And then the rains came!

Well folks, in the past month or so, the southern Willamette valley where we live has been under repeated waves of deluging downpours that have swelled the watershed drainage at the back of the land to a shallow creek over fifteen feet across. In the fourteen years that we've grown food on this land, there was only one other winter with such persistent and extreme flooding. I'm not sure how much extra housework we got done (above) but we are so very grateful for our greenhouse/grow tunnels which have allowed us to get a jump on starting seeds. The other big weather challenge we faced since our last post was a four-night stretch of sub-freezing temps.

This post is about how the food we started to grow in early January has fared and the ways we've mitigated these extremes in the weather. This post also includes many live LINKS to seasonally relevant articles. Enjoy!

Rain is always a challenge here in the winter so, even though this was a rainier winter than average, it hasn't really slowed us down too much; we have hundreds of veg-starts and perennial herb and flower plants already thriving in pots, and hundreds more plants already in the ground. 

Chris planted our first carrot crops on January 5th in the greenhouse raised beds he completely rebuilt in December. They're doing beautifully.

By mid-January, Chris began starting other cold-tolerant crops including beets, lettuce, kale, collards and cabbage. We make all our own potting mix and use re-purposed tofu containers, with holes drilled in the bottoms to germinate seeds and 'pot-up' the seedlings once they're big enough (right).

Chris re-built all our raised beds in our two main greenhouses during December. He managed to save the wonderful soil we'd already accumulated over the years. Every winter we also add more of our amazing home-grown compost, generated right in the greenhouse paths. (LINK: How we grow...Veganic Community-based gardening) Note: Rows of red and green lettuce in the beds behind him and in front of him, and potted seedlings in the path he's crawling along. This pic was taken March 6th.

This pic was taken just four days later on March 10th. Everything is growing so well now! Red Russian kale on left with Four Seasons red and Slo-bolt green lettuce above the kale (LINK: Planting Lettuce (or other cool-weather loving crops) from seed). The dominant seedlings in the GH path are cabbage and more kale plants, primarily for sharing. The white specks in the raised bed to the right are perlite which is a natural material derived from volcanic glass which helps soil drain better LINK: Perlite. It's the only commercial additive we use in making our potting mix. We also mix it into all our greenhouse raised beds.

In between the heavy downpours, we have had a couple of sunny stretches that allowed the land to drain and dry out enough to harvest some grass clippings. Leaves and grass are all we put in our greenhouse paths. These turn to compost over the full garden season and we harvest the compost in the autumn to use throughout the gardens (LINK: Making Your Own "Veganic" Potting Soil in Your Greenhouse Paths - Using Worms )

Though we've had to cancel close to half the Monday share-giver (volunteer) sessions this winter due to inclement weather, we have had two dedicated folks who seem to be just about as crazy for gardening and the fellowship that it brings throughout all the seasons as Chris and I - Donn and Suzanne. I know that all four of us have really looked forward to being together on Monday mornings with our hands and knees and hearts touching the Earth. If you're local and itching to get your hands in the dirt, here's info about joining our share-givers (volunteers) this spring.

Here's Suzanne on Feb. 12th, planting lettuce starts. These are the same ones shown in the pics above. They're really growing fast now. Soon, we'll start harvesting a leaf or two off each one for fresh salads.

We've had two large donations of firewood this season. Here are Donn and Chris splitting oak and cherry which will dry through the summer and be ready to use next season. Donn loans us the use of the hydraulic splitter and helps with the collecting and splitting of the wood and keeps much of the wood to heat his home too.

Winter garden-time often includes wonderful conversations around the wood stove in the Sunship-greenhouse. We use the wood ash throughout the gardens and orchards to mineralize the soil. (LINK: Coffee Grounds and Wood Ash for Soil Fertility)

COLD! Aside from the epic January ice storm that we wrote about in our previous post (LINK: A Love Like That! Historic ice storm...) we also had a severe cold snap a few weeks ago with several nights in a row where temps dipped into the high 20's. This put our greenhouse potato crop at high risk of frost damage.

