In case you haven’t noticed, it is spring. That means that the flowers are blooming, and the trees are blooming and the weeds are starting to bloom too. It won’t be long until the grass is blooming as well.
Spring brings with any number of blooming plants spreading their pollen
If you are one of the many people who suffer from seasonal allergies, it means that you will soon be dealing with burning eyes, runny nose, headaches for some, rashes or whatever way your allergies manifest. I am one of those people. I have suffered from allergies for most of my life.
When it first was diagnosed I was in the eighth grade. That spring I experienced my first allergy induced migraine. In that case allergies, migraines and whatever else combined to make me really sick. It started with a slurring of my speech, followed by a loss of fine motor control and eventually vomiting and a loss of major motor control. As I lay on the toilet in the nurses office the school called my mother and told her I was having a drug overdose, to come and get me. It was a combination of hay fever and migraine, though just the hay fever was diagnosed at the time.
Since that time I have dealt with the results of seasonal allergies, never again as extreme as that time, but often making me extremely ill.
The flowers of spring.
When I got married to my wife in 1988, my mother-in-law Ruth Hoey told me about a remedy I should try, honey. Raw, local, natural honey. I started eating local honey before the next allergy season. My allergies have never been as bad since. The honey doesn’t completely eliminate the symptoms, but the severity of them is much less.
So now I have a regiment. In late winter I begin eating at least a tablespoon of honey a day, hopefully I start doing this at least 3 or 4 weeks before the pollen starts to show. It may only be my imagination, but in the years when I am consistent in the daily use of honey I hardly have to deal with allergies.
They key here is that it must be local, and it must be raw. If my allergies are to pollen, the honey should be made from the same pollen I am allergic to. I look for locally produced honey from as close as possible to my home. I have heard that bee pollen works as well, but I have never tried it. Some people chew on the honeycomb, but with the amount I eat it is impractical, and I prefer the honey to the comb.
This year I have mixed it up a little. I now combine a tablespoon of honey with two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar in a large glass of water. This serves to eat my honey, and provides for a tasty drink different from my normal tea, water or coffee, and both better tasting and better for me than soda (which I do my best to avoid at most times).
Some people might think that the result is a product of my imagination, but I would much rather eat a spoonful of imagination than an antihistamine any time.
So, if you are one of those that suffer from seasonal allergies, try getting on a program of honey leading up to and through the allergy season. It may help you avoid some of those symptoms, and the medicines that we use to address the symptoms. I hope it works for you like it has for me.
The first flowers that bloom in my garden are the dandelions. I am not sure how they got categorized as a weed, but the bees love them.
By the way, those dandelions you see growing in my yard are there so the bees have something to eat early in the spring when other flowers have yet to come out.
Today was transplant day, the day when the weather is right to start moving things out of the greenhouse into the ground. I would like to share a photo essay of some of the things in my garden. You can click on the images below to get a view of a larger version of the image. You should do it, the large images hold lots of cool secret details you don’t see in the smaller versions.
Let’s start with the greenhouse. Because of the size and nature of my greenhouse, it is hard to get good pictures of the inside. I use a heavy plastic for the shell of the walls and root, and it allows light in, but it is not possible to take photos through it.
It is hard to get good pictures of the stuff growing in my greenhouse
This was the second year for my new greenhouse, and the plastic can’t be used for another year. It has rips in the high stress areas, and it is generally starting to deteriorate.
Here you can see where I have had to patch the plastic, and it continues to rip.
Checking the weather today, I saw that the lows at night for most of the rest of the 10 day forecast are in the 50s, daytime highs in the high 70s. There is also rain in the forecast, so that combination meant it was time to transplant the tomatoes into the garden.
I rolled back the plastic roof to get a glimpse inside, but left it attached so I could put the roof back in place if necessary.
The roof plastic has been rolled back to provide a glimpse inside.
What it showed me was a good view of some very healthy and happy plants, especially the tomatoes.
