Gnarly Carrots

My carrots won't be winning any prizes at the county fair. They're all gnarly and twisted, and I probably should have harvested them a month or two ago.

I've never successfully grown carrots from seeds. Every year, some little critter eats the tender shoots as they emerge from the ground, and the whole project is lost before it's begun. This year I started carrots in 4" pots indoors sometime in February. As the weather warmed, the little pots of seedlings moved to the greenhouse. Finally the carrots were transplanted in bunches to raised beds, where they were interplanted between the tomatoes as companion plants.

Perhaps I should have thinned the crop to avoid the gnarly mass of carrots that I'm pulling up this week. Truthfully, I don't mind. I'm happy to have carrots for soups and stews. I trim the tops, wash the carrots and store them in the root cellar. So far I've harvested about 15 pounds of gnarly carrots, and there is plenty more in the gardens. All is well.

Harvesting Hops

Our curiosity in growing hops at Red Bucket Farm is new. We began brewing beer in late 2011, which led to an interest in growing hops this summer.

We started brewing by purchasing an equipment kit (ale pail, carboy, siphon, capping device, etc) and an ingredient kit (grains, malt, yeast, hops). By following the directions and paying attention to detail, it's not too difficult to make very drinkable beverages. Brewing beer from kits is similar to making brownies from a boxed mix. It's easy and fun, but eventually you might want to try a recipe of your own. Growing hops made sense to us and seemed like part of the brewing adventure.

Hops are a perennial vine that flower in the late summer. They can grow twenty feet tall in one season and need sturdy structure. Pictured in the photo above are two of our three hops towers just after planting in July. We established three varieties---Cascade, Willamette, and Nugget---each in their own raised bed with a 12 foot tower. As the vines grew, we encouraged the strongest to attach to twine and clipped out the weak vines. Hops grow best in full sunshine.

At the end of the summer, all three of our hops plants produced flowers from which beer gets its aroma, flavor and distinctive bitterness. We carefully cut down the twine supporting the vines and pulled the flowers gently off the vine.

The flowers were dried in a 120 degree oven and then weighed for use. Our resident brew master refrigerated the flowers overnight and cooked up a wort the next day. It's percolating in the basement now.

We're pleasantly surprised that the vines were productive in their first year of growth. The plants will die back to the ground over winter. Next summer should produce a much bigger crop as the vines become more established.

Hops also have antiseptic qualities. I read that they're good for chicken health, so perhaps we'll have enough to share with the flock next summer. Meanwhile, Al the Cat (above) is having a small taste. Cheers!

Food Snobs

It's time for me to recognize that my girls are food snobs. Oh sure, they love the treats we give them---bread, pasta, rice, melon rinds, and those scrumptious smushed Japanese beetles that we pick off the raspberry plants. But just this week they've proven themselves to be as fussy and lazy as spoiled cats. 

When we first began raising chickens, our poultry consultant recommended that we feed them food from a reputable company such as Purina. He discouraged us from buying the bags of cheap feed at the farm store. Like dog and cat food, poultry feed comes in a few different formulas for different stages of life. There's chick feed, of course, followed by different blends for egg layers or for birds raised as meat production. Our first girls started out with Purina chick grower and then moved on to Purina Layena. 

After a while, I became aware of genetically modified crops, and I realized that Purina very likely uses corn that has been genetically modified. We switched to organic hen food, alternating between two brands. We tried Organic Pride (from Mounds) and the Willy Street Coop's own soy-free organic blend. In the end, we decided that Organic Pride had less waste at the bottom of the bin and the girls seemed to prefer it. 

Just in the last month, egg production has been down significantly. Two of my girls have given me an egg or two per week, which is pretty poor. I know they lay fewer eggs in extreme heat, but this month has been pleasant. We decided to change their food to see if that would make any difference. 

Early this week, we scooped the Purina feed into their food dishes and watched them run frantically from one dish to the other. All four hens eyed us wildly, certain there was some kind of horrible mistake. They returned to the hanging food hopper, the only dish with a bit of organic feed remaining. Then they sulked in a corner and refused to eat until their evening ration of Japanese beetles. 

So. That's the way it's going to be? We returned to organic feed and the girls dramatically swooped in to fill their little crops. I'll give the Purina to a neighboring chicken farmer. But the cleaver and soup pot await those who do not lay eggs. Nope, I'm not kidding. We're limited to four hens and they're not simply pets. I hope they're paying attention to my daily pep talks! 

