Make a Quilt from Old Fleeces

Ever since my son was born, I've saved many of his fleece sweatshirts, thinking one day I could make a quilt out of them--a nice reminder of all the times I hugged him when he was wearing those warm, cozy fleeces. I finally got out my pile of fleeces and started working.

I decided to make each quilt piece about 6 1/2 inches square, and I made a template out of some stiff cardboard so I wouldn't have to measure each one--just lay the template on the fabric, go around it with a sharpie marker, and cut.

It's easier if you put the fleece over the end of an ironing board, then lay the template on and trace.

If the fleece has an image on it that you like, the template makes it easy to make that the center of your square:

And if the fleece has stripes or other designs, you can cut your square to include them:

You can cut the sleeves open along the seam; most of the time you can get at least one square from them.

I also cut some squares that included pockets: who says you can't have a pocket in a quilt?

Next phase: sew them all together, and find something to use for backing.

Growing Cranberries from Seed

I love cranberries, and last year I got curious about how they grow. I decided to save some berries out of the bag I bought to make Thanksgiving cranberry sauce. I cut them open and picked out all the tiny seeds. Then I put the seeds in a prescription vial that was filled with damp peat moss, and left the vial in the refrigerator all winter so that the seeds could "stratify." This exposure to cold and damp is necessary before most seeds of cold-climate plants will sprout.

Over the winter, I looked around the Internet for info on growing cranberries from seed. There isn't very much, since most people who want to grow them simply buy plants that have been propagated from existing varieties. But seeds, like people, are a genetic mixup and plants grown from seed would be different from the parents as well as different from each other. I thought it would be interesting to see what variations I would find in a batch of plants grown from seed.

I found conflicting information about the temperatures the seeds needed to sprout. Some sources said they needed warm temperatures and other said to keep them cool. Another source said that variation in temperature was important. Every source said they needed acidic, sandy soil, and the professional database I consulted noted that the seeds must be exposed to light in order to sprout--so they should not be buried, but left on the surface.

I mixed equal parts of sand and peat moss, put it in a pot, and sprinkled the seeds on top:

This seemed like it would make the seeds dry out too much, so I enclosed the entire pot in a plastic bag to keep in the moisture, and put it out in the yard, where it would go through a variety of temperatures.

Now it's time to wait. If this doesn't work, then I'll keep researching it and try again next year. My yard is not exactly great cranberry habitate, so If I get any plants, I'll plant them upstate on some land owned by my family.

For more info on growing cranberries, go to http://www.mofga.org/Publications/MaineOrganicFarmerGardener/Winter20042005/Cranberries/tabid/1278/Default.aspx

Growing Beach Plums and Other Plants from Seed

Buying plants in pots is expensive, but collecting seeds is free, so last fall I decided to save seeds from a variety of plants so I could try growing them. Most seeds from plants that grow wild in our climate need a period of "stratification." This means exposure to moisture and cold, and it simulates the environment a seed would encounter in nature, once it fell off the mother plant and went through winter. Most seeds will not sprout until after this, which makes sense: if a seed sprouted without stratification, it would sprout in the fall and then the young plant would be killed by the arrival of winter. Much better to wait until spring, then sprout.

I looked up ways to stratify seeds at home. Most of the info I found mentioned putting the seed into moist peat moss in a ziploc and leaving it in the refrigerator for a month or more. Other sources said you could use paper towels, but I was afraid the bleach or other chemicals in the paper towels would affect the seeds, so I used peat moss.

I collected seeds from beach plums, beach roses, and elderberry bushes that were growing in the wild. (I also collected seed from goji berries and seed from cranberries I bought at the grocery store, but I'll describe those in another post).

I put it in bags of peat moss last October, and stuck it in my fridge.

Today I took out the packages of seeds. The seeds had grown much plumper, and some of the beach plum seeds had begun to sprout:

One difficulty with the "peat moss in a bag" system is that with smaller seeds, it can be difficult to find the seeds when it's time to plant. If the seeds are small, it's easier to fill a prescription bottle with dampened peat moss and put the seeds in that:

Then you have far less material to go picking through, looking for tiny seeds.