But before I started to transplant, I took the camera out and had a look around. I like to chronicle my garden, and frankly, you can get some pretty cool pictures of plants that are just starting to grow. I wanted to share some of those with you.
The first flowers that bloom in my garden are the dandelions. I am not sure how they got categorized as a weed, but the bees love them.
Click on the image above and take a close look at the larger version of the image. If you are able to free your mind from the judgement of the dandelion as a weed, you will see that it is really quite a beautiful flower. It becomes the first major food source for the bees in the spring, and that is good enough for me.
The raspberries are starting to bud out on last years canes, and producing new canes.
I wrote in one of my earlier blogs about the raspberries in my yard. Now they are starting to bud out with new growth on the old canes that will produce berries this spring, and new canes popping up that will provide berries in the fall.
Peas planted on St. Patrick’s day are up and have a good start.
Peas are one of my spring stalwarts. I like to plant them very early because they can handle a few freezes or snows and just keep on doing their thing. There have been some years when I have planted the peas right into the snow. Then, when they find soil they find the right time to germinate and are one of the earliest green things in the garden. I really like to look at the up close details of the pea plant.
Oregano is a perennial that does well in our climate. I have learned that it can be a challenge to keep it in control.
In addition to being an early herb to add to your sauces or salads, oregano is a lovely delicate little herb. It is surprising how much it can increase in size from year to year. This is my third year with this particular plant, and it has been transplanted to this location. Somehow it manages to have green even under the snow.
Onions show up all over my garden. If I have a place without something in it, it usually gets an onion seed.
Another early riser in the spring is the onion. Onions are the thing I plant the most of, placing either seeds or sets all over the garden. And yet, I always seem to run out of them. Luckily it is easy to keep the seeds of onions, so there is nothing to seeding the garden liberally with onions.
I was taking a picture of the lettuce, but I found a bunch of daisies.
The picture above is another one to take a closer look at. I was taking a picture of the lettuce coming up. I knew that there were a lot of little somethings coming up, but I didn’t know what they were. And then I opened this photo. I started a daisy patch because they are my wife’s favorite flower. Daisies are perennials, so they come back year after year, but it takes them a little while to get started. so this year I decided that in the back of the daisy patch I would grow lettuce and sunflowers. The sunflower seeds were just planted this weekend, but the lettuce is up. And now I realize that this will be the last year I will be able to plant lettuce here, because with all those daisies, there won’t be room for anything else next year.
Volunteer Blue Kale coming up.
In the picture above, you can see volunteer blue kale coming up from where the kale was planted last year. I like that the bolt is there for perspective. This is currently a little tiny plant. But, take a look at the larger picture and check out the details of the bolt, the water drops on kale, and the stone or wood deteriorating beside the bolt. That bolt used to hold a board onto cement blocks to provide a decorative edge.
Asparagus, it makes your pee stink, but it is so yummy.
The asparagus is well under way. It is the first edible thing that I get out of the garden each year. I planted these from seed about 5 years ago, and planted the seeds way too close together. I have been thinning the patch ever since. I thin one small section each fall and generally give away the roots, I have no more room for growing asparagus. If you are going to plant asparagus from seed, do yourself a favor and get the right spacing, it is a chore to thin them. I right about it in this blog post.
And since I have also posted about compost, I thought I would only be fitting to show the current status of my compost pile. It is very hot and active in there. The tarp give you an idea of the size of the pile, and it has reduced down to about a half or a third of the size it was at the beginning of spring. I have pulled some of the compost out today as I transplanted tomatoes, but it still has a ways to go before it is ready for using.
I added the tarp mostly to keep the moisture in the pile. As dry as it has been, the pile had started to dry out, and dry leaves don’t compost.
