Living with the Land

Is This Plant Really Hardy to Zone 4?

2015-08-02T11:14:00.000-07:00

Those of us in northern climates always check the rated hardiness of plants we buy to make sure they can survive the cold winters. I live in a borderline area that is zone 4 to zone 5. I also live on top of a mountain which tends to cause about a two week delay between when plants bloom a couple miles down the road at the base of the mountain and when they bloom in our yard. All of which means I look for zone 4 hardiness whenever I add plants to the yard.

But just because a plant is rated for zone 4 doesn't mean that it is comfortable in zone 4 climates. Forsythia bushes, for example, grow very well in our yard and around much of New Hampshire without fear of being killed off by cold temperatures. A late frost or excessively cold spell during the winter, however, may mean that the forsythia will not produce any flowers, or very few, during a particular spring.

The same is true of many fruit trees that are supposed to be safe for zone 4. Some peach trees, plum trees, and other varieties may suffer from the same late frost damage that forsythias may experience. If this happens, they may have no blossoms at all in a given year, and, therefore, no fruit at all in the fall.

If you have fruit trees that produce fruit some years and none in others, it may be a result of the tree being planted in a zone that pushes the limits of it cold tolerance. The tree generally isn't hurt by the late frost or winter cold snap, so technically it is hardy for the region, it's just that it may be unable to produce fruit or flowers unless the winter weather has been particularly favorable.

This year turned out to be one of those years for us. We have loads of developing apples and grapes, but the forsythia, peaches and plums never blossomed at all. Their tender flower buds having been nipped by Jack Frost. Covering them with a thin, light tarp or plastic sheet would probably have helped if we could have predicted the coldest weather or the rogue late freeze. Such covers help trap ground heat and form a protective temperature barrier around the covered plant and will also prevent frost from precipitating directly on the plant.

If you do elect to cover them, just be aware that the covers can also catch snow and become far too heavy for the plant to support. This can cause broken branches or even snapped trunks completely destroying the young fruit tree.

Choosing plants that are hardy to one zone beyond where you live will help ensure that they produce regularly. If you must have peach trees or other semi-hardy fruit trees in New Hampshire or other northern climes, choose a hardy variety, such as the Reliance Peach, and understand that unless you take precautions to protect them, you may have some years of little or no fruit production.

How to Clone a Tomato Plant

2014-08-01T06:06:00.000-07:00

Choose an offshoot, or sucker, from the junction between
the main stem and a larger branch of your tomato plant.
Photo by Brad Sylvester
All rights reserved

When most people think of cloning, they think laboratories, bio-hazards and maybe even one of the Star Wars movie sequels. In reality, cloning your favorite tomato plants is quick and easy. It's a great way to propagate tomato plants and jump start your winter indoor garden.

Because clones are genetically identical to the original, they should share all the properties of the parent plant. This method is great for propagating hybrid varieties that don't breed true from second-generation seeds.

Just keep one plant inside over winter and use it to create the next spring's plantings. It's also a great way to save money. If you buy one large potted tomato plant from a local vendor, you can clone it and get extra plants for free! This is a great trick for expensive heirloom varieties.

To promote a vigorous and healthy tomato plant, you should remove the suckers (especially from the bottom 1-2 feet of the plant) as these will divert energy away from the main producing stems and lower your overall yield if left in place. Removing the suckers also keeps the tomato from getting too thick and bushy near the ground. Good airflow around the base of your plant helps to prevent mold, fungus, and diseases from getting a foothold in your garden.

First make sure the tomato plant you're using is healthy with no signs of blight or other disease. Using contaminated plants for this will just propagate the disease and the new plants will not be successful.

Then look for the places where a large branch comes off the main stem. Many of these will have a new smaller branch growing from the "V" formed by the stem and the branch. These are called suckers. These suckers are what we're after. In the picture below, the small stem in the center is the sucker. They will grow and add new leaves, whereas the other established branches will not. Look at the other branches and notice how there is no place on them where new leaves are growing. These branches are just food factories for the rest of the plant. The suckers are like brand new complete tomato plants and will add new leaves, flower, and bear fruit. They should snap off easily if you gently bend them at their base. Be careful not to squeeze the stems as this can damage them and kill the suckers.

You can plant each sucker in an individual pot or put several into a planter box or window box. Space them at least 3"-4" apart if you use a common planter. If you use an individual pot, choose one that is at least 3-4" deep to allow room for good root development. And bear in mind that you may need to transplant to a larger container later if they get too big before it's time for them to go outside into your regular garden. I use Miracle Gro's Moisture Control Potting Soil. It is the right consistency, doesn't pack down hard, holds moisture well, and feeds the plants for the first three months in the new soil. This helps them grow faster and more reliably as they establish new root systems. Using a pencil or similar implement, poke a hole into the soil.

You'll want to plant the sucker as deeply as possible keeping leaves and branches about an inch above the top of the soil. If you need more depth, you may need break or trim the bottom-most pair of leaves off the sucker before placing it into the hole. Gently firm up the soil around the newly planted sucker. You want to make sure you don't leave any air pockets around the stem.

Water the new plant generously and keep an eye on it for the next few days. For the first few days, you will see it wilting from time to time. Remember it has no roots at all and needs to re-establish an entire root system. For the first week, it should be kept out of direct sun, but still in a bright place. When you see it wilting, you can give it a boost with a light leaf misting to help the plant absorb water. It will most likely wilt every day for 3-4 days until some new roots begin to form. Keep the soil very moist for 3-4 days, then water as you would a normal tomato plant.

After about a week, your plant should have enough roots to keep it going with no special treatment, place it in the sun and keep it well watered. If they do start to wilt, continue to mist them. I'd wait at least 3-4 weeks before transplanting to their permanent location (longer is ok). Then, just take care of it like any normal tomato. Remember tomato plants love the sun! Once it is established it should be given as much light as you can give it during the day, but don't be tempted to leave indoor grow lights on 24 hours a day. Plants need the day night cycle for proper growth and maturation. 12-14 hours of light per day works great for tomatoes.

Not every cloned plant will make it past the first week, but if you follow these steps, you should have a very high rate of success. With good follow up care, you'll have a healthy new crop of cloned tomato plants. You can increase your rate of success by applying a Rooting Hormone to the suckers before placing them in the soil. There are many different brands available and they can be found online or at your local nursery. Follow the directions for the one you buy. Basically, though, all you need to do is dip the portion of the sucker that will be in the dirt into the rooting compound before planting it. If the rooting compound you choose is a powder then just dip the sucker in water first to help the powder adhere to the plant. With a rooting compound, you should get nearly one hundred percent success in cloning tomatoes.

Maple Sap 2014 Season

2014-03-02T12:53:00.000-08:00

I put out some maple taps on February 22nd, this year. Normally, that would be a bit late. As it turns out, this year it is early. For maple sap to flow best, the trees should be subjected to a day/night temperature swing which hits 40 degrees F. during the day and drops down to below freezing at night. While we've certainly been below freezing at night, the days with high temperatures over 40 have been few and far between.

I suspect this will make for a short season this year, since once we start getting warmer days it may be late enough in the spring that the night time temperatures don't drop below 32 or at least not consistently.

