New Team

We've got a new batch of chicks joining the Gap Mountain Garden Team.  They arrived on July 9th from mypetchicken.com and have been growing like weeds ever since!

We originally ordered 5 but sadly, a silver-laced wyandotte did not survive the trip.  We're left with 4 and actually, that is the perfect size for our small family and home.  The roster includes:  a golden-laced wyandotte, speckled sussex, silver marans and a dominique.  The dominique is a rising favorite for her super laid back attitude.  The sussex is a close second for her uncurable curiosity.  The other two act like you're trying to murder them when you walk into the room.  I guess no matter how much handling you do, some will just always be nervous.

These ladies are ready to head to their outside home.  We're just waiting for a dry day to finish our coop upgrades and repairs.   Relentless rains have slowed progress for most everything this summer.

June Blooms

HipHops

We're into our second year with the hops grow and we're excited to bear witness to the formation of our first flowers and cones!  Our 'Cascade' vines were the first to get going this year.  They have a prime spot in the front flower bed and they climb up our tall porch posts.

Cascade hops

After last year's derecho-pocalypse storm, we lost many of the 'Nugget' babies that we planned to plant in the new trellised hops bed.  Not to worry though, these plants are just begging to propagate themselves, so I overwintered several cuttings indoors and planted them out this spring.

Nugget hops

We also planted two new varieties from rhizomes this year -- 'Magnum' and 'Perle'.  We're hoping to do a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone for a forthcoming brew and these are critical ingredients.

I have a serious plant crush on these hops vines.  They're beautiful in every way!

See?  Told ya so.

Grand Canyon Garden

Earlier this spring, I had the supreme pleasure of joining my parents and a good friend on an epic journey to the bottom of the Grand Canyon (and back to the top!) on foot.  There are no words suitable enough to describe the beauty contained within those canyon walls.  A trip to the rim, although amazing in and of itself, just does not afford you access to all the secrets that this amazing place has to share.  What got me the most though, as you might imagine, was the plant life.  April seems to the best time for catching the canyon in bloom.  Do yourself a favor and GO THERE!

"April is the Cruelest Month"

....so says T.S. Eliot... and so says me.  This month has always given me the heebie jeebies.  For a few years, it seemed like all bad things tended to happen during this tumultuous time.  Thankfully, life has calmed down recently but I always seem to be bracing myself when April comes around.  Always expecting the worst.

The worst that has happened this year is that winter has pretty much failed to turn to Spring.  Hey - if this is as bad as it gets, I'll take it a million times over.  As I type this though, it is snowing outside.  SNOWING.  Again.  Heavily.  Not what I had planned for April in Virginia.  The cold weather crops will just have to patiently wait in the greenhouse for now.

What can one do in such dire circumstances you ask??

Drink homebrew, of course!

Thankfully it turned out drinkable!  Round two of beer brewing will commence soon.  This time we'll try the Shining Star Pale Ale from Northern Brewer.  After this next batch, I'm on the hunt for a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone.  

Vernal Snowquinox

Snow on daffodils?

Really, spring?

Sweet Slip Success

I've been growing sweet potatoes for just a few years now and have enjoyed them immensely.  This past year provided a solid stash of taters that we're still eating from just a week shy of the Spring Equinox.  It has been incredibly satisfying.  They have stored very well this time around.  Thankfully, our basement is not heated and hovers around 50F all winter.  Apparently, this is the perfect temperature.  I don't have any rotting or wilting sweet spuds to speak of. 

I was very careful when digging them this year.  Not many injuries to the skins and I held off on removing any dirt.  I stored them in large bins in single layers separated by newspaper.  We still have several layers to work through.  For the first time, several of the stored sweet potatoes put out sprouts.  I've tried, for several years to grow my own 'slips' from the previous years' harvest and have failed miserably.  I tried the kindergarden style toothpick method in a glass of water.  Also, the planting of the potato in the sand.  I've also tried just putting them in regular potting soil.  I was met with rot every single time.  This year, things were looking good since we had sprouts.  I tried the kindergarden method again but without the toothpicks, and it worked like a charm.  Mind you, it took several weeks in a warm greenhouse to get that sucker growing, but it did.

