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We're beginning this December with some pleasant days with high temperatures in the 50s. But by the middle of next week, high temperatures will hover just over freezing. The ground will gradually freeze, ending most outdoor gardening activity. After cleaning up the last of our regular garden beds, I'll need to cut and clear our asparagus beds of stalks to reduce the chances of insect or disease carryover. I still have a bag of saved compost to spread over Bonnie's Asparagus Patch, a second patch just off our property that we care for (and gladly harvest). All of our pots and hanging baskets have been soaked in bleach water, washed and dried, and stored in our basement plant room. I still have a bunch of trays to clean on one of our few remaining warm, sunny days. I also need to haul the tub of various garden chemicals from our back porch to the basement for the winter. Letting that stuff repeatedly freeze and thaw over the winter just doesn't seem to be a very good idea, although I have no facts to back up that opinion. I'll also spread the last of our remaining Serenade biofungicide over areas where we'll be growing tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers next season. I'm not sure that will do any real good, but I like to start each gardening season with fresh biologicals (Serenade, Thuricide, and Milky Spore). I didn't get our inventory of seed on hand completed in November, so I'll need to take a day early this month to complete that task. Once that is done, I can begin to seriously scan seed catalogs for seed we'll need to order for next season. Since we start things like petunias, daisies, geraniums, impatiens, vinca, and onions in January, I'll need to place our main seed orders this month.
With the tiller out, I also turned a narrow raised bed and mulched it for our early peas. In March, I'll pull back the mulch from the center of the bed to seed the peas. I also found time to snip a few cuttings from our wandering jew plant. It's beginning to show signs of age, so I need to get a replacement pot of plants started. I usually root the cuttings first in water and then dip them in Clonex Rooting Gel
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before putting them into Saturday, December 2, 2017 - Garlic Planted (finally!)
When I tilled, I turned under a (3.8 cu ft) bale and a half of peat moss into the garlic area and where we'll grow our spring carrots. The remaining half bale went into our narrow bed where we'll grow our early peas. That bed's soil level had dropped a bit and needed to be restored. I also turned in a very light sprinkling of 12-12-12 commercial fertilizer, some lime, and a fairly heavy amount of Muriate of Potash (0-0-60). When the tilling was completed, I topdressed the entire raised bed with Milky Spore, as we're still having lots of mole activity under the bed. Obvious mole tunnels outside the bed got some poison peanuts dropped into them. With my garlic cloves already separated and chosen, planting was just a matter of making a hole with our garlic dibble, sprinkling a little bone meal into each hole, and then making sure the garlic clove went in root side down and pointy side up. Most of the garlic got about two inches of soil over it, although I put in the elephant garlic a little deeper. I planted one row of elephant garlic and three rows of mixed softneck and hardneck garlic. Our garlic dibble has homemade markings on it for depth. While I don't drive the dibble in quite to the eight inch mark when making a hole, that measurement is important, as I lay the dibble down to make sure I'm spacing the garlic about eight inches apart in the row. Preparing the soil and selecting and separating the garlic cloves took several hours previously this week. Planting this morning took a half hour! Growing Garlic is our tutorial on growing, harvesting, and storing garlic.
We've used Twilley for most of our sweet corn seed since our farming years in the 1980s. They were a pioneer in carrying sh2 supersweet sweet corn seed and continue to carry an extensive array of sweet corn varieties. While the price of some of Twilley's sweet corn offerings may jolt you a bit, they have some real bargains in flower seed. If you're looking for small quantities of flower seed that isn't a new offering, there are lots of varieties to choose from at just a buck and a half per packet.
I also ordered a very small packet of Bella Rosa tomato seed. Thirteen seeds cost $2.79, but Seeds 'n Such has an attractive flat rate shipping price of $2.95. Note that some of their newest offerings can be pretty expensive. They also included two very small packets (5 seeds in each) of "free" seed that I didn't order, a practice I wish seed companies would abandon. We're not quite ready to begin ordering seed as yet. The orders we've already placed have been for new items or things I was sure we'd need. But before I place our main orders, I need to complete our inventory of seed we have in frozen storage. We're also waiting on print catalogs from Burpee, Fedco, and Johnny's Selected Seeds to arrive.