This is the first year that I'm using the small "tree-saver" taps instead of the 7/16" diameter taps. They seem to work quite well so far, but we'll see how it goes when the sap really gets flowing.

I'm thinking about trying to tap some birch trees this year. Supposedly, birch sap runs a bit later in the spring and when the maples are just finishing up, the birches are just beginning. Birch syrup, I'm told is not as distinctively flavorful as maple syrup. It is said to have a molasses-like flavor. Birch sap also has a much lower sugar content than maple sap so it takes several times more sap to yield the same amount of finished product.

If I end up tapping any birch trees this year, I'll let you know how it turned out here on the blog.

1000 Pound Challenge Update

2012-07-26T09:35:00.002-07:00

I have come to the realization that I will not just fail to meet the 1000 pound for produce from my garden within 1 calendar year, but that it will be an epic fail.

As of yesterday, I have harvested 9.555 pounds of produce. While it's true that tomatoes and squash have barely started and that the cabbage will add some weight to my totals, I don't think I'll even make 200 pounds in total this year.

The reason is pretty simple. My garden is more of a traditional kitchen garden. Each day, I go out and pick something for use in the meal that I'm preparing. Since I cook a wide variety of dishes, I have a wide variety of items in the garden. Of the 450-ish square feet of garden space, about 75 square feet is dedicated to herbs, for example. Herbs weigh next to nothing, and although I might make 200 or more harvests of basil, oregano, thyme, dill, and the rest, during the season, they won't weigh-in very heavily compared to planting the same ground with, say, 9 zucchini plants.

We also had bad luck with the strwberries which occupy one complete terrace of my hillside garden this year. The fruits were eaten just before ripening by the animals that live in my yard. Primarily chipmunks, I believe, but quite possibly deer and other nocturnal visitors as well. That cost us a number of pounds of production.

It's true that we are only four months into a 12 month challenge. So there is time, yet. If I were to build cold frames to act as mini-greenhouses and use passive solar heating to keep them warm, I might yet pull out some late season harvests. The difficulty with that is that we are already losing daylight hours as autumn approaches. When the number of available hours of sunlight gets too low, many garden vegetables will stop producing or stop ripening. Others, like lettuce and leafy greens, greatly reduce their rates of growth.

So this year, we will experiment with exending the season as far into the New England autumn as we can, and we'll see how mcuh we can squeak out of the kitchen garden. Next year, though, we will plan for production. We'll plant much larger quantities of vegetables that we can not only eat as they ripen, but which can be effectively preserved.

Shopping in the Backyard

2012-06-25T12:10:00.000-07:00

Summer is one of my favorite seasons, because it's that time of year when you can simply walk outside and stroll through the garden with a produce bag and pick your groceries for the evening meal. Row markers become menu entries as I go shopping in the garden for the family dinner.

Most of the time, I pick only what I need for the day, washing and cooking it immediately after picking it. Sometimes, however, a particular plant or group of plants comes due for picking in larger quantities. With the herbs, for example, we'll pick them in large quantity when the plants get big and when they get ready to bolt. Then we'll dry them and crush them to fill our spice jars in the kitchen.

Other types of produce may be frozen, dried, canned, pickled or otherwise prepared and preserved for use during the winter.

It's still early in the season so many of the crops haven't ripened yet. Nevertheless, we have harvested more than 4.5 lbs of miscellaneous produce from our small garden. In a few more weeks, blueberries and blackberries will be ripening on the mountain on which we live and we'll pick pounds of them for both immediate use and freezing.

Food Preservation Tip: When freezing blueberries, spread them out on flat baking sheets with space between each berry. Place the baking sheets into the freezer until the berries are frozen solid. Then remove them from the freezer, bag them up and put them back in the freezer. When you thaw them for use, they'll retain their shape and firmness much better than if they were initially frozen in a big lump.

Garden Produce Quality Guarantee

When we shop for produce in our backyard, we know that it has not been sprayed with whatever pesticides are legal in its country of origin, we are confident that it has not been exposed to a processing plant contaminated with salmonella or E. coli. With the prevalence of reports of widespread food-borne contagion these days, that's no small benefit.

The other thing we can be sure of when we pick produce from our garden is that it's fresh and packed full of nutrition, without the incredible amounts of sodium added to canned vegetables. With family members in the home on medically necessary low-sodium diets, that's no small benefit either.

One Pound of Produce

2012-05-19T16:39:00.002-07:00

It's May 19th. Our most recent threat of overnight frost passed on May17th with temperatures only getting down to about 34 degrees, here on Blue Job Mountain in New Hampshire. Meanwhile today, temperatures hit the high seventies or low eighties. That's a New England spring for you. Old Man Winter struggles fiercely to maintain control of the territory against the challenge laid down by the adolescent spring as it strengthens into its full adulthood of summer.

That's great for poets, but for gardeners it can take some getting used to. Its largely a question of knowing what to plant when, and how to prepare if things look like they aren't going to go as planned. To take advantage of the early season warmth and rains, very hardy plants like radishes, lettuce, spinach, peas, and broccoli can be planted for an early season harvest.

Even before these frost-tolerant plants will be close to ready to pick, however, I have made several harvests from plants that are able to overwinter through the sub-zero temperatures and snow cover of a New England winter. These include some perennial herbs such as chives and oregano, but also a more substantial perennial vegetable: asparagus.

Asparagus is always one of the first vegetables I harvest here each spring. It is on the strength of an early harvest of asparagus that I have already reach one-tenth of one percent of my goal in the 1000 Pound Challenge (the effort to grow 1000 pounds of food for the table on less than 500 square feet of garden space). That's one pound of food on the table already this year from our garden.

Click here for our harvest totals for this year

I also have one row of my terraced hillside garden planted with strawberries which are just beginning to shed their flower petals and to produce fruit in earnest. I am removing all the runners as they form so that the plants put more energy into fruiting than vegetative growth.

After another round of planting today, our garden now contains the following plants:

Asparagus
Garden Peas
Mixed Lettuce
Spinach
Radishes
Bok Choy
Cucumbers (both full-sized and pickling cukes)
Basil
Red Cabbage
Tomatoes (just a few planted outside as yet with row covers handy)
Mustard Greens
Garlic Chives
Chives
Lemon Thyme
Thyme
Sage
Garlic
Leeks
Strawberries
Wax beans (just planted as seeds)
Sunflowers
Cilantro (Coriander)
Summer Squash
Peppermint
Chocolate Mint

We'll be adding a few more in the next few days as well...

Outside of the gardens we have many other edible plants (or fungi):

three apples trees (7 varieties thanks to the science of grafting),
one peach tree (newly planted)
one cherry tree (newly planted) (Note: I'm aware that I need another pollinator, but haven't yet gotten around to planting another)
three grape vines (one established, 2 newly planted)
rhubarb
blackberries (wild)
blueberries (wild)
wintergreen (wild)
occasional edible wild mushrooms
maple and birch trees (for sap which can be boiled down into syrup or sugar)
and a number of other incidental wild edibles that can be found on our 5.25 acre plot of land.

I haven't added these to my garden yield totals page since they do not count toward the 1000 Pound Challenge, but I think I'll make a separate total for food plants harvested outside of the garden as well.

