Growing project updates

I'm participating in three growing projects this year:

• I'm saving 3 kinds of tomato seeds for the Populuxe seed bank- Bramki (a paste? hard to find info), Ferris Wheel (slicers) and Blondkopfchen (a golden cherry)
• I̶'̶m̶ ̶g̶r̶o̶w̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶d̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶O̶n̶e̶ ̶S̶e̶e̶d̶ ̶C̶h̶i̶c̶a̶g̶o̶
• I'm growing German Pink tomatoes for the One Heirloom Project

Bramki is a huge plant-- already more than 5 feet tall. I like a tomato plant to have 7 to 10 fruits per plant; fewer than that just isn't worth it in my small garden; this one looks like it will make it. On the three plants, there are 4, 5, and 7 fruits, plus at least 2 flower sets ready to go. Because this looks to be such a large plant, I will probably start pruning this to a constant size once I get the fruit that I need ripening.


Ferris Wheel is a moderate height, looks like a slow grower and fruit production is way behind other varieties I've grown, with just 5 fruits among the 3 plants. However, this was also my experience with the Black Krim. After saving seed for 10 years, my Black Krims now give me 10 or more per plant of good sized fruit. So depending on the flavor it might be worth creating my own backyard cultivar.



Blondkopfchen is the most insanely prolific cherry I've ever seen. Too much! Yikes. Kelly, are you sure you want these seeds?






German Pink continues to lag because it was planted so late and small, but it does have two flower sets and should be fruiting within a few days. I think it would be very interesting to find a variety of tomato developed by a Chicago farmer or gardener and do that as an Heirloom project. There must be one.



The One Seed Chicago chard all washed away in the floods; the rest of the chard is doing fine. Does that count?

Growing for the community

I'm participating in three growing projects this year:

• I'm saving 3 kinds of tomato seeds for the Populuxe seed bank- Bramki (a paste? hard to find info), Ferris Wheel (slicers) and Blondkopfchen (a golden cherry)
• I'm growing chard with One Seed Chicago
• I'm growing German Pink tomatoes for the One Heirloom Project

Populuxe Seed Bank
This is my second year growing seeds for Populuxe. This is serious seed saving, with isolation bags to make sure they don't get cross polinated. Last year I grew Roma VF, a tomato which I didn't really like very much, but Kelly has her seeds now!

This year's toms were started indoors on March 20, and they're looking gorgeous. The Bramki in particular are a marvelously sturdy, hardy seedling. They've been outside in cold boxes for about 2 weeks, through some very low nighttime temps, and are thriving. I have nine of these, so in addition to the 3 I'm planning to plant, I'll be donating a couple to a Plant a Row project, and to a homeschool group, as well as selling some at the Peterson Plant sale. It's impossible to find information on this tomato. Hilariously, nearly the entire first page of Google hits are either me or Populuxe.

The Ferris Wheels did not germinate as brilliantly as the Bramkis, but I have three strong seedlings. These are liking the cold less, even in the cold boxes, but are still healthy. All of these will go into my own garden.

The Blondkopchens were fine last I found them, but it was freezing cold and pouring rain when I looked for them in the cold box just now, so we'll have to take this on faith.

Find Populuxe on Twitter as @seed_bank and @xitomatl and on Facebook.

One Heirloom
A new project this year, modeled on the One Seed Chicago (itself modeled on One Book Chicago), I got involved in this through my friend Gina at My Skinny Garden (which was also the very first garden blog I ever followed--if you want to b̶l̶a̶m̶e̶ thank someone for all this crazy blogging I do, blame, um thank her). Green Home Experts is supplying everyone with inexpensive 4" seedlings; they'll go into the cold box next week. (I never plant out my toms until the first week of June, because you just never know in northern Illinois. Today, for instance, the low was 44°F/7C.)

One Seed Chicago
Kinda of the local granddaddy of growing projects, this is the brainchild of Neighbor Space and MrBrownThumb (you can blame him for the blogging too). My choice of eggplant didn't win, but I love chard too, so this will go in this week (since the rabbits ate all my early chard).
Find the project on Facebook, and on Twitter (@oneseedchicago), and join all of us on Mondays and Wednesdays on Twitter for #gardenchat and #seedchat.

Spitfires soldier on

It's the last official Spitfire check in, which makes me a little sad. This was a wonderful project that connected me with a lot of people I'd never have had occasion to speak with, literally or virtually, otherwise. It helped me as a gardener to see what sorts of failures and triumphs others had, and how this planting thing connects us all.

