Composting: Not Just For Kitchen Scraps!

The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Barbara Pleasant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the only book on composting you will ever need. It discusses many different composting methods, style, and tools, and it ends on uses, cover crops, and green mulching. It uses the real, personal experiences of the authors, fantastic step-by-step photos and diagrams, and some great recipes and info graphics.

I got a lot of new ideas and plans from this book, and I can't wait to get started on my new composting projects. I checked this book out of the library, but it is such a fantastic resource, that I will soon be purchasing my own copy.

View all my reviews

Time for Vodquat!

My loquat tree finally has ripe fruit on it. I’ve been waiting for this for a year. We’ve fertilized the tree, given it lots of water, and our sickly tree has grown beautiful over the last 12 months and finally has a good harvest of loquats on it.

I love loquat fruit. When it’s ripe (golden orange fruit) it has a sweet, tropical flavor. If it is slightly under-ripe (dark yellow) it tastes like a sweet/tart candy. The fruit’s skin is a little fuzzy, like a peach, and it has a pit of one or two seeds. Don’t eat the seeds! They contain cyanide. Swallowing one or two is fine, but don’t go eating a handful. Do, however, save the seeds, because they have a particularly delicious use.

Vodquat.

Vodquat (my name for this loquat-seed liquor) is made by soaking the loquat seeds in vodka or grain alcohol. The strange thing about vodquat is that it doesn’t taste like loquats. It tastes like amaretto. The seeds have an amazing cherry aroma and impart that flavor to items it is cooked/soaked in.

I learned this recipe from Green Deane. He’s a forager in Florida, and I’ve learned a lot from him. (Check out his videos on YouTube!) Here’s Deane’s recipe for Loquat Grappa (his name for vodquat):

Soak one to two quarts of clean, whole Loquat seeds in a tight jar with a quart of vodka for one to six months. At the end of soaking time, drain the now flavored vodka and split it evenly between two fifth bottles. On the stove create sugar water by mixing equal parts of sugar and water. Heat until the sugar is dissolved. Top off each fifth with the sugar water. If you want it less sweet use less sugar, or more vodka.

I recommend waiting a month or two after finishing the vodquat with the sugar water before tasting. This will give it time to meld all the flavors together. And its true, the longer you soak the seeds, the more flavor your vodquat will have.

On a final note, vodquat makes a great gift. My family looks forward to getting a small bottle of home-made amaretto every year at Christmas. It’s a great cold weather treat, and it tastes all the better for having made it yourself. If you don’t have loquat trees on your property, keep an eye out for them while you are driving around town.

If you live in Florida, you are likely to drive by a tree or two no matter where you are going in the state. I have asked my friends to collect loquat for me from their trees and neighbors. Most people with loquat trees have more fruit than they know what to do with. So ask around, and I am sure you will be able to acquire enough loquat seeds to make plenty of vodquat for holiday gift-giving.

Seasons Keeper

For the last couple of years now, I have been working on a better way to store and organize my seeds. Last year I attempted a storage notebook system, and I wrote about it here: http://backtourbannature.blogspot.com/2012/01/seed-organization.html.
That system worked for about a month. It was hard to get the seed packets back in the card holders, and as time went on, the open seed packets deteriorated and leaked seeds.
I decided that this cannot stand. I had seeds rolling around all over the place. I spent a week collecting the seed packets from all their hidey holes and did a massive accounting of what I had.
I am organized by nature, and tools like MS Excel only feed my desperate need to file and categorize. I listed all of the seeds that I had in an Excel spreadsheet and found that I had purchased several duplicates because I didn’t know what I had. Then I looked at that list and decided I would log all of the cultivation information from the seed packets so that I could do away with saving those packets forever. Now I was really getting into it. I added columns for seed source, ID#, cost, date of planting, potential harvest date, season, garden notes, etc. Now I really had something. I could use the spreadsheet to plan each seasons of planting, log when I planted, and schedule on my calendar when to harvest. The days of keeping the seed packets for their information was over!

But if I am not keeping the paper seed packets, how am I storing the seeds? I knew I needed something that was compact, easy to use, and stored the seeds in airtight, freezer-proof containers. I did some research with manufacturers and came up with a storage vial organizer system.

I’ve taken my invention around to seed swaps and showed it to some fellow gardeners. I’ve received a lot of positive feedback about the system, and I had several people ask me to make them one as well. So I’ve decided to Kickstart my invention so that I can offer it to as many people as want it.
Seasons Keeper on Kickstarter
If you aren’t familiar with Kickstarter, it is a website where entrepreneurs can raise money through crowd sourcing to start their projects. Projects only get funded if they raise all of their goal amount. I’ve posted my project on their website and have listed nine backer levels with some great rewards.
If you have ever wished for a better way to keep your seeds, I encourage you to visit my Kickstarter and back my product. You can get a Seasons Keeper organizer, storage vials, and customizable electronic catalog for a pledge of just $30. And you will receive your reward by the end of May (in time for spring planting).

