June in the garden...

The frost is no longer a danger, the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, and Gerdie is sitting on 9 eggs! So many things are springing to life around here that I thought I would share a few more pictures with you guys!


The flowers are blooming...

Lettuce is having its best year ever!

Remember the 6 Sunchoke roots I planted last year?...

Happy vegetables...

And a new project to work on today!

Progress Photos...

The season is in full swing at Susitna Farm & Fiber, and I thought I would share some photos of what's growing!

Blue Potatoes and Horseradish ready to be planted.

 

 The Salad Garden

 The Herb Garden

 Pepper Plants

 Sunchokes (Jerusalem Artichoke)

 Perennial Flowers for Pollination

 Arugula

 Broccoli

 Gratuitous Compost Picture

 Blurry Picture of a Baby Asparagus

 Lavender

 French Tarragon

 Pumpkin

 Snap Peas

 Bleeding Heart and Volunteer Chives

 Marigolds Everywhere!

 Beautiful Lettuce

 Cucumber

What are YOU looking at?

Dandelion Grapefruit Marmalade

The dandelions are out in full force, and Lily loves picking them... so I put her to work harvesting and I made Dandelion Grapefruit Marmalade!

Woodside Gardens will be getting a new name...

Just a heads up to all my lovely followers... Woodside Gardens has changed to Susitna Farm & Fiber! It's still me, just more appropriately titled! Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

Frost protection in the garden...

Spring appears to have arrived early this year, and although most of us have experienced snowfall in May, we all seem to be having a difficult time refraining from planting the entire garden by Mother's Day weekend! Honestly, in most of the Matanuska Valley and Anchorage area, your seeds can be safely planted now, if you take a few steps to warm the soil a bit.

Raised beds are a great way to maximize the heat from the sun. They tend to thaw faster, and if you cover them with black plastic or row cover until you are ready to plant, your soil should be plenty warm. Cold Frames are usually insulated on the bottom, and that, paired with the heat brought in through the glass, make a great place to keep starts, or to plant cold tolerant veggies such as lettuce and spinach a little earlier in the season. Hoop houses are essentially cold frames on a grand scale. They make great season extenders, and can be custom built over raised beds with the plastic removed once the danger of frost is past.

If you decide to brave the frost and plant out your starts, the first thing to consider is micro climates within your space. Generally the south facing side of your house will provide the best cold protection. Large rocks strategically placed amongst your starts will absorb heat during the day and release it at night, and a black garbage can or jugs full of water will retain a surprising amount of heat. For more active frost protection, some sort of nightly cover may be needed. You can buy specially designed fabric to cover your plants with, but an old bed sheet will do just as well.

In my garden, the best protection I have found is to cut the bottom inch off of a clear plastic milk jug and place it over the plant like a miniature greenhouse. You can remove the whole thing on nice days, or just the cap on colder days.

If you do decide to plant now, remember to harden off any starts for a few days before placing them in the dirt, and be sure to use air temperature water so you don't sent the roots into shock! Good luck, and happy planting!

Geese in an organic Alaskan garden.....

The weather has been warm and beautiful, the days are getting noticeably longer, and the snow is slowly melting.  These are all wonderful things, but this year the sure sign of spring at Woodside Gardens is goose eggs!  Gerdie has laid 3 eggs so far this season, and it has me excited for the year to come!  My geese are most definitely my pets, and I would keep them simply for the compost boost they give me, but I've decided to sell her eggs to cover the cost of their food (see the facebook page!), which really works out nicely!

 A goose egg compared to a large chicken egg from my Mother's flock.

I have been ridiculously impressed by how well these birds did over the winter.  Their coop is not heated or insulated (except lots of straw, of course), and I had no supplemental light other than a string of small white LED Christmas lights around part of the fence perimeter to help me see the MOOSE.  I kept a metal trash can in the coop for food storage, along with a heavy ceramic dish for them to eat from and an elevated (so they don't try to swim in it) heated dog dish for water.  That's all it took!  They have 24 hour access to their fenced run, and they actually chose to spend most of their time outdoors.  I filled the coop with a bale of straw last May, and added another this past January, stirring it a bit every month or so.

Having a permaculture-centered garden means that I don't purchase fertilizers, I make them myself.  My compost bucket in the kitchen doesn't fill up very fast anymore because I feed the geese all the edible scraps. Those scraps still make it to my garden soil, but first they provide free food for my birds!  They also eat all the weeds I pull out of the raised garden beds, and every dandelion they can get their beaks on!  After Gerdie is done laying eggs for the season, I'll pull all the straw out and throw it into the compost pile, and start the whole process over again.  The compost feeds the soil and also builds it up, so every year I have more soil to build more gardens, which feed my family and birds, and feed the compost pile!  It's a beautiful, never-ending cycle!

I do feel that it is important to note that geese are BIG birds, and they can be dangerous.  When I steal an egg, Herdie wants to kill me, no kidding.  I know how to handle them, and I'm not afraid of them, which helps, but they are NEVER near my children or visitors.  Geese are easy to care for, but I don't want anyone to think they are cute and friendly like chickens (which can be vicious also!).  Some geese are sweet as can be, but most are not, and you must realize this before you get them.  That being said, they have provided endless value to me, and I'm glad I have them!

I'm still here!

I just wanted to drop a line real quick, and let you all know that I'm still around! I don't have a lot to blog about this time of year, but if you visit on my facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/woodside.gardens, you will find lots of relevant articles I share, as well as random pictures of the geese and other wildlife that hangs out here! I'll be back with more blog posts here, as well, once I'm out in the garden again, and doing something worth talking about! And as always, if you have questions, or something specific you want to learn more about..... ask!

