October Onion and Garlic Report

Yesterday, i weeded the onion/garlic patch, leaving the onion shoots I saw in place. Actually, I had been weeding all along ever since I planted and the first sprouts came up, but I had left the weeds in place in the areas between each sprout. So, yesterday, i just cleaned the whole bed free of weeds and grass. I counted about 50 sprouts. Given that I planted to grow about 150, I'm not feeling entirely successful.
I had added new seeds to some of the area before I left for Northern Ireland a couple of weeks ago. But it really hasn't rained since and I haven't watered. As far as I know, these seeds are still just sitting in the ground. I watered after I weeded yesterday, so perhaps new sprouts will emerge. I can be patient and will continue watering now that I am home.

It occurred to me this morning that my strategy could use a little adapting. When I planted earlier I went through an elaborate strategy to glue seeds to napkins. For my pre-Irish catch-up, I just sprinkled seeds. Of course, getting seeds requires breaking open pods, which is also laborious. Today I thought, why not just plant the pods? There are probably (someone should really know for sure) 4 to 6 seeds in each pod. That's how nature probably does it; keeps the seeds in the pod until they sprout. So I took 50 seed pods (pictured) and planted them directly in the soil. I know where I planted them so we will see how they sprout.

I can think of two additional reasons (other than ease) for keeping seeds in the pods and just planting the pods. First, taking the seeds out of the pods might be damaging to the seeds. You often have to crush to pods to break the seeds loose, which might cause harm to the seeds. Second, the way pods are constructed, it would seem that they have a natural ability to trap just a little bit of moisture. This may be important for germination.

Garlics on the other hand have sprouted well. Of the 32 cloves I planted, 31 have come up. I will have more garlic than I can use, but there are always friends and other gardeners.

Garlic and Onions

I only planted 8 cloves of Chet's red garlic last fall. Only 7 came up. Of those, I did something with 5, leaving just 2 for planting this fall. The ones from the previous season had sprouted this spring, and I planted a number of them. I harvested all of the spring planting, leaving none of them for seed for the coming year. Of the 2 garlic that I set aside for planting, I was able to get about 40 cloves. I kept 32 of them for my own garden and gave the remainder to my friend Steve at church.

I planted the 32 during the week. Nothing has come up yet. I don't need them all to sprout, but I am glad to keep the variety growing in my garden.

Last fall, I scattered onion seed in one of my beds. I think my reasoning had been that trying to plant the year before in prespecified positions hadn't worked well. The sprouting was spotty. But there were two problems last year. First, there were just too many onions that sprouted. Second, I think all the seed came from first-year plants, meaning that for what is supposed to be a biannual, there was no "bi" in when the plants went to seed. As a result, just about every onion in my garden went to seed again this year. Essentially, my onions became annuals.

This year, I am attempting to solve both problems. I am attempting to solve the first problem of scattering seed by going back to a 4-per-square-foot planting system. I used napkins and a glue stick to allow me to create little patches of seeds. Then, I cut up the napkin so I could plant each bunch of seeds separately. I picked a napkin as the medium to glue the seeds on because I think the paper will dissolve pretty rapidly once wet, allowing the seed to send its roots down. I planted these today, 4-per-square-foot, more or less evenly throughout the same bed in which I planted the garlic. (The garlic occupy 2 of the 12 feet, the onions the remaining space.) I hope to have about 150 or so onions from this. That will be plenty to harvest next June.

The second issue was using annual seeds instead of biannual seeds. I purposely kept about 10 onions (long red Florence) alive through the winter and let them go to seed the second year. I used those seeds, as I trust that only a few will got to seed early. That variety was generally a better variety for not going to seed early when I have raised them in the past.

Now seeds and cloves just have to sprout.

Great Balls of Dirt

I thought I was through writing about sunflowers, but there is always clean up to consider. It occurred to me, of course, that for a plant to grow as thick and as tall as a sunflower, it had to have roots. But, having never seen a sunflower root before, I didn't quite know what to expect. Each plant was pretty well anchored with a good thick ball of roots. I wasn't successful uprooting plants until I used the garden fork to loosen dirt around the base of the plant. But even then, the root came up as a large ball. Indeed, taking care of each sunflower was about like trying to deal with a small tree.

The next challenge I faced was just how to get to dirt off of the root. In a raised bed, dirt is precious. And it is apparent that a lot of whatever was in the dirt was up in the air in the stalk of the sunflower plant. Many of the stalks were about an inch in diameter at the base. My solution to getting the dirt off involved finding yet another use for the cold frame hoops. I primarily use the cold frames to brace myself while I bend over the garden boxes. The second use is when I grow tomatoes, as a way of anchoring the cages so they don't blow over when the tomatoes get big and the wind blows. Their use for me as a device to hold up plastic sheeting in the winter is in doubt. (I wasn't very successful growing things in the past this way.) So now the next use is as something to bang the root ball against to get the dirt attached to the roots of sunflowers off and back into the raised bed.

Wet Weather and Tomatoes

I'm sure there are plenty of people in my neck of the woods who have had success with tomatoes this year, but the common complaint I have from friends is that it has been too wet and tomatoes have not done well.