In 2023 we experimented for the first time with growing potatoes in our greenhouses. We had a bunch of potatoes sprouting from the crop we'd harvested in October of 2022 but it was still too cold and wet outside to plant them. The experiment was a success so we repeated it this winter. 

Potatoes are very susceptible to the cold and, if their leaves get frosted hard enough it can either cause the potato to form a hollow in its center, or even kill the plant outright. So, since the greens have grown above the leaf mulch, on any nights that are even approaching the freezing mark, we have blanketed them in three layers of a polyester cloth specifically designed as an agricultural "row cover"...

...followed by a tarp.

So far, so good! (Image: March 18th)

WET: As I mentioned above, rain is a normal part of a western Oregon winter! We are so incredibly grateful that we have so much of our gardens under the protection of our greenhouses (just under 3,000 sq/ft). The water line that goes from our well to the spigots in our gardens is not, however, cold-proof! At the first sign of a hard freeze (usually in late November) we have to shut off and drain the garden's water lines. This means we must rely on the collection of rainwater for our seedlings throughout the coldest part of the winter.

Chris, setting up a row of rain buckets to capture this free gift from the sky...

The buckets lined up under the drip line of our garden shed roof fill the fastest (above). Those are food-grade soy sauce buckets a friend scored from his work in a deli. The racks above are storing bamboo poles. Bamboo rots really fast if in direct contact with wet ground but otherwise will last for many years (we harvested this bamboo in 2011).

Here's a walk down memory lane! Here's the same side of our garden shed before we built the bamboo racks. Chris made the sign for our original garden site in Alpine (2009/2010).

After collecting water in the buckets we pour it into large trashcans and dip out of these to fill our watering cans. The willow branches (above) are said to add a mild 'rooting hormone' to the water which we figure probably helps all our seedlings to do well.

But, as the saying goes, "along with rain, come the rainbows!" (Actually, I've never heard that saying but it seems a good segue - teehee). Here are a few of our favorite Sharing Garden rainbows from over the years: Enjoy!

The greenhouse pictured is, fittingly, named the 'Ark'!

This picture of a double rainbow is taken from our front yard, looking north. The building behind the gorgeous fall trees is the old Methodist Church which was bought by the S. Benton Food Pantry (one of the charities we donate to) and converted to a community center.

Here's a view of the front of our house.

...and here's a rainbow that appeared over the first greenhouse we built at our current site shortly after we finished it in 2011.

And lastly, here are some seasonally relevant posts for fruit and vegetable and flower gardeners:

For vegetable growers, starting plants from seed:
Starting lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, kale and other cool weather-loving crops - from seed.
Starting Seedlings Directly in Greenhouse Raised Beds 

If you're not growing vegetables but you want to help the pollinators in your area, here's a useful post: Why growing sunflowers is great for bees...and how to grow and process sunflowers for birdseed and sprouts

If you have grape vines and need some tips on pruning:
Best Video on Pruning Table Grapes!

And lastly, a profound and moving Ted Talk video by Peter Owen Jones: Beyond Nations, Ownership and Competition

A Love Like That! Historic ice storm, Pics from the Garden and Tips for Early Spring Planting

A Love Like That! 

 

Even after all this time

the sun never says to the earth,

"You owe me."

Look what happens 

with a love like that,

it lights up the whole sky.

 

-Hafiz (a Persian poet of the 1300's)

Hello friends of the Sharing Gardens - Well, after only a minor set-back from an historic double ice-storm here in the Pacific NW, we're back on track with significant plantings of early spring crops. Here's news of the storm, pictures from the garden and links to relevant posts for this time of year. Enjoy! And happy gardening!