Slow-Cooker Baked Apples

This is how it all started... 3 chopped apples, 4 tbsp butter, 1/2 cup oatmeal, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 tbsp vanilla extract and some sprinkles of cinnamon and sugar all set on low in my crock-pot early this afternoon.  Now....

My house smells heavenly, and after dinner this will be topped with caramel praline ice cream.  My children are drooling as we speak...


In other news, we FINALLY got the snow we've been missing for over a month! Yesterday started out with an ice storm which turned into a huge snowstorm, and finally the world is white again!  The kids are loving it, and even the geese seem to enjoy it a bit.  I thought they might sleep in the coop for once, but they seemed quite content to sleep outside in their usual spot!

The Geese are ready for winter!

The Geese finally have their arctic entryway! My silly husband even made it match the existing coop... and our house! I laughed at him, but whatever gets it built, right?! The best part of this whole thing is that other than the bird netting on top, we spent exactly $0.00 to make this! It's all repurposed lumber and leftover roofing and siding!

The last leg of the 2013 garden...

With all of the leaves gone, the weather is starting to feel less like fall and more like winter, and I'm somewhat surprised that there is no snow on the ground yet. I've been taking full advantage of the un-frozen earth, however, and am still enjoying the harvests from the garden. I'm eating broccoli, chard, bok choy and lettuce, having just finished the last of the turnips and beets last week. I'm not harvesting any more sunchokes, as I want to have a good crop next year.

Along with stretching the garden out, I've also managed to get an extra fence project started! I'm building a small wattle fence at the back of the herb garden, to protect the siding on the house from back splash and to keep the dirt from eroding toward the house as well. I love the look of this type of fencing, and with all the brush that grows up around here, I'll never run out of supplies! Wattle fencing is such an easy solution around the garden, and it's a great way to utilize the natural materials on your property!

The geese are doing well, although Gerdie is quite confused as to why the swimming pool is so hard and slick in the mornings! I've left it out for them up until now, but I'll be removing it this weekend and putting it into storage for the winter. We should HOPEFULLY be building the arctic entryway for the goose house this weekend also, so with any luck, I'll be able to get my projects finished and all of the tools put away before the snow decides to let loose!

A Woodside Gardens Radio Interview!

alaskapublic.org has a radio interview that I did last week available...

http://www.alaskapublic.org/2013/10/07/the-year-round-alaska-gardener/

Give it a listen!

New Garden Updates!

I've got a new garden update posted at Alaska Public Media... check it out!

http://www.alaskapublic.org/2013/09/17/another-successful-garden-season/

What have you been missing?

Have you joined us on facebook yet?  I keep the blog posts here, but there's a lot more chatter and pictures at https://www.facebook.com/woodside.gardens... come say hello!

Sunchokes in Alaska...

For those of you who don't know, a Sunchoke, or Jerusalem Artichoke, is a perennial related to the sunflower with a tuberous root that is very edible and quite tasty.  I have been hearing about Sunchokes and their cold temperature hardiness for many years now, and they seem like a great perennial vegetable for Alaska, yet I've never seen them planted in the gardens around here.  Known for their pretty flowers as well as their plump roots, they seemed like the perfect fit for my permaculture aspirations!  I finally found them in the produce section of our local grocery store last fall, and I have been looking forward to testing out their potential all winter!

The package came with 10 roots, and I experimented with cooking 4 of them, using them raw in salads or roasted like a potato with a little olive oil.  The remaining 6 were wrapped in plastic wrap and put in the back of the refrigerator crisper drawer, where they remained until the end of May.  This spring, when the ground was ready to be worked, I simply opened the package up and let it sit on the counter for a few days, and then planted them about a foot apart and 6-8 inches down into the soil. I made sure to select an area where they can fill up the space over the years without bothering anything else in the garden.

They sprouted out of the ground within about two weeks, and a month later, they are growing beautifully and providing a shaded area for my geese as well!  They seem to be very tolerant of the heat we have been having, and don't seem to be bothered by any pests so far.  We'll see how they do as the season progresses, and hopefully they will become a permanent resident in the garden!

New post up at AlaskaPublic.org...

I've got a new post up at alaskapublic.org... check it out!

http://www.alaskapublic.org/2013/05/16/protect-early-starts-with-recycled-milk-jugs/

It started as a greenhouse...

It started as a greenhouse that turned into a garden shed... but this year I have found a new, permanent use for the structure...

Moving the building to its new location, closer to the house...

Adding the new floor...

 Cutting the access door...

Framed in to protect from sharp metal edges... (the access ramp is temporary, we'll build a better one shortly!)

And Herdie and Gerdie have a new home!!!

The Geese have FINALLY moved in!  I'm ridiculously excited!  If you follow Woodside Gardens on facebook, you've seen me gushing about these critters all winter.  Herdie and Gerdie are a 1 year old mated pair of Toulouse Geese.  I fell in love with them as soon as I saw them, and I've been waiting for the snow to melt for MONTHS so that I could set up a proper shed and run for them.  The geese are beautiful and very friendly (toward me, not everyone...), but the best part is this...

Breakfast!

It's mating season in the goose world, and although she won't lay all year long, Gerdie is giving me one of these every 2 days right now!  Her eggs average 160 grams (she won't be fully mature until next spring at 2 years old) which is approximately the size of 3 chicken eggs!  Scrambled goose eggs with a little sea salt and dill make the best breakfast ever!  I have saved all her egg shells, by drilling a small hole at each end and blowing the egg out, and they will be used for some craft projects in the future.

I love this basket of egg shells sitting in my kitchen window!

Do you have geese or other poultry?  Come on over to the facebook page and talk about it!