Orchard Helper

Alamos Red Blend with Gorgonzola, Mushroom and Onion Hand Pies

Wine:

Alamos Red Blend 2012 $12.99

[From the back of the bottle] Dark berry fruit flavors, integrated with brown spice and vanilla oak characters that form a plush mouth feel. The Tempranillo and Syrah grapes contribute bold, spicy flavors of blackberry and black pepper which marry well with the juicy dark cherry flavors of Bonarda and the deep plum flavors of the Malbec base. The addition of Cabernet Franc helps to balance the blend, as it melds with notes of warm brown spice to create a long, supple finish.

Cheese:

Mushroom, Gorgonzola and Caramelized Onion Hand Pies $I’m estimating 10.00

This is a recipe I found on this blog. Being a fan of Gorgonzola in my beef pasta dishes I thought it sounded rather good. Mushrooms, caramelized onion and cheese. What could go wrong?

Wine Review- Absolutely terrible with what we paired it with. I almost threw up this was so bad. However, when I ate a banana to calm my nausea and then drank some of this wine it tasted pretty good. I’m sure the guy at the liquor store, who suggested this would be the perfect pairing with Gorgonzola, would about die if he knew. Drink this with a banana. Can’t go wrong.

Cheese Review- As I said before, I rather like Gorgonzola. It has a strong flavor but a sauce made with it pairs deliciously with beef. This recipe, however, was repulsive. I couldn’t even eat a full hand pie and I was quite determined to do so. I just…I couldn’t. It was too gross. I did beef broth fondue as I thought it would pair well with these hand pies. The only thing edible was the fondue. I don’t think anything pairs well with this recipe. Yuck!

The kids were smarter than we were. Son did not even think twice before retrieving some emergency ramen for dinner. Oh how I wish I’d eaten ramen for dinner. Maybe Gorgonzola wouldn’t be ruined for me forever.

Daughter was forced to stare at her hand pie with woe filled eyes. She got some ramen as well. Poor thing.

Inhabit- A Permaculture Perspective and a new camera

I am very excited to share this new documentary with everyone. I have pre-ordered my copy and plan on showing it at the first meeting of the Laramie County Homesteading/Permaculture Group (which I just started). The trailer looks amazing and I really admire a lot of the speakers in the film already. I’m excited to see what Mark Shephard has to say!

On to the camera. I got a Cannon Rebel and I’m EXCITED! The pictures are such better quality! The kids and husband were happy to model the night I got the camera. This is our telephone pole pile and some of our spools. 🙂

Cold Hardy Pistachio Experiment

After finding this post on Permies.com I had to try to grow pistachio on the farm. So I went to Ebay and purchased some seeds from someone in Turkey. They took a few weeks to arrive but arrive they did.

Ok. Great. They arrived and I didn’t research them at all. Quick Google of planting pistachio from seed. I see that a potassium nitrate mixture is said to help with germination rates. So I IM my husband to find out what household chemicals we can use to make potassium nitrate. I give him no context, just: “What household stuff can we mix to make potassium nitrate?” He replies with an explanation that includes a toxic gas byproduct. In typical fashion I ponder this for a few moments before asking him if soaking a banana peel in water won’t do the trick. I am sure that his brow furrowed as he saw that piece of brilliance pop up on his computer. I admit, bananas are the only thing I’m aware of with potassium. Sad, I know. At this point he requests information on WHY I want potassium nitrate. I think he saw that conversation going no where really fast. Anyway, I ended up soaking the seeds without the mixture added, as I am far too impatient to start to wait for an order to arrive in the mail.

I soaked them in simple well water overnight. Some of the seeds floated and some did not. I assume the floating seeds will not germinate but I planted them out anyway.

Sending good thoughts to this seed. Grow baby grow!

After soaking I planted the seeds out in one of my favorite containers, a plastic egg carton. They make eggcelent mini greenhouses. I also like how they allow me to see how things are developing.

And now, we wait.

Planting predator proof grapes

I love our property but it comes with challenges. One of those challenges is living within oil drilling country. All of us noticed a huge influx of ground animals once the oil play began. They shy away from the vibrations and seek out calmer areas. Since they are not drilling near houses, they have sought out houses. The results have been pretty devastating:

The roots of this crab apple tree were completely consumed.

I have them traveling about in my berms, which is a pretty big concern for me. I have not noticed any dead fruit trees, yet, but I’m waiting.

So when it came time to plant my very expensive grapes, I wanted no ground animal intrusion.

I had many large tree pots from big box stores sitting around at home. So I cut the bottom out of 10 of them and then cut chicken wire large enough to cover the hole.

Then I began digging. I had to dig a hole big enough to hold the pots. I placed the chicken wire in the bottom of the hole and then placed the pot inside. I then filled the sides of the hole around the pot.

Daughter was pleased with the play area I had established for her. She was happy to throw dirt into the bottom for me.