In mid-January, southwest Washington and northwest Oregon were hit with two back to back ice-storms and several days that didn't get above freezing, with night-time lows in the teens. Heavy, steady, freezing rain just became 2" of sheet-ice in our area. Thousands of trees and branches came down, severing power lines all over the region. We were very fortunate in that we personally only lost power long enough to prompt us to try out our new hand-operated coffee grinder (slow but perfectly adequate). We heat exclusively with wood so our house stayed nice and toasty. Thousands of households lost power for days and in some cases for over a week! 

We heat exclusively with wood and insulated the whole 1875 farmhouse when we did renovations in 2014 so we stayed plenty warm. We often cook on it too.

The wildlife really suffered. We went through over three gallons of birdseed in four days (three times our usual amount) and had to use ski poles to venture out to where we feed them so we didn't slip and fall. Many types of birds that we don't usually see at our feeders showed up including varied thrushes, quail, red winged black birds and more. 

People in our area who didn't have crampons or ski-poles made make-shift traction devices by wrapping small-link chains around their boots and attaching them with twist-ties! One friend had to venture across the frozen nightmare several times a day to feed wild mallards and geese that overwinter at her pond. Another friend tried to help the deer by spreading out apples for them but the deer were having a heck of a time moving across the ice. There was no crust to break through and gain traction...just solid ice all the way to the ground.

Birds during the ice-storm. At one point I counted over 80 before they took flight and I lost count.

This view includes a big apple tree in the middle, flanked by hazelnut trees and a lilac on the right. None of our fruit or nut trees were damaged in the storms.

Thank goodness for our greenhouses! We already had carrots started in two raised beds - which did fine through the cold. We also had also just planted two-dozen potatoes, 6" underground and under a thick cover of dry leaves. These appear to be doing fine. Their greens are just beginning to emerge from the leaves.

A beautiful sunrise following the worst of the ice storms; ground is still very icy. The greenhouse on the left is called the Sunship and the one on the right is the Ark. Chris had to knock ice off both greenhouses to be sure they didn't collapse under the weight.

Chris had already started several varieties of seeds in tofu-containers. We brought them in the house during the worst of the freeze.

We often start our seeds in tofu-containers with holes drilled in the bottom. The soil in our raised beds is perfect for just scooping into the containers for starting seeds (though sometimes we sift it for really small seeds).

Seedlings (foreground/left) we brought inside during the worst of the storms and until things were consistently warm enough to return them to the greenhouse.

All the seeds that we started before the storm have now been transplanted into bigger pots. They're suffering a little bit from lack of sunlight and are a little spindly. Even though temps rose, it's been a very overcast and drizzly/rainy winter (typical for an El Nino season). Starting seeds in January was pushing things a bit for our area but even if this first batch doesn't do so well, the later batches we've started should do fine. Starting seeds early is always a gamble but it's worth it if you have enough seeds to spare. Starting Seedlings Directly in Greenhouse Raised Beds 

Here are many of the seedlings that have been "potted up". Cabbages and kale: six per tofu container...Lettuces do really well in egg cartons (bottom/right). The roots grow right through the cartons and each seedling can just be torn off the dozen and planted directly in the soil, egg-carton and all!

Prior to the ice storm, we still managed to host a few volunteer sessions inside the greenhouses. Here, Donn and Chris are hand-digging in bags of compost (harvested from our greenhouse paths - LINK). Chris rebuilt all the GH raised beds this winter with 2x6 lumber (much of which was salvaged). The black, plastic bags on the other beds keep moisture in the soil, keep the soil temperature warmer (for microbial action) and prevent damage from UV rays. These bags will be re-used over and over again.

Suzanne, removing greens from carrots harvested from outside beds in January.

Chris planted a long bed of carrots and beets in an outside bed in Sept. It was a bit of a gamble, starting them so late but they did beautifully. We harvested 54 pounds of delicious, sweet carrots! So tender and yummy and full of minerals. We collect plastic containers with fitting lids from our community and re-purpose them for storing our harvests. (Here the carrots are in containers for salad greens).

The beets weren't quite as productive but we still got 17 pounds. They too were very sweet and tender.

