The pecan trees we planted last year are doing very, very well. Planting any tree is not a short-term investment. Pecan trees are usually sold bare-root here and so we have a very short window in which to plant them when they arrive. They are also not cheap and don’t produce any nuts for nearly eight years. That said, who doesn’t want more trees?
So what did I do two year ago? I looked up how pecan nuts germinate. I have a love of propagating trees and have tried (and failed) to grow from seed a fairly wide variety of trees.
While researching chickens and compost making I came across Edible Acres (website LINK), which, while a wonderful resource about using chickens to make compost, is a tree nursery which also has great content about growing nut trees from seed. So I tried it. To my utter surprise, not only did it work, it was easy.
Behold, my current batch of pecan seedlings:
Each little twig is a pecan tree not quite a year old. I got a bit carried away last year, so we have a lot. No matter, I couldn’t resist doing it again. Because, again, why not? So I’ve put a few of this years’ pecan nuts in a container to cold stratify for planting in September.
It really is as easy a putting a few pecans in fairly damp wood shavings in a covered containing and leaving them in a cold place. The nuts will start to germinate after a few months and then you plant them in deep flats where they live for a year. It’s ridiculously fun. Needing to pot up 100+ nearly 1 year old seedlings? Not quite as much fun.
Más árboles de Pecán
Los árboles de pecán que plantamos el año pasado están creciendo muy, muy bien. Árboles no son inversiones de corto plazo. Árboles de pecán son vendidos raíz desnuda y cuando compra tiene un tiempo muy corto para enterar. También, no son barato y, en caso de pecanes, no da nueces antes de ocho años. ¿Pero, en realidad, quién no quiere más árboles? ¿Entonces, que hice hace dos años? Busqué cómo germina nueces de pecán. Encanto la propagación de árboles y lo he intentado, y he fracasado, plantar semillas de muchas variedades de árboles.
Cuando estaba buscando información sobre la combinación de gallinas y compost, encontré Edible Acres (LINK). Ellos ofrecen mucha información sobre gallinas y la producción de compost, pero también es un vivero de árboles, ofrece mucha información sobre la germinación de nueces. Así que lo intenté. Para mi sorpresa, no solamente funciono, fue fácil.
¡He aquí, mi lote actual de plántulas de nueces!
Cada palito es un árbol de pecán de menos de un año. Plante demasiado, entonces tenemos muchos. No importa, no podría resistir la oportunidad de hacer lo de nuevo. ¿Por qué no, sí? Puse algunas de las nueces que cosechamos este año en un contenedor para plantar en septiembre.
Realmente es tan fácil como poner algunas nueces en viruta mojada y dejar en un lugar frío. Después de algunos meses las nueces germinan. En la primavera, planta en tierra profunda donde vive por un año. Es muy divertido. ¿Sabe que no es muy divertido? Plantando en macetas nuevas 100+ árboles jóvenes.
While perusing YouTube for something to watch while knitting (please tell me I’m not the only one who does this?) I came across a vlog talking about citrus vinegar. I’ve been making apple cider vinegar for years, but citrus vinegar? From the juiced peels? As the skeptic I am of such things, I tried making a single liter of the stuff first. It worked. Not only did it work, my father really liked the taste. Now, the vlog I watched wasn’t so much suggesting the citrus vinegar for home cooking but rather as a cheap ingredient for making homemade weed killer.
Commercial herbicides are expensive and unpleasant and no one likes them. We tried not using them one year. It was an absolute disaster. I cannot explain how bad it was. We spent literal months attempting to manage the invasive weed growth and it took us nearly a year to claw back to where we had been before we tried only mechanical means to manage weeds. Needless to say, we buy commercial herbicide and just deal with the expense and dislike. But if we could have a large enough volume of homemade vinegar (i.e. free or very cheap) we could try homemade weed killer in some areas under carefully observed conditions.