So, that is what the garden had to share before I started transplanting today. After I transplanted 35 plants of various types, I tilled up a new section to add to the garden. It was in the back corner and never had any light before. But last spring I lost three trees and it opened up a nice area that I can now garden. I added about 500 sq. ft. of garden this spring. I’ll be needing a lot of that compost to get it into shape, my soil consists mostly of sand until I amend it.
And just to close out the post, I wanted to share a cool photo I got after the storm came in and put a half inch of rain on my newly transplanted garden.
As I was preparing the images for this blog, my wife called me down to enjoy this, double rainbow all across the sky. This is the only decent image I got.
We used to throw a lot of watermelon away. Some of the old ways of cutting the beast left it difficult and messy to eat, and didn’t providing for those time when you just want a little bit of watermelon instead of a whole slice.
I needed something to write about in my blog today, so I am floating up this bit of fluff because I have pictures, and this is the kind of stuff some people like to see on the Internet. So, let’s get started.
I like to use a long sharp knife when I am cutting a watermelon.
Whenever I start to carve a watermelon, I think of my grandfather, Fritz. He had a definite and predictable way of starting the process. The first step is that if there is a stem, it should be cut off. No reason here, just the first part of making sure it is dead. Then, for the next step, you kill it.
The second step requires you stabbing the watermelon to make sure it is dead.
To kill a watermelon, you thrust the knife deep into the heart. Now this is where I break off from the tradition that I was taught. Fritz would always then split the watermelon down the middle and cut out that part right in the middle that has no seeds, he called it the heart. Removing the heart was the last step of killing it, then it was cut into slices with the rind still attached. This method meant that usually the only time watermelon wasn’t wasted was when there were enough people around to eat the whole thing at one sitting.
Cut off the top and the bottom, then the front and the back go give you close to a cube.
We start by cutting off the stem end, then cut off the opposite end. This gives you a melon that is flat on the top and bottom, much easier to work with. This method works best with round watermelons. When you have a elongated melon, cut it in half to give you your first flat edge. The proceed the same as with a round melon. The idea here is to turn the melon into a cube.
Start by Gutting off the stem end and the opposite end to keep it from rolling around.
Once you have cut off all the rinds you will have a cube. By cutting it in this way, you leave very little melon on the rind. You can scoop it out with a spoon or knife if you want, but it is that melon that is so close to the rind that it isn’t that tasty anyway. Not much waste, and what you waste isn’t the lower quality.
The melon cube wastes very little melon by leaving it on the rind and leaves little rind to be trimmed off.
You can trim off the corners and it should leave you will rind-free watermelon. Now you can cut the length and the width, but don’t cut all the way to the bottom, leave the last half inch or inch in tact to hold it all together.
Cut length and width at distances that will make for bite size chunks.
Now turn the melon over on one of the sides and now you can dice the melon into bite size cubes by cutting it across the slices you have already cut.
The last cut crosses the others to give you bite size cubes.
Eat what you want now, and throw the rest in a container with a lid that you can throw in the fridge. Now you always have a tasty and healthy snack just waiting in the fridge for you to eat a healthy option.
When it is cut like this, you can take just what you want, whenever you want.
Put it at the front of the shelf on the fridge so you have to move past it to grab for something else that might be less healthy.
There you go, much less waste because it is easy to eat and you only need to take what you want at the time. Make sure you take the rind out to the compost pile. No sense wasting that, your garden will love it next year.
So your asparagus patch is over crowded. You can take that little patch of overcrowded asparagus and convert it into a very large patch of asparagus by digging up and separating that root ball.
Asparagus is one of the first harvests you will get from your garden.
If your asparagus isn’t above ground yet, it is your last chance to transplant. Asparagus needs space to get the nutrients necessary to produce the large sprigs we love to eat. If you plant from seed, or your asparagus is given the chance to produce seeds, it will eventually get over crowded.
When packed too tightly, Asparagus can’t get enough nutrients to grow well. They need to be broken up and transplanted.