With February upon us, garden tasks will shift to pruning, turning compost piles, repairs and maintenance on buildings and equipment, along with transplanting seedlings and other tasks. If you're local and thinking you'd like to join us for the coming season, here's info about our share-giver (volunteer) program: (LINK: Volunteering and Garden Location ).

Here are timely LINKS for your own early-spring planting:

Valentines Day - Time for Pea Planting! 

Sprouting potatoes? What to do.  

Can I Speed Up Potato Sprouting?  

Do I Need to Buy Seed Potatoes or Can I Just Grow Potatoes from the Grocery Store?  

Onions - Growing From Seed - deep pots  

Onions - Growing from Seed - Using heat mats and shallow pots  

And remember...If you plant it, they will come!

Sharing Gardens - Early Winter Digest

Here is a digest of all the posts we've published (or re-published) in the last six weeks. We hope there's at least one link below that interests you! We hope 2023 was  blessed for you and all the circles you touch (including the non-human ones!). May this coming year be one for all of us to embrace life-giving habits and generosity!  Llyn and Chris

What we grew/Lessons Learned: Year in Review: The 2023 season was our best year yet in anticipating the needs of our garden helpers and the food charities we serve. At the beginning of the 2023 season, we reviewed the patterns of previous years' donations and shifted our planting strategies accordingly. This post offers highlights of our learnings. What we grew/Lessons Learned: Year in Review

Starting Seedlings Directly in Greenhouse Raised Beds:  A re-published post on our experiments with starting seedlings (to be transplanted to other beds) directly in our greenhouse raised beds. This worked quite well for several crops including: lettuce, broccoli, kale, collards, onions and cabbage. They are all plants that transplant easily and will germinate in relatively cool soil. Starting Seedlings Directly in Greenhouse Raised Beds 

Full Circle Generosity: The Sharing Gardens operate on the principle of mutual- or full-circle generosity, finding ways to help each other in the community in which we live. Here are two actual examples of how this works: Full Circle Generosity - some examples... 

Gallery of Givers: Highlights from the 2023 Season: Here is a gallery of some of the year's highlights with our wonderful share-givers.  Gallery of Givers: Highlights from the 2023 Season

Tips for Maintaining a Well-Stocked Pantry: Whether you’re concerned about preparing for a natural disaster or economic hard times, or just tired of opening your cupboards and not having a variety of tasty, nutritious items to choose from, it’s always a good idea to get in the habit of stocking and maintaining one’s pantry. Here are some tips to help. Tips for Maintaining a Well-Stocked Pantry 

Wim Hof - Benefits of Cold Showers: For several years, Chris and I have been following the work of Wim Hof (affectionately know as the Iceman! - image: left). He recommends taking cold showers and ice-baths for their health and spiritual benefits. Here's a post that outlines the benefits of cold showers as well as a video interview with Wim Hof. Wim Hof - Benefits of Cold Showers  

What we grew/Lessons Learned: Year in Review

The 2023 season was our best year yet in anticipating the needs of our garden helpers and the food charities we serve. In recent years, the food pantry that shares our parking lot (SBFP - LINK) has had the "high quality problem" (haha) of an amazing surplus of fruits and vegetables being donated from local gardeners in the peak of the harvest season (typically mid-August through early October). There have been weeks when it was hard to find room on the tables for our donations!

At the beginning of the 2023 season, we reviewed the patterns of previous years' donations and shifted our planting strategies accordingly. This post offers highlights of our learnings.

Our crops fall into two main groupings: the crops we grow abundantly enough to share with charities; and the crops we grow primarily for ourselves and the Gardens' supporters.

In 2023 we grew enough of the following summer crops to share with garden supporters and charities: lettuce, cabbage, cucumbers, peppers, beets, garlic, kale, chard, collard greens and celery.  

All of these are the kinds of produce that are not typically donated in large quantities to the pantries by other gardeners. They are easy to grow, requiring minimal maintenance once they are established. They are also easy to harvest in large quantities (unlike, for example green beans, which are very labor-intensive to harvest).  (Salad-left is all from the gardens!)