Wednesday, December 6, 2017 - Seed Inventory
I keep our seed fairly well sorted by family, such as brassicas, beans, sweet corn, and such. While I weigh or count the seeds in some seed packets, I'm often able to estimate if I have enough seed left just by feeling the seed through the packet. I record the results of the inventory on a spreadsheet that is formatted the same as our seed order spreadsheet to facilitate cutting and pasting between the two files. Quantity amounts recorded can range from pretty exact references such as "out," 2.8 ounces," and "137 seeds," to rather subjective references such as "lots," "some," "a few," and even "a baggie." While the latter references are pretty inexact, they tell me what I need to know for the upcoming gardening season. In the process of doing the inventory, I get things pretty spread out. This year I worked at the kitchen table counting, weighing, estimating, and recording the results. The big bag of seeds got spread out over our dining room table and a kitchen counter. It's not a tidy operation.
While completing this task, I realized that I needed to start some sage plants as possible replacement plants for some of our corner marker plants in the East Garden that are looking pretty puny. I also had to winnow some zinnia seed I'd forgotten before bagging it for storage. Once done, the bulk of the seed went back into our manual defrost freezer in the garage. Packets of seed varieties we offer other gardeners went into our refrigerator freezer, while some jars and big bags of seed went to a cool, dark shelf in the basement for storage. I'll still need to add the seed samples currently hiding behind the doors of our Burpee Advent Calendar to the inventory. But for that task, I'll need to decide what I want to keep and grow and what I'll share with one of our daughters who helps with school and community gardens in Bloomington, Indiana.
The first line of our Baker Creek order this year will be for Ali Baba watermelon seed. Year in and year out, Ali Babas have been our most dependable watermelon variety...when we can keep the raccoons out of them! Baker Creek has added the Red Ursa variety of kale to their offerings this year. That's the kale that produced our Best Garden Photo of 2013. When we ran out of seed for the variety, we got some similar named kale seed that just didn't cut it. Then we tried Red Russian. Even with half a packet of the Red Russian left, we'll order more Red Ursa for next fall's kale crop. It's that good, although it may overgrow anything planted near it! We don't order seed from Baker Creek every year. Part of that is that Baker Creek doesn't carry any hybrid varieties and about 40% of what we grow are hybrids, But beyond that, Baker Creek gives a fair quantity of seed in their packets at a good price which allows us to use some and carry over the rest for the future. With our seed inventory done, I was up really late last night going through it. I couldn't resist beginning to figure out what we needed to order for next year. I must say that I had a lot of trouble sorting out "want" from "need" in the process, as every description in a seed catalog sounds like a world beater. Our seed ordering process will take several weeks. Orders that contain stuff we need to start in January will be placed next week. Then we'll move on to the last of our main orders. I almost always find sometime in February that there's something I need but didn't order earlier. That's often when slowpokes like Burpee and Johnny's Selected Seeds who can't seem to get their catalogs out early in December get a small order. I finally gave up and went to bed when I realized that I wanted to take several hours going through all of Twilley Seed's inexpensive flower offerings (around $1.55/packet).
Fedco actually seems to be a bit ahead of schedule, as we didn't receive their catalog last year until December 14. Besides shopping Fedco's web site, one can also download their latest catalog from which I poached the cover photo at right. Since our weather has turned cold and windy. I'm just letting stuff in our garden plots sit until I get a nice, sunny day to work outside. Instead, I'm sitting in my office with the heater turned way up looking through gorgeous garden catalogs. I couldn't find a way to work it in above, but can't resist again posting the 2013 photo of our Red Ursa kale.
I hope you're having as much fun as I am going through seed catalogs and planning for our next garden. It's one gardening activity that doesn't cause sore muscles!
Friday, December 8, 2017 - Snow in the South
If you live most anywhere across the south and into the east coast, you may have lots of snow. (Snow from San Antonio to Atlanta: Winter just got real) Gardening buddy Marcus Blanton sent me photos of the snow they got in central Mississippi today. He wrote that they ended up with six inches of snow. His hens decided to just stay in their house and lay more eggs than usual!
When I called daughter Julia to ask permission to use the image at left, she related that their power had just come back on after being out all day. Brrr... More on our Burpee Advent Calendar
After opening a door to another empty space today for a variety I really wanted to try (Tattoo Papaya Vinca
Also included in the Burpee seed samples were three new zinnia varieties. They'll be included in our usual long row of zinnias in our East Garden that heavily relies on the old, tried and true State Fair As I tweak our garden plan for next year, I shortened our row of zinnias to make room for a row of sweet potatoes. I'd originally planned to skip sweet potatoes for next year, but this year's crop convinced me to try them again in our East Garden. I still have one or two more crops I need to work into the plan somewhere. But that's just part of the fun of planning a garden.