The plant itself was a giant "meh" for me-- I'm not sold on the concept that a nasturtium can "climb." This one needed to be trained to grow up; it really wanted to trail, and while the color was a big plus for some people, I'm not that fond of it. My search for a deep purple, black, or mahogany nasturtium continues.

These plants were rather schizophrenic-- they hated the heat, but craved the sun, wouldn't climb but too spindly to trail nicely. They grew well in my conditions from all methods--wintersown, direct, and indoor starts, and I ended up with 6 healthy plants. The foliage really finally took off in September and they doubled in size in just the last 5 weeks or so, so in the end I'm getting nice fall color out of them.
Anyway, this plant was so-so, but the project was great. Let's do it again next year! (Or what about a houseplant, started now, and nurtured through the winter....)

So last time: I'm growing Spitfire Nasturtiums for the Seed Grow Project. Thanks to Renee's Garden for the seeds, and a big thank you to Mr. Brown Thumb for setting it up and getting me involved.

Spitfires, and their cousins

I'm growing Nasturtium Spitfires for the Seed GROW project. Thanks to Renee's Garden for the seeds!

Once I got over the idea that nasturtiums will climb on their own, and actually trained and tied them to the various trellises, they started doing what I wanted them to do. Palm to forehead for not doing this all along, because I think they would be gorgeous now if I had.

I set quite a high bar for these guys, since all the trellis areas I wanted to use are in dappled shade. But now that they're tied for height, they're getting a little more sun and showing a continuous bloom and nice lush greenery.




Here's the other nasturtiums still growing in my yard:

Cherries Jubilee

Two volunteers from a mix planted back in the mists of time. The ones on the left might actually BE spitfires; they look identical, but they're a volunteer from a prior year's planting.

Spitfires in June

The spitfire nasturtiums are doing their nasturtium thing, namely, growing wherever you put them. A volunteer snuck in at the Narnia gate, so there's a butter yellow one from last year's mix, and the spitfire (which, by the way, bloomed).

The original transplants were planted out quite early and cloched; these are now big enough to start training up the cyclone fence (left). They get almost no sun, but don't seem to care. The largest has leaves the size of saucers. I have to keep cutting back the lilies to give them air and light, but they're going to take off, unless the evil furfaces find them.

I also direct seeded some around a plant stand in one of the vegetable beds, and will train those up the legs. I planted them May 14, and they were sprouting by the 20th.

And speaking of completely random recipes that have nothing to do with nasturtiums, here's some cornbread.

Update: gardengirl came through in the comments with this local Illinois source of cornmeal.

I'm growing Nasturtium "Spitfire" for the GROW project. Thanks to Renee's Garden for the seeds.

Cornbread

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon salt
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder (I made my own using the recipe at Not Dabbling in Normal)
1 egg
1 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Spray or lightly grease a 9 inch round cake pan.

In a large bowl, combine flour, cornmeal, salt and baking powder. In a separate bowl (for instance a 2 cup pyrex measuring cup) whisk together the honey, egg, milk and vegetable oil. Beat into dry ingredients until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

Allow to cool completely before removing from the pan. Learn from my mistakes. (Oh well, still tastes good.)

Spitfires and walnuts, hipsters and uncles

My garden, long a private refuge, has become a community. It's rather a pocket metaphor for how one's life changes with time. In the past I've only brought people into the garden once a year or so, for a garden party we give each year at "peak," around mid to late July. This year, I've got friends helping me with tasks through my Hipster Supported Agriculture project, and a huge online community of mentors and friends that is growing and developing daily.

One of these communities is the GROW Project. I got involved in this through the blog that helped me find the online gardening community, MrBrownThumb. Renee's Garden sent free seeds to several dozen gardeners all over the country; we're planting them in various ways and conditions. I'm planting mine in stages; the newest event is planting the wintersowns at my stick trellis, the "Narnia Gate" on April 26 (left, you can see the spitfires at the base of each branch). These are thriving; I did not cloche these at all, and they lived through two hard frosts, one quite heavy. (Full progress in small type at the bottom of the post).


Left: along the fence. Right: Narnia Gate. The gate is dappled shade; the fence will be full sun, but right now the seedlings are shaded by the lilies.

I still have a good handful of seeds, which will be planted direct in about a week in various other spots in the garden, both for climbing and for trailing.

My recipe today also comes from my growing community. My uncle-in-law lives on a farm in Hungary. When he visits, he brings us food he's grown. This time we got several pounds of walnuts and a quart of apricot compote. While I come up with a recipe that combines the two (yes, a walnut apricot bread is in our future), I made walnut butter to give away with the Hipster Supported Agriculture project, another community project inspired by Kinder Gardens, yes, yet another community project.