Audubon Society Call to Action to Save Loons

2012-04-19T10:49:00.000-07:00

Bald eagles, loons and other aquatic birds are being poisoned
the unnecessary use of lead fishing tackle. Switching to steel
can preserve these birds without changing the fishing
experience.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012.

I received an email from the NH Audubon Society this mornign and I wanted to repost it here in its entirety (as the text requests that it be redistributed as widely as possible). As you may know, I am an avid bird watcher and I enjoy recreational sport fishing. I have long been an advocate of using steel splitshot instead of lead and avoiding lead tackle of all kinds in order to protect aquatic birds.

Lead tackle ingested by ducks, loons, herons and other aquatic birds poisons and kills them. From a fisherman's viewpoint, I find no difference whatsoever in my ability to fish using steel instead of lead. Steel is roughly 68% of the density of lead. It is more than heavy enough to drag your line down in the water.Adding a tiny amount to the diameter of a steel sinker or heavy-headed jig gets you the same weight without any noticeable difference in size.

A distant loon calling late in the day, herons flying overhead, or a bald eagle sitting high in a tree overhanging the lake, and the other wildlife that can all be poisoned by the use of lead tackle are actually part of what makes fishing enjoyable and relaxing. Insisting on using lead makes no sense. Please take a moment to read the Audubon Society email below and take action to extend the current restrictions on lead tackle in New Hampshire (or your own state).

"Dear Friends of Loons,

Senate Bill 224, which would increase protection [for] aquatic birds, particularly loons, from toxic lead fishing jigs will be heard before the House Committee on Fish and Game and Marine Resources this coming Tuesday, April 24, at 1:00 p.m. in the Legislative Office Building in Concord. Your calls, emails and letters to every member of this committee (contact information below) between now and next Tuesday will be the most important thing you can do this year to assure a future for New Hampshire’s loons.

Senate Bill 224 as amended by the Senate would leave existing regulations (restricting the use and sale of lead sinkers 1 ounce or less and lead jigs less than 1 inch in length) in place through 2014, and would ban the use of lead-headed jigs less than 2.5 inches in length beginning in January of 2015.

Our loon population remains far below historic levels and the number of loon pairs on New Hampshire’s lakes decreased in 2011, after a record-high number of deaths from ingested lead tackle in 2010. This decrease occurred despite record levels of management and outreach in recent years, and continued declines are projected unless mortality from lead poisoning is addressed.

We know the toll lead tackle is taking on New Hampshire’s loons because biologists have been monitoring the State’s loon population very closely for many years. Although no specific numbers are available, biologists across North America have also documented lead fishing tackle ingested by Canada Geese, American Black Ducks, Wood Ducks, Great Blue Herons, and Bald Eagles, among other species.

It will not be easy to gain the support of the House Fish and Game and Marine Resources Committee in view of the concerted efforts of certain fishing groups and the lead tackle lobby. We need to work harder than ever to bring this bill out of committee with a convincing vote and then on to the final stage, a vote by the full House. Your help with the following actions will make all the difference in securing these critical protections for our loons and other water birds:

1. Please contact as many of the House Fish and Game and Marine Resources Committee members as you can between now and next Tuesday, April 24th to express your support for loons, waterfowl, and the important protections in SB 224.

2. If you can, please attend the hearing and sign in as supporting the bill, whether or not you choose to testify.

3. Please distribute this email as widely as you can to friends of loons and other wildlife in New Hampshire.

Numbers matter in the House; the more people committee members hear from, the more likely they will take our concerns to heart and vote to save loons and other wildlife from this needless cause of death.

Next Tuesday will be a critical day for loons in New Hampshire. I hope I will be able to report that loons won out over toxic lead fishing tackle. It’s in our power to make it so. Thank you for your continued support of our loons!

Note that the below are home phone numbers as representatives do not have offices.

House Fish & Game and Marine Resources Committee

Chairman: Clifford Newton- (603) 332-5643

V. Chairman: Dennis Reed- dreed1@msn.com; (603) 934-6607

Clerk: Joe Duarte- joe.duarte@leg.state.nh.us; (603) 483-8454

Betsy McKinney- betsy.mckinney@leg.state.nh.us; (603) 432-5232

Michael McCarthy-michael.mccarthy@leg.state.nh.us; (603) 598-4966

Tyler Simpson- Tsimpson.rep@gmail.com; (603) 968-9285

James Webb- james.webb@leg.state.nh.us; (603) 845-3454

Benjamin Lefebvre- bplefebvre@gmail.com; (603) 677-2722

Lyle Bulis- (603) 444-5024

Leo Pepino- l.pepino@leg.state.nh.us; (603) 624-1476

Norman Tregenza- norman.tregenza@leg.state.nh.us; (603) 733-6736

Daniel Carr- daniel.carr@leg.state.nh.us; (603) 239-6830

Dick Patten- dickpatten17@gmail.com; (603) 228-1803

Elisabeth Sanders- (603) 642-5070

Richard Okerman- rep.rokerman@gmail.com; (603) 893-7705

Marc Tremblay- marc.tremblay@leg.state.nh.us; (603) 752-1995

David Watters- david.watters@leg.state.nh.us; (603) 749-4539

Jenna Roberts- jenna.roberts@leg.state.nh.us; (603) 868-7402"

Fresh meat from the garden?

2012-04-11T13:27:00.002-07:00

This pool on the Isinglass River is a great, easy access place to fish for brook trout.

As you know if you're a regular reader of this blog, I am competing with a garden in Georgia in the 1000 Pound Challenge with a goal of putting 1000 pounds of food on the table from a garden of 500 square feet or less in one calendar year. Although the challenge covers only produce grown within the garden plot, there are other ways to put food on the table with the garden.

For example, as a part of my annual spring garden preparation, I turn over the soil in my raised bed gardens to loosen it up and to dislodge and pull out weeds that have infiltrated the garden. Today, I decided that as I turned over a few pitchforks full of dirt, I might as well collect the earthworms that were uncovered (about 4-5 in each turn) and put them to good use. Of course, leaving them in the garden to enrich the soil with worm casings is also good use, but I had another purpose in mind.

I have also written in this blog that fishing is foraging, too, and a great way to put food on the homestead table. While we don't often think of the garden plot as putting meat on the table, it is very effective at propagating earthworms because of all the organic matter worked into the soil to make it fertile for the plants. While earthworms are edible, they're very small and don't particularly appeal to my predilection for haute cuisine...

Earthworms do, however, top the preferred menu for brook trout and brook trout is certainly on my menu. So this morning I threw a handful of earthworms in a biodegradable paper cup with a bit of dirt and headed for the nearby Isinglass River with my father-in-law to do a little fishing. Within our first ten minutes there I caught my first fish of the year, a ten inch brook trout.

The fish I caught was most likely stocked as part of the NH Fish and Game trout stocking program. Game fish populations are closely monitored and catches are limited by the NH F&G so as to maintain sufficient numbers in New Hampshire waters. Plentiful game fish allows New Hampshire to profit from licensing fees and tourism generated by fishing. The benefit for the environment is that the state has a powerful economic incentive to keep its streams and rivers protected from pollution and the encroachment of suburban sprawl. More wild areas mean more wildlife and a healthier environment for all.

