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Perennial Rye

Here’s a tray of perennial rye, part of Tim Peters perennial grains project.  Over the last few days I’ve been busy planting this out in the garden.  In part because it’s known this seed has a lower than average rate of germination, I’ve started it in the containers above before setting it out.

Like is pretty normal for me, I’m late.  Not only am I a bit late in the season, Tim says July or August is better, but in this case I’m also a year late.  I missed getting it out last year, because I was too busy.  This of course means everyone else doing this project will likely be a year ahead of me.

Since it’s a perennial plant, in fact it doesn’t really matter I’m a little late.  It will grow back again next year anyway.  The reason for getting it in a little earlier than I did was because the plants need to store up energy this year, in order to produce seed next year.  Because I’m late, I risk a lower seed harvest next year.

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Strawberry Disappointment

The first ears of Strawberry popcorn in my garden are drying out.  They look really exciting!  The ears are small, but they are suppose to be.  They have a nice rich red color.

The kernels are also small, even though this close-up makes them look big.  The parts that were in the cob are white, and the outside parts are the red color.  Getting them off the cob was quite fiddly and tedious work.  The reason may be because they were still a little bit moist.  Even though the seeds were hard enough not to be damaged as they were removed, they were still a little stuck.

I put about 50g into my hot air popper.  They whirled around, made lots of noise — smelled fantastic!  The smell was like hot buttered sweet corn!

But this is what came out!  You can see they only popped a little bit, if at all.  The next time I try, I will let them dry out a little more, but I wonder if that was really the problem.

Anyone have any suggestions?

The taste by the way, even half popped, was fantastic.  No real need for extra butter or salt, the taste was rich enough all by itself.

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Gold of Bacau

This bean I’m growing this year came from Søren, called Gold of Bacău.  Søren gave me the seeds two years ago, but last year I only grew it in order to save more seeds.  This year I’m growing it to eat, and the glut has begun!  I have 6 poles of this bean, and it’s more than the 2 of us can eat especially considering we’re growing other beans too.  It was pretty much my earliest pole bean, of the roughly 20 varieties I have this year.  Most of the others I’m growing for seeds or as a trial.

It’s a Romanian bean.  It has a very nice taste.  I’m not a big fan of wax beans, and the taste of this is really something different.  The texture is very soft, but still crisp and not mushy.  Mostly the beans are yellow, but as you can see in the picture sometimes they are a little streaked with green, probably because I picked them a little early.  They mature from green to yellow.

This bean will become a regular feature of my garden, at least for now.  I will certainly want to grow it again.  Does anyone know of other similar beans?  It might be nice to compare and contrast them.

Update:  Someone asked me what the seeds look like.  Here’s a picture:

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Black Alder and Companion Planting

I’ve posted before about my black alder trees.  I’m really pleased with them, and I thought it was time for an update.  They are now almost 2 years old, and I think I’m just really starting to see some of the benefits.

They are nitrogen fixing trees, meaning they put nitrogen into the ground as they grow.  Many gardeners plant beans or peas for this reason, but the difference with a nitrogen fixing tree is it is perennial so it keeps growing and it’s also large and deep rooted, so it fixes a lot of nitrogen deep into the ground.  Black alders are also a native species for me, which is an important reason why I choose it and like it.  Now that I know what I’m looking for, I see them in a lot of wild places.

It’s a tree, which means if you let it grow it will get huge.  I don’t do that.  As well as getting big, it doesn’t mind being severely cut back.  Whenever I think it’s getting on the large side or it’s in the way, I just whack off as much as I want and it cheerfully grows back.  About the size you see in this picture is what I generally find best, a slightly overgrown stump.

By cutting it back, it also helps it release it’s nitrogen into the ground.  By cutting leaves and branches off the top, it causes some of it’s roots to die and rot, and so release nitrogen.  Also, by cutting the tree back around the time it’s trying to produce seeds, it prevents it from putting resources into producing seeds and so consuming some of the nitrogen it already fixed.  It also keeps it from producing too many weeds.

By now a number of these trees are becoming well established, and they are making a noticeable difference to their surroundings.  At the beginning they caused a bit of a weed problem, because they were fixing nitrogen close to the surface.  As they became established, they fix nitrogen much deeper, meaning there was no immediate weed problem and the overall improvement in soil health of the area meant fewer weeds in general.  I would say however the benefits of the trees are not seen much beyond a meter or 2 from the tree itself.

One of the things I decided to experiment with was companion planting my garlic with some black alder trees.  I had little choice in fact, because the trees were established were it was time to rotate the garlic crop too.  Rather than removing the trees, I decided to see how it went.

Normally garlic, and alliums in general, are considered companion ‘enemies’  to nitrogen fixing plants.  They tend to stunt one another’s growth.  What I found was quite the opposite.  I couldn’t really say if the alder’s growth was stunted, as they grow pretty fast regardless, but the garlic planted near the trees developed quite large and healthy bulbs.  I guess because the roots of the alder are so deep, there’s little or no conflict between the plants.

I’m so happy with the alders in fact, this winter I’m going to try to buy some more.  I found them before on a local EBay equivalent for €1 per tree, and I’m going to see if I can find the same thing again.  I guess I have 20 or so trees, and I would like to double that number.  In particular, I would like to plant new trees in poorer parts of my garden, and perhaps remove some of the larger trees that are getting a little in the way by now and aren’t needed any more.

If you want to try something similar in your garden, I suggest looking for a native species that fixes nitrogen.  There are quite a number of possibilities.  By getting a native species, you know the plant will grow and thrive but at the same time not naturalize and turn into an invasive weed.  In some climates, the black alder is considered invasive.

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Sunflowers

This is certainly the year for sunflowers at our community gardens.  It seems like everyone is growing them.  I don’t remember seeing so many in past years.  Kathy was just talking about this too.

I’m growing them too.  In fact I’m growing a variety called Titan, that’s in the Guinness Book of World Records as producing the largest recorded Sunflower.  In fact the plant was grown not too far from where I live in the Netherlands.  I don’t think it’s a variety that’s commonly available here, so I’m curious how my sunflowers compares with the others.  I planted mine a few weeks later than everyone else, so they aren’t flowering yet.

Below is someone obviously attempting the thankless task of trying to save some seeds from the birds.  You can see he’s put bags of some sort over 2 of the flowers, and behind he built a scarecrow.