I am always up for ways to reduce bad chemical inputs on the farm, reduce costs, and manage waste. So this year my father and I decided it wouldn’t hurt to see what I could do with citrus vinegar. First step, take the peels, put them in a container with a little bit of sugar – citrus peels aren’t really high in sugar and you need sugar to get the nice bacteria to grow – cover with water and leave them covered but with air access. Vinegar is an aerobic process.
For these first batches of vinegar I used our fermentation crocks, without the lids and no water lock. Sadly, photographing inside of dark brown pottery is not easy and my pictures were terrible. Picture rotting citrus peels and you’ll have a good idea of what it looked like. Step 1 involved leaving it all alone for a couple of weeks. The crocks live outside in our make-shift pantry area. To my shock, despite the cold temperatures, it started to smell like vinegar after a couple of weeks!
Step 2 was to strain the rotting peels out of the resulting liquid. This was as unpleasant as it sounds.
Cold, wet, smelly, and slimy. Since I don’t like to invest in equipment if I don’t know I’ll use it again I went really low tech, so hands and the ladle we used when fermenting olives. If this whole homemade vinegar thing is deemed successful I am absolutely investing in large strainers for next year. The peels were broken down enough I felt safe creating a citrus-peel only compost pile and have been putting them there. After they fully compost I will be spreading said citrus-based-compost under the citrus trees.
After the solids are removed, more sugar is added to the in-progress vinegar to help the bacteria continue to develop. There’s a lot more science involved than that, but I’ll be honest and tell you I’m not quite sure I understand it. I’m very happy to have it be a magical process where vinegar just happens. However, I do understand enough of the science to know that temperature affects how well things ferment and too cold means the fermentation slows down or stops. The outside pantry is not warm at the moment so I moved the now liquid-only in-process vinegar to one of my outside rooms which has an oil radiator running on low to help combat winter mildew. I combined a couple of the crocks into one as without solids there was less volume.
Because I could, I have three flavors going – lemon, lime, and grapefruit. I have no idea of the resulting vinegars will taste different or the same. But we are going to find out.
My outside room now smells very strongly of vinegar. Citrusy vinegar. I’m considering that successful for the moment. I am waiting for the fermentation process to finish using up all available sugars before moving on to the next step. I, in typical me fashion, did a bit of advance research on how to store the vinegar once I think it’s done. Also, how do I know it’s done? According to a very informative post on the blog Urban Fermentation (link) this last fermentation can take a while. And if I bottle to soon things can explode. As I have zero interest in shattered bottles and smelly liquid all over my pantry I am very happy to just let the buckets sit in my office until I think they are past done.
Vinagre – Parte 1
Cuando estuve buscando YouTube por algo par mirar mientras tejes (por favor, me diga que no solamente yo hago esto, sí?) encontré un video sobre vinagre de cítricos. ¿Hice vinagre de manzanas por años, pero vinagre de cítricos? ¿Hecho de las cáscaras? Como el escéptico que soy, probé hacer un litro solo primero. Funciono. No solamente funciono, pero mi padre le gusto. En realidad, el video no recomendó el vinagre de cítricos por la concina, sino más bien como un ingrediente en herbicida casera.
Herbicidas comerciales son caros y desagradables y nadie les gusta. Un año, probamos a no usarlos. Fue un desastre. No puedo decirle que mal fue este experimento. Pasamos meses y meses tratando de manejar las malezas y llevamos casi un año a recuperar el estado de la plantación y la pradera. No hace falta decir que compramos herbicida. Pero, si pudimos tener un volumen suficiente de vinagre casero (casi sin costo), pudimos probar herbicida casera en algunos lugares, bien controlado y con mucho cuidado.
Siempre trato de reducir el uso de productos químicos en el campo, reducir los gastos, y la gestión de residuos. Entonces, este año, mi padre y yo decidimos que no sería mal si pruebo a producir vinagre de cítricos. Para inciar etapa 1, pone las cáscaras, con un poco de azúcar – cáscaras de cítricos no contiene muchos azúcares y necesita un nivel de azúcares por el crecimiento de la bacteria buena – agrega agua y dejar con un cubierto pero acceso al aire. Vinagre es un proceso aeróbico.