Despite the early success, we did not land another fish over the next few hours and we left for home. Within minutes of arriving home, of course, it started to hail even though we had beautiful partly cloudy, warm weather for our mid-day fishing. It is New England, after all.

To make a long story short, The fish I caught with the earthworms grown in my garden weighed in at .266 pounds after being cleaned and dressed (bones in). That's an entree for one person. Unofficially, then you could say that my garden produced this bounty as well, although it doesn't count for the 1000 Pound Challenge. Living with the land, however, means that we take advantage of available food sources that put minimal strain on the environment. Fishing not only meets that goal, but provides some good relaxation therapy and a chance to build memories and strengthen bonds with friends and family.
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Don't forget to like the 1000 Pound Challenge on Facebook!

Extending the growing season with row covers

2012-04-04T21:16:00.000-07:00

DIY garden row cover
Phot by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012.

If a New Hampshire garden is to compete with a garden in Georgia for total yield over a span of twelve months in the 1000 Pound Challenge, a key factor with be the ability of the northern garden to extend the growing season. One way to do that is with the use of row covers.

Row covers are used both in the early spring and late autumn to protect garden plants from cold and frost damage. They provide a crude greenhouse for an outdoor garden by covering the garden and trapping ground heat to keep the plants warm enough to survive cold early spring or late autumn nights.

They should be made of a material that lets sunlight in, but which keeps frost out and heat in. Generally, that means plastic sheeting. In my case, I had some battered plastic that I recently used to help protect my in-laws' furniture while moving it in an open truck bed during a light rain. Rather than throw out the plastic, I recycled it by making garden row covers.

I used flexible green branches from my backyard as the hoops for the row covers, and longer branches as the framing members. Row covers are actually pretty easy to build. I have prepared a slide show with step by step instructions for building your own garden row covers and a written a detailed account of the specific benefits of row covers.

With the row covers in place, I can plant seeds directly into the garden even though we have another month of frost danger, or I can transplant seedlings that I started indoors out into the garden. This will add weeks of productive harvesting to the garden.

By using row covers again in the fall, I can grow crops like lettuce, spinach and other plants that aren't as sensitive to shortened daylight hours, well into late autumn or even early winter.

Techniques like the use of row covers make a huge difference in the total annual yield of gardens in regions with short growing seasons. In New Hampshire, row covers can increase the effective growing season by 50-100% depending upon the severity of the weather.

If I'm going to have any chance at the 1000 Pound Challenge, I'll need row covers to give my garden a longer harvest time along with a number of other techniques designed to increase the yield per square foot of garden space.

First Token Harvest of 2012

2012-04-03T09:17:00.000-07:00

Chives and oregano harvested on April 3, 2012 for
The 1000 Pound Challenge.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012.

I had vowed to make a harvest and take the lead in the 1000 Pound Challenge on the first day of the competition which was April 1st. Instead I ended up helping my in-laws to move from Connecticut to our house here in New Hampshire and did not have any time to get out to the garden until today. Today, however, I did make a harvest of four separate crops: leeks, chives, garlic, and oregano.

The garlic and leeks were planted in our terraced garden bed last year and overwintered in place. Ordinarily, all the garlic that I let overwinter in the garden would be dug up, separated and replanted rather than harvested for the table. Each clove will grow a new garlic bulb to be harvested in late summer or fall. In fact, I only harvest three small cloves and the rest will be replanted. For those looking to propagate garlic using this technique, I have written up a tutorial on planting and propagating garlic. The slideshow has step by step photos and instructions. Once garlic starts to grow in the spring, the fullness is sapped from the cloves as the stored energy is consumed by the new plant. If intended for the table, therefore, it's best to harvest late in the growing season as the leaves dry up and wither. I did pick out three good cloves weighing in at 0.004 lbs with the tops that I will use in a vegetable soup along with everything else I picked today.

A leek prepared for cooking.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012.

I trimmed the fibrous green leaves off the top of the leek and the growing roots off the bottom before weighing it up. This is the part that will go into the soup later. It weighed in at a paltry 0.02 lbs. The other leeks that overwintered will be allowed to grow bigger this year.

Finally, from the herb garden, I picked fresh chives and a little oregano that will also go in the soup. The total weight of these two items combined was 0.026 lbs. Both oregano and chives can be used fresh as I will today, or they can be dried and preserved for later use. In the fall, when the plants in the herb garden are as big as they'll get and the threat of early frost is upon us, I'll harvest as much as I can and dry it out for use all winter long.

The young green shoots of spring garlic can be shopped and
used for cooking.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012.

My total yield for the 1000 Pound Challenge, as of April 3rd, 2012, is 0.05 or one-twentieth of a pound comprised of four varieties of produce. It's not much, but it's enough for the lead over "The Good (& Simple) Life" in Georgia.

If you haven't seen it yet, there is now a Facebook page dedicated to the 1000 Pound Challenge.

1000 pound challenge accepted

2012-03-29T11:38:00.002-07:00

Vegetable and herb seedlings for the 2012 season.
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2012.

A friend of mine who writes "The Good (& Simple) Life" blog has thrown down the gauntlet. With a 500 square foot area in which to garden, she has vowed to achieve a yield of 1000 pounds of produce over the course of one full calendar year -measured from April 1st 2012 through March 31, 2013 (assuming the Mayan prediction for the world to end in 2012 doesn't come to pass).

That's two pounds of produce per square foot and it's not an easy goal. It helps that Angie, the woman behind "The Good (& Simple) Life" blog's 1000 pound challenge, is planning her garden in the state of Georgia where the growing season is significantly longer than ours here in New Hampshire. Conversely, the fact that she's doing it all organically makes it arguably more difficult.

North vs. South Gardening Challenge

We, here at the "Living with the Land" blog, are taking up the 1000 pound challenge and we'll be comparing results over the course of the year. We will represent northern gardeners while Angie will represent the South.

Size Matters

As Angie noted in her challenge post, she will be growing "tomatoes (enough for canning), peppers, eggplant, zucchini, winter squash (my personal obsession), lettuces, cabbages, fennel, onions, garlic, peas, beans, cucumbers, celery, okra, beets, radishes, carrots, potatoes, parsnips, watermelon, spinach, Swiss chard," and other items as whimsy dictates throughout the year on her rectangular 20 x 25 foot garden plot. That's 500 square feet of garden space.

My garden plots total about 375 square feet and I'll add in another 30 square feet of herb garden. I will not count other producers like an existing grape vine, apple trees, maple trees or other edible wild plants growing throughout my 5.25 acre yard for the purposes of the challenge. I will, however, keep a record of these things as a side note since it may be of interest to those trying to live with the land.

What to Grow This Year

Since I still have some time before the regular growing season starts here, I hadn't yet fully planned what I'll be growing yet. I have already started some seedlings indoors, however. So far I have several varieties of tomatoes including grape, Roma, and Better Boy hybrids, among others. I also have started summer squash, cucumbers, sunflowers, and red cabbage. I have a handful of 2nd year leeks already in the ground along with garlic chives, asparagus crowns, and some garlic cloves planted last year, and have about 40 square feet of the garden area dedicated to strawberries.

