Writing: Scraplet

(I wrote this to demonstrate a concept on a writing forum. Then the blog looked hungry, so why not?)

Jane's front door was open. She had locked it--she always locked it, and checked it, and sometimes came back from the car to check it again. Rebecca was always talking about OCD and a therapist, but was reduced anxiety worthwhile if it meant a laissez-faire attitude about locking doors?

Jane stared blankly at the door for a moment, then dumped the groceries on the step and rushed inside. She passed by the phone, she ignored the gun cabinet. She didn't stop, she felt as if she didn't breathe, until she was standing by the opened third drawer of the dresser in the second floor guest room, holding a threadbare stuffed rabbit. Then she released a breath. Muffy was fine.

At lunch later that morning, Rebecca asked, "You thought that burglars had come and stolen a twenty-year-old stuffed rabbit? 

"Thirty-two. My father got Muffy for me the day I was born."

Rebecca's tone was a fraction gentler, but the effort to keep it that way was apparent. "Hon, you are not Elvis Presley. No one is stealing artifacts of your childhood. Next time you need to call the police. Hon? Are you listening?"

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Gardening: The farm droning continues.

So, I've already drawn an alarmingly optimistic plan that involves tilling row 6, half of row 7, and the weedy ends of rows 8 and 9.

And planting

• A block of four beds of Supai Red parch corn.
• Four kinds of pole beans growing on the corn: Fortex, Withner, Blue Lake, and Scalzo.
• Patisson Golden Marbre Scallop summer squash. This is another one that's supposed to be good as a winter squash as well.
• Four more tomatoes.
• Another try at Candystick Delicata, in a proper plushy bed, because I grew it lean last year and it wasn't good.
• Enation-resistant snap peas in some of the half-shaded back beds, as an experiment.
• And repeats of already-planned things.

I should get a grip.

I occasionally tally up the things that can be harvested late and stored, to make myself feel less wildly irresponsible:

• The parch corn.
• Most of the beans, as dry beans.
• All of the cucurbits except for the zucchini and cucumbers.
• The potatoes.

It's a short list. I don't really feel less irresponsible. Now, the Armenian cucumbers and Costata Romanesco squash are at least harmless--they'll just sit there and turn into useless dry, hard things. The same for the peas. (For all I know the peas might even be decent dry peas, but I doubt it. I'll look them up.) My concern is all those tomatoes.

But I don't seem to be erasing anything yet.

Many of the tomatoes are dryfarm experiments, after all. So most of them could just fail. Right?

That is all.

Gardening: Progress! Woohoo! And more droning on.

So, most of the top farm priorities are mostly done. This is well ahead of where I expected to by today. (Thanks, Cynthia! Cynthia did almost all the work.)

So, as of yesterday rows 10 and 11 are tilled and mostly ready (woohoo!) for us to insert seeds. I say "mostly" because in some cases we still have to do a little minor cutting of fabric and arranging of already-hooked-up drip lines. Those rows are ready to take:

• Eight beds of Blue Lake bush beans. Beans are spaced roughly 18 inches apart, so there are twelve plants per bed. I realize that this is a crazy-wide spacing for beans, but they make correspondingly enormous bushes and aren't too demanding of water; so far this seems to work well.
• Five tomatoes.
• Two Armenian cucumbers.
• One Costata Romanesco zucchini.
• Two Sunshine F1 winter squash plants that we'll probably also harvest as summer squash.  These are vining squash, so they'll go in 11G and 11H, and I'll encourage the vines toward the sun.
• An early girl in half-shade as an experiment.
• Some Withner's White Cornfield Beans in half-shade as another experiment.

What's next? There are a few items remaining from the original plan:

• Plant the first bed of potatoes. 
• Prep for pumpkin plants.

What next next? Is it OK to plant more? Didn't I promise to make this the simple garden? Hmm.

For now, that is all.

Gardening: Droning On

I want to keep talking about gardening. But there's really nothing to talk about. For this year. (Look up there! Last year!)

But I could talk about the dozens of projects and crops that I'm not planning to work on this year. That could be interesting to see in some theoretical future when I have the simple garden chugging along and I have room for projects.

So, what are those possible projects?

Growing for donation. Like food banks and such. I've never grown for volume before, because we don't preserve things. But growing for volume could be an entertaining challenge.  And it could tie in with other things--for example, if I want to do a trial of multiple varieties (testing under dryfarming, or shade, or something) and lots of them succeed, I'll end up with too much food. It would be useful to already have a routine for giving excess away.

It would also feed fantasies of growing vegetables for income. That's purely fantasy, probably forever, but I like feeding fantasies.

Popping/parching grains. I've been curious about popbeans since I read the first version of Carol Deppe's Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties. And then about parch corn.  I tried parch corn, and I think popbeans, in earlier and more failure-prone years. And I seem to remember other popping grainlike things from her books. As I understand them, these are grains that don't pop explosively like popcorn, but instead sort of puff, becoming softly crunchy.

These are a gardening candidate because I have yet to find a way to just buy the grain or bean--you can buy popcorn anywhere, but not popbeans or parch corn. Apparently sorghum and amaranth and lentils can also be popped (sorghum makes adorable itty bitty popcorn; I had some at a restaurant the other day), but I suspect that I can just buy them. But I'm not sure.

All of these would, I think, be a kind of dried storage grain that I'd actually be willing and able to eat. I don't like dried bean or lentils cooked the normal wet way, and while I sometimes like polenta and I definitely like cornbread, I'm far too lazy to not only shell corn but also grind it. So they're a good choice for, among other things, the zombie apocalypse.