OGS Spring Conference – Beekeeping

I had the privilege of attending the 20th Annual Spring Conference of the Organic Growers School last weekend in Asheville, NC. This is my second year attending the event, and I can’t imagine ever missing it. I learn so much at this conference. Between the wonderful, knowledgeable people, fantastic class topics, and beautiful surroundings, this event has quickly become a highlight of my year.

This year I took classes on Beekeeping, Mushrooms, Goat Cheese Making, and Composting. I thought I should impart some of the things that I learned from these classes for those that didn’t get to attend. So here’s the first in my OGS series of articles – Beekeeping.

I’ve had beekeeping in the back of my mind for a while now. I feel like its important to keep bees for several reasons, but primarily for me it is for pollination and honey. I live in a rural area where there are a lot of small farms and tons of backyard gardeners. I know that having a couple of hives of bees will not only help my garden pollination, but it will also benefit everyone growing in a 3 mile radius of my hives.

Last year at OGS I took a class on mead-making. Since that class I have been cheerfully experimenting with making mead using honey from a local apiary that sells me one gallon of honey for $40. That’s not a bad price at all, but I want to really ramp up my mead making this year, and that is going to get costly at $40/gallon.

So I have a need for producing my own honey and keeping my own bees. That being said, I’ve drug my feet about it because of expense, time commitment, and fear of bees. The classes at OGS have alleviated all of these fears.

Lets start with some basics:

• One of the best pieces of advice I got from both of the beekeeping classes I took was to get plugged into your local beekeeping clubs/organizations and to go visit other beekeepers hives with them. Both classes stressed the importance of getting to know bees and how to behave around them by apprenticing with a local beekeeper in your area. Not only will you learn a lot of technique, you will also get more comfortable dealing with the bees. This should help me get over my fear of bees.
• Both classes stressed the importance of being calm when working with the bees. The first workshop recommended doing yoga or meditating right before entering the bee’s space. They claimed that the bees will respond to your energy in kind. Mary Beth Gwynn said that she often stands with her hand on the top of the hive for a couple of minutes to allow the bees to get used to her before she enters the hive.
• When do you get bees? Well, it depends on your environment of course, but the general rule is that you order bees between November and February. That being said, if you hope to acquire bees through a swarm, that usually happens around April through June.
• Where do you get bees? You can order packages of bees or nucs of bees from apiaries, or you can acquire swarms or splits from other beekeepers. Everyone seems to agree that purchasing a “nuc” of bees is the best way to get bees. Whichever source of bees you choose, you should get two hives of bees as a minimum.
• Nucs are small, established colonies of bees that can be slipped into your hive and are ready to go. They are bees that have already been living and working as a hive.
• If you buy packaged bees, you are getting an odd assortment of bees from many different hives and a queen none of them have ever met before. The quality of the bees is in question with this method, and it can take a while for all of the bees to decide to work together.
• Splits of bees can be acquired from your local beekeeper who has a full hive and wants to avoid a swarm. You can find out about getting a split through your local beekeeping association/club.
• Swarms are essentially free bees. Get on the swarm list through your local beekeeping association or extension agency. They will call you when they are going out to get an unwanted swarm from someone’s home. You show up, collect the bees (a Nuc box is perfect for this), and take them home to your awaiting hive. This is a great way to get free “survivor” bees.
• What are “Survivor Bees”? The classes I took on beekeeping were on “Natural” beekeeping. Meaning no medications, pesticides, or chemicals are used on the bees. This style of beekeeping is also known as “Live and let die,” meaning that only the strong bees will survive to breed. If your bees die, well, then they weren’t the strong bees you want to procreate. Natural Beekeepers hope that if enough beekeepers practice natural beekeeping, eventually bees will be bred for natural resistance to varoa mites and other diseases.
• Expense – there are predominantly two types of bee hives: Langstroth hives and Kenyan Top Bar hives. The two are very different and cost is just one of the ways they differ. Top Bar hives are significantly cheaper than the more classic Langstroth boxed hives. Here’s why:
• Langstroth Hives are the classic bee boxes you see whenever you think of beekeeping. Generally there is a large brood box topped by a series of further brood frames and honey frames. This style of beekeeping yields a lot of honey and allows for a large, expandable hive.

A downside is that these boxes get very heavy when full of comb and have to be moved to inspect the lower boxes. These boxes use frames with starter comb that the bees build upon. To harvest the honey the frames are removed, the caps are sliced off and the frames are spun in a honey extractor. The empty combs are then returned to the hive so that the bees can refill them with honey. This is a great energy saver for the bees, but can also keep diseased wax in the hive.

