A yummy rose hedge

Lots to post about recently!

First, we finished the rose hedge a couple weeks ago. The goal is to hide my neighbor's death mobile.
Oh, but what's that under the roses?Let's get a closer look at that....
Mmmmm....strawberries....

We found out there's actually two kinds of strawberries: June-bearing and ever-bearing. Most commercial growers plant June bearing since it's better for harvesting (all fruits ripen at once). However, since we don't use our berries for pie and prefer to just snack on them, we have ever-bearing. We've been getting about 2 berries a day so far. Hopefully next year, they'll be more established and we'll get a few more!

Weirdness we discovered: it's very important to make sure the berries don't sit on the ground. Otherwise they rot and the bugs get them. Instead, we've been carefully propping up ripening berries on the leaves of a neighboring plant. This seems to fix it.

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Curing garlic and shallots

I harvested the garlic and onion today! For all their gourmet-ness, these are both lazy-gardner's plants. We planted the garlic last November by shoving several cloves in the ground. (I use "Russian Red" because it stores well and has a nice strong flavor. I'm sure storebought works too, but if you're going to plant it, might as well getsomething strong!) We then completely ignored it. It popped up in early spring, out of the snow, and started going from there. We planted the shallots in spring, and then also ignored them.

So, both got nice and huge, and then started yellowing just before the 4th. Traditionally apparently, one harvests these on the 4th, and they looked ready, so we did!

This was our first year with shallots. They grow like onions, but in little bunches. Each shallot is about the size of a baby onion.

Saul planted about 10 shallots. Each shallot bunched off loads of babies, and we harvested over 70 shallots!

So, the "curing" thing. This is the one not-lazy part of these plants. Apparently you don't just pull them up and put them in storage. You have to encourage a nice protective layer of papery skin across the top so they don't rot. So, you set them out, tops and roots and all, in a warm and partly-sunny place to "cure". Once they're mostly dry, it'll be time to braid them and store them. So, out on the porch they go.

That's 17 garlic plants by the way. We went a little overboard this year....again. But on the other hand, we can always give them away, and I really like the garlic scapes we get from all of them in June.

Of course, the biggest ones we won't actually store. Those go in a separate space, to be planted in the fall! Best part about these plant: I don't have to order more plants or seeds ever again, and I don't have to baby any seedlings.

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Nitrogen-fixing Bacteria

I recently had a conversation with the Google crowd about how legumes are "nitrogen-fixing". A bacteria grows on their roots in a symbotic relationship, and it converts nitrogen (N2) into a form that plants can actually use (nitrate, N03-). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_fixation)

I had read that the bacteria forms small pink nodules on peas. Last year, I tried to find them, and couldn't, so I assumed they were rather small.

Imagine my surprise when I pulled up my peas this year.
Not exactly small. The largest are about the size of a nickel. I also wouldn't really describe them as "pink", more like a buff color.

Coolness. Chemistry in the backyard. No need to fertilize this garden.

Funny enough, this is why, back in the day, clover was a good thing to have in a lawn. You wanted clover in lawn, so that way it would add in nitrogen. Clover was even standard in lawn seed mixes.

Then the idea of fertilizer came up. How do you get people to buy fertilizer? Well, you do some awesome marketing to convince people that clover is bad. You convince them that a good, healthy lawn has only grass. Clover is a weed. How do you get a lawn like that? Buy our expensive fertilizer! Of course, since only the rich can afford this, we now associate lush, grass-only lawns with wealth. Which means everyone wants one. Fantastic.

I claim that my clover-spotted lawn is vintage, thank you very much.

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Peas are crazy big

Well, Saul and I just ripped out the peas last weekend.This year, we decided not to tie them up. Normally, they look like this:

Kinda insane. Actually, this was more of a "we're lazy and we spent a lot of time away this season" decision rather than a thought through one. We came back from a week in the bay area to find that the plants had reached the top of a 3 foot lattice, gone 3 feet past that, fallen over, and grown back up again. While some vines were bent, it really didn't seem to hurt the plants, and actually made it easier to harvest!

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Local Brews

Maja has reminded me that I haven't posted in a year! OMG, someone reads my blog!

So, here starts more posting. :)

First up: I just found out about this awesomeness happening at Construction Junction. Let's call it a Pittsburgh Oktoberfest.

A nice thing about living in Pittsburgh: lots of local breweries. Getting local produce in the winter is tough, but local beers? Always a good selection. Among those appearing will be:

• The Church Brew Works
• East End Brewery (which is like two busway stops from my house)
• Erie Brewing Company
• Fat Head's Brew
• Great Lakes Brewing Company
• Rivertowne
• Penn Brew
• Sprague Farm
• Tröegs
• Weyerbacher

Also? It's either a 30 minute walk to my house, or a 20 minute walk and bus. So no arguing about who is DD. I suggest all you yinzers get back into town for this one. It will be awesome.

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