Heirloom Gardening, Food and Other Thoughts
This is the first year growing Heritage Sweet White Multiplier that Søren sent me. It’s just started developing topsets. Does anyone know if this is normal? The weather has been very dry here, and these have been growing in an unwatered raised bed. Is it just because they are stressed from the dryness?
Until now, all the apple trees in my garden have had white blossoms. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find some of the blossoms on my new apple trees are really very colorful. The one above is Rosemary Russet apple.
I’ve been trying some more grafts. The one above is scion wood Søren sent me of a Danish heritage variety called Filippa. I’ve grafted it to MM106 rootstock, which is the locally recommended for standard growing conditions.
Anyway, in this case I wrapped the entire scion in Parafilm tape. You can see it’s starting to bud under the tape in the middle of the picture and at the top.
Søren says he thinks he sent the scion too late, as it was already starting to break it’s winter dormancy. It’s apparently nothing to see it budding, what’s really important is if the graft heals, and this may not happen if it buds too quickly and puts all of it’s resources into new spring growth.
We shall see…
This is another scion I grafted at the same time. In this case one of my existing trees of an unnamed variety onto MM106 rootstock. If you look at this picture very closely, you can see some red spots where it’s starting to bud. It obviously worked better to wrap the whole scion in parafilm, but this seems to work too. It won’t be a big loss if this graft doesn’t take, I will just try again next year.
I planted out my very sorry looking mauka plants today. Above you can see one of what’s left of the 4 cuttings Frank gave me last fall. At one time this was a very healthy plant, even blooming at one point.
It’s a little early to be planting out, but I concluded it was the best thing to do under the circumstances. The danger of frost is probably past (but not for sure), and they weren’t doing well on my roof in their tiny containers.
The instructions Frank gave me was they needed to be over-wintered, protected from freezing and with lots of light. He said a very light windowsill would probably suffice.
I didn’t have a very light windowsill safe from my cats so for a few months, after it started freezing outside, I kept them under a growlight. In order to save electricity, the light was on 12 hours a day, what I thought was probably the minimum possible. They were in a room that was part of my house, but otherwise not directly heated. The temperature was probably between 5-15C for most of the winter. Probably colder at night when the light wasn’t on.
I didn’t know it at the time, but cool temps and short day-length are the perfect conditions to trigger flowering with this plant that’s very hard to get to produce seeds.
Owen got a few flowers on his plants as well.
While it did flower, I had to move them outdoors. They had an aphid infestation I couldn’t risk spreading to other plants, and I needed the space to start my 2010 seedlings. In the end, the flowers faded and I didn’t get any seeds.
Frank gave me 4 cuttings, and it was all arranged on short notice. I could only find 3 containers to plant them in, all a little smaller than Frank recommended, and one of the containers ended up with 2 cuttings. It fared the worst of the lot, and you can see it above after transplanting.
On the right you can see one of the plants started developing a tuber (next to the bug that walked into the picture). None of the others showed any signs of tubers yet. Both of these plants lost all of their leaves, but you can see the one on the left is starting to bud new foliage.
Frank grew this last year and said the tubers really tasted very special. These are one of the Lost Crops of the Incas plants. Hopefully they’ll recover from my neglect, and I’ll get some tubers this year…
It’s allium season!
Of course you can have alliums most of the year but this is what’s mostly been coming out of the garden lately. Boy do they taste good! I’ve started to notice my garden is getting especially full of perennial alliums. Can you ever have too many alliums?
Now for the tour…
This is a new bed I’ve started this year, so it’s not very full yet. In the front left I have the Utrecht Onion (local version of Allium dictuon) and the right is the Amish Onion. In the middle left are a few plants of what I call Afghani Leek, because I got them from an Afghani gardener a few gardens down, but I think these are allium currat. On the right is Mc Cullar’s White Onion, that I got from Stephen (stevil) in Norway last year, and directly behind that is allium ceruum or knodding onion also from Stephen and finally in the back left are Cook’s Multiplier also from Stephen.
While we’ve been eating both the Amish Onion and the Utrecht Onion already this year, the others will have to wait a few years before we have enough to both grow and eat.
In the back of this bed is Heritage Sweet White Multiplier from Søren, but originally from Paquebot in Wisconsin. In the front are klimt shallots from Frank in Belgium, just starting to poke through the straw.
Here are the two victory onions I got several years ago from Søren. They are really great, but haven’t been multiplying very much and all we’ve been doing is eating the leaves from time to time. I’ve been growing them in tubs on our roof. I think this year I have to try moving them to the garden, and see if they do better there.
These are He Shi Ko Bunching Onion from Baker Creek. I just bought and planted these, and don’t know a lot about them.
I guess these don’t look a lot different from all the other pictures of onions here, but these are Egyptian Walking Onions. I got these from Salt Spring Seeds in Canada years ago, and they’ve been going great.
Finally, these are a few of my roughly 1000 bulbs of garlic I grow each year. I currently have about 60 varieties.
Can you tell I like onions and garlic? Does anyone have anything else I might want, and want to trade??
Amsterdam is to have an underground farmers market! At an as yet undisclosed location in the city center, on 16 May. Homemade jam, cheese, and sausages are all promised, as well as a wonton making demo. Goat cheese bonbons! Possibly live music!
It’s really a problem in Amsterdam that small producers have little chance of participating in the city’s markets. All stall holders have to pay a fee, which is too big of an obstacle for many potential vendors. There are also organizations that run the city’s markets with implicit and explicit rules, about what’s allowed or not allowed to be sold and at what price. It’s very normal to go to a city market, and be faced with every stall selling virtually the same thing at the same price and almost none of it having been grown by the farmer themselves.
I hope this underground market goes some way towards breaking up these cartels which don’t benefit any consumers and not very many small farmers.