I expect that I'll be planting garden peas, pole beans, chili peppers (several varieties), bell peppers, lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, various greens such as mustard and arugula, and a variety of herbs. My herb garden already contains a few plants that are able to overwinter here with minimal protection: sage, chives, lemon thyme, peppermint, and oregano. I'll weigh the herbs as freshly picked, rather than dried. I use them both ways.

Organic Versus Not so Much

Angie is a committed organic gardener and even uses as much passive watering (collected rain-water) as possible. I am less avid, but still like to avoid using chemicals on my food where ever possible. My water comes from a well on my property. I compost our vegetable and plant scraps along with some of the chicken manure that our backyard flock produces. I have been known to spray Miracle Grow on my garden, use a fungicide for powdery mildew infestations, and once I even used Sevin insecticide for a particularly bad infestation in the garden. I sometimes buy composted cow manure and peat moss to enrich the soil if I am adding a new section of garden. My gardens are raised bed (about 180 square feet) and on a terraced hillside (the remainder, minus about 30 square feet of non-contiguous herb garden).

I have mentioned the short growing season here. As I write this, it is snowing here despite the fact that we had two days of 83+ degree heat last week, naturally followed by two nights at 20 degrees or less. We are in what New Englanders refer to as "mud season." Even my terraces and raised beds are too saturated with water for planting even if the temperatures allowed. With a few exceptions, a significant portion of any seed I put in the ground now would likely rot. As long as we get nights that are below freezing the soil temperature is going to stay low, although the terraces help on that front.

Early spring planting here is a wager. You plant your toughest crops and hope that the weather doesn't call your bluff. Row covers or a small greenhouse could provide protection and greatly extend our growing season for some of the hardy crops, but I don't want to spend more to grow my own food that it would cost me to buy it at a local farmer's market.

The North Poised to Take an Early Lead

A quick survey or the gardens shows me that the warm days we had last week have kicked a few things into gear already. On day one of the challenge, I'll be able to make a token harvest and, hopefully, take the lead over "The Good and Simple Life." It'll be just a handful of chives, some lemon thyme and a bit of oregano, and possibly those few remaining leeks, but if our northern garden is going to have a chance, then every ounce counts and a lead is a lead.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Despite a much shorter productive growing season, we do have the advantage of mature garden beds. The majority of our garden has soil that has been prepared in years past with compost and manure mixed with the sandy and unproductive soil that naturally occurs in our yard. Depending upon the soil quality of Angie's yard, and the amount of available organic compost and composted chicken manure she has available, she may struggle to attain maximum productivity for the first year as nutrients are added into what may (or may not be) less than optimal soil.

Goals and Techniques

I also want to mention that both of us are aiming for a well-rounded garden whose goal is to provide as much of the table produce for our families as possible. If this were a straight productivity race, we'd each figure out which one or two crops are the best producers by weight and ground area required and plant only those one or two items. Conversely, I expect we'll both benefit from intensive gardening methods and by using a vertical approach such as providing vertical surfaces so that cucumbers and other vines grow upward, letting pole beans climb high up posts and the stalks of sunflowers, while squash and other ground covers act as a natural mulch holding in moisture and preventing soil nutrient run-off.

We'll use successive plantings to try to double up on area used for short-lived plants (like spring peas). and, of course, as I've mentioned, I'll be giving our veggies as much of an early start as possible by seeding them indoors until the weather allows them to move into the garden. While we are having fun with the race to 1000 pounds of garden produce, the real goal is to learn to optimize the available garden space that we have, share best practices, and pass on a little of what we learn to others.

Game On!

We'll detail and compare techniques, obstacles and results with Angie over the next year. Hopefully, the two of us and our readers will learn a few things throughout the process. Don't forget to participate by sharing your favorite tricks for higher yields as comments on the blogs as well.

Game on!

Fishing is Foraging, Too

2012-02-17T07:25:00.000-08:00

I often talk about wild edibles, plants that grow wild in field and forest that can be eaten. Foraging need not, however, be limited to vegetarian fare. Even for those who don't hunt, fishing can be a plentiful source of nutritious food.

I prefer to fish the clear, contaminant-free brooks and streams that run down from the mountains here in New England. Their sources are high above any old mills, factories or storm drainage systems so the water is clean and pure as it self-aerates by splashing down over little waterfalls and endless rocky cascades.

These streams ore often home to brook trout, a small but tasty fish that is easy to clean and easy to cook. Brook trout fishing is a more active sport than some other types of fishing because you have to move along the stream searching for the small pools where the fish tend to hide. Although I enjoy all types of fishing, brook trout fishing is one of my favorites.

I was just given a regular fishing column for Yahoo! Sports where my first fishing article, about Brook Trout Fishing, was published yesterday. You can read it at here. I'm mentioning it here, because I think fishing is an often overlooked part of the self-sufficiency equation. For the low cost of an annual state fishing license, you can easily catch enough fish to supply your family for a year.

Broody Hens

2012-02-15T14:35:00.000-08:00

Broody hens can be helpful if you're trying to hatch more chicks, or harmful if you're trying to get all your hens to lay eggs for the table.Either way, if a hen goes broody at the wrong time of year for hatching new chicks, you've got to either wait it out or take steps to shorten the broody period.

One of our broodiest hens decided that February 15th is a good day to begin brooding. It's too early to begin hatching here and I prefer to use an electric incubator anyway, so I decided to remove the eggs and move the hen off the layer box. Sometimes, if the season isn't right the brooding instinct will be a bit lessened and it can be easier to break them. I should know if that's the case in a couple of days.

Meanwhile, here's a more complete guide that I wrote about broody hens.

Chicken-napper Thwarted by Stout Coop

2012-02-14T09:33:00.000-08:00

Foot prints on the side of the chicken coop this morning tell of a
failed overnight attempt at entry.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012.

When you're trying to be as self-sufficient as practical, a single mis-step can set you back. This is particularly true when it comes to farm animals like the chickens that we keep. We have three chicken coops that are all built like bunkers. It was more expensive and it took more effort to build them so strongly, but there's a good reason for it.

Our yard is surrounded by forest, miles and miles of forest depending upon which direction you go. Lots of things live in the forest, including a bull moose that wandered through our yard last week. Other local residents include bears, coyotes, foxes, bobcats, and weasels, just to name a few. When it comes to these wild predators, chickens make a pretty tempting meal.

Two of my chicken coops survived a prolonged and concerted effort at entry by a large black bear. The third, unfortunately, had a weak point and the bear after a week of failed attempts, was able to rip and access door to shreds and pull out two chickens. last year. After that, I added a stronger door and checked all the coops for weaknesses. Since then, nothing has been able to get at the chickens locked up in the coops at night.

This morning, however, when I went out to feed and water the birds, I saw some interesting marks on the side of the largest of the three coops. Muddy claw marks that appear to be canine in nature (or possibly vulpine) showed a recent attempt at entry. The prints reach about four feet high on the side of the coop. It could be a dog, a coyote, or a fox. There are, according to all wildlife and forestry service folks that I know, no wolf populations left in New Hampshire, certainly not in southern New Hampshire.