Today I mixed equal amounts of sand (free, from the beach) and topsoil, filled pots with the mix, and planted several seeds in each pot. Then I put them outside, since it's warming up now. And now I'll wait to see what happens. If they grow, I'll plant some in my yard, and plant the others in random places around town: part of my "stealth wild edible plants" program. I plant native edible plants in places where they belong, or won't be noticed: scrubby woods, edges of roads, the back ends of parks where things have been allowed to grow wild and no one cuts the grass. Maybe other foragers will find them, or the birds might like the fruits; it's just a way of creating a little bit more nature here on the Island.

Update: This is for Bill, who asked what the bush looks like:

The easiest way to find beach plums is to go around in spring and look for them when they're flowering; then later in the summer you can come back and look for the fruit. This year (2013) I'll take some photos of the flowering bushes to help you know what to look for.

Forsythia Is Evil!

Today was a bright, clear day, the kind of day before things leaf out, when you can go out in the yard and see how all the bushes are doing. Every year, around this time, I consider ripping out the forsythia hedge and replacing it with something else, even though it hasn't even bloomed yet. Maybe a hedge of some kind of bush that makes edible berries. Blueberry hedge! How great that would be.

I love forsythia in other people's yards. I love when I'm driving around, or running, and I go past a fence and see long wands of bright yellow waving over the top of it. It's as if the forsythia is saying, "You can't contain me! Whee, I'm free!" It's like hot yellow fireworks and it always makes me happy.

Except when it's in my yard. The blossoms are still pretty, but they don't last long and the bush itself is a pain. It still says "You can't contain me!" and I can't. It seems like every time I'm not looking at it, which is most of the year, it sneakily grows a few more feet. Then suddenly one day I realize that my tomatoes and beans are in deep shade: there is a 20-foot-high forsythia hedge looming over them and stealing all the sunlight.

In addition to shading my entire yard if I let it, it's also a terrorist haven for the most evil of plants. Poison ivy loves to hide among the forsythia branches, and I can never find it all to get rid of it, so every time I prune I end up itching all over, pus running down my arm or leg from a massive poison ivy blister. Next time I go near that hedge, I'm wearing a biohazard suit.

A couple of months ago the renters next door moved, and the landlords brought over a landscaping crew to decimate the yard while the house was empty. They launched a full-scale assault on the half of my forsythia that had grown up on their side of the fence. They really whacked it. I was thrilled!
Now it's actually under control, and my garden will have full sun this summer--until it grows back.

Free Mulch!

Here on the Island, we have free mulch, but no one knows about it.

All you have to do is go to a local beach, preferably one near a marsh, in the spring. In springtime all of last year's salt hay, or marsh grass, breaks off and floats around in the water. After a storm, it washes up in huge piles on the beach. In the old days, people collected it for mulch.

The marsh without the marsh grass: it's all broken off and floated away to a nearby beach. In the summer it will grow back and this will be a sea of tall green grass that ripples in the wind.

You can buy salt hay, or straw that companies call salt hay (even though it isn't--it's usually oat straw), and it is expensive. But there's no reason to pay for it, since it's free on our beaches--you just have to do the work of picking it up and hauling it home.

I'm sure that if it was left lying on the beach, it would fulfill some role in the ecosystem: as it decomposed, it would provide nutrients to the marsh, or food for tiny water creatures. It's not left lying on the beach, though, because the town sends guys with trucks to clean the beach every spring, and they gather it up and throw it into huge dumpsters. So, I don't feel bad taking some, since they're only going to use it to add to a landfill.

I use it as a mulch, layering six inches or more around all my plants, using the "lasagna gardening" system. Last year I had huge tomato plants and not one weed--none of them could come up through the layers of marsh hay. I also didn't have to water much, because the mulch kept the soil evenly moist.

This year I just missed the gathering time--the town workers beat me to it, and one day when I drove by the beach I saw those huge dumpsters loaded with salt hay. The next day, they were gone. Today I went to that beach and saw that the guys had left a few piles behind--and you can bet I'll be over there with my giant plastic bags as soon as I'm off work!

Garlic is up!

