Fall has made itself felt this weekend, and oh, how wonderful it is too. The high today was 64F (18C) with a lovely cool and refreshing breeze. The cicadas have stopped their buzzing but the crickets are still going strong and the geese are honking as they fly south. The cold and snow are coming!
Last night we had a gentle soaking rain that lasted a few hours. We needed it quite badly because we have gone from too much water in the spring to being officially in a moderate drought. It is rather disconcerting how quickly we went from wet to dry. The meteorologists, both local and national, are beginning to think that climate change is setting us up for this to become our regular weather pattern, shorter, warmer winter, wet spring, dry hot summer. Fall seems to be a toss up in the scenario at the moment. But it has gotten me thinking about what it means for the garden since the August blast of oppressive heat and drought scorched it badly and we had to water with the hose almost every day.
The two apple trees in the back garden, Walter and Bea, are still young but will eventually provide some shade. But shade isn’t necessarily what is needed because even plants in shade will dry out in the heat. I talked to Bookman about needing more rain barrels. Currently we have just one. And if rain barrels alone prove to be insufficient for water storage, I suggested we might need to think of an additional way to store water when we have it in abundance in spring.
But what we need to do most, I think, is work on creating good soil. Our garden soil is on the sandy side which is great for plants that need good drainage but bad when you have a drought because water does not stay in the soil even when there is plenty of mulch. We need compost and lots of it. We already compost everything we can but we don’t actively turn the pile to help it break down faster. We talked about the need to start being more proactive with the compost. It is a start but it won’t be enough because we can never make enough at this point to meet our needs. We’ll have to buy extra, at least for now. Also, good garden planning using permaculture methods I have been studying will help too. The soil will improve over time, but it can’t be rushed. Gardening is a perpetual lesson in patience.
To wit: mustard seeds. We grew mustard greens in the garden this year, a first for us. The variety we grew is called green wave and it did pretty well but we weren’t impressed with the flavor. However, when it bolted and we were gifted with an abundance of pretty yellow flowers waving in the breeze and attracting bees, we decided we would grow it again next year even if only for the flowers. Well now the flowers are gone and there are a bunch of dried seed pods. What can one do with mustard seed I wondered?
We have used black mustard seed in recipes before. I couldn’t remember what color the green wave seeds were. And then I wondered, how do you make mustard? You know the condiment that tastes so good on burgers and sandwiches and giant soft pretzels. Google revealed to me that mustard is made from — wait for it — mustard seed! I have since gotten a mini education in mustard seeds and the kind of mustards they make. American mustard is made from the very mild yellow mustard seed. There is the slightly more pungent brown mustard seed and the most pungent, black mustard seed.
Mustard is easy and simple to make and there are so many kinds you can make that I was astonished with the variety. I mean, in this house we have yellow mustard, stoneground, and dijon. But goodness, when you make it yourself, anything is possible!
I think the recipes talking about how easy it is assumed you bought the seed, not got it from your own garden. Yesterday I clipped off all the dry seed pods (and there are still quite a lot out there that is not yet dry). Next year I am going to have mustard sprouting up all over the place because even though I was careful, as I clipped I could occasionally hear a pod break open and the seeds falling down who knows where. It turns out I have black mustard seeds and whoa, are they tiny!
I started getting the seed out by trying to pop open one little seed pod at a time. There are about a dozen or so seeds in a pod and on each stem there are dozens of pods. Can you see how this was going to take a very long time? So Bookman decided there must be a faster way and found a YouTube video of a man explaining how to harvest mustard seed. He was at a large outdoor garden bench so had lots of room and it didn’t matter if things went everywhere. I was indoors at the kitchen counter so needed to keep things under control.
Here’s how I ended up doing it and it worked pretty well and went pretty fast. I used a mesh sieve over a bowl. Took a six to seven inch section of mustard stem and gently rolled it between the palms of my hands. This popped open the seed pods (no matter how gentle and careful I was some of the popping popped all over the kitchen and Bookman is going to be finding tiny black seeds everywhere for weeks I’m sure). In theory the seeds fall through the sieve into the bowl and the mustard chaff stays in the sieve. Of course it is not that easy but it worked for the most part. I still had to pick chaff out of the seeds in the bowl but over all it took less time than it would have if I had continued one pod at a time like I was doing when I began. So far I have about a quarter of a cup of black seeds. To make two cups of Roman mustard which looks really tasty to me, I need one cup of seeds. While grocery shopping Friday night I made sure to look for mustard seed in the bulk spice aisle and I saw both yellow and brown so if we have to bulk up the black with some brown seeds it won’t be a problem. I am so excited to try this. Has anyone made mustard before? If so, do you have a favorite recipe?I also snipped off lots of dried radish seed pods from the garden. I haven’t gotten to work on them yet but the pods and seeds are bigger and will be easier to deal with. We make our own sprouts, you know as in alfalfa sprouts. Except we do broccoli and sometimes radish. Radish sprouts have a spicy kick to them that is really tasty. So we will save some seeds for the garden next year and then store the rest to sprout for sandwiches and salads.