Por estos primeros lotes de vinagre yo usé nuestras vasijas de fermentación, sin tapas y sin bloqueo de agua. Lamentablemente, sacando fotos adentro de cerámica morón oscura no es fácil y mis fotos estaban terrible. Imagina cáscaras de cítricos podridas y puede tener una idea de lo que adentro. Etapa 1 – deja todo sin tocar por algunas semanas. Las vasijas viven en nuestro almacén, en el galpón. ¡Para mi sorpresa, no importa el frío, después de algunas semanas, empezó a tener el olor de vinagre!
Etapa 2 – sacar las cáscaras podridas del líquido. Esto fue tan desagradable como suena.
Frío, mojado, maloliente y viscoso. Como no me gusta comprar equipamiento, sino sé si uso más de una vez, yo use lo que tenemos: las manos y cucharón que usamos con las aceitunas. Si vinagre casero es una cosa útil y buena, el año que viene compro herramientas mejores. Las cáscaras fueron tan podridas que hice un lugar con compost de solamente las cascaras y viruta. Después que el compost está pronto, pongo alrededor de los árboles cítricos.
Después que saque los sólidos, agregué más azúcar al líquido que queda para ayudar el desarrollo de la bacteria buena. Hay mucha más ciencia, pero, veramente, no lo entiendo bien. Estoy feliz que el vinagre aparece como un milagro después de un rato. Pero, entiendo suficiente que yo sé temperaturas muy bajas, detener o retrasar el desarrollo. Como el almacén no está con suficiente calor, el líquido de Etapa 2 está en baldes nuevos en unas de las oficinas exteriores de la casa mía. Con un radiador que mantiene la temperatura allí para evitar la humedad y frío del invierno. Yo combiné algunas de las vasijas y ahora queda solamente tres baldes.
Porque pude, tengo tres gustos de vinagre – limón, lima, y pomelo. No sé si los vinagres al fin van a tener gustos distintos o serán todos iguales. Pero vamos a ver.
Ahora mi sala exterior tener un olor fuerte de vinagre. Vinagre cítrico. En este momento, me parece una buena cosa. Espero que termina la fermentación antes que sigue a la etapa próxima. Yo, como siempre, investigué un poco como podría embotellar el vinagre cuando estera pronta. ¿Y como voy a saber que está pronta? El blog Urban Fermentation (link) dice que esté última etapa puede llevar un poco de tiempo. Y si embotellamiento demasiado pronto, las botellas explotarán. Como no me interesa tener vidrio y vinagre en todo el almacén, dejo los baldes en paz hasta creo que la fermentación esté bien terminado.
In the past years of no blog the garden has undergone some rather large changes. Since I have no idea when we did what, I shall sum it up by saying we reduced the amount of garden space by planting pecan trees. Now, when I say reduced, that doesn’t mean we got rid of it all and we can still plant among the trees. But we went from about an acre of prepared garden beds to less than a third of an acre. We also converted a greenhouse to a chick house. But that’s another post entirely. As noted in Tuesday’s post, we can garden here year round as long as we take care with what we plant. So what do we have growing right now?
Alliums. Garlic, bulb onions, and leeks are all planted outside in the half of bed #1 not filled with peach trees. The garlic will be harvest in late November, the onions in December or January, and the leeks we will start to eat whenever they get large enough, likely December or later.
Greenhouse #4 (which was our rabbit house many years ago) is planted with cold hardy tomatoes, pak choy, mixed salad greens, and red mustard. There’s a large tomarillo plant in which lives there permanently. The green beans aren’t happy, they are in the cold breeze. They won’t last much longer.