In our west facing kitchen window, we now have a gloxinia in bloom, wandering jew cuttings rooting in water, and of course, our large wandering jew hanging plant. Most of our gloxinias are now dormant with a few still heading for dormancy and one or two just emerging from their required annual period of dormancy.
Wandering jew cuttings may root well for you without any rooting hormone. I take the extra step of adding it because I have plenty of it on hand. The big thing for us is to get the rootings started early enough to be ready to take over the spot in our kitchen window come spring. By that point, the year old plant hanging there will be pretty well worn out with lots of dead stems and dry leaves. Our current wandering jew plant in the kitchen is a sixth or seventh generation plant produced from cuttings from the previous wandering jew. We also give away some extra wandering jew plants each year. It was a real treat a few years ago to give a daughter who gave us our original wandering jew plant some plants of her own. The cuttings in a deep sixpack went under our plant lights. They're sharing space with a recently rooted cactus and some freshly seeded pots of sage and hosta. Concert Getaway Annie and I took another one of our weekend getaways last night. We drove to Effingham, Illinois, to see The Guess Who perform at the Effingham Performance Center. I'm not sure, but I don't think there is an original member of the band still with the group. The current lead singer of the band teased the audience in a friendly way about all the wrinkles and gray hair in the crowd. At 52, I think he is about twenty years younger than most of the attendees. But they put on a good show, pleasing the filled venue, and apparently totally enjoyed putting on the show. After doing these getaways for about ten years, we've become fond of food and lodging close to the venues. In Effingham, we always have a great meal at the Firefly Grill. They've greatly expanded their gardens, producing a lot of what appears on their frequently changing menu. They also locally source as much of their menu as possible. We've also gotten to like the Hampton Inn & Suites, just down the road from the grill and performance center. They have very nice rooms, and are very close to the venue...in case we happen to imbibe too much during a show. While our room was excellent, as usual, I have to say that their breakfast was way below what we expect and what they usually provide. Watered down orange juice, powdered eggs, cold sausage, very little bread, no donuts or danish, and an anemic offering of old cut fruit just doesn't cut it. Shame on Hilton/Hampton. We'll probably move on to another hotel on our next Effingham getaway. Update (12/11/2017): I sent Hilton Honors a complaint last night about the horrible breakfast provided by the Hampton Inn & Suites in Effingham, Illinois. This morning, I was greeted with an email from Hilton giving me enough honor points to pay for our next stay at a hotel. Whether they will follow through with the specific hotel and improve their food is uncertain. There's No Place Like Home We got home in time today to see our Colts show they could lose in the snow as well as in good playing conditions. But our day ended with an incredibly beautiful evening sky.
Note: The Firefly Grill is not a Senior Gardening Affiliated Advertiser. We just enjoy eating there.
Instead of sharing any nasty photos of the skilled surgeon's handiwork, I decided to throw together an animated GIF of some garden photos I like from this year. Many of them appear on Our Best Garden Photos of 2017 feature story that links to larger versions of each photo. Sadly, the animated GIF may take forever to load, as it's a pretty big file. Please note that all photos on this site are copyrighted, but may be used for desktop photos without permission or payment. All other use requires prior consent, massive royalty payments, your left pinkie finger... Getting back to my resting up, all the laser work made me sick yesterday, the first time that's happened from one of these all too frequent appointments over the last decade or so. At any rate, I was sick at my stomach and the burns hurt. It's a bit better today, but I'm still not willing to try doing anything of consequence (other than making the GIF). The moral of this story, of course, is to protect oneself from the harmful rays of the sun when working outside. I won't repeat here my annual nag on the subject, but will suggest sun protective clothing One thing from yesterday's experience that made me feel good was that the doctor didn't order a blood draw, a sure sign he might have thought any of the cancers had metastasized. I have lots to be thankful for this season, but a good session with my cancer doctor had me again thanking the Lord.