Soon I will be saving flower seeds for next year — zinnia, bachelor buttons and calendula. And eventually I will be saving seeds from the pumpkins when we cut those up.
I was hoping the apples would be ready to start picking this weekend and they are close but just not quite. This week they will be ready for sure probably sometime after Wednesday. So you can look forward to me telling you about them next Sunday.
I’m so excited that we are now part of a composting plan in the city! We had a fantastic, big compost area when we lived in the country, but since we moved to the city, all those wonderful peelings and parings have gone down the garbage disposal. (Someone recently told me I shouldn’t feel too bad about that because the microbes help in the water purification process, but who knows.) Anyway, we were given a 5-gallon compost bucket and every Tuesday it’s collected. I love filling it up and, as a vegan, everything I eat is compostable. It feels great to know that I’m helping some lucky gardeners who are looking for good compost! (But I wish it were going into my garden, which I miss very much.)
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Joan, what a great program! We got our big compost bin from the city for something like $30 but they don’t pick it up. They encourage everyone to do their own composting. So I am on my own. Next to our food and garden bin we have a compost pile of chicken manure we got in the spring from a friend who keeps chickens. It will be good to put on the garden next spring. It seemed like so much when we got it but now that it has been breaking down it has shrunk considerably. For a while we lived in a townhouse with a huge south-facing deck in a burb south of the city and the county had a huge composting center not far from us. We could drive up and if we brought our own containers and shovel we could haul away as much compost as we wanted to for free. I had the best container garden around. It was great. I am thinking of trying worm composting but have to do some research to make sure the two of us will create enough for for them.
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As I am learning here every sunday a garden is not only a perpetual lesson in patience, it is also a continuous learning ‘how to’.
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Cath, oh yes, patience and always something new to learn!
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I’ve failed miserably at most sprouting (I can’t seem to find the right conditions in our kitchen and we don’t control the heat/humidity directly so either I compulsively rinse and damage them that way or stick with twice/day which never works) but I love eating radish sprouts which we buy at the farmers’ market. A great accent for so many meals (if you like a bit of spice). And we do well with sprouting legumes, the chickpeas being a family favourite, so the mold doesn’t always defeat us! We have a new living situation now, which means there may be some container planting in our future for the next growing but, in the meantime, I’ll enjoy your experiences vicariously.
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Buried, oh no! we’ve not had any trouble sprouting. We use a pint-sized wide mouth jar and have a screw on plastic sprouting lid with little “mesh” holes in it. Put in about 2 tablespoons of seeds, soak for 8 hours then rinse twice a day until they are ready to eat then they go into the fridge. In winter we find seeds take a bit longer to sprout and grow–up to a week–in summer it only takes about four days. We’ve not tried sprouting legumes, hadn’t thought of chickpeas! I do hope there is some container planting in your future!
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It’s such a struggle figuring out how to deal with climate change. Just as soon as I had reconciled myself to long, rainy winters we’ve had 2?3? in a row that are super cold and snowy, followed by lovely summers and autumns. Don’t get me wrong – I 100 percent believe climate change is real and we are all going to have to adapt/evolve to survive it, but it sure would be nice if it were, um, a little more predictable, for gardening and home renovation and such!
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sandwichdays, it is a struggle because of the uncertainty. Will the weather people be right? There is no way to tell. And maybe they are right for a few years and then as climate continues to warm it could change the pattern yet again. I suppose what we need to strive for is resilience so we have the flexibility to adapt no matter what happens. That in itself is a challenge because while I have an idea about what that means for my garden there are elements that will always be unknown and up to trial and error. Same with home renovations except errors can be rather expensive!
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It’s so cool what you guys are doing and quite inspirational. I wish I could do more growing and such–why do I not feel more inspired? Not that I don’t feel it–I just can’t seem to find time for it all–everything I want to do. I would love at least to be able to compost. Do you have a special area–use a bin or just a fenced area? I know there are a variety of ways you can do it–have looked into it a little and thought of buying something that you can rotate/turn, but I need to investigate it further. As weird as this sounds–if you are ever looking for a good subject for a post–share your composting experiences! (Or maybe you already have?).
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Danielle, thanks! It’s fun but I am ever surprised how much time it takes. I could probably be an almost full-time farmer on my own little city lot, an appealing thought! We have a big black plastic compost bin we got for the outrageous price of $10 from the city about 12 years ago. It sits in an out of the way spot but close to the house so even in winter we still put our food scraps in it. We never turn it though so it takes longer to do its thing. I am thinking about a small worm composting bin for food scraps especially in winter but I have to do some research to find out how much “food” they need and whether we can provide it for them. I’ve not posted on composting before. Will have to think about how to make it interesting with a story or two. Hmm…
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Do you mean a wormery, where you add compostable material to a binful of worms and draw off the liquid they produce to dilute and use as plant food? My aunt and uncle did this and it was very successful with just the veggie peelings produced by the two of them.
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pining, yes, I think we are talking about the same thing. I am glad to know of your aunt and uncle’s success with just the veggie peelings from the two of them. That makes me want to give it a try even more. Thanks!
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