After last year's dismal tomato harvest, I was committed to not even try. Last year was the year I tried to dedicate the garden to growing heirloom varieties. They just didn't do well.

This year, I wasn't even going to plant any, but Kathy wanted some. So we went to the Farmer's Market and bought some hybrids. I have since looked and I can't find the labels that state what variety they are. All I know is that we bought a four-pack of one variety and a single of another.

Given the few plants we have had, I was surprised the other day to come home and find that Kathy had enough tomatoes to can some. And the plants continue to produce.

I understand the theory of growing heirloom varieties. Heirlooms can be grown from your own seed year-after-year-after-year. But here's the deal, the hybrids are doing well. I also understand the theory of growing tomatoes from seed. You gain important understanding about self-reliance when you grow tomatoes from seed. But the deal here is that what we planted took a lot less energy and made a lot less mess than going the heirloom route.

Hoses

The water barrels have been full most of the year. There has been a lot of rain and I've hardly needed to use them. However, that is not universally the case. The other day, I wanted to use the water. Turning on the spigot, the water just dribbled.

This same event happened two years ago. At the time, I think my solution to the problem was to try to use water from just two barrels at a time. That would provide maximum flow and have the potential to keep muck from growing in the hoses. However, this year, the flow was so slow that I thought I needed to try a different approach.

The problem as I see it is that algae and other kinds of junk grow in the slow moving water that is in the hoses. What I needed to do was clean that out.

The way I have constructed the hose system, I actually had to put female hose connections on both ends of the hoses coming from the barrels. Essentially, I turned the spliters backwards. They are designed to take one source and split the water into multiple streams. I used them to take multiple streams and combine them into one. But, what that did mean is that the end that the water exits from into the hose that goes to the garden has a female end on it.

My solution was to take our regular hose, which is fed by the well and the pump and therefore has a lot of pressure in it when the water is turned on, and simply attached it to the single outlet. I then turned on the water full force and washed each barrel's hose to clean out whatever might be inside it.

The best part for me is that it worked.

After years of using these barrels, there is probably muck in the bottom. I know there is in the barrel that is fed from the roof because I can put my measuring stick down and feel the sediment. Someday I will need to clean it out. For now, I am just happy to have water flowing freely.

More Sunflower Processes

What I have read about processing confectionery sunflower seeds is that you can separate husks from the edible part of the seed by running them through a stone mill. We happen to have a stone mill. We bought in the 1980s to grind wheat. It doesn't have a motor, just a hand crank, so it's not the preferred method to do just about anything. Still, for dealing with sunflower seeds, it seemed appropriate.

The method I read suggested opening the aperture of the wheels a bit, between and eighth and a quarter of an inch and grind away until you get seeds separating from husks. The stones are, indeed, adjustable. For me, it seemed that about an eighth of an inch worked well. As I turned the wheel and ground the husk, the seeds separated quite nicely. The photo on the left below is the result of processing a half filled bowl of seeds this way.

What is apparent from this is that the stone mill grinder does its job. Both parts fall down through the shoot. Clearly, this makes it easier to crack the seeds. What it doesn't do is separate the two parts. I ran one small batch through and sort of used a combined method of hand picking out the shells and blowing on the bowl lightly to see if that would separate the parts. It worked, but it was time consuming and messy. I had to do it outside and my shirt ended up covered with small bits of shell. The one problem I tried to avoid was loosing seed because I blew too hard. I'm not sure how effective it was.

I added a step with the larger batch of seeds. I had some quarter inch screen left over from another project. I first put the batch of cracked seeds on the screen. I actually tried to do too much at a time and so I had to work it around a bit. The screen caught the very biggest pieces of shell, about a third of the total batch. I dumped the part that was caught and did it one more time. That left about half of the total batch in the bowl below and, as far as I could tell, didn't leave any of the seeds on top of the screen. After this, I went outside and did my gentle blowing process again. Finally, I hand picked out the few remaining pieces of shell and whatever the other things were. The photo on the right is the result.

One thing is for sure, there isn't a lot of seed that results. It would take a lot of sunflowers to make a quart of seed. I understand now why you would need to dedicate acres to growing and good equipment for harvesting and processing if you wanted to do this economically. For us (well, me) this is just an experiment to learn about self-reliance. It's mostly just humbling to know how cheaply I can buy this stuff in the store.

Processing Sunflower Seeds

This is our first attempt at doing something with sunflowers. After I chopped the heads off (sounds a bit like the French revolution!) I put the sunflowers in the garage to dry. It might be a bit humid in our garage, but it is also quite warm in the summer. Mostly I think we just needed them out of the house and in a place where birds and other vermin wouldn't have access to the seeds.

After a couple of weeks, the backs on some turned yellow and the leaves all either fell off or shriveled. I brought them in the house and Kathy, Jenna and I used our thumbs to get the seeds out. It was a bit more time consuming than I expected. I thought they would just fall out. Instead, bending the flower and rubbing with your thumb seemed to get them to pop out, at least for the most part.

Kathy soaked some over night in brine and then baked them. The first batch were burned. The second batch was just great.