We have a few more seedlings ready to plant but are trying to get bed #2 back in shape. We had to take down all the vertical trellising to replace the rotted wood supports and are taking the time to refresh the rows and walkways. When the mud dries a bit I shall try and get a few good pictures although it looks much as it did years ago. For everyone in summer, how is your garden growing?
Estado de la Quinta
Durante los años pasados sin noticias en el blog, la quinta cambio mucho. Como no tengo ninguna idea cuando hicimos cada cambio, en sumo te digo que reducimos la quinta por dos terceras. Plantamos pecanes en el espacio donde fue tierra preparada. No eliminamos todo el espacio por los vegetales y podemos plantar abajo y alrededor de los árboles. También, convertimos un invernáculo a un pollero. Pero esa sería una noticia diferente. Como fue notado en la noticia del martes pasado, podemos plantar verduras afuera en la quinta todo el año. ¿Que está plantado ahora?
Ajo, cebollas, y puerros, todos están plantados afuera en la meta de cama #1 que no tiene los duraznos. El ajo será pronto en el fin de noviembre, las cebollas en diciembre o enero, y los puerros cosechamos cuando están suficiente grande, probablemente en diciembre o más tarde.
Invernáculo #4 (que fue nuestra casa de conejos) está plantado con tomates resistentes al frío, pak choy, ensalada mixta, y mostaza roja. Está un tomarillo grande que está siempre. Las chauchas no están felices, están en el viento frío y no van a vivir por mucho tiempo más.
Tenemos algunas plántulas más prontas para plantar, pero tratamos de arreglar cama #2. Sacamos todos los apoyos por el hilo horizontal porque estaban rotos y aprovechamos la oportunidad de mejorar las filas y paseos. Cuando seca un poco el barro trato de sacar fotos, pero en realidad es casi como fue antes. ¿Por todos ustedes que están con verano, como crece sus quintas?
If my blog posts are giving you the impression that here on the farm we do things based upon what’s ripe or what’s in need of care or what the animal needs are, you would be right. And we do the same things every year at about the same time every year. So basically our lives revolve around seasonal activities – such as the olive harvest, the pecan harvest, pruning olive trees (that one is coming soon), planting time, or sheep shearing. It’s winter here in Uruguay which means it’s time to deal with citrus fruits.
My father loves the climate here. We can easily grow lots of fruits we couldn’t back in the United States in Washington State. Such as citrus. Citrus grows so easily here we went a wee bit overboard on the planting of citrus trees. They really are wonderful. Evergreen, mid-sized, easy to care for, they love the summer heat, and have few pests.
Only problem? We don’t actually eat much citrus.
Laugh. We do. More than 20 citrus trees and we barely eat any of it. But we do use lemon and lime juice. We gift the oranges, tangerines and clementines. We eat some grapefruit, we juice the rest. But the lemons and limes? We juice as much as we have space for in the freezer. Which is a lot.
All red lids are one liter bottles of juice. This is the top layer. The entire bottom layer is all bottles of juice. And I’m just starting the process. I have at least a month more of picking and juicing.
The only drawback to so much citrus is the peels aren’t great to put in the compost pile. The oils from the peel inhibit the growth of good stuff in the compost. There’s more technical ways to say that, but what I know is basically more than a little citrus in your compost pile isn’t a good thing. So I have a challenge every year of what to do with the peels. If it were summer I could peel and dehydrate the zest. But it’s winter, and very humid, and I’m not using electricity to dry lemon peel. So this year I am trying something new: making vinegar from the peels. I’ve been taking pictures of the early stages and will share how it’s going starting next week.
Procesamiento anual de cítricos
Si mis noticias da la idea que acá en el campo hacemos proyectos, depende de lo que está pronto para cosechar o que cuida es necesario o qué animal precisa algo, sería correcto. Y hacemos las mismas cosas cada año alrededor del tiempo mismo. Básicamente, nuestras vidas giran alrededor de las actividades de temporadas – como la cosecha de aceitunas, la cosecha de pecanes, la poda de la plantación (esa está llegando rápida), el tiempo para plantar, o la esquila. Es invierno acá en Uruguay. Significa que es tiempo para hacer algo con los cítricos.