Then just fill with dirt, compost and a grape seedling. I covered it with straw mulch as a finishing touch.

I had so many problems with my grapes. As you can see here I had mold, fungus and general death. Some of them pulled through with an organic fungicide spray and a few just died.

This is one of the plants that was suffering from fungus. It pulled through.

Same plant dying back in winter.

Same plant gone dormant.

I did move all of my grapes in the fall. I moved each of them under a standard sized fruit tree. I then mulched and held the mulch down with cement rip rap.

Growing Fruit Trees From Seed

Life is tough in my household. You can’t eat anything without my demands following you. Such is the life for kids who like apples. I love buying them apples but they had best not throw that apple core away. I require the seeds from it first! Plus, the chickens like the cores so they’d best not throw them away regardless.

Apple seeds need stratified before they will germinate. I cold stratify my seeds in the refrigerator until they have just barely sprouted. Ok, not completely true. I once forgot I had seeds in there and they were leafed out before I planted them. They did not make it. Best to get them when they have just barely started.

A forgotten apple seed, leafed out in fridge and finally planted.

Whoo that picture is bad. I need a better camera. Anyway, you can barely see the leaves there. I believe these were fuji apple seeds and my very first stratification attempt. I remember they exist a lot better now!

So what I do is easy. I take out the seeds, put them on a wet paper towel and then put them into a cup that I have labeled with the name of the apple I took them from. I have all the cups stacked and put in a ziploc baggie. This is all kept in the veggie drawer of my refrigerator. Every once in awhile I take them out and check to see if any have sprouted.

If not, I put them back in the fridge. If they have I plant them in a plastic cup.

I planted 8 germinated apple seeds a week ago and today they look like this:

Growing quite well!

Now I am also trying to grow rootstock from crab apples I found on a tree in town. The same basic process as regular apples except harvesting these seeds requires more work.

So far none of them have germinated. They had been dried up hanging on the tree for most of the winter so we shall see what happens.

I also collected various locust seed pods on my daily walks with my parents. We all take our lunch break and walk. They have become quite used to my odd veering off and shoving of various debri into my coat pockets.

To germinate the locust seeds I simply put them in a small “greenhouse” like container with a bit of soil.

I have germinated many, many seeds this way. It also works. This container has seen many gardens!

The locust seeds did not need to be cold stratified and germinated in just a few days. I have 2 surviving seedlings that are growing quite happily in a windowsill right now.

I believe I only have a few survivors as the seeds had also been collected from the ground in the middle of winter. I did not pre-think most of these projects.

Indoor Seed Starting Part 2

Part 1 can be found here.

The gardening never stops! Here is a bit more of what I’ve been up to and how I have been germinating my seeds.

Last year I received some random seeds from China. A “commercial sample” is what the customs form said. The odd thing is that I have no idea what company sent me the sample. The package does not say anywhere. So odd. There were 3 packets: Saffron, Lavender and Spearmint. I decided to plant them and see if they were still good and if they would germinate at all. They have all germinated and this is how I did it.

The seeds came in these nifty little foil baggies.

Now, I don’t know much about Saffron but I highly doubted that those were saffron seeds. What little I know of Saffron growing is bulbular. I could find nothing online about seeds. So I did a quick Google search and discovered that those are Safflower seeds, also known as “Bastard Saffron” as it is used the same way. Now Safflower has an amazing taproot. I certainly want to capitalize on that out in the orchard. Thus I planted a few safflower seeds and held the rest to be sown directly into my fruit tree guilds.

I just happened to have 3 plastic containers that had held ravioli for our dinner. So I cleaned them out and filled them with dirt. As a germination tray they work great!

I watered and bagged the “Saffron” and left it on the bathroom counter to germinate. You can see that I already have 2 other seed types set out for germination. In the background there is an egg carton with Black Crim Tomatoes and one with Jalapenos. The tomatoes have germinated already. The Jalapenos haven’t yet. As soon as I have a moment I will be cutting the individual cells of the egg carton apart to plant the tomatoes into cups to grow out.

The Safflower seeds germinated just fine. The Lavender did pretty well but the spearmint only has a few germinated seeds thus far. They are all sitting in a window now, growing away.

Last year I cut up a whole bunch of English Ivy to propagate. I wrapped each piece in newspaper and stuffed them in a plastic tray. I’s been sitting in our kitchen window since fall and I had honestly thought they had all died. I would forget to water them and such. Ivy appears to enjoy neglect as I have quite a few that appear ready for transplant. The plan for these babies is to plant 3 to a fence panel to grow up over the fence and hopefully make it a lot prettier than it is now. Plus a bit of wind block I hope!

I had a hard time getting any good pictures of this but I tried. I am having some sort of infestation in the house. I imagine this is a result of ordering plants from all over the globe. They are these little white dots all over a lot of my plants. I use tape and get them off. What could it be though? I finally just sprayed everything with an organic insecticide. I am a bit baffled on how an insecticide can be organic but…whatever.