These hives usually have 8 or 10 frames per box, and are usually 4 or 5 boxes high for a full hive of bees. As production of honey ramps up, additional boxes with the frames can be stacked on top to help the bees expand their production.

• Kenyan To Bar Hives have one long box that is shaped like half a hexagon. Viewed from an end it looks like this: \_/. Then there is some sort of slightly pitched roof that just rests on top of the hive.

Instead of frames, a TB hive uses bars that are set on top of the hive. The bees make their comb directly on the bars. The main job of the beekeeper with this style of hive is to ensure that the bees build straight combs and to reshape any curved comb. The bees will naturally build their brood combs on the first couple of bars, and will leave the honey combs to the rest of the bars.

One of the downsides of this type of hive is that you will be able to harvest a lot less honey. This is because you will not be reusing comb, so the bees will spend a lot of their energy making comb. it takes 8 pounds of honey to make one pound of comb. The comb is not reused because they are more fragile hanging from the top bar.

To extract the honey, the comb is crushed and strained. Tom Knaust (who taught the Top Bar class I took) recommended taking two 5 gallon bucked, drilling holes in the bottom of one bucket and stacking that bucket on top of the other. Then place a strainer on top of the buckets and crush the comb in the strainer. This method allows you to have strained honey and a bucket full of bees wax.

So this method will provide you with less honey, but it is also a lot cheaper to get started because you can construct your own hives and cheaply extract the honey. Cost estimates for starting out with two hives runs roughly $300 for Top Bar hives and $1,000 for Langstroth hives.

Other benefits of Top Bar hives is that they tend to house happier, healthier bees. Top Bar bees seem to be less susceptible to diseases. They tend to be happier bees, because you are not changing their temperature when checking on them, the way you are when you are breaking down the chimney of the Langstroth hive.

After taking a class on both I think that I will try Top Bar hive beekeeping. It is a method that I can start cheaply and right away. It does take a little more time and management on my part, but right now I have more time than I have money. Also, I only want a couple of hives for home use, so not harvesting as much honey as I might with a Langstroth hive is not such a large detraction.

The following are a series of resources I acquired at the the classes:

BOOKS

The Practical Beekeeper (several volumes) by Michael Bush. Bush also provides a lot of fantastic content for free on his website: www.bushfarms.com/bees

Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture by Ross Conrad.

Honeybee Democracy by Thomas Seeley

Top Bar Beekeeping: Wisdom & Pleasure Combined by Wyatt A. Mangum, PhD. This is THE comprehensive text on keeping Top Bar hives.

The Barefoot Beekeeper by P.J. Chandler

Top Bar Beekeeping by Les Crowder

WEBSITES

http://www.biobees.com/ – source for free step-by-step instructions on how to build a horizontal top bar hive, and loads of information about top bar beekeeping.

http://www.anarchyapiaries.org/ – is filled with interesting thoughts and lots of info on keeping bees in alternative hive structures.

http://www.beesource.com/ – all things bees

http://www.bushfarmscom/bees.htm – a wealth of experience-based knowledge with great photos.

http://www.tbhsbywam.com/ – top bar info and links to buy the bible of top bar beekeeping by Wyatt Mangum (see books above.).

http://www.holybeepress.com – This is Debra Roberts’ (who taught my beekeeping workshop) website

http://www.fortheloveofbees.com – this is bee book author, Les Crowder’s website.

http://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org – home of the Natural Beekeeping Trust

http://www.brushymountainbeefarm.com/Resources – offers fantastic text resources, pictures, and video classes for beekeepers from beginner to commercial beekeepers.

https://www.youtube.com/user/FatBeeMan – this is Don Kuchenmeister’s YouTube channel. He has tons of practical, how to videos.

FORUMS

http://www.beesource.com – go to “The Exchange” for their forum.

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It’s Sauerkraut Season

 

Here in Northeast Florida, it is cabbage season. All around me are fields full of bright green, dark green, and purple cabbages. They are in such an abundance that I do not bother to grow any myself. I do, however, buy them from the local produce stand (The County Line) and make delicious, lacto-fermented Sauerkraut.

Making lacto-fermented Sauerkraut is super easy. Basically, you just let the cabbage and brine sit for a week. Here’s the details:

1. You will need a large container to pound the cabbage in, a container for fermenting (I’ll discuss this later), a potato masher, sea salt, spices (optional, but I like celery and caraway seed and black sesame seed).
2. Shred or thinly slice a couple of heads of cabbage. It can be any cabbage you like. I prefer to use the beautifully colored red cabbage and the crunchy savoy cabbage for my sauerkrauts.
3. As you add the sliced/shredded cabbage to the large container, lightly salt each layer and give it a good pounding with the potato masher.
4. Continue layering, salting (and spicing if using) and pounding until you run out of cabbage.                           
5. Let the cabbage sit in the container for several hours. Give it a good pounding every 15-30 minutes. You are looking for the cabbage to start expressing its water. You want to get as much water out of the cabbage as possible.
6. At the end of the day or when you feel you have a good brine started, begin to pack the wet cabbage into your pickling container. I use The Picklemeister glass fermentation jar. This is a great contraption. It has a gallon capacity  and a fitted airlock so you don’t have to worry about contamination. You can use a regular jar and cover it with cheese cloth, but you will need to remove the scum from the top of the surface every couple of days. With the Picklemeister, this is not necessary.
7. As you add the cabbage to your fermenter, make sure you mash it down very tightly. Hopefully, there will be enough natural brine to cover the top of the cabbage in the fermenter. If not, add a cup or two of saltwater solution (1tablespoon per 2 cups of water should be sufficient) to the cabbage.
8. Weigh the cabbage down so that it is fully covered by the brine. If you are using an air-locked fermenter, cover it and add the airlock now.
9. Next, you just wait. Give the cabbage a taste every day or so to track how the fermentation is going. Here in Florida, where it is fairly warm, it usually only takes 5-7 days to reach a fully mature sauerkraut.
10. Once you reach a taste that works for you, move the sauerkraut to the refrigerator. This will keep the bacteria from continuing to work and making the kraut too sour. As long as the cabbage remains under the brine the kraut will remain delicious and full of beneficial lactobacillus. You may also can the sauerkraut at this point to keep it shelf stable, but this will kill off the beneficial bacteria.

I hope you give this easy fermentation craft a try. It will turn even a hot dog into a mouthwatering meal!

GREENHOUSES!

 

I was so excited to score these little, three-shelve greenhouses on clearance from Big Lots at the end of spring last year. They have been sitting in my garage waiting for when I needed them. This winter has been so mild, they were unnecessary. Until now!

I got my spring seed order in the mail from Baker Creek yesterday, and I am ready to get some seeds started. It is supposed to freeze here this weekend, (if it happens, it will be our first freeze of the season) so my seed starts are going to need some protection. Time to dig out those greenhouses!

They were super easy to put together. No tools required! They wouldn’t be sturdy or warm enough for someone with serious winter weather, but they will do very well for those of us in the lower Southeast. Now I got to get to planting some seeds!

Time to start seeds?

I took up gardening on a small scale last year. I had many failures, but I also learned a lot from the experience. One of the things I decided to do differently this year is to start the seeds sooner. Here, in Florida, we have a very long growing season, and I missed out on growing some of the cooler-weather vegetable varieties because I didn't start the seeds soon enough. Not so in 2012, I vowed.

So despite the temperature dropping at a steeper rate than it has all season, I decided to get a jump on a few of the cool-seasons veggies. Last year I used the Burpee seed-starting trays to start the seeds. The trays worked very well, but I found that it became difficult to find the trays after the first month of Spring. Instead of being dependent on Burpee this year, I purchased a paper seed pot making tool.

http://www.reuseit.com/store/doityourself-plant-potmaker-from-newspaper-p-3092.html

Yesterday afternoon, as the cold, windy weather was starting to blow in, I made 18 paper pots out of some newsprint junk mail. Not only is the pot-maker made of wood, and therefore completely recyclable, but it also helps the home gardener recycle some of the paper in her home. It's a win-win! I have also read that these paper pots are better for the growth of the seedling, since it doesn't restrict the roots the way the seed starter mesh soil pods can do.

The act of planting seeds on the coldest day of the year seems like an act of extreme hope. It's hard to believe that those tiny, dry seeds will open and grow into plants that can feed us all season. Therefore, I think it's a perfect way to bless the new year.

My Seed Pots

I sowed seeds for leeks, Nero di Toscana cabbage, Coer De Boeuf Des Vertus cabbage, Black Giant Tomatoes, Rapini Broccoli, and Natal Plums. The Natal Plums are a total experiment. I discovered this plant on an urban foraging class of Green Deane's (www.eattheweeds.com). It is a thorny bush type of plant that produces wonderfully scented white blossoms and delicious, sweet/tart flavored, fig-sized "plums" all year long. I picked a dried fruit off of the plant during the class and brought it home with me to harvest the seeds. My fingers are crossed that I can get a couple of these going in my yard. Visions of Natal Plum preserves and dried plums have captured my imagination.

Natal Plum

Everything except the tomatoes and Natal plums are cold-tolerant, so I'm hoping to have them producing before the afternoons get warm. The tomatoes I will keep indoors for as long as possible. I just want to get a few of them started early so that I can get the most out of them all spring and summer long.

If anyone from the South has any advice or recommendations for a newbie just starting to garden in Florida, I would welcome it in the comments of this blog. I scour the internet for helpful tidbits, but most gardening advice doesn't pertain to the extreme South. Thanks for the help, and I'll post an update soon.