Mi padre encanta el clima de Uruguay. Crece fácilmente muchas de las frutales que no pudimos plantar en los EEUU en el estado de Washington. Por ejemplo, los cítricos. Cítricos crece tan fácil acá que plantamos demasiados. Los árboles son preciosos. Siempre están verdes, son de medio tamaño, son fácil a cuidar, encantan el calor del verano, y sufren de pocos bichos.
¿La única cosa? No comemos mucho de cítrico.
Risa. Es divertido. Más de veinte cítricos y comemos casi nada. Pero usamos el jugo de los limones y las limas. Regalamos las naranjas, las tangerinas, y las clementinas. Comemos algunos pomelos y hacemos jugo con el resto. ¿Pero los limones y las limas? Hacemos lo más jugo que tenemos espacio en los freezers. Y es mucho.
Las tapas rojas son botellas de jugo de un litro. Hay dos niveles – el nivel abajo es todo jugo. Y solamente estoy empezando. Al mínimo tengo un mes más de trabajo.
La dificultad con esta cantidad de cítrico es las cáscaras no son buenas por el compost. El aceite en la cáscara no permite el crecimiento de las cosas buenas en el compost. Es más técnico de esto, pero yo sé solamente que más de un poco de cáscara de cítrico no debe poner en el compost. Entonces, cada año tengo que decir que hago con las cáscaras. Si será el verano, podría sacar la piel y secar, pero es el invierno. Es frío y húmido y no pago por la electricidad para secar piel de limones. Este año pruebo algo nuevo: hacer vinagre de la cáscara. Estoy sacando fotos del proceso y la semana que viene te cuento como va.
Tomatoes – the pride, and bane, of any gardner. While not all the varieties of tomatoes start being ripe at the same time, there is a point in which they are all ripe at the same time. Megan cannot eat tomatoes in any form, I like them in a few choice ways, but do not ask me to eat a tomato as a tomato, sliced with pepper and salt, YUCK! But Jon loves to eat tomatoes, in almost any form, and any kind of tomato.
These are the Roma tomatoes that I cook into tomato paste.
I wash, slice, cook for a long time on simmer to get rid of most of the liquid, then blend to eliminate the skins, cook some more, then put the sauce in jars.
The jars are stacked three deep. We have a freezer full of a years supply of tomato sauce. One less thing to buy at the grocery store.
Next year’s plan – less variety of tomatoes and canning equipment.
Our first summer of drought we had issues trying to get enough water to the vegetable plots. Our second summer of drought, we installed drip lines to water the rows. And then couldn’t keep the soil moist enough under the burning sun. This year, while there has been no drought, we have learned how to keep our soil moist. Mulch. Lots and lots of Mulch.
The hot dry wind that arrives every evening dries out the top inch of soil building a hard crust, while a few inches down, the soil is moist. So, MULCH is our friend! We have placed it in all the plots and around the base of all our trees. It is working very nicely. The walkways squish as you walk between the rows harvesting. The ground is moist – success!
Growing our own produce is a nice luxury, even if it is time expensive. We enjoy being able to grow and eat various fruit and vegetables that we cannot find in the markets. We also enjoy being able to extend the availability of some vegetables. If it is not “in season” it is not available to purchase. Also, produce trucks are not refrigerated nor are the vegetable bins in the market, so shelf life once we bring it home is short. Eat it soon or it becomes chicken food.
So, now you can understand our delight in having fresh strawberries! We have managed to put netting over the plants so that we do not share too many of our delicious strawberries with the birds.
We have now enjoyed several bowls of strawberries.
As this season winds down, we will need to separate the strawberry plants and we will get even more fruit next year. YUM!