In addition to these crops, there are some summer crops that we are only able to grow enough for our inner circle of participants/supporters. These include (but are not limited to): carrots, broccoli, potatoes and figs.

The Sharing Gardens also grows winter storage crops that can be distributed to our supporters and  food charities* through the fall and early winter (when other local gardeners have stopped donating). These crops we donate to charities include: cabbage*, beets*, celery*, winter squash*.

We typically grow enough of the following winter storage crops, just for our inner circle: lettuce, carrots, potatoes, dried beans, and dried corn and sorghum (for cereal and baking).

Though overall, we were very pleased with the quantities we grew of all our crops, here are a few specific notes we'll keep in mind for 2024.

A cornucopia of Sharing Gardens veggies!

Carrots and beets: Chris did a fantastic job of growing carrots and beets in succession (staggering the plantings so we almost always had some to harvest). We had enough surplus beets to share with the charities but since our sharegivers all love homegrown carrots, it's hard to grow enough to share beyond our inner circle of helpers/supporters. We'll continue to grow as many as we can but it's unlikely we'll ever have a significant surplus. (carrots (left) Imperator variety: To grow this long, they need very deep and loose soil. We grow them in our GH raised beds)

Our beets did phenomenally well this year! This variety is called "Detroit" and typically they have rather small 'greens' (not so in our case). Also, common wisdom says that you must direct sow beets where you want them to grow as they're not supposed to transplant well. We have disproven this 'common wisdom' for two summers in a row. The above beets were sown very closely together in raised, greenhouse beds and, when the greens were about 2" - 3" tall, we very carefully dug them up (being careful not to damage their tap roots). We replanted them 5-6" apart, covered them with a floating row cover (Remay) and kept them moist while they overcame transplant shock and, as you can see, they did very well! (395 pounds over the course of the whole season!)

There's just no comparison between store-bought and home-grown carrots! Our soil is highly mineralized from compost and wood-ash which makes for sweet, crisp (but not 'woody') carrots. Our share-givers and other supporters eat the carrots we grow as fast as we can grow them!

Cabbage: We had two really good green cabbage crops this year. Though cabbages averaged about 8-10 pounds (left), we had one beauty that grew to 13.5 pounds (below)! (That's the biggest one Chris has ever grown!). This fertility all came without using store-bought fertilizer or animal-based amendments (blood/bone meal etc). LINK: Making Your Own "Veganic" Potting Soil in Your Greenhouse Paths - Using Worms   We're sure, had we grown more cabbage and had a good way to store it that food charities would have been happy to distribute more of it for as long as we could have provided it. (Total pounds: green cabbage: 210 pounds, Red cabbage: 108)

Here's the queen cabbage from this year's harvests. She weighed 13.5 pounds!

I know...hard to believe, right?

This cabbage, cut up, served six families at the food pantry! (Thanks Darlene, for these wonderful pics!)

Potatoes: We had several bumper crops of potatoes.  Our big breakthrough with the potatoes was to grow some of them in the raised beds of our greenhouses. We've had problems in the past with our seed potatoes (saved from our fall harvests) breaking dormancy in January or February, when it's too early to safely plant them outside. Last winter, we had some extra space in the Sunship GH and so we planted them there. The potatoes did beautifully and we had many abundant and delicious harvests through the summer and fall (including the potatoes grown outside the greenhouses, we harvested over 400 pounds!).

I think this is the largest potato we've ever grown. I forget how much it weighed (and can't find my notes) but, wow, it was a biggie!

Other staple, storage crops we grew this year included dried blue and yellow corn (Hooker's Blue and Golden Bantam) and Kassaby sorghum.  We dry and grind these grains and use them for cereal and baking. We are now growing enough to share significant amounts with our share-givers too.  (LINKS: Grow Your Own 'Blue Corn', Grow your own Sorghum for grain and flour, ).