Fedco's catalog differs from a lot of other seed houses' catalogs in that is a black and white catalog with lots of interesting woodcuts instead of photos. Vegetables aren't arranged in alphabetical order, which I find a bit disconcerting. I also find it difficult to read because of its extremely small print. After a quick scan of the print catalog, I relied on their downloadable PDF version which I can magnify to my heart's content. With those criticisms, I must say that I like buying from Fedco. They have a good variety of both hybrid and open pollinated vegetable varieties. Big seeded items such as beans and peas seem to be priced a bit better than the competition when ordered in half or pound quantities. Packet prices are also reasonable. And I like doing business with a customer and employee owned cooperative, enough so that I coughed up the bucks a few years ago to become a consumer member of the co-op. So far, I only have three items to order from Fedco, Mokum and Yaya carrots and Jericho lettuce. The Yaya carrot listing is on the same page as the Mokums and I liked the description. Jericho lettuce is a romaine that may extend our spring lettuce harvest due to its heat resistance. Since Fedco won't begin shipping seeds until January 3, 2018, I can hold this order for a while to see if there is anything else I want or need to add to my small order. Along with everything else carried by Fedco, they now offer a fairly reasonably priced soil test done by the Maine State Soil Lab. Finally, page 3 of the catalog announced that Fedco founder C.R. Lawn has retired. He has been a pioneer in the seed industry and seed saving.
Earlier in the day, I waited too late to get our usual splashshot from our sunroom window. By the time I tried taking it, I was aiming the camera directly into the low afternoon sun. The evening shots were taken with my old Nikon P-60. While I treat my good photo equipment with great care, the P-60 that only functions well in the fully automatic mode sits atop our microwave oven in the kitchen for impulse shots like the ones above.
He also has a new toy, his web site, Senior - In the Garden. He's just getting started with the garden site and blog, but already has lots of gorgeous garden photos posted. I edited a screenshot of his blog to show his snow and previously green back yard. Our seed orders are coming in. Two arrived yesterday, one today, and one more is due on Monday. I'm not quite done ordering, as there are a few items I want/need that are only available from seed houses that haven't yet sent out their seed catalogs. Yes, I could order online, but then I'd miss the fun of paging through the seed catalogs, a visual temptation much akin to sampling the smells from food vendors at a county or state fair. So far, I've placed a total of eight orders including our sweet potato plants for a total of $101.78, about two bucks over what I annually plan for seed orders. I still need to order another soil heating mat, as the oldest of ours finally gave out last spring. It was Portuguese Kale Soup for supper here tonight. Annie has an infection under a crown, so soft, comfort food was the order of the day. Served with a hearty bread, it's a great meal for cold, windy days like today.
While I was at it, I cut back our Gloriosa Daisies to about four inches tall. Most of what I cut were dead stalks, but there were still some green leaves at the base of the plants. I usually don't compost our asparagus stalks. They can be pretty fibrous and break down slowly. But I decided to just pile them and the daisy cuttings on top of our compost pile. We'll see how that one works out. We still have a few things to be cleaned up in our garden plots (at this late date). Kale in the main garden and cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli in our East Garden need their leaves stripped and composted with the hard roots going onto our burn pile. Our long row of zinnias at the edge of the East Garden need to come out. I don't know whether to burn the stems or compost them. And I left the T-posts for our long row of tomato plants in the ground when I pulled the tomato cages and plants. I'll need to dig the T-posts out of the heavy clay soil of our East Garden. When those chores are done, we'll pretty much be done with garden cleanup. At some point, I plan to dump the last of our Serenade biofungicide on areas where we'll grow tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes next year. I like to start with fresh biologicals each spring. Dumping the Serenade on the ground may or may not help prevent plant diseases. The last of our Thuricide (BT) just gets pitched into the trash. And I used up our bag of Milky Spore on our main garden bed when I planted our garlic earlier this month. I was pleased to find no Japanese Beetle larva under some walking boards I moved off the garden soil today. Often, one will find bunches of them snuggled under such things.
I'd hoped to clear our kale row today, but our day started out rainy. By mid-afternoon, the rain had stopped, and the sun came out. I cleared a little over half of the kale row, pulling the plants and saving the best leaves. By that point, my bucket was full of kale leaves, our garden cart full of discarded stems, and my hands were too cold to continue picking. The remaining kale, the oldest in the row, is pretty ratty and will probably just get pulled and composted.
Our raised bed of asparagus still has lots of plant trash on it that I'm hoping will blow away.