Believe it or not, the worst of the three, should it gain access to the chickens, would be a domestic dog. Dogs enjoy chasing and catching chickens and will often kill an entire flock before they get bored and wander off home. Foxes and coyotes are a big more pragmatic. They'll take a couple of chickens and may also kill any overly aggressive roosters out of necessity, but having learned how to get a good chicken dinner, they'll come back on a regular basis until they decide that they can't get at the chickens or that the risk is too high.

Paying a little extra attention to chicken coop security can save your flock.

On a side note: As the days are getting longer, this morning we found four times the number of eggs that we've been getting for the last couple of months (due to the short winter days). That will come in handy as we are expecting to add two more members to our household this spring when my wife's parents move in with us. We should be all set for chicken and eggs, but we'll definitely need to think about expanding the gardens.

Identifying and preventing frostbite in backyard chickens

2012-01-12T11:28:00.000-08:00

In New England, especially in the winter, the weather can pose a serious hazard to backyard chickens. Whether you let them free range or keep them fenced in, your chickens will need a secure and well-built coop in order to survive the winter and avoid frostbite. I wrote a piece for Yahoo! Voices recently talking about this issue. It describes what it means when your chicken's comb turns black in the winter, how to identify frostbite, and most importantly the simple steps you need to take to prevent it from occurring in your flock in the first place.

Read the entire article here: Why are my chickens' combs turning black?

Pruning Our Concord Grape Vine

2011-11-20T10:24:00.001-08:00

Too much vegetative growth and lower grape yield
can be the result of not pruning your grape vine enough.
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011. Do not copy.

This year our Concord Grape vine, now about 3 years old, did really well. It produced 7 pounds of grapes that we harvested, plus those eaten by the chipmunks. Those grapes, in turn, yielded just about 7 liters of wine which is aging peacefully on a shelf. It will sit for at least a year before we open the first bottle and see how we've done with the first batch from our own grapes.

The knock on Concord grape wine is that it tends to be highly acidic and can be a bit harsh on the palate. There are steps that can be taken to minimize this or correct it entirely, but we made a very basic batch without taking any of those steps this year. I'll taste it next year just before preparing next season's batch and decide then whether to make alterations to the basic approach we took this year.

Meanwhile, it is the end of the season and although it has been unseasonably warm (the forsythia is blooming again for the second time since September), the growing season is over and it is time to prune the grape vine. This should only be done once it drops its leaves and is definitely shut down for the winter.

Grape vines should be pruned very heavily. I am training mine to weave in and around the spindles of our back deck railing so that it will look as though we have a living green railing next year and beyond, so I'll leave a little more of the vine structure this year for shaping.

For a really good guide to pruning grapes, check out this page from Ohio State University's Extension Service.

Most people tend to either neglect pruning their grape vines altogether or prune far too lightly. The result of under pruning is that the grape vine has so many branches and leaves that it has to spend too much energy building and maintaining that vegetative growth that the yield of fruit suffers. Let's face it, the main point of having a grape vine is to produce grapes, so pruning for maximum fruit yield should be an important part of your pre-winter grape vine maintenance.

One way to determine if your pruning regimen is working is to weigh your grapes each year. If your total harvest starts dropping and there was no unusual cause that you can identify (very bad weather, disease, etc.), then you may want to revisit the way you're pruning the vine.

Next spring we are planning to add another variety of grape vine as well. We are looking for a good hardy vine and will probably look at those grape varieties that grow well in upstate New York as the winter's are similar there. We'd like to get a sweeter grape that is better for eating or producing a more palatable sweet wine. I'll keep you informed as we make the decision on which variety we get. Whichever it is, we'll expect very few grapes the first year after planting as the plant concentrates on establishing itself rather than fruiting.

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Read my blog entry on the Grape Tumid Gallmaker, an insect that creates unusual growths on the vine tendrils or grape stems.

Putting up Green Beans by Blanching and Freezing Them

2011-09-20T06:41:00.000-07:00

"Green beans are one of most prolific vegetable plants in my garden, year after year. Once the plants start producing, they'll keep producing green beans all season long. The pole bean varieties will continue growing and actually increase their production over time as the plant continues to get bigger and bigger. With just six pole bean plants in my garden, I am picking them at least two days out of three and getting more than my wife and I can eat each time we pick." So what do we do? We blanch and freeze the excess and enjoy green beans all year round.

Read more about how to optimize production of green beans and blanch and freeze them here.

Exotic pets?

2011-06-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

I like animals. I have two dogs, a cat and a yard full of chickens. I understand the appeal of keeping exotic animals as pets, whether its a giant snake or a money swinging from the rafters of your house. However, increasingly the animals used as exotic pets are becoming endangered or threatened in their own natural habitats because of illegal poaching fueled by the money involved in the buying and selling of exotic animals.

Read more about Parrot Poaching in Jamaica here.

Poaching can devastate entire ecosystems by removing or dramatically reducing the populations of key species from the food chain. Furthermore, it can actually have the opposite effect as people grow tired of caring for their exotic pets and release them into the wild in parts of the world where they are not native. These exotic pets, if the environment is suitable, can multiply and become a nuisance invasive species in thes areas.

One example of this is the growing population of wild Burmese pythons living in the Florida Everglades says National Geographic. These snaes are imported into the United States by the hundreds of thousands. Often, they grow too large for their owners to handle safely and are released or they may escape.

Burmese pythons are now sharing space at the top of the Everglades food chain with the alligator. In some cases, pythons are even killing alligators. These are very big, and very mean snakes. They also feed on birds and bird eggs putting many of the rare bird species in the everglades at risk from this newly introduced, but rapidly multiplying predator.

While it's easy to see the havoc that top predators can do when introduced to a new ecosystem, even seemingly harmless animals can have unintended consequences and be very harmful to local species when wrecklessly introduced.

If you want to see and learn about these exotic animals, visit a local zoo that aids in preserving rare species. During a recent trip to the York Zoo in Maine, I too some photos of the capybara. Click here to view photos that I took of the capybara, the world's largest rodent which is native to South and Central America. Upon retunring home, I was surprised to discover that even this animal is now being kept as pets in the United States.

Spring planting

2011-05-26T13:33:00.000-07:00

After a week or two of rain and cold temperatures, known in New England as Mud Season, we are now into full summer with 80 degree temperatures. Technically it's not summer for another month, but close enough. Tomatoes that are hardened off (gradullay accustomed to the harsh UV of the sun and the temperature extremes of night and day) can be planted outdoors now with almost no risk of frost kill.

