Apple trees for cider

In November of last year my wife and I bought a house. Prior to that we owned a Town-home with a zero lot line, so I never really got to start my garden or the various hippy ideas that floated in my head. The new home is on .38 acre, which isn't huge by any stretch, but will let me have a garden and plant some fruit trees. I've been shopping for heirloom varieties for cider making and have a few that seem interesting.

I found a site called Trees of Antiquity that specializes in heirloom varieties that will ship trees ready to plant.

First is the Manchurian Crab. I'm particularly interested in a crab variety that works well in my cooler summers and has a somewhat early harvest, that will also act as a pollinator for an eating or dessert apple tree that I would like to plant.

The second apple tree that is interesting is a Cox's Orange Pippin. It's supposed to be quite tasty and it appears to be compatible with the crab apple for bloom time and fertility, so they should do a good job of helping to keep each other pollinated. I also read that the Cox tree is good for espalier which could be useful to give me a little bit of a privacy screen between my home and the neighbors.  Previous owners of this house cut down some privacy bushes that were on the fence line so a tree that could do double duty of fruit and privacy seems like a win.

Random-ish gardening post

Damn spring tricked me!

I got around to transplanting my tomato starts last weekend and it has been a week of 70's for the high but overnight has been dropping off as low as the high 30's.  My poor tomato starts where looking a touch on the yellow side going into the weekend, and now with Sunday and Monday dumping rain and keeping it cold I'm concerned I'm going to loose 2 of them!

Unrelated in any fashion I haven't brewed in what has to be close to 2 months.  I just haven't had the time, energy or funds to take on a brew of late so I've been putting it off.  Every time I pull meat out of the chest freezer though I have to look at the 16 or so ounces of hops I got from my wife's co-worker at the end of last summer.  I need to use them fairly soon or I need to pull them out and start aging them for sour beers.  Cascade isn't the best for aging though so I'm thinking I need to nut up and make some beer.  An ale of some form or another would be a lovely thing to stuff into a keg and keep on tap.

T is for tired

So I lost my mind and decided to destroy my backyard planter (that I apparently never uploaded a photo of).  The thing is my "backyard" is more of a 15'x20' place where the sun don't shine.  In 3 years I managed to grow lettuce, and that is about it.  In the picture below you can see my 3 strawberry plants  (I have at least 12 now) that I have yet to grow a more than 1 berry a year on, and an onion gone to bloom.

Once I finished destroying I used the lumber to create this beauty!

In the front of my house I get amazing sun for about 8 hours a day, so I'm hoping for some better growing this season.  This whole process took about 10 hours of labor, and my body is wrecked.

Shrooms

A little late for most but earlier in the summer I had some trouble with mushrooms in my planter box garden.  It was all related to too much moisture (Gasp in Seattle say it isn't so!)  Any how I was looking for ways to deal with mushrooms and thought I would share what I found.  Short story is reduce the moisture!  Next up is remove the "infected" soil because the mushrooms are just going to keep coming as moisture and food make themselves available.

One suggestion was for a baking soda/water solution to spray the affected area to try to change the PH and prevent them from growing.  I think the raised bed I made doesn't have enough drainage and the heavy rain we get in the winter soaked the bed and it has just never gotten dry enough to prevent the mushrooms from growing.

some random source links
Helpful Gardener
Allexperts

Indoor Ikea farming

After the gardening post yesterday I thought about ways to pull off indoor farming.  I don't know that this will work for my space so consider it concept art for the moment, but here you go.  I found this on Ikea hacker the other day and Loyal reader A Beer for the Shower might appreciate this as an upgrade to his "drug dealer style" garden.  As a plus side it also has an aquaculture feature for some slow delivery of fish.  What is the maturation rate on fish any way?  Don't most species take a few years to yield anything useful in terms of Biomass?

So for the people that have read deep into the archives of this old ass blog, or just noticed the tag feature know that I've written about this type of thing before.  This particular post happens to be somewhat practical in the sense that it was designed around objects that exist in the real world and implements principles that are actually on display at Disney World.  It is in a boring section of Epcot, and clearly a sign that the hippies where accidentally allowed into the workforce some how evading the extensive counter-counter culture hippy genocide that must have happened to explain the 80's.  I'm surprise I haven't seen more literature on what must have been quite the feat of quiet genocide here in the US for all of the chanting hippies to have disappeared almost overnight near the end of the 70's.  My current theory is the CIA created a huge (like 1 million gallons or so) batch of tainted lsd and Quaaludes and some how distributed it across the country all on the same week or so miraculously killing all of the hippies.

I kid of course, but seriously think about. ;)

Terrible year to try a garden

I don't take it personally, but in the PNW this has been the summer that wasn't. and my attempt at a garden has been pretty mediocre due to the total lack of sunny days.  In spite of all that, I have seen some growth there in the back and may actually get some green beans before snow starts to fall.

Biotower project

image via Philips

The idea of a biotower in your home helping you grow herbs and vegetables is interesting.  The idea that many if anyone would be interested in growing fish to eat in their home seems less likely to me.  I will give them that it is an interesting design.  I would prefer to see some options on how you configure it, maybe there is a way to grow sea life like lobster and clams. 





via gizmodo