Numbers in parentheses in the table at right indicate the number of items ordered from each vendor. Then I broke the bank and placed my annual supplies order with the Greenhouse Megastore (DGW rating). The big item there was a replacement Gro-Mat for my original that cooked itself last spring when trying to germinate seedless watermelon. Triploids (seedless) require a germination temperature of at least 80° F, with 85-90 being preferable. I gave up searching for several hybrids I like. Nelson carrots, Roadside Hybrid muskmelon, and Red Zeppelin onions all appear to have been discontinued. While I liked the Red Zeppelin onion variety, I have to admit its name was what got me. Both Red Zeppelin and Grateful Red hybrid onions were introduced the same year. Red Zeppelins were cheaper, so that is what we tried. For our red onions this year, we'll try the new Red Carpet hybrid, but rely on the tested open pollinated Rossa di Milano, Tropeana Tonda, and Red Creole varieties. The reason I did some extensive (for us) testing of onion varieties in 2014 was that I could see the end coming for some of our favorite hybrid onion varieties. That test gave us several good, open pollinated varieties that grow well here that we could fall back on when hybrids were discontinued. With little actual gardening to write about today, I'll list our most accessed pages for 2017 on this site. Note that I didn't include basic pages like this page, the about page, our suppliers page, and indexes. So here are the ten most read feature stories, how-to's, and recipes on Senior Gardening so far for 2017:
New to the list is the Mulching with Grass Clippings feature story. I'm guessing that a lot of readers hate weeding as much as I do. Not appearing in our Top Ten are the new articles I posted this year.
Beyond finishing up our garden cleanup, I'll be turning my attention to our garden plan for next year. I published our initial garden plan for 2018 in September, but have tweaked it a good bit here and there since. It appears that I'll need to open up some isolation patches not used this year to grow out some varieties we need to isolate and save seed from. Thursday, December 21, 2017 - Winter Solstice
We're still experiencing some nice days with high temperatures getting close to 50. That is supposed to dramatically change over the weekend as winter weather really will arrive. I got out early yesterday morning and worked on cleaning up our fall broccoli and cauliflower. I was surprised to find that some of the broccoli plants had good sideshoots. I didn't get the job done, however, as my gloved hands got too cold to get all of the two rows of plants pulled and composted. By the time things warmed up in the afternoon, I was too busy with some shopping to get back to the task. Maybe later today... Calendar Like a lot of folks, we're receiving lots of deliveries daily. Beyond Christmas gifts for family, our garden orders are coming it. One Christmas/garden order that came in yesterday was especially pleasing (to me, at least). It was our 2018 wall calendar from Vistaprint. Since we no longer get as many freebie wall calendars as we once did, I ordered a calendar last year from Vistaprint with lots of garden photos. It was such a hit with my wife that I put together another one for her for this year. I didn't have enough good new shots to fill the twelve months, so I had to drop back into years past for some of the photos. Vistaprint did a great job on the printing. Clicking on an image below will open a new window or tab with a larger size image used for the month.
Since I'm burning through space and bandwidth, I'll add what I used for a cover photo for the calendar.
My office calendar for next year will once again be one from Habitat for Humanity, one of the charities we support.
Friday, December 22, 2017 - Possibly Save a Few Bucks on SSE Order
I backed out of that order, cleared my browser history, and tried an order for just a packet of the seed. I did this one without logging in. The retail $2.99 packet of seed would require a shipping charge of $3.26! The SSE print catalog specifies a shipping charge of just $3 on orders under ten dollars. Thinking that there must be something wrong with the SSE site or my reading of their shipping charges, I popped out an email to SSE Director, Lee Buttala, just before midnight. Amazingly, I got a response a few minutes after midnight. Either they're partying late at SSE, or Lee is burning the midnight oil there. Lee referred my question to customer service. I had an explanation by noon today. Online order shipping charges from the SSE Store are calculated on order weight and zip code. Print catalog mail orders follow the shipping rates shown on the order form.
My thanks to Lee and Laura at the Seed Savers Exchange for their helpful responses to my question. Since SSE is going on vacation after today until January, I was glad to get the quick answers. And since I've been pretty free to express my concerns about the current direction of the Seed Savers Exchange, I should add here that they've put together a very attractive print catalog for 2018.
Saturday, December 23, 2017 - 2017 Garden Review
Having slept in, I decided to work inside today. At one point a month or so ago, I had decided not to publish a garden review for this year. But I began updating the table of successes and failures I keep all season and decided to finish the piece. As it turned out, I first completed writing the text and then had loads of fun adding pictures to the story. Most of the images used have already appeared somewhere on Senior Gardening this year, but a good many of them got touched up a bit. So I uploaded A Year in our Garden - 2017 a few minutes ago. The text may be only slightly informative, but the pictures may entertain readers with images of warmer times and fresh vegetables. Doing the final editing on the piece made me hungry! BTW: The last movie we watched last night was Scrooged.