The stem grew long enough that I was able to take two cuttings and left a few inches on the sweet potato so that it could grow out some more.  The cuttings are rooting in a glass of water now.  I will plant those once they root and allow them to grow out a bit.  Once I have a full plant (closer to our June planting time), I will take cuttings again and allow them to root.  These will be the 'slips' that I plant out into our garden.

I'm very excited and our local garden center probably will be too.  I'm THAT customer that calls them almost daily in late spring to find out if/when their slip shipment will arrive.  They're a HOT item in our area and they move quickly, so it's easy to miss out.  Many online sources for slips are just insanely expensive so I was determined to make this happen on my own.

I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch, but things are looking good for another excellent sweet tater year!

Sweet potato sprout (post-cuttings)

Spring Forward....

This past Sunday, we entered into DAYLIGHT SAVING time (please note the lack of the 's' at the end of saving - it's one of my weird pet peeves!  There is no 'S', people!).  Anyhow, sorry....yes....Daylight Saving time.  Hoorah!  Anyone who likes to do things outside knows how great this moment is.  No more racing home after work to catch the last seconds of daylight.  We've got a little buffer now.  Last I checked, the globe of fire was still casting beams at 7ish!  Yes!

As if we found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, our first day of Daylight Saving was coupled with amazing weather.  Highs in the 60's and blue skies.  Oh me oh my.  I was able to get out and get my hands dirty in the garden for the first time this year.  Butterfly bushes and grasses got haircuts, the overwintered and neglected spinach got a clean-up and a reapplication of row cover, weeds were pulled (weeds!  even in winter!) and volunteer garlic and onions were neatly rearranged.  Also, (and I will pay for this later) I removed the dead tomato skeletons that I was too lazy to take down in the fall.  Serious fail.  I'm sure the tomato area is now a harbor for disease - namely blight.  You see, my vines were all twist tied to the cattle panel - which, by the way, worked GREAT - and it seemed to be an insurmountable task in the fall when I was busy traveling overseas for work and prepping for presentations at national meetings, etc...  Then the holidays hit and then it snowed and then....here we are.

But regardless, a beautiful First Day of Gardening was had, and it was finished with a Mike's Lemonade.  The traditional post-work beverage of choice for the warmer months.  Scandalously sweet but quite refreshing after a long, dirty day.  Yes!

In other news, all of the chickens are dead.  The perpetrator has been located.  Owner has said he would tie up said perp and the news on the street is that he has most certainly NOT made an attempt to do so.   The saga continues.  We miss the chickens very much.  On the last and final murderous day, one of the ladies had left us a final gift...an egg...after several months of no eggs...quite frustrating.  To add insult to murder, the egg was crushed in the attack.  One final blow.  We will rebuild, but we need to get this situation under control first.

And so, I leave you for now with some things that are happening in the warmth of a greenhouse....

Beer - Part II

Sunday was IPA bottling day at the Gap Mountain Garden.  Our brew was moved from the fermenting bucket to the priming tank for the addition of more sugars.  The yeasties be hungry!  Then to the bottle this liquid goodness went.  Tastes were tested and we deemed this beverage to be 'BEER'.  It still has a way to go but I think there's a good chance this will be drinkable in the end.  WIN!

 

Gap Mountain IPA  :)

What's brewin'?

We received a wonderfully generous gift from some great friends over the holidays.  Our very first official beer brewing kit from Williams Brewing in San Leandro, CA.

I have always wanted to brew beer and when I became obsessed with growing hops last year, I knew it was time to make it happen.  Our friends, knowing our tastes in beer, correctly ordered us the American IPA.  After a couple of snafus (3-day winter power outage and confusion about whether the brew pot could be aluminum or if it should be stainless steel) we got her going this past weekend. 