Walnut butter
2 quarts walnuts
2-3 tablespoons walnut oil or light flavorless oil like safflower, canola or corn
1 tablespoon sea salt

Add all the ingredients into a food processor. Start grind at a low speed if you have the option, gradually increasing to high. Blend for about 60 seconds; do not blend too long because you do not want to overheat the walnut butter to preserve the enzymes. Check for taste, add salt if desired. I did it about 1 1/2 cups of walnuts at a time, since I have only a 3 cup processor. Two quarts of walnuts made 1 quart of butter.



Prior events: I'm growing Nasturtium "Spitfire" for the GROW project. Thanks, to Renee's Garden for the seeds. I planted 6 seeds in Ferry-Morse organic seed starting medium on March 8, and got 5 seedlings. These were cloched for 6 weeks, but not for the past week or so. One of them didn't make it, but the others are thriving, and are getting big enough to start weaving through the cyclone fence. There are also 9 seeds planted in a wintersown container, in plain soil mixed with perlite. These poked their heads out of the dirt on April 3 and were planted out in the shade on April 26.

In which we welcome the god and the goddess

Grow Project April post

Having been extremely kind to the Midwest all year, the goddess continues her gentle journey into the spring with a string of 80F/26C days. The goddess’ consort, in the form of a large robin again, watched me work, mostly brute labor building beds, setting paths and amending soil. I gave the goddess a pincushion plant for an offering this year.
The weather rarely works out so perfectly for planting, or coincides so neatly with my schedule. Friday a hot sunny day for all the grunt work and some early transplanting. Saturday a gentle cool rain (still in the 50s). Supposed to be dry and warm (60s-70s/10-15) again next two days, plus, the moon phase is exactly right for putting in my early spring root vegetables. I’ll savor it, because this confluence of need and ability is so rare.
My offering to the goddess yesterday was apparently appreciated.

Among the many gardening tasks for the weekend was planting out the indoor starts of the "Spitfire" Nasturtium for the GROW project. Five seedlings went into the ground by the cyclone fence, behind the birdbath, strawberries, and columbine. This should give me color there when the columbine fades, and incidentally help draw the aphids away from the eggplants going in a little ways down the fence. I'll be cloching these early set-outs under pop-bottle cloches to protect them from the cold, since I put them out a little early (I'm not having great luck with the indoor starts; the cold can't possibly be any worse for them than my incompetence.)
I'm growing Nasturtium "Spitfire" for the GROW project. Thanks, to Renee's Garden for the seeds. I planted 6 seeds in Ferry-Morse organic seed starting medium on March 8, and got 5 seedlings. There are also 9 seeds planted in a wintersown container, in plain soil mixed with perlite. These just poked their heads out of the dirt today.
And, because it's Easter, and I hate to put up a post without a recipe:
Greek Easter Twists
(Koulourakia)

1/3 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup milk (or a little more if needed)
3-4 cups cake flour
2 tsp. baking powder

Cream sugar, butter and vanilla thoroughly. Add 1 egg at a time, beating well after each addition. Add milk and flour alternatiely, beating vigorously until well blended. I like using cake flour rather than all-purpose flour for these cookies; it makes a nicer texture when done. Use your judgment about the last cup of flour to make sure the dough is not too dry. You may need to work the dough with your hands at the end as it will be quite dense and springy. (If you have a food processor, these mix really well in a food processor.)

Break the dough off in small portions, rolling it on a cutting board until you have a roll about the width of your finger and 6-8" long. Form into traditional shape- a circle with the ends pressed together, or a twisted "braid." Beat an egg and coat each cookie (I use my fingers rather than a pastry brush). Bake them plain, or sprinkle with sesame seeds first.

Bake on a greased cookie sheet at 400F/200C for 20 minutes, turning once to ensure even cooking. Makes about 28 cookies.

Project Grow post

I was starting to worry about the indoor starts on the Spitfires. Growing something so publicly makes me feel a little vulnerable. If it doesn't work, everyone will know I'm not a "real" gardener--I stuck a seed in dirt and it didn't grow.

But like the little boy and the carrot, in fact, I planted it, and watered it, and patted it, and on Thursday they just BURST through the seed starting medium (Ferry Morse organic seed starting mix). In the morning- nothing. In the afternoon 3" tall, with two leaves on each. I've never seen anything like it. Haven't checked the wintersown ones, because it's suddenly winter again (March-in like a lion, out like polar bear), and I'm not going outside except under duress.



I’m growing Nasturtium “Spitfire” for the GROW project, thanks to Renee’s Garden for the seeds.