The garlic I planted last October is shooting up after the big rain we had yesterday:

This is a softneck garlic, called "Chinese Pink." I got the bulbs from Territorial Seed--a great company.

This is a very early garlic that should be ready to harvest by May. After I dig it up, that section of the garden will be available for other vegetables--most likely tomatoes. You can never have too many tomato plants!

Growing Asparagus from Seed

One of my garden experiments this year is growing asparagus from seed. It'll be a few years before I can harvest any asparagus spears, but hey, I'm patient. Also, I have previously bought "crowns," which are asparagus roots that are a year or two old, but they were so dried out from sitting around in the store that most of them died. I've heard that when you grow your own crowns from seed, they're much more vigorous and likely to succeed.

There are two basic kinds of asparagus you can grow: all-male varieties, or varieties that have male and female plants. Asparagus, like people, comes in male and female forms. The female plants make berries that contain the seeds. The male plants don't have to spend any energy making these berries, so they typically make more spears. Plant scientists have developed all-male varieties for more production, but the older, heirloom kinds have both male and female plants. Most gardening books advise you to pull up the female plants before they make seeds, otherwise the seeds will fall off, germinate in the soil next to the parent plant, and crowd the asparagus bed.

Despite this warning, I decided to plant an old male/female variety, "Precoce d'Argenteuil," that is originally from France. This makes thick, purple-tinged spears. Some people cover them while they're growing to produce white asparagus. I chose this variety because it sounded interesting, and I actually wanted a variety that would produce seeds so that, if I wanted to, I could collect them and give them to friends or otherwise spread them around, without having to rely on plant scientists or garden stores. More asparagus! For free! Always a good thing.

In the Midwest, where I grew up, I often found wild asparagus growing along riversides and in fields. During a period in my life when I was young and poor, I ate a lot of it because it was free and delicious. Another time, while backpacking in Virginia, during a resupply stop in a town, I found a vacant lot full of it and amazed other hikers by coming back to camp with an armload of free, fresh spears for everyone to share.

I figure if I have my own source of asparagus seeds, I can be a Johnny Appleseed of asparagus, planting my extra seeds in out-of-the-way places around the Island, where it will become wild. I've actually seen some wild asparagus growing along the roadside near my house already.

So, at the end of January, I soaked 30 asparagus seeds, which I got from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (www.rareseeds.com) in water overnight. The next day I poked holes in the bottom of an aluminum pie pan for drainage, filled it with seed starting mix, and planted the asparagus seeds 1/2 inch deep, about an inch apart.

29 of the seeds germinated and within a few weeks I had this:

The ferns are 6-8 inches tall. Today I watered them, filled plastic cups with more seed-starting mix, and carefully transplanted each one to its own cup. Their roots were 2-3 inches long already. Later in the spring I'll plant them in a bed.

Some people say you should plant them in a "nursery bed" for a year before moving them to their final location a year later; others say you can plant them in their final location right away. I'll have to look into that more before I plant them.

While writing this, I just had an idea: maybe this year I'll keep an eye on those wild plants near me, and collect their seeds. Then next year, I'll grow them. Just to see what happens, and what kind of asparagus it is.

Update, February 27, 2013

Those little plants grew and thrived. I did plant them in a nursery bed, which was just a corner of one of my regular garden beds, and let them grow for a year. Then last year I planted them in a permanent bed, which I enriched with a lot of compost, aged manure, and leafmold. They were incredibly strong and healthy and grew huge ferns over the summer! I'm hoping to be able to harvest a few spears from them this year.

I started more asparagus seeds this year by winter-sowing them, and I hope to nurture those plants and eventually plant them out in the wild, where they will hopefully prosper and spread.

Growing Artichokes from Seed

This year I'm experimenting with trying to grow some unusual veggies and fruits. Artichokes usually grow in much warmer places than Long Island, but I did some looking around on the net and found an article about growing them in Connecticut:

http://www.ct.gov/caes/lib/caes/documents/publications/fact_sheets/forestry_and_horticulture/how_to_grow_globe_artichokes_in_connecticut.pdf

I figure if people can grow them in Connecticut, I can grow them in Long Island, where it's a little warmer.