 

Hopefully we got it all right.  True to my virgo nature, I spent a fair amount of time sanitizing everything with a bleach solution.  Everything.  Stovetop, countertop, microwave (why, I don't know - because it was near the stovetop?), utensils, buckets, brew pots, etc...  As I mentioned, there was some initial confusion about the pot in which to boil the wort.  A lot of people say aluminum is a no-no.  That was frustrating because my large pressure canner pot is aluminum.  The idea of using that was nixed.  We ended up using the water bath canner.  It's made of steel and has a ceramic coating.  I checked on several home brew forums and found this to be a suitable choice for the first-go.  If we're really excited about brewing again, we'll think about investing in a large stainless steel stock pot - $$$!!   After all of my reading, I started seeing some opposing viewpoints.  Figures.  Suddenly, it was okay to use aluminum if you didn't try to clean it with a cleaner like Oxiclean.  Apparently that will release some offensive tastes into your brew.   Everyone has an opinion.  Which is the right one?  Jury is still out.

The water bath canner was barely big enough.  Our biggest fear was a boil over which is common when you first add the malt extract.  All went well though, no scorching on the bottom of the thin pot and no boil over mess to clean up.  

The hops were wonderfully aromatic.  It makes me very eager to use my own home grown hops in the next batch!  Fingers crossed that we'll get a harvest this year.

We have no idea if this will be successful or not.  All I can tell you now is that this stuff has taken on a life of it's own in the fermenting bucket.  Lots of urps and burbs and bubbles going on.  I suppose that's a good sign.  AND - it smells like beer.  Yes!

Chicken Massacre

Sadness has fallen upon the Gap Mountain Garden.  Our chicken Fort Knox turned out to be not so Fort Knoxy.  After a year and a half we had our first break-in and it was tragic.  I arrived home from a walk with the dogs Wednesday afternoon.  Our normal path comes up our back property and past the hen house.  As I approached, I saw that something was amiss.  The hoop run was fully dented in from the top and there was an eerie silence across the yard.  As I approached, I noticed feathers.  And then the head of our timid little Golden-laced Wyandotte (damn she was pretty!).  And then her leg.  When I finally got to the coop I saw that our Light Brahma was still inside of the coop (unable to get to the run because the structure had caved in and blocked access).  She was clearly stressed and I understood why.  She just saw her 3 roomates butchered right in front of her. 

I examined the structural fail more closely.  I felt guilty that my design had not held off the predator.  It had worked so well up until now.  Not one incident.  I noticed some small footprints and nail marks where it had dug into the structure.  I'm suspsecting a hungry raccoon.  The bad thing was that this happened in broad daylight.  The husband had let the chickens out of the coop that morning and served up some cracked corn.  All was in order.  By 5pm though, things were very, very wrong.  This was a bold raccoon - although I can't blame him or her.  There's not usually a lot of human activity in our holler during the day.  He or she was free to do what they wanted without interruption.

I closed up the coop as best I could as daylight was waning.  I locked up the Brahma, and hoped for the best.  Fingers crossed that she would still be there in the morning.  If so, I would spend more time securing the run.  At 10pm we let the dogs out into their yard for one last bathroom break.  Our greyhound, Copper was very interested in the corner of the run right outside of our door.  To my extreme surprise, she had sniffed out our new (for 2012) Speckled Sussex we dubbed 'Special'.  I was surprised to see that she was still alive (against my better judgement, I had become fond of her).  Poor gal was huddled in the corner, roosting on a plastic chair - she was obviously rattled.  I picked her up and checked her out and she had been pretty roughed up in the tail area.  Most of her feathers were gone and there were some scratches.  It seemed like she would be okay though.  We brought her out to the coop to join the Brahma.  I think they were relieved to see each other....as was I.  We only had 4 chickens.  I wasn't too sure what I was going to do with just one. 

I'm still not sure these girls are through the woods.  After closer inspection, I noticed that the brahma was fairly mangled too.  Neither have been interested in their cracked corn over the past two days though they are drinking water.  I'm hoping for the best.  In the meantime, I'll be back at the coop this weekend making sure things are more secure.  Thank goodness for forcasted temperatures in the 70's on Gap Mountain (in January!).

Chicken farmin' ain't easy.....