Apiary Update

This is just a quick update on our beehives. In July, we had such an extended heat wave that one of our top bar hives experienced a damaging meltdown. You can read the details of that on my July 22 post. But there is good news---the damaged colony is rebuilding. This week I noticed a new hatch of bees taking their orientation flights in and out of the hive, staying within a few feet of the hive while they get their bearings. (I avoided picking tomatoes in front of that hive while they were doing that!)  They have about eight combs now and the colony is obviously queen-right. We're a little more hopeful that this hive will be able to survive the winter. Aren't they amazing little creatures?

Onion Harvest

A week ago my onion bed looked tired. The leaves had been flopping over for several days and it wasn't due to lack of water. The plants were finished and ready for harvest.

At the end of April, I planted a hundred purchased Copra Hybrid onion plants and forty onion "sets" of generic purple onions given to me by a fellow gardener. Onion sets are tiny little bulbs that were sown the previous year and then stored over winter for spring planting. Onion plants, which look like a bundle of thick grass, were seeded a few months earlier and then gathered for transplanting. Both methods are tried and true, although sets are sometimes more disease prone. I planted my onions in a 12'x3' raised bed in full sunshine where they have grown without much fuss.

Last week, after carefully lifting the onions out of the soil, I gently rubbed them clean and placed them on top of the soil to dry for a week. It's important to cure the onions until the outer skin becomes dried and crispy.

Since it's been a rainy week, I transferred the onions to wire tables in the greenhouse and kept the fan running to dry them. The Copra onions will store well in mesh bags, so we'll use the purple onions first.

This is the first time we've grown onions at Red Bucket Farm. So far, it's been pretty easy and we're looking forward to eating this crop!

Greenhouse Shadecloth

In my life as a Wisconsin gardener, much of my thought process is about how to get bushes, vines, trees, chickens and bees to survive the bitter cold winter. But this year, I'm learning how to get those same bushes, vines, trees, chickens and bees to survive an extraordinarily blistering summer. And although it's been hot outside, it's been even hotter in the greenhouse.

Daytime temperatures in the greenhouse are frequently more than 100 degrees. Inside, we're growing eggplant and peppers in large containers. These two veggies theoretically love the heat, and I thought they would enjoy the protection of the greenhouse. I was surprised to discover that the leaves of the eggplant bushes were bleaching and dropping. Once it dawned on me that it was just too sunny in there, I draped an old sheet over the top of the greenhouse. Within a couple days, the leaves began to turn green again.

We ordered a "shadecloth kit" and installed it inside the greenhouse. It's not perfect, but it certainly makes the greenhouse more tolerable in the heat. The eggplants are recovering and shooting out more blossoms and fruit. I imagine that I'll remove the shade cloth in a few weeks and store it until next year. I've also added a fan to the greenhouse. It's important to keep the air moving, which seems to keep the whiteflies under control.

Whether it's too hot or too cold, we always enjoy eating whatever fresh food we manage to grow.

Apiary Meltdown

We experienced a disaster in the bee yard at Red Bucket Farm. Due to extreme heat in the first week of July (over 100 degrees for three consecutive days), we discovered that all the combs in the red hive had melted off the top bars and dropped to the floor of the hive, crushing hundreds or thousands of bees. This was our newest hive and it had been doing fabulously, building a dozen combs, laying eggs, tending brood, bringing in nectar and pollen.

Last weekend (July 14) we cleaned out the melted mess from the floor of the hive. The combs had not melted off the top bars. In fact, there was still an inch or two of comb attached to each top bar, but the bulk of the comb had dropped in the heat. I remember a day in the extreme heat (when I was preoccupied with trying to keep the chickens alive) that there were suddenly a large number of bees on the outside of that hive. At the time I assumed it was normal bearding behavior in the heat, but in retrospect I believe the returning forager bees clustered outside because of the disaster inside.

We also discovered bees building comb in the roof of that hive. This was new comb without honey or brood, so we suspect they began building there after the meltdown. I have to admire their work ethic and resourcefulness.

After cleaning up the disaster, we shook the bees out of the rooftop and back into the hive body, then replaced all the top bars and let the bees get back to work. We're rebuilding the rooftop to repair the warp and prevent them from accessing the space. We also built an arbor-like structure over the bee yard and sewed awnings to provide some shade from the summer sun. The awnings can be removed in the fall when the sunshine will be beneficial to the hives.

We're concerned that it's rather late in the summer for that hive to rebuild enough that it will be strong for winter survival. This morning we took two top bars from an adjacent healthy hive to share with the struggling colony. The borrowed combs were full of honey, brood and bees. Perhaps this will jump-start the red hive for a chance at survival. If the queen was lost in the disaster, they may be able to groom a new one.  We're also providing supplemental cups of honey.

There is some good news. One of the hives is quite strong. We harvested 20 cups of honey which we can use to feed the weaker hive. Maybe there will even be some honey for us to enjoy. It's been a fascinating journey. There is nothing like an emergency to teach us about bee life.