This clump was dug up last winter after it had gone dormant. You can see the yellow asparagus and an assortment of green weeds. Your asparagus should be dormant when you are trying to transplant it. Dig it up and remove all the debris. This is a hands on job and it is easier if you get the root ball as clean as possible.
There will be dozens of asparagus crowns in this ball
It is important to get as much of the soil off the roots as you can. It holds the roots together, so it is best to take a hose to it and get as much of the soil out of the root ball as you can.
It is a exercise in patience to separate crowns from a root ball, but it is worth the effort.
When you get it cleaned up, it is going to look something like this. This particular root ball is a result of planting from seeds placed too closely together. There are dozens of crowns in this root ball.
The key is to learn to identify each crown so you can isolate it from the others and pull it apart from the ball. It really is as simple as that, but it can be a challenge. You can identify the individual crowns by following a root to the place where it ends, and look to see that there are other roots coming from other directions and ending in the same spot. This point is your crown. Be careful with that part, it contains the stuff that will turn into next year’s spears.
Learning to follow the roots to the individual crowns is the key to separating out the crowns.
After you pull them apart, you will have a group of root clusters, each of which will become it’s own asparagus plant when transplanted. You will need to dig a trench about 5 or 6 inches deep, and wide enough to place the crowns in with the roots out flat. At the bottom of the trench put the richest soil you can find, you will be feeding these plants for a long time. Place the roots in the trench, and cover it with about 3 inches of soil. As the season goes on, you will add more fertile compost or soil until it reaches level ground.
After you separate them out, a clump will give you dozens of crowns to plant into a new patch.
When you will be able to harvest depends upon how old your crowns are, and how much they like where you plant them. Usually you can count on not getting a harvest the first year unless you are planting really nice crowns. You can harvest the asparagus spears when they are about the size of a pencil or larger. If they are smaller than that you should leave them to supply nutrients for next year.
Planted from seed, still too young to harvest.
The first year they will be thin and spindly, in subsequent years they will get more and more stout. Your biggest job for the first year will be to keep the weeds out of the garden so they don’t compete with the asparagus. Top dress with good compost to keep the weeds down and the nutrients up.
Cilantro and Asparagus growing together in the garden.
After it is established, you can use the space between the asparagus for some other crops if you leave enough room between asparagus plants. In this picture I have cilantro that works nicely because later in the spring and summer it benefits from the shade provided by the asparagus. Also, it is really easy to pull up cilantro and clean our the patch when it is done. I have heard of people planting strawberries and even tomatoes between the asparagus rows.
The Damselfly will eat a lot of the pests that will settle on your asparagus, but you still have to pick the beetles.
I don’t like to use insecticides or herbicides in my garden if it can be avoided. That means I have to go through and pick of the asparagus beetles most mornings. Later in the season, the damselflies and wasps come through and take care of a lot of the bugs that will infect your garden.
I also go through and pull off the springs that start forming seeds, because the seeds of asparagus become small asparagus plants that act like weeds because they compete with the older plants for space.
Once you have them established, take care of your plants, by feeding them and clearing out the debris. The will then feed you and your family and make your pee smell of asparagus for 30 to 50 years.
The last couple of years spring came so late and winter lasted so long I didn’t really have a chance to prepare the garden. This year the lack of snow and the relatively mild temperatures have given me the chance to do some early season prep work. Let’s talk about raspberries.
There are many types of raspberries, and they need to be taken care of based on their type.
The type of raspberries I am used to working with are everbearing. This type gives you two crops a year if properly pruned. Each year the plant puts up new shoots that will flower and fruit late in the summer. These are the primocaines.
They will produce fruit from late summer until the weather gets cold enough to make them go dormant. This is a heavy crop of fruit, with large berries. When winter comes, any berries that are still on the bush will remain until spring, unless birds or deer decide to eat them.
In the spring, it is best to prune the vines while they are still dormant. The picture below gives a clear indication of where to prune. The buds for this year can clearly be seen in the image below. They show up just below the end of the last fruiting branches from the fall.