Already growing in our gardens outdoors are:
strawberries (blossoms forming now)
Concord grapes (flower bud clusters forming -lots of them!)
apples (several varieties- blossoms fading now)
asparagus (We've already harvested two batches this spring.)
chives (ready to harvest)
garlic (from outdoor overwintered bulbs)
leeks (second year for seed)
chocolate mint
cilantro (tender to frost, but it self-seeded from last year and I guess it knows when it's safe to start growing)
lemon thyme (ready to harvest)
oregano (ready to harvest)
lovage (ready to harvest)
wintergreen (growing wild throughout our forest)
rosemary (freshly planted)
blackberries
garlic chives (ready to harvest)
(I had also planted Jerusalem artichokes, but they were eaten by moles (or voles or some other such little burrowing beastie)

Today, May 26th, I planted:
red cabbage
summer squash (yellow straight-neck)
cucumbers (Marketmore)
fennel
pickling cucumbers
tomatoes (roma, brandywine red, and another indeterminate heirloom variety whose name escapes me at the moment)

In the house I have:
1 large brandywine red tomato which I plant to grow throuhg the fall and into winter as long as I can keep it healthy and fruiting
6 miscellaneous miniature hot pepper (chili) plants in an Aerogarden
two freshly cloned brandywine red tomato plants

Those are the edilbes that we have growing at present. I'll add more soon, beets, green beans and others to be determined.

Bartering turkey for rabbits

2011-05-22T12:31:00.000-07:00

In addition to vegetable from our gardens, we raise both chickens and turkeys for eggs and meat. Recently, we traded with another family we know. We gave them a dressed turkey a few weeks ago, and today they gave us the first of two dressed rabbits. That way we both end up with a wider variety of locally grown food than we would if we only ate what we raised ourselves.

We are lucky to live in a rural area where there are many small farms, and farmers' markets at least four days a week with easy driving distance, so we have access to a wide variety of localy grown produce and other food products. Bartering, however, lets us trade something we have in abundance with someone else in a similar circumstance with different commodities.

At any rate, we are looking forward to our rabbit dinner. I was surprised to see how big the rabbit is, it has much more meat than I thought it would. The only other dressed rabbit i had seen up close was a wild rabbit from a hunter about 30 years ago. It was much thinner and smaller than the domestic meat rabbit which we just received.

Food Supply Safety: Exploding Melons

2011-05-18T05:45:00.000-07:00

This article about exploding melons in China points out another reason to try to grow as much of your own food as possible and to buy the rest from trusted, preferably local sources. In many countries laws governing which chemicals can be used on food crops or even livestock intended for human consumption are very lax. Even if such rules are in place, enforcement is often spotty at best.

In the case of this specific example, farmers in China were adding excessive amounts of forchlorfenuron on their watermelon crops. This chemical is designed to make the fruit grow faster, rapidly expanding its size and weight. For crops sold by the pound, this can mean additional profit for the farmer.

While forchlorfenuron is used in the United Stated for certain fruits such as kiwi and grapes, amounts are regulated. In China, it seems, at least some farmers got the idea that if a little is good, more is better. While much of the fruit so treated has burst and become worthless, thanks in part to the heavy rains that magnified the effect of the chemical causing the melons to grow so quickly that the rinds split open and ruined the crops in the field, different weather conditions could have resulted in a different outcome.

Here are the USDA safety findings for forchlorfenuron. Studies on animals show that it can result in low body weight, low birth weight, and some significant kidney problems in animals. No comprehensive human tests have been conducted. It's not clear how much of the chemical was being used in China or what concentrations were found int he flesh of the fruit. So there is no way of knowing how the dosage compares to that used in the animal tests.

This, unfortunately, is not the only case of tainted food supplies from China and other sources. Melamine has been found in milk, eggs, baby formula and other food products in China. In one famous case, a supplier was even marketing the toxic by-product of plastic manufacture as a protein content enhancement to food processors. Because a chemical in it mimics one tested for in protein tests, it essentially caused a false positive result in protein testing for foods.

Only a very small percentage of food entering the United States (or even food produced within the United States) is ever tested for these kinds of contaminants. As a consumer, you simply can't know what's in most of the food you eat if you buy food produced in large commercial operations, especially those from regions where the existence or effectiveness regulations and oversight is dubious, at best. If, however, you grow your own food, you are in control of what goes in it. If you buy from local farms, you can often actually visit them as see their operations or at least talk to someone from that farm and ask questions abotu their practices.

Eating local foods, gardening and raisng your own food are not just good for the environment, they can protect you, individually, from the risk of dangerous chemical contaminants that may be added to the food supply without your knowledge or consent.

Chicken Breeds: Research First!

2011-05-17T04:28:00.000-07:00

Before anyone steps into the ongoing learning process of becoming a backyard chicken owner, it is absolutely imperative that they do a little research first. After you have acquired a basic understanding of what it takes to raise happy, healthy chickens, you need to research chicken breeds.

I got a phone call from a complete stranger the other day that highlights why researching chicken breeds before buying them is so important. This woman called me in desperation. She had an assortment of different chicken breeds including Cornish X chickens that she acquired at the beginning of April this year, about 7 weeks ago.

She was nearly frantic about the Cornish X chickens. She told me, as I could have guessed, that they were much, much larger than the other breeds of chickens she had acquired at the same time. They were not active like the others, and she feared for their health after recently reading that Cornish X left to continue growing are prone to severe leg injuries and even heart problems because they have been bred to gain weight faster than ordinary chickens and to achieve a total weight far in excess of what most other breeds can ever reach. This strains the ability of their legs to hold them up and strains their hearts and other organs which have to deal with their rapid growth and very high body fat content.

She said that here 7 week old Cornish X birds were already about ten pounds in body weight. For most chickens, adult weight is less than that. She said she recently read about the potential for these birds to have health issues and wanted to sell them to someone who would use them for meat birds. She said she was constitutionally unable to butcher the chickens herself, even though she knew it was probably the most humane thing she could do for these particular birds.

Lest you think I am overstating the case, let me tell you that I have seen cases where owners of Cornish X chickens have let them get to 10-12 weeks of age. A significant percentage of these birds develop severe and painful leg problems. These problems include legs actually breaking under the bird's own weight and other debilitating structural injuries. Chickens are simply not engineered to get that big. While a careful feeding regimen can slow their growth and postpone some of these health issues, that's only a delaying tactic.

I could not take the chickens off her hands because I am using a strict quarantine policy now. In my first year of chicken keeping, I did add adult chickens from other flocks to my flock. In one case, after adding some new birds, I had a couple of them die mysteriously exhibiting symptoms of a contagious poultry disease. I could have lost my entire flock and ended up with the pathogens present in my soil for any future chickens I raised. Fortunately, that wasn't the case and the rest of the flock is doing fine. In any case, I resolved that I would not risk bringing in chickens from any other flock again. I simply can't know their health or the conditions under which they were raised. The risk to the health of the rest of my birds is just too high.

The woman who called me wanted to know how to sell her Cornish X broiler chickens to someone who would butcher them humanely for food. I suggested the Farm & Garden section of Craigslist. It is quite common to see chickens of various ages available for sale there and most buyers are fairly knowledgeable.

Taking the responsibility of raising and caring for any animal whether it is a family pet or a farm animal ultimately intended for the dinner table should not be taken lightly. Just as you wouldn't get a dog without knowing if it were a pit bull or a Chihuahua, you shouldn't acquire chickens or any other animal without first researching the specific breed so that you fully understand its needs and basic characteristics.

Cornish X (also called Cornish Cross) chickens are a hybrid breed specifically designed to be used for meat. They grow extremely fast and are not built to last into adulthood. While it is possible for Cornish X chickens to live into adulthood if raised under the right conditions, it generally requires special care from an experienced chicken owner who knows the specific inherent liabilities of the breed.