Tepary beans. These beans are supposedly appropriate for growing dryfarmed, assuming that you get them planted in still-wet spring weather. Of course, they run right into my dislike of dried beans. I just bought a bag of white tepary beans at the grocery, so I'll try them to see if there's any way that I like them. The interesting bit is dryfarmed beans that don't require support.

Sprawling Pole Beans. Speaking of beans that don't require support, Steve Solomon says that pole beans grown for dry seed can be allowed to sprawl on the ground. Could I get any snap beans this way, or would they get too much insect damage? It seems worth a try; I'd be annoyed to assume it won't work, struggle with supports for years, and then discover that it works just fine.

Bean Texture Experiments: I'd like to like dry beans. I don't like the mealy texture of most dry beans. So I'm interested in trying any dry bean that is reputed to have a different texture, such as the Hutterite Soup Bean.

Breeding: Snap/Dry Bean Crossover. Black Aztec corn is useful both fresh and dry. Sunshine squash is supposedly useful both as summer squash and winter squash. Fava beans are useful both fresh and dry. I have yet to hear of a regular common bean that is useful as both snap and dry.  Is there a fundamental reason why not? Does one already exist that I don't know about? Could one be bred?

Breeding: Shade-tolerant round snap beans. This may already exist, but I just read (Deppe, again) about the shade tolerance of Withner's White Cornfield Bean. They produce flat beans. We like round beans. Would it be worth playing with crosses?

Breeding: Sunflower buds/flowers as a vegetable. Supposedly, sunflower buds can be eaten. I keep growing them and not getting around to eating them. But if they're good for eating, then surely it would be worthwhile to do some breeding work

Winter Squash. Well, I'm already going to try those Sunshine squashes. If I like them, I'll try other things in other years. The premise is that while you can buy winter squash at the grocery, most of them are harvested immature and insufficiently cured.

Dried Summer Squash. Discussed in Deppe's The Resilient Gardener.  I want to like summer squash. I want to like it fresh, but so far I only like it when it's soaked in so much oil and garlic that it might as well be upholstery foam. So I want to try it dried.

There's more. Lots more. So much more. But I'll stop here.

Image: Mine.

Gardening: Seed Obsessions

Farm farm farm farm farm. Farm.

When it gets warm, all I can think of is what I'm going to plant.

I already blogged on the topic. But I can't plant any of it until next weekend, so my brain keeps spinning.

And I ordered seeds. Bad chicken! Not nearly as many as usual. But too many. So let's list 'em. Because.

• Blue Lake bush beans. As discussed. From three different sources.
• Jade bush beans, because I want to try one or two alternatives to Blue Lake.
• Adriana lettuce, because it was wonderful last year, except I don't actually plan to plant lettuce this year, so what's my excuse?
• Tohya soybeans, because if I like green soybeans at Japanese restaurants, why not grow them?
• Sunshine winter squash. This one, according to Carol Deppe, works as both a summer squash and a winter squash. So when I inevitably fail to harvest the summers squashes, the plants won't be a waste.
• Fortex pole beans. A pole bean that I hear about a lot.
• Evergreen Hardy White bunching onions. Because I keep meaning to grow perennial bunching onions. These will probably go in in late summer or fall.

I also have many, many seeds from last year. 

As previously discussed, I really need to force myself to prioritize. Let's list those priorities. The idea is that the ground must be prepped for each priority before I can move on. Except I'm cheating on that with the potatoes; they're really a lower priority than the beans.

I feel the need to define my watering rules, before I start the list:

• Strictly dryfarmed: They might get a little water to get them to the "first true leaves" stage or one good soaking after transplanting, but otherwise, that's it. If they die, they die.
• Tentatively dryfarmed: I start out as firmly dryfarmed but if they start to fade I'll start watering, because I want the harvest more than I want the experiment.
• Lightly irrigated: No more water than they seem to need to survive; if in doubt, err in the direction of watering too little.
• Irrigated: Ideally just enough water; if in doubt, err in the direction of watering too much.

So, the priorities?

• One 4X6 bed of Yukon Gold potatoes, tentatively dryfarmed.
• Blue Lake bush beans, irrigated. All three different seed sources.
• Howden and Orange Rave pumpkins, lightly irrigated.
• Tomatoes from seedlings, strictly dryfarmed. Early Girl plus one or two plum tomato candidates.
• One or two more beds of Yukon Gold potatoes, at least one of them strictly dryfarmed.
• Armenian cucumbers, lightly irrigated.
• Sunshine hybrid squash, tentatively dryfarmed.
• A Bean Experiment, two or three beds' worth. Maybe just a different kind of bush bean. Maybe the soybeans. Maybe dryfarmed and sprawling pole beans. Maybe Supai Red with pole beans growing up it. I'm not sure. There are a zillion beans worth trying; I'll try one or two this year.
• Howden Orange Rave pumpkins, strictly dryfarmed. Howden Orange Rave got near to producing a ripe pumpkin last year, on almost no irrigation. (I think it's the pumpkin in the photo.) Then we panicked on a hot day and started watering. This year I want to finish the experiment properly.  (Corrected--when I first posted, I misstated the pumpkin as Howden.)
• Costata Romanesca squash, strictly dryfarmed. Really, as long as there's space for this, it's no labor; I intend to insert the seeds into the ground by the fence, let them fend for themselves, and see what happens.
• Parch corn, if I didn't already plant Supai Red as part of the bean experiment. I'm looking at a shorter variety that apparently finishes sooner, which would be good, since ideally this dries down on the plant.

I could keep going, but it's very unlikely that I'll get this far. 

I'm also torn about my favorite Copra onions; I'm almost too late, or possibly already too late, to order plants, so I'll have to order them before I decide whether I'm going to plant them. If I added them, I'd probably insert them between the tomatoes and the second set of potatoes.

I think that's all.

Image: Mine.