The buds will start where the previous year’s berries left off. Click on image for better details.
When the weather warms, they will grow into the new growth that will house the spring harvest that normally comes in June and into July. These berries are usually smaller than the fall harvest. After the June harvest, these vines will die and should be trimmed out if possible. The canes that will continue to grow and those that are dead are clearly distinguishable when you know what you are looking for. In the picture below, you can see dormant (brown) and dead (grey) vines. Ideally the ones that are now grey would have been pruned in July, but if not then they should come out in spring.
You can see from the grey color which vines are dead and need pruned out. The dormant ones maintain their brown color.
To prune the dead vines, clip them close to the ground, and remove them from the patch so they don’t pass disease and pests to the next crop.
Cut the dead vines right at the base of the ground and remove the vines from the patch.
The increased air flow and sunlight from having properly pruned your berry patch will result in a delicious and healthy harvest.
The better care you take, the better will be the result of your harvest.
I had a little time before the conference started, and thought I would check out the San Francisco scene. I was here once in the 1990s, but it was only for a few hours and it was before anything opened, so I really didn’t get any kind of sense of what the city was about.
Nothing says Fisherman’s Wharf like a bowl of clam chowder in a sourdough bowl.
I have this habit of waking up at ridiculous hours of the morning and starting my day. Today, I worked for a while before setting out to see the sites of the city. The main attractions on my list of things to do in San Francisco were Fisherman’s Wharf, China town, and of course the cable cars.
The gates to Chinatown in San Francisco
One of the things I like to proclaim about myself is that I am a food tourist, and it is true. Whenever I am traveling, I make a point of figuring out what the signature foods that people eat when they live or visit a place. I love food, and when I have a chance to try something new, I go for it.
I have had the sourdough and chowder before, on my last trip, for that very same reason. But my goal was to spend some time in China Town and find something interesting. The first thing I settled on was a plain old cucumber. I walked in and out of dozens of markets of all types and honestly didn’t know what I was even looking at. I did learn that there are a lot of different kinds of ginseng, and that some of that ginseng is really really expensive. I don’t know what makes good ginseng, but someday I want to find out. The problem was that there was no defined food to get in Chinatown so I was assaulted with options.
I really wanted a mango, but it doesn’t look like mangoes are in season. Really, I thought way too much about what I wanted to eat this morning, but I just couldn’t make up my mind. Next I tried a coconut tart kind of thing, and it delivered. It was a unique taste and a really nice texture. They looked like they were pretty common in many of the bakeries.
Then I walked into a bakery as I was nearing the end of China town over toward North Beach. I felt awkward not knowing the proper way to even select my food, so I walked around and looked at everything they had, watching for a chance to see another customer go through the process of making a selection and buying it. That panned out and I figured out how to select the food. There are trays I had overlooked near the door and the process was to also grab tongs when you picked up a tray. So I grabbed a tray and a set of tongs, and settled on a roll that looked like it had bits of ham, and some kind of vegetables baked into the bread itself. If I had known what I was doing, I would have taken a picture. I think it was called a ham sun roll, but I am not sure.
I made my purchase and took the roll out of the store and headed toward North Beach. When a half block later I took the roll out and had my first bite, I realized that I had accidentally found a jewel.
The texture of the roll was closer to cake than roll, and the pastry was rolled up like a bedroll with layers of deliciousness in between each layer. But on the outside, on the ends of the roll, there was some kind of substance that was a cross between slightly sweet and slightly savory. And when I took that first bite, I experienced an explosion of flavor in my mouth like I had never experienced before. The effect was of biting into something that is both crusty and creamy. It was not an overwhelming flavor, but rather it was like a tapestry of textures and flavors, delicately blended to complement each other and delight the mouth. It was fabulous! It had only cost me $1.50. If I get a chance, I will return and see if a second round is as good as the first.