Fragrant viburnum

2011-05-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

Fragrant viburnum (Viburnum carlesii) in bloom
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2012.

Every year we attend the 4-H fundraising auction in Pomfret, Connecticut. Right outside the door of the hall in which the auction is held, there is a very large viburnum bush which is always in full bloom during the auction in early May. The clusters of pink blossoms are beautiful to look at, but even more notable is the scent of the viburnum. The fragrance is exquisite and pervades the entire area for a few weeks each spring.

Since the first time my wife saw the flowering bush there, she wanted one for our yard. Unfortunately, we hadn't been able to find one at an area nursery. We finally got a small one in 2009 and planted it beside the back deck of our house. The idea is that the fragrance of the viburnum will waft up as we sit out on the deck in the springtime, especially when it gets bigger.

Once it finishes blooming this spring, I'm actually going to take some cuttings from the fragrant viburnum and propagate it. I'd like to add a half dozen more of them around the yard. While some plants are relatively easy to root without rooting hormone, I find that most trees and woody bushes do better with some rooting hormone applied. I have a powder version containing 0.1% Indole-3-butyric acid. For a yield of six new plants that actually take root, I'll probably take 12 cuttings, so that I end up with too many rather than risk too few.

The Fragrant Viburnum (Viburnum carlesii), sometimes called Koreanspice, grows about six feet tall and six feet wide. Some specimens can get larger if conditions are right. They are hardy in growing zones 4-7. The one we've had for a couple of winters here on a mountain in southern New Hampshire is doing quite well and has had no evidence of winter die-off.

The flowers are a light pink to white. Like many plants that put on such effusive displays, the flowers of the fragrant viburnum are short-lived. In a couple of weeks, they wilt and fall away. Like the forsythia, next year's flowers are formed from growth that occurs shortly after this year's flowers drop off the plant. Unlike the forsythia, however, the viburnum tends to grow a bit more slowly and with more control. If pruning is needed, it should be done in the spring after the fragrant flowers have died away.

4H auction and broiler chicks

2011-05-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

The 4H club is an organization designed to develop leadership in young people with a strong focus on agriculture. They offer summer camps and many fine youth programs throughout the country. The 4H club in Pomfret, Connecticut, holds an annual auction to raise funds for the camp. We have attended every year for at least a decade since my son went to summer camp there and had a wonderful time.

This year, my wife went while I stayed home to work. She ended up buying 50 Cornish X (also called Cornish Cross) broiler chicks. She paid $22.50 for the entire lot of 50 chicks. That's about 47 cents each. These same chicks will cost you about $1.87 plus postage from a commercial poultry breeder and are often sold for between $5-6 each locally. They are a special proprietary breed and are only available through breeders licensed by the breed owner.

The particular trait that makes this breed of chickens desirable is that they grow amazingly fast. Cornish X chickens are ready to be butchered in 6-8 weeks after hatching. At that point, you'll expect a 4-5 pound dressed weight. That makes them much more economical than ordinary breeds which might take 5 months to reach their finished size.

The downside to the Cornish X breed is that they grow so quickly by a combination of genetics, eating continuously and not moving around enough to burn calories. Others who have raised them said that if you don't put their drinking water a few dozen yards away from their food, they'll never get up and walk. They are reported to simply sit in front of the feeder trough, eat and sleep. If the ground is bare dirt, as feeder areas often are, that means they sit in the dirt and mud, and even their own poop for days at a time. Now this only happens when they are older and nearing their harvest weight and their are ways around it.

As chicks, Cornish X birds behave much like any other. A little less active, a little more voracious at the feeder, but pretty much ordinary. As they grow and put on weight, they become less and less active. By moving the feeders, separating water from food, and making them move around in order to get what they want, you can keep them somewhat active. I'll report back with my own experience with this breed once we get them and start them growing.

At any rate, the other downside of Cornish X chickens is that the excess weight and fat is a heavy load on their hearts. If allowed to continue growing to full adulthood, they tend to die, presumably of heart attacks. This, say other Cornish Cross owners, starts to become a significant risk at around 12 weeks old. Furthermore, the Cornish Cross breed is a hybrid. Reportedly, it is derived from mixing four separate breeds of parent stock. I don't know the exact combination. That means that Cornish X don't breed true. If you were to get some that survived long enough and were able to breed them, the resulting chicks would be a hodge-podge of all possible variations of the four parent breeds, but not fast-growing Cornish X chickens.

Cornish X, therefore, are suited to one purpose: being raised for meat. They may be the most efficient feed to body weight converters in the world of agriculture, outperforming tilapia, pigs, cows, and just about everything else. People who are not prepared to butcher them, should not have Cornish X chickens.

This will be our first direct experience with raising this breed although we have raised other breeds of chickens and have seen Cornish X's at other local farms. We'll keep them separated from our older (egg-laying) flock, for their own protection. Adult chickens don't take well to the introduction of new chicks unless there's a fierce mother hen to defend them, or a gradual secure introduction can be made over time.

Wild edibles: Japanese Knotweed

2011-05-07T09:10:00.000-07:00

Japanese knotweed

Photo by KENPEI

Creative Commons Attribution, S-A 3.0

As I was driving along today between Rochester and Dover, I noticed many thick stands of Japanese knotweed beside the road. The plants are at the perfect stage for eating just now (early May) in New Hampshire. If I had time to stop, I could have harvested bushels of the stuff. I'm not a big fan of the taste when eaten raw although many are, but adding a sweet component to the sour knotweed in something like a knotweed-strawberry pie makes it quite good.

Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica or Polygonum cuspidatum) is a very common invasive plant in New England and throughout the United States. At first glance it looks something like bamboo, and is sometimes even called American bamboo even though it is not a member of the bamboo family. It grows very rapidly during the spring and summer, then dies off in winter. The roots survive, however, and even a small root fragment can produce a new plant.

Japanese Knotweed is often found along roadsides because of the way in which it propagates. Snow plows here in New England often catch a bit of the roadside dirt, including knotweed root fragments and push them further on down the road. In the spring these travelled roots produce plants in the new location, and eventually spread to form a new stand or thicket of knotweed.

Japanese knotweed is actually being harvested and used commercially now. If you look on the ingredients of a bottle of the health supplement resveratrol, you'll see that the reseveratrol is most likely extracted from Japanese knotweed.

The young shoots of Japanese knotweed can be eaten. They have a sour taste, not unlike rhubarb. That's because they contain some of the same chemical make-up as rhubarb. Those with a sensitivity to rhubarb should therefore avoid knotweed as well.

Anyway, the point of all this is that because Japanese knotweed is a virulent invasive species, it is one of the wild edibles that you can harvest with wild abandon. If you pull up all the available shoots from any given patch, that's ok with knotweed, but definitely not ok with native wild edible plants. Even though you are not likely to get all the roots to eradicate the knotweed patch, you'll still be slowing down its spread at the very least.

When knotweed gets larger it is more fibrous and woody like real bamboo. So it must be harvested young to be eaten. They are good up until they get about two feet tall, just peel off the thin stringy layer on the outside and chop off the leaves at the top. You can cook them up as a substitute for rhubarb in most recipes or eat them raw.