We grew a lot more winter-storage crops this year. Here we have Hooker's Blue and Golden Bantam corn. Both can be eaten fresh (as sweet corn), or dried and ground (we use it mainly in hot cereal). To dry, we peel the husks back and lay the cobs in the sun in our greenhouse. As the husks dry, they pulls moisture from the kernels. (Grow Your Own 'Blue Corn' )

Beans: We harvested over 50 pounds of Scarlet and Giant Greek White 'runner' beans which grow on teepees and trellises, and about 20 pounds of kidney beans which are a bush bean. We are now growing enough dried beans for all of Chris' and my personal use (we're vegetarians so that's a lot of beans!) and, for the past two years we have also grown enough dried beans to share a modest amount with our inner circle as well. Grow Your Own Protein - Scarlet Runner Beans

It's comforting to know that, with the low-tech methods we've developed, and by dedicating more of our fields to growing them, we could probably provide a significant amount of these grain and bean staples for the Garden's main participants.

Scarlet runner beans in their shells after harvest. 

Scarlet runner and Giant Greek white runner beans ready for storage. They always remind me of jewels!. Grow Your Own Protein - Scarlet Runner Beans

In 2023 we tried a new variety of winter squash (Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato Squash) that has been very popular at pantries and among our garden helpers. It has a very creamy consistency and is mildly sweet.

This is a new variety of winter squash we grew this year: Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato squash. We only grew this variety as it's in the same family as other squash we love and we wanted to be sure the seed we saved is pure. (It is in the Pepo family which also includes Delicata, zucchini, crook neck and more...). We've saved enough seed to last us for many years and to share with other growers.

In this coming year, the only significant changes to growing the winter storage crops will be to increase the amount and variety of winter squash. 

Typically, we're able to store winter squash at least through till February. So far this year we've had enough to supply our supporters and one of the three food charities we serve (Of the 594 pounds we harvested, we have about 30 pounds still in storage). Next year, we'd love to grow enough winter squash to provide for the needs of our second food pantry and the soup kitchen we serve - at least through till February too. 

We are careful to isolate squash varieties that can cross so we can save pure seed. (Above: Sweet Meat squash and seeds being rinsed; to be dried and saved).

We also had a phenomenal year for fruit. Everyone did in our area. Our apple, pear, plum and fig trees, and grape vines all produced record amounts of fruit. Food pantries were inundated! Our trees were no exception and we had plenty of apples to share with our volunteers as well as enough for our use through the winter and to make apple/quince/pear sauce (49 quarts!). We also canned over 135 quarts of fruit and veggie juice and 36 quarts of stewed tomatoes.

These are some of the canned foods we prepared this past fall: veggie juice and canned, whole tomatoes.

Speaking of tomatoes...In previous years, we've grown way too many (over 200, one year - but averaging about 100 plants)! Since this is such a popular plant for home gardeners to grow, the food charities are typically inundated with donations starting in late summer. So this year we restrained ourselves to just 44 plants. This probably should have been enough except we had a condition called blossom end rot affect about a third of them, radically reducing their productivity and we barely had enough tomatoes to make our delicious canned veggie juice. In the coming year, we're going to try growing some outside our greenhouses (like we used to), try to be more consistent in watering the ones inside, and try pruning a little less radically and see if we can increase production again.

We also will grow fewer sweet peppers (and one or two more jalapenos). We grew 16 red and yellow sweet pepper plants this year and, though we were able to distribute all we grew, the final harvest (to beat the frost) was 90 pounds! That's a lot of peppers! In 2024, we'll grow more jalapenos since the one plant we had didn't seem to fill people's desire for spicy, hot peppers! The five poblano peppers we grew seemed to be just about right. (right: Pimento red  and Gatherer's Gold yellow sweet peppers)

It has been an excellent year overall!

We hope 2023 was  blessed for you and all the circles you touch (including the non-human ones!). May this coming year be one for all of us to embrace life-giving habits and generosity!  Llyn and Chris