What I grew in 2015

 

Beans: Rabbits and birds got into the beds twice and ate the starts.  Restarted late. [Dvds on strings really scared the birds away!]

• Red Chinese long beans - Got original seed from BC.  Now I use our saved seed from 2014.
• Dragon Tongue: One survived [our saved seed from 2014]  
• Freshette green bean.  Got the seed from Rural King. 
• Kentucky Wonder Pole beans:  Flat and strings.   Prolific.

Cucumber

• Telegraph: These are my favorite.  Long and smooth.   Great for soup.
• Sikkim Cucumber:  Remember to let this get brown and crackled looking.
• Boston Pickling Cucumber:  Pick small.

Eggplant:  Another bad year for eggplant.   Flea beetles devoured them.  Try under hoops?

• New York Improved eggplant
• Ping Tung Eggplant
• Japanese Pickling

Flowers:  zinnia (liliput), calendula [and probably some cosmos.  I love cosmos.]

Garlic: Made it through the winter, but the constant rain rotted a bunch.  Pulled enough to replant this fall. 

• Chesnock Red
• German Red

Greens:

• Arugula
• Bibb Lettuce

Herbs, Annual:

• Basil, Genovese
• Genovese red basil
• Basil, Thai:  Very sweet! Small leaves.  Blooms very quickly!
• Cilantro, Slo Bolt.  Got original seed from BC.  Now I use our saved seed. Mostly it self sows.
• Dill.  Self sows now

Herbs, Perennial [planted several years ago]

• Lavender
• Thyme
• Sage
• Horehound
• Chives
• Anise Hyssop
• Hyssop
• Chamomile [self sows]
• Alpine Strawberries
• Clary Sage: Didn't come up this year.
• Winter savory
• Lemon balm
• Sorrel
• Purslane: volunteers.

Melon: None came up.   

Onions: Planted sets from Rural King.  Harvested well until late May when the constant rain rotted them.

Peas:   Sugar Snap.   Saved seed from 2014.  Heat tolerant.  Lasted through July
  
Peppers -We're shooting for sweeter, meatier peppers this year.

• Jupiter pepper  or maybe it's Lipstick?   Puppy got into the starts.  This one made it.
• Golden California Wonder pepper [beautiful!]

Potatoes:  Kennebec,  early ones were great. 

Radish:   Early Scarlet Globe - the regular red kind.   Nice!

Squash, Summer

• Zucchino Rampicante - No new seed this year, so we'll try planting last year's seed and keep our fingers crossed.  Languishing.  No blooms.   Too wet?
• Golden Marbre Scallop [pattypan]
• Lemon Squash
• Castata Romanesco [zucch type]:  Early set of fruit. Light.  Striped.
• Black Beauty Zucchini:  Late sown.  Good producer.

Squash, Winter: Started late. Fertilized.  Came up well.   Languished.  Too wet?  Not dead, but not doing anything.  

• Black Futsu
• Greek Sweet Red
• Galeux d'Eysinee squash 
• Pie Pumpkin:  seed saved from last year.
• Gioia Violina: butternut type.

Strawberries

• June bearing [from May's]
• Ever bearing  [from May's]

Tomato

• Amish Paste:  Good standby.  Roma type.  Does OK with septoria.
• Lemon boy:  Good! 
• Early Girl:
• Indigo Rose:
• Uncle Mark Bagby
• Black Cherry [grape tomatoes]:   Nice!   Prolific and tolerant of septoria.  

Garden Huckleberry: Prolific.

Arting is good for my brain

Over the past year, I've been practicing painting with watercolors.   It's good for me because watercolor has a mind of its own.   I have to surrender control...and at the same time being an artist is about being responsible for every single line on the page.   Making art is about making choices.    The whole process is a little paradoxical and that feels good in my head these days.   

I paint to be brave.   Actually, I do a lot of things to be brave, but painting requires me to really step out of my comfort zone in a lot of ways.   I don't feel confident sketching, making mistakes, letting go, learning to see the truth in the lie and not feeling like a liar, showing the art to other people, etc.

I love how my head feels when I paint.   The process puts my brain in a really good, non-emotional place.   This is especially important in the winter, when I'm not outside getting as much sunshine as I need and when I tend to brood.   Brooding is bad unless you're a bird.  Which I am not.  Even though my name is Robin.  

SO.   For the next while, I'm going to be posting my artwork on the blog.   I am not looking for approval, I'm just putting it out there so I can see it from a different perspective. 

The photos of my art won't be fabulous.   I paint when I can and that's often when the light is not great.  I paint anyway.  The photos aren't in great light either, but my goal with this is to get it posted, not get it ready for jurying into a show.   So I'm posting them anyway.  Feel free to ask questions. 

Notes:   I paint two or more paintings at a time because I hate waiting until things are dry to do more work on a piece and you kinda have to do that with watercolor.   With 2 paintings, I can work on one while the other is drying.  This was a great strategy!   Double the practice and I can try something a bit different on the other painting as ideas occur to me.   Bonus - I like different things about each one.  

I'm taking a watercolor class online via Craftsy.com and many of these will be homework from the class.   The teacher is Mary Murphy.   I like her a lot and I like the way Craftsy lets you post projects, talk to each other, ask questions, etc.   I'll be doing a landscape painting class later with a different teacher.  I let you know when I start that.


