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Month: July 2016
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Market Morning
The baby kale sparkled with dew this morning. And the potato blossoms were smiling when I went out to the garden to gather produce for today’s Bow Little Market. Their anthers are such a brilliant yellow.
I’m studying Rebsie Fairholm’s book, “The Lost Art of Potato Breeding”. The nature of potato genetics means that if you grow potatoes from seeds instead of tubers which is how most people grow potatoes, you have no idea what kind of potatoes you’ll get from those seeds. From a single potato plant, you can get a variety of potatoes. As a result, the chances of ending up with potato varieties no one else has, is what makes potato breeding a worthwhile endeavor.
Digging potatoes is a highlight of summer and fall. You can do it a million times and still be awed when your hand digs into the earth and uncovers a potato. It’s awesome how these plants use solar power to create sugars and starches out of water and carbon dioxide, and store this power in the ground. And they don’t just make one kind of potato, they make hundreds of varieties of colorful potatoes.
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No Boredom Here
So much happens in one day, it’s hard to keep track. Pepper has moved to laying her eggs in a nest in the chicken yard instead of in the nests near the garden.
The eggplants are coming along. In a week or two, I should have some ready for Bow Little Market. Ena 枝那 is exhausted watching me weeding.
The Roma tomatoes are turning red. Hopefully, enough will be red to have some for Thursday, the 21st’s Bow Little Market. And why is Sven resting in a nest in the middle of the afternoon?
Now both of the dogs are exhausted from watching me weed. I should be more tired than them. Some days I think I would rather be a dog, as long as I had an owner like me.
Old Billy enjoys a quiet moment with one of the older hens, Daisy. While Miasa-Hime 美朝姫 has taken to laying eggs in the nests near the garden where Pepper used to lay eggs.
And King Richard and his hens are going through what is left of the last compost pile. Just a few of thing things that happened today. I don’t have pictures of the bald eagle which flew low overhead and flew off when I yelled at it, nor pictures of the great blue heron who flew in to go fishing at the pond. There is never a boring moment here.
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Eat the Weeds
Eat the weeds! It works when onions are the weeds. Last fall, I let some onions do their thing, go to seed, and let them fall where they may. I ended up with a bed thick with onions. I thinned them out today, gathering a bowl of baby onions for cooking.
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Tomatoes Are Blushing
A stand of bamboo is handy to have. Every year it produces shoots twenty to thirty feet tall. Cut and trimmed, they make great poles to string supports for snap peas. What’s great about bamboo poles, is that you can trim the branches so that you have handy hooks at each node. Hooks on poles, you have to pay extra for those at the store. They come built in on bamboo.
On a sunny July afternoon, the hens stay cool taking dirt baths in the shade.
The tomatoes are blushing. They go through so much effort to become the red, luscious fruits we love. Never take a ripe tomato for granted.
Sorry, Bow Little Market customers, these Korean Red garlic are not for sale. They are for next year’s crop. After drying through the summer, I will be planting them in the fall. Next year, I’ll try and have many more of these popular garlic than I had this year.
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Uncommon Flowers
Elephant garlic and shallots are worth growing for their flowers. The elephant garlic’s purple flowers are about to open, and the shallot’s white flowers fringed with green are unfurling. Such beautiful flowers. I’ll let these go to seed and start the long process of growing them from seed.
The dogs are in training to be calm around chickens. It must be difficult for these hunting dogs to have chickens walk around them without being able to catch them, but they are keen on wanting to please us. I do wonder what is going through their minds. “All these birds … why aren’t they eating them?”
