent invention of mine...well, it may be something lots of people do, but I just thought of it the other day and Jude has been enjoying bunnie boats ever since.

I start by gathering some baby lettuces from our garden

chop up some carrots into strips

spread a dollop of hummus in the center of a lettuce leaf 

(there are raw versions made with zucchini or sprouted chickpeas but we haven't tried those yet)

and plop a carrot in the middle...and there you have bunnie boats.  

They are easy to handle and travel well.

And Jude says they taste good with avocado.

enjoy!

:::

Now hop or float on over to threading light where we are discussing seeing clearly.

homemade and homegrown intentions...one small change

A dream of mine is to grow a significant portion of my family's food.  I really wanted to grow more of our food this fall/winter, but I really got a late start on that.  I have some carrots and endive ready in a cold frame waiting for more sun and warmth to grow into early spring harvests, and we ate a lot of kale, celery, swiss chard from the garden this fall, but winter is tough.  I am in the planning stages now to grow a lot of root crops that will get us through next winter and more diversity to make our growing and eating more enticing. So this month's one small change is really the next step and a big change (for us) to rely on our land and our hands to meet our family's food needs.

There was a time in our life that we would stop at the grocery store on our way home from work each day to buy whatever we needed.  Slowly, over many years we have transitioned to relying on local sources for our food.   But we are not perfect, this winter I have reluctantly bought conventionally grown produce in our grocery store to get us by.  There is also the fact that neither one of us works outside of our home anymore.  We have a limited budget, and it is hard to justify driving into town to get stuff.  Often I have to weigh the choices of spending the money and time to drive to local markets that are 35-45 miles away, a large grocery store that has a decent selection of exotically grown organics 25 miles away, or our local grocery store that offers only organic carrots, celery, and broccoli which is 10 miles away.  Even in the heart of the growing season, I still have to drive 20 miles to pick up my CSA order and visit a closer local grower's market.  So it is time to step up and grow...our own food.

This month I've bought Eliot Coleman's Four Season Harvest, which I got through interlibrary loan this summer...too late to really get things going for this year...but oh so inspiring.  I also ordered his latest book, Winter Harvest Handbook.  Oddly enough, about 18 years ago, I read his book Organic Grower and was seriously interested in becoming one...seems I am finally coming full circle.

I also placed my seed order and I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my seeds.  This week we are getting started with some cold weather crops like kale, mache, and other greens...yes, greens!  There is 2 feet of snow on the ground right now and another 6 inches on the way tonight...so we are still at the dreaming/planning phase.  I've been gardening for years, so that part isn't new.  It is just being more intentional about what and how much I grow and why I am growing it.  So it is an intention more than an actual change.  But that's what seeds are too...tiny intentions that can grow into big things.

Finally, to properly wrap up January's small change.  We did a really good job exploring the idea of different cultured foods.  The cultured veggies seemed to be the easiest to assimilate into our lives at this point.  Although, I struggled to get Jude to eat much.  Did anyone else have luck with their kiddos eating cultured veggies?  Kombucha brewing was a dismal failure...I think our house is too cold this time of year.  I'll try again in the summer.  And I am going to get kefir grains soon to begin making our own kefir from raw milk that we get from Erma.

Finally to share what turned out to be my favorite winter salad creation...so far:

Celebration Salad

what you need:

1/2 head savoy cabbage

2 carrots

3 T of cultured beets

olive oil

balsamic vinegar

what you need to do:

1. slice the savoy cabbage into thin slices

2. grate the carrot and mix in

3. mix in the cultured beets

4. drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar over and toss

enjoy~

handmade, homemade, homegrown...mystery wip

My life has been a little bit full lately. Lots and lots of ideas flowing through, but not a lot of them getting completed. So today, I thought it would be fun to play a little game and find the beauty in things that are in a state of incompleteness. So often I catch myself looking for some perfect complete state....but deep down I know that my joy is found right here, right now.

So here are three works in progress...

One homemade...

One handmade...

One homegrown...

Any guesses???? I'll be revealing the answers over the next week as they find a more complete (n0t perfect) state...

homegrown...fearless clipping and a garden update

We have had so much rain this year that I have had quite a time getting any basil to grow. And the plants I did get started keep getting eaten by slugs! I felt better when I talked to my friend Erma who happens to be Mennonite and raises almost all her family’s food. She said that she had no luck with her basil either this year. I love her attitude though…she said, “oh there’s still time, and I don’t use it until I make my sauces anyway.”

Pesto is a staple in our house, and I just couldn’t stand the thought of having to buy fresh basil all season long. So today I broke down and bought some really leggy overgrown and even flowering basil at a greenhouse. The roots were really bound so I had to cut off the bottoms. And since these were really leggy, I gave the plants a major clipping. Thankfully, we are going to have a couple of rainy days so that should give these a good chance to recover from all the trauma. And now I have basil for pesto at the beginning of July!

leggy greenhouse basil

basil gets a clip

You can see from my opening picture once I trimmed the basil, no plant was safe. I went after the coleus in our window boxes next. That was harder to do because it means temporarily the boxes will have a bit less color, but in the long run the plant will fill out much better. Again, with all the rain, these plants were developing long stems in their hopeless search for light.

The garden is starting to green up a bit. We have harvested lettuce, peas, radishes, kale, and cabbage. My beans are getting a slow start, I suspect more seeds rotting as the ground is so wet with all the rain. And the peppers are stunted, but the kale and cabbage are glorious even though they got a late start. Apparently, I forgot to dig up a row of potatoes last year because I have a row of potato plants and one plant growing with the kale.

The garden is what it is. I love that gardening is different every year depending on the challenges presented by a whole host of things that are completely out of my control. Anyway, here’s where we are the last day of June.

so wabi sabi... what?

Most descriptions of wabi sabi start off by saying something to the effect that wabi sabi is a very difficult term to describe. I have tried before like this… “the feeling you have holding a piece of handmade pottery in your hand and taking that first sip of warm tea in the morning that stirs your senses and warms your soul.” And even this morning I had a wabi sabi moment listening to raindrops hitting our tin roof while snug and secure under a soft worn cotton quilt. Wabi sabi is an experience rather than a description or expression. For me wabi sabi is a feeling of balance and beauty. It is simple, natural and unforced. It is authentic. It is not perfect or permanent.

My wabi sabi moments are moments of mindfulness and connectedness. I am not aware of them everyday yet, but I believe we manifest what we focus our attention on. Desiring more beauty and balance in my life, I am seeking them and finding them in nature or in objects that remind me of nature. Moments spent wearing, using, admiring, or creating handmade, homegrown, and homemade furniture, clothing, food, art definitely bring more balance and harmony to my life. I want to share these moments in this blog… moments of mindfulness, moments of peace, moments of connectedness, moments of wholeness, wabi sabi moments.

As my Qigong instruction often says in the quiet stillness of our early morning class, “Intention leads the Qi.” I hope that through this blog I can share some of these moments with you and that you too will discover the beauty and balance of wabi sabi. May it be so.