Grand Marais

Katherine and I spent a few days last week in Grand Marais, where we took classes at the North House Folk School. I took a class called "Rustic Breads for the Brick Oven", taught by Derek Lucchese, in which we made several styles of bread and baked them in North House's brick oven. Most of the breads were made using only a sourdough starter and no yeast.

I learned quite a bit in the day and a half and it was very helpful to see a baker kneading, shaping and scoring loaves.  One of the most important things I took away from the class was the importance of maintaining a temperature range of 70-75 degrees when refreshing your starter and fermenting your dough. I believe that many of my sub-standard loaves at home have been caused by fermenting at too low a temperature or using a less than fully active starter.

 My loaves proofing in the classroom.

 Everyone brought their loaves out to the oven.

 Derek loading loaves into the oven.

 Derek testing loaves for doneness.

 The beautiful rustic loaves.

Fall harvest

Although we haven't had a killing frost yet, most of the root crops are ready to harvest. We've been pulling carrots, potatoes and sweet potatoes in the last two weeks. Most of the carrots and sweet potatoes are still in the ground, but I harvested all of the potatoes last week.

They are curing on the basement floor to harden the skins before I put them in the root cellar. With the extremely warm October we've been having (80+ degrees for several days in a row), the temperature in the root cellar is still in the 60's, which is too warm for storage. We need some extended sub-freezing nights and cool days to lower the temperature in the cellar.

Now harvesting: Carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, bell peppers, Jalapeno peppers, tomatoes, winter squash, spinach, Swiss chard, collards, beets, celery, green beans.

The Key

The key to growing healthy vegetables is healthy soil, and the best way to improve the health of your soil is with compost. There are probably as many theories on how to make compost as there are people who are making it.

In our backyard, we currently have three compost bins in various stages of decomposition. All of our kitchen vegetable scraps (no meat or dairy) go into the piles, along with weeds we've pulled around the garden. The green material is layered with brown material, usually dried leaves or grasses. I also add a bit of soil on top of the kitchen scraps, to get some micro-organisms to work on them right away.


Every few months I'll sift the finished compost out into a wheelbarrow, returning the larger pieces that haven