The green houses are HOT! 40 degrees + Celsius when nearing mid-day. And, Yes, Uncle Mark, we added shade cloth and have planted several passion fruit vines (Brazil natives which really do love all that heat and humidity) to grow up and expand across the ceiling to act as living shade.
It is easier to work in the green house in the winter when it is cooler than sweat the day away in the summer. We have one working greenhouse where the seeds are planted and set on shelves and watered diligently. Then the sprouted plants in boxes are moved outside to harden off and then the plants go into the garden bed. Some plants are outside in a garden plot in a few weeks, others take several months.
The next two green houses have plants in the ground. We have a drip line watering system and the rows are covered with mulch. The mulch keeps the weeds down and keeps the soil from drying out quickly.
This past winter was a bit of a disaster garden which so we pretty much ignored the green houses all winter and had to prep the soil after pulling weeds this spring. To our surprise we found a few plants that thrived on the neglect.
Bell peppers all year round. After summer in the markets, pickled peppers are the only kind one can purchase. They show up cold on pizza too!
Megan left a volunteer tomato plant to grow in the green house and we had cherry tomatoes before any fresh tomatoes were in the market and and long before any of our plants outside even had fruit. A little thing but it really lengthened the tomato season for us.
The last survivor of neglect was the Bulgarian Carrot Peppers – which are hot peppers. Excellent for hot salsa; way too spicy for me, but Jon loves it.
A few years ago (three , I think- it might feel like we’ve been here forever, but really, it ‘s hasn’t been that long) we planted a couple of rows of sunflowers in the garden. We fed all of the plants & seeds to the animals and Megan saved seed for future plantings. This year, Megan again planted sunflowers, and while we will again feed the seeds and stalks to our animals, we also used the plant to act as shade and trellis. Or at least that was the intention.
Bed # 3 – the garden bed farthest up the hill from the house, but next to the green houses still (one day I’ll post a map and you can all picture the garden layout. Until then, just pretend.) Megan planted every other row in sunflowers using the seed she saved from those first flowers. In between the rows of sunflowers we planted broccoli, cauliflower, celery, and carrots so they would have shade and not be exposed to the harsh sun. The sunflowers grew so fast they provided fabulous shade for the brassicas & the carrots – we just finished harvesting the last of the broccoli now in January. With the shade of the sunflowers the broccoli held in the garden nearly a month longer than last year without bolting. Success!!
As trellis, however, the sunflowers have been, as Megan puts it, a total failure. Megan debated over trying to use the sunflowers as trellis as her research showed that there was some debate as to what would grow planted in companion with the sunflowers. Some sources said the beans and squash (cucumber, in our case) would do well – other sources argued that sunflowers are fairly allelopathic, meaning they secrete some something from their roots which inhibits the growth of other plants around their base. Once the sunflowers were tall enough Megan planted beans and cucumber seeds at the base of the sunflowers. Few if any cucumber seeds germinated and the bean plants have had very, very poor growth. So, next year the sunflowers can be shade but we’ll skip the trellis expectations.
On an entirely separate note, the sunflowers are beautiful to just enjoy. As my sister made comment, they are the only colorful thing on the farm right now. Even if they do block Jon’s view of the water tower from the house.
We have a few planter beds off our front patio. We’ve had them for a couple of years now but haven’t really done much with them. We had thought to plant herbs. Just walk out the front door, cut a few fresh herbs, and put them in your meal. It was nice for awhile, until the herbs took off and overran the beds, or they died from lack of water or being crowded out from weeds. Nice idea, but didn’t work for us. We might try again in the future.
So this season after weeding and amending the soil, we planted salad ingredients. We have lettuce, arugula, chives, celery, radishes, and onions.
Perennials still alive from last year are a hedge of rosemary, some oregano, and mint. So far the pick your own salad is working, we have a salad every night.
These pictures are early in the season, now all the vegetables are fully grown and fill the beds and our salad bowls. Now we just have to learn how to make some new creamy dressings.
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