Boat 9x12.  Watercolor.  December 2015

Goal:  Use a sponge for texture.
Execution:  Used a fine sponge for added detail in grass in foreground.
Learned:  I'm not a big fan of sponges, but now I know how to use one. 

Goal:  Use big brushes.
Execution:  I started with the bigger brushes [1" and 3/4" feel huge to me] for the background, then worked smaller as I went. 
Learned:  I love working this way on larger paper!

Boat 12x18.  Watercolor.  December 2015

Goal:  Use really big paper.
Execution:  Used really big paper.
Learned:  It was a lot more comfortable than I expected.  I need to start buying more big paper.

Goal:  Use Frog Tape to tape out sections of the foreground/subject so I can paint better backgrounds. 
Execution:  I used the yellow tape to tape out the boat, did the backgrounds, then pulled the tape off and did the boat.
Learned:  The tape trick totally works.   Will do it again for large areas.  [I also have the masking fluid for fine lines, small areas.]

Garden Huckleberries Final Report

I told you at the beginning of the year that I was going to plant a couple of rows of garden huckleberries on the advice of one of my neighbors, who loves them for pies. 

I did my research, was surprised at the fear and skepticism surrounding these little things, but planted them anyway.

I started them from seed in my milk jugs along with everything else last spring.  They sprouted just fine and managed to evade the puppy destruction experienced by the peppers and most of the baby tomatoes and I was able to get 14 plants in a bed [2 rows] along with the brassicas and some later tomatoes.  I planted them 18 inches apart in wide rows. 

They bloomed white flowers in small loose clusters at the end of branches, and kept on growing.   And blooming.   The bees liked them and soon there were green berries on the clusters and soon the berries expanded to the size of small blueberries and turned black.   And the little bushes kept on going. And going. And going.   At one point the margined blister beetles attacked.  They go after the leaves, not the fruit. I spent two or three days picking those little buggers off into soapy water and that seemed to take care of it. 

One of the sites I read through was by a guy who liked eating garden huckleberries right off the bush as soon as they turned black.  Another said to wait to harvest until after the first frost.    I tried one fresh berry in the summer when one cluster was good and black.   It was utterly disgusting.   Think of a blueberry that tastes somehow sort of like an unripe tomato.  

Hmm.    But that other article had said to wait until after the first frost, so I let them go thinking I'd harvest and make one batch of jam in October and if they were awful, I'd chalk it up to a learning experience and never do it again.

And October came and the bushes were loaded with black berries.  And it frosted a couple of times and I shanghaied my youngest and we spent 20 minutes stripping the plants of the berries, except for a few for seeds just in case.

Note:   These babies stain in a BIG way.   Wear junk clothes when you work with them.   The stains do not wash out, which means they are an underutilized plant for natural dyeing.    I got a gorgeous blue on the cloth I used to strain with.   We'll see how fugitive it is and maybe do more experimenting next year.   One very cool thing is that they stain your hands purple, but when you wash your hands with soap, it turns the foam bright screaming blue.  Bright. Screaming. Blue.    I had to wash several times before the foam was the normal color again.  

The best information on cooking them came from Mother Earth News.   Remember - these are no substitute for blueberries.  You can't just drop a handful in muffins.   They must be softened and sweetened before you use them.

I got about a gallon and a half of huckleberries from my 14 plants.   I decided since mine were very ripe, I'd skip the baking soda boil recommended here.   I dumped them all in a large pot and added enough plain water to barely cover.   Then I boiled the living daylights out of them for about 2 hours, until they were soft enough to crush with a potato masher.  I crushed and crushed.  When I'd had enough of the crushing, I strained them through cheesecloth, kept the juice and tossed the seeds and skins to the chickens.   Next year I'll save those for dyeing. 

I made one batch of jelly using my regular jelly recipe - just to taste - and it was.....  Delicious!  And really pretty!   The taste is somewhere between grape and a very bright blueberry.  I had enough juice for three batches total.   Here's the recipe:

Garden Huckleberry Jelly
www.rurification.com

4 cups huckleberry juice
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/3 cup Dutch Gel All Natural Lite pectin [You can substitute Ball or Sure-Jel, just make sure it's the low sugar type.]
2 cups sugar  [or more, to taste]

Bring huckleberry juice, lemon juice and pectin to hard rolling boil.   Maintain boil for 1 minute.   Add sugar and return to hard rolling boil.  Boil for 1 minute.   Ladle into jars and process for canning.

Soooo - I asked the family - Will we plant these again?     The unanimous answer was a resounding YES.  They were easy to start from seed.   The plants are easy to grow in our zone 5B heavily amended clay soil.  I basically ignored them all summer long.   The jelly is delicious.   I'd like to try making pie filling with it next year, too.   I will wait again until after the first frost to harvest, then cook them and divide them up for pie filling and for jelly.  

I will definitely save the spent seeds and skins for dyeing, as well as a bit of the whole fruit to see if there's a difference in color.   Because of the wide difference in color when exposed to acid [fuchsia] and alkali [green to blue], I'm expecting that wools [acid] and cottons [alkali] can be dyed very differently, or at the very least I can get a difference in color on the same fiber with a post dyeing dip in vinegar or ammonia.  We'll see.