I ordered seeds from Fedco, a seed company in Maine, which only sells seeds for plants that thrive in cold climates. "Imperial Star Globe Artichoke" is especially good in cool places.

Following the instructions I got from the net, at the end of January I soaked the seeds in room-temperature water for two days to soften the seed coat, then "stratified" them for a month. Stratification imitates the cool, wet weather that a seed would normally go through in nature after falling off the parent plant. In my kitchen, I wrapped the presoaked seeds in damp (not wet) paper towels, rolled up the paper towels and put them in a sealed ziploc, and left them in the fridge for a month.

A month later I took the bag out and examined the seeds. They were swollen but not yet sprouting, so I figured the fridge was too cold for them and left the sealed bag on the kitchen counter at room temperature for two days. This is what I got:

The seeds are starting to sprout. I poked drainage holes in the bottom of quart-size yogurt containers, filled them with seed-starting mix, and put them in a sunny window:

Now we'll see what happens. According to the Connecticut instructions, once they have four leaves I can put them outside in the hoophouse, covering them only when there is a chance of frost. In Mid-May I'll take them out of their cups and transplant them to my yard. Where in the yard, I have no idea, since the yard is so small, but I'll figure that out later!

Harvesting Salad Greens all Winter

Last fall I built a small "hoop house" with PVC pipe and plastic sheets from the hardware store.  A hoop house is a mini greenhouse, and they are easy and cheap to build. If you Google "hoop house PVC" you will find many plans for every possible size and garden situation.

The PVC pipe is white plastic pipe that comes in 10-foot lengths, and I used the 1/2 inch diameter pipe. The plastic sheets are the kind that people use as dropcloths when they paint, the thickest ones I could find. The sheets aren't clear, they're translucent white, and at first I was worried that they wouldn't let in enough light, but they did just fine.

Last September, inspired by the book "Four Season Harvest" by Eliot Coleman, I planted kale, parsley, carrots, onions, arugula, and some unusual greens like mache and miner's lettuce. When it got cold I put the plastic sheet on. I had fresh greens from about October onward, and was picking salads until the beginning of January.

In January it started to snow, and snow, and snow. We had the snowiest, coldest, iciest winter I've ever seen on Long Island. The hoophouse got covered with snow and ice and partially collapsed. I figured everything in it was probably dead.

A few days ago, after all the snow finally melted, I got around to opening it and this is what I found:

I just stood there in awe: it was like a little piece of permanent spring. The plants were totally untouched by the winter, even though they had just gone through six weeks of ice, snow, and below-zero temperatures in an unheated, snowed-under, unwatered plastic cave.

This is a view of half of the hoop house: kale, arugula, green onions, and mache. The other side was filled with parsley and carrots. I had never had homegrown carrots before and they were amazing, with a tender crunchiness and delicate flavor--they almost tasted perfumed, like Earl Grey tea. The baby kale was so tender and fresh, I made soup with it right away!

Next fall, I'm making an even bigger hoop house, one big enough to walk into (and since my yard is so small, it will take up half my front yard). Imagine in the winter, being able to walk into that sweet, fresh place, filled with the smell of fresh greens. And a big plus of winter gardening: no weeds, and no bugs!

Seed Starting Time

You don't need to buy expensive containers or special "grow lights" to start seeds at home. All you need are some yogurt cups, plastic cups, or other containers, and some cheap fluorescent lights from the hardware store. I buy lights that cost about $10 and duct-tape them to the underside of a set of old shelves. Then I pile up books to a height that is close to the lights but leaves enough room for the containers, put a foil pan on top of the books, and fill it with seedlings in cups. These are heirloom tomatoes called "Omar's Lebanese Tomato."

You want the seedlings to be within a couple of inches of the lights. As they grow and get taller, just take out some of the books under them and lower them away from the lights. When they get too big for the containers they're in, transplant them to bigger containers, or to the garden if it's warm enough.

Another great, free seed-starting container is the clear kind with a lid. Tomatoes, berries, lettuce, and other produce come in these. Just wash, fill with seed starting mix, and plant your seeds.

The containers usually have holes that provide just enough ventilation while still keeping the seeds in a moist, humid atmosphere when the lid is closed:

Happy gardening!