Sunday, December 24, 2017 - Christmas Eve
The Shumway catalog is one that used to get a lot of my attention. During our farming years in the 80's when Shumway was located in Illinois, we ordered field corn and annual hog pasture seed from them. Since then, we've often used them for pea, melon, and bean seed. They have pretty good prices for half pound packets of green bean seed, although Fedco beats the pants off of them price wise on half pound packets of the same varieties. Small packets of flower seed are also quite reasonable from Shumway...until you get to their minimum shipping charge ($6.95). Like a lot of folks, our day today will be taken up with wrapping presents, cleaning, and cooking.
Monday, December 25, 2017 - Merry Christmas
Luke 2:10-11 (ASV) The image above is a "scene from a life size nativity at the Luxembourg Christmas market." It was taken in 2006 by graphic artist Debbie Schiel who lives in Far North Queensland, Australia, and shared on the royalty-free stock.xchng site. The scripture was copied from my installation of the free Macintosh Online Bible. There's also a free version for Windows users. On my iPhone, I currently use the ESV Bible app. Best wishes from Annie and I to you for a joyous and fulfilling holiday season.
When I was outside today, the temperature ran around 12° F, with 20-30 MPH winds. It was dark and visibility was limited due to snowfall and blowing snow. There are far colder places in our country right now and certainly worse places in the world to be. But I'm having trouble getting used to the cold. Garden Catalog Weather While I really prefer to receive garden seed catalogs in November or early December, the four seed catalogs that arrived in the mail today will give me something to look at during our current cold spell.
I've already placed and received our order with Johnny's. Burpee may get a last minute order of things I forgot to order. Jung and Territorial's minimum shipping charges pretty well preclude my doing business with them.
Being up early gave me some time to look through the seed catalogs that came in yesterday. Both the Burpee
I was sad to find that Shumway no longer offers the Sugar Cube hybrid icebox cantaloupe variety. We got our first seed for the variety from Shumway in 2010. It's funny that now eight years later, lots of other vendors (Burpee, Johnny's, Stokes, Territorial...) have picked up the excellent variety. When I looked for a Sugar Cube image on this site, I also found an image of a Sarah's Choice melon from 2010. While regularly priced in Johnny's print catalog, I noticed that the variety is on sale on Johnny's web site. Sarah's Choice melons have a bold cantaloupe flavor. While rambling here, I should add that all five cantaloupe varieties we plan to grow in 2018 are hybrids! (Avatar, Athena, Roadside Hybrid, Sarah's Choice, and Sugar Cube) That leaves us susceptible to losing a variety such as the Roadside Hybrid variety that has been discontinued. I've tried, but simply haven't found any open pollinated cantaloupes that I like as well as the hybrids we grow. Knowing that the end was in sight for the Roadside Hybrid variety, I tried saving seed from it several years ago. As often happens with seed saved and grown out from hybrids, this experiment turned out to be a total failure. The flip side of the melon coin is that all of the watermelon varieties we like, other than a couple of triploids (seedless), are all open pollinated varieties. (Ali Baba, Blacktail Mountain, Congo, Crimson Sweet, Kleckley Sweet, Moon & Stars, and Picnic) Since we got a free sample of Burpee's new Mini Piccolo Hybrid
Developed by "eminent seedsman Glenn Drowns." Blacktail Mountains mature early in the season. They can produce fruit with good watermelon flavor without the really hot weather other varieties require to be really sweet. Other Stuff
Our Christmas tree looked pretty bare in the daylight this month. I brought the wrong pre-lit tree downstairs from our attic, but kept it in place. Our miniature pre-lit and decorated tree would have been an invitation for disappointment if used. We still have some very young cats from a spring litter that were very interested in the tree.
We still have more indoor cats than we need to discourage mice, but are coming to like the kittens' antics more and more each day. Eventually, some of them will need to move to our garage. At right are two of the culprits who initially tried to climb and chew on the tree. Without the usual ornaments, they quickly lost interest. Cooking Report
We again traveled to one of our kid's house for Christmas this year. It's always nice when someone else is the host, as it saves a lot of cooking and cleaning. I did, however, get assigned several dishes to bring for our Christmas dinner. I did a good bit of the food preparation on Christmas Eve, putting the half prepared dishes (covered) on the back porch overnight. The first dish to be prepared was candied yams. Our sweet potatoes had a lot of bug damage this year, but it peeled and trimmed out pretty easily. I'm always amazed by sweet potatoes' ability to heal over cuts and bad spots.
I usually make our "yams" with butternut squash, but our crop failed this year. Making them with real sweet potatoes is something rather new to me. The recipe remains about the same, though. Sweet potatoes (or butternut pieces) baked with brown sugar and marshmallows, seasoned with a bit of salt, pepper, and nutmeg make a delicious holiday dish. If I had a choice, I'd go with the "butternut yams" over the sweet potato ones. I think the butternuts taste better. The next dish I could prepare ahead of time was the traditional green bean casserole. I depart from the standard recipe by adding some chopped fresh mushrooms to the dish. I decided to try adding a bit of shredded cheddar cheese this time around, although I don't think the cheese really improved the flavor. I brought in and thawed both dishes Christmas morning. The yams got some more brown sugar and marshmallows and the green bean casserole was topped with French's onions before going into the oven. I also started a batch of Grandma's Yeast Rolls on Christmas Eve, using the overnight method for their first rising. Since the usual recipe takes about five hours, start to finish, letting the dough rise in the refrigerator overnight cuts down the time required the next morning to let the rolls raise and bake.
In a few hours, I'll rub salt, pepper, and homemade garlic powder on the roast before browning it for 20-30 minutes in the oven at 500° F. Then I'll cut the oven back to 325° F for another hour and a half, making sure this time not to overcook the meat. While there won't be candied yams or green bean casserole for our mini-feast, mashed potatoes and gravy and some sugar snap peas should nicely fill out the menu. Another Apple Tree An Indiana Tree Survey I received yesterday from the Arbor Day Foundation pushed me to order another Stayman Winesap apple tree last night. We lost our original Stayman Winesap to fire blight years ago. A full dwarf replacement from the Arbor Day Foundation finally produced fruit this year after eight years in the ground. The apples were yellow! Maybe the branch the yellow apples grew on is a sport, the term for a spontaneous mutation that produces a new variety. But since the "free" tree I selected with my order so long ago turned out to be a silver maple instead of the red maple I chose, I'm guessing that whoever pulled our order on that day long ago wasn't having a good day. I let the Foundation know of my disappointment with the trees. Their prompt response was to agree to remove me from their mailing list. I didn't expect a credit or refund, but an apology would have been nice. Sadly, Ryan B of member services for the Arbor Day Foundation apparently has no empathy for those the Foundation has screwed. Even though Stayman Winesap trees are getting hard to find, I did find two vendors offering them last night. Obviously, the Arbor Day Foundation didn't get the order.
Friday, December 29, 2017 - Bleak
It's just that bleak looking outside today. I lightened the image at left a good bit in Photoshop. I also decreased its contrast a good bit. It's still bleak, but at least a little brown shows in the field next to our garden. When I decided to use the sharpen/lighten filter to the office shot, Photoshop took over almost all of my computer's processor cycles and RAM. I finally went and got a fresh cup of coffee while the application struggled to complete my handiwork. Under the operating system I use most of the time (Snow Leopard, Mac OS 10.6.8), my Mac Mini can only access 8 of the 16 gigs of RAM installed. When I know that I'm going to be doing some heavy photo processing, I boot the Mini to its macOS High Sierra (10.13.2) partition that allows it to access all the RAM installed.
Getting Ready
Other than some hosta and sage, I haven't started any plants for next year's garden, but I'm getting ready. I sterilized a kettle of potting mix yesterday and brought in bags of flower seed from our manual defrost garage freezer. I need to get some daisies going to fill in blank spots in our plantings at the back of our yard and at the side of the house. I also brought in impatiens, petunia, vinca, and ivy leaf geranium seed for hanging baskets. While we'll grow some impatiens, petunia, vinca, and seed geraniums for our garden, they don't have to be started as soon as the plants for our hanging baskets. I wondered for a moment about the petunias that we usually start in styrofoam egg cartons, but spied several on top of our fridge. Egg carton petunias are often the first thing we start for an upcoming gardening season.
Our hanging basket plants get started first because they're portable. I can hang them outside on warm days in late March and early April, but still bring them back inside on freezing nights. One other preparatory chore I did was to set up and test the new soil heating mat I ordered from the Greenhouse Megastore (DGW rating). This time of year, our basement runs around ten degrees cooler than the rest of the house, so a soil heating mat and thermostat are necessary for seed starting there. The temperature shown on the thermostat is where it started out after I turned it and the soil heating mat on. BTW: While Hydrofarm (now Jump Start, I think) makes a great thermostat, I can't say as much for their soil heating mats. We had one that lasted 366 days before burning out, one day past its warranty. The Beef Roast Lives On
Our kids growing up came to expect any large, somewhat expensive cut of meat to appear in some form for three days at supper. In retirement with the kids now grown, I haven't much changed my cooking habits.
A local grocery often puts their Green Giant Steamers on sale for a dollar a box. We stock up at those times on things we don't freeze a lot of, such as sugar snaps. While I published our initial garden plan for next year in a September posting, I'm struggling to find room to grow more peas. I'm juggling garden rotations, as peas need good soil, and isolations to find somewhere to grow more second early peas and sugar snaps. I put a long row of peas in the plan for our East Garden, but that soil is pretty poor. I'd added a lot of compost to that area last fall, but it's also dangerously close to the woods. Deer love to nibble on tender, newly emerged peas and such.
There is, however, a good story that goes with the bird feeder. The late Don Smith wrote me years ago, telling of a great bird feeder he'd found. He included links to a glowing review and to the feeder on Amazon. The feeder was pretty expensive for my tastes, but also sounded like it would last longer than some of our previous, cheapie bird feeders had. At that time, I had counted on Don's reliable advice on a good many things. So I counted my pennies and decided I could spring for the near $50 the Droll Yankees Bird Feeder When it arrived and was filled and hung, it turned out to be all the good things the review said it would be. I wrote and thanked Don for the tip. He wrote back thanking me, as he'd only read about the feeder and hadn't bought one yet! Every time I fill the feeder, I have to laugh and think fondly of Don. The bird feeder is now a bit over three years old and still functions well.
I looked through two more new seed catalogs today. The John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds catalog arrived in the mail. While we don't have a paper copy as yet, I downloaded the PDF version of the Annie's Heirloom Seeds catalog. Scheeper's sells open pollinated and hybrid vegetable seed, while Annie's specializes in open pollinated and heirloom vegetable varieties. We've gotten good seed from both vendors in the past, but just haven't needed anything they offer in the last few years. We got our first Red Ursa kale seed from Scheepers. Annie's supplies us with Violet of Sicily cauliflower seed. Neither of these vendors would suffice as a main seed supplier for us due to their limited offerings. But for some odds and ends, they're great. Egg Carton Petunias
Since I did an in depth how-to last January, I won't repeat that information here. I seeded one egg carton to Supercascade and another to Double Cascade (listed in Twilley's catalog as Petunia grandiflora double). Both varieties of petunia seed came from Twilley Seeds and are incredibly inexpensive!
The lack of mulch was to deny hiding places for overwintering bugs. We may pay a price for that in weed growth and garlic cloves heaving with the freezing and thawing of the soil over the winter. But I'm willing to take some losses there to ward off some new insect problems we've had indications of this year.
Garden seed catalogs arrived this month, over a dozen of them. After completing our annual seed inventory, orders were placed (and received) from our major seed suppliers. I took and rooted wandering jew cuttings this month for new plants for next spring. It takes wandering jew cuttings about five months to make a nice plant. We've had a wandering jew plant hanging in our west facing kitchen window for seven or eight years, replacing the almost worn out plant each spring with a fresh one from cuttings. We also started some hostas and sage, initially slow growers that need a big head start before going into the ground. My thanks to you, the readers of Senior Gardening for regularly returning to this site and for your emails. Let me wind up the calendar year with another one of those beautiful evening skies we have here.
Happy New Year! Contact Steve Wood, the at Senior Gardening
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I'm taking it easy today, recovering a bit from a trip to my friendly neighborhood laser surgeon. While I scheduled the appointment because a potential cancer was growing rapidly on my left shoulder, the surgeon instead burnt off eight or nine other bad spots from my head, arm, and back. The big one has to be cut off at a later appointment.
(Actually, I'm a pretty soft touch on non-commercial use of my photos, especially for educators. Just
, please.) 
as possible gifts for gardeners. Lightweight shirts and sun hats with serious UPF ratings (50 or so) can help gardeners with skin cancers keep on gardening. Don't forget good gardening gloves. My first cancer in 2002 was on my right hand.
would cost.
We began December playing catch up in our garden plots. I planted our garlic on December 2, later than I ever have before. I also didn't mulch the garlic for the first time in years. The late planting was due partially to waiting for the ground to dry out enough to rototill and also because our weather conditions remained very warm through much of November. I didn't want the garlic emerging in the warm fall weather.
Finally clearing our kale and asparagus beds completed our cleanup of our main garden plots for the year. Clearing the kale produced a final, nice harvest of kale. We boiled the kale for dinner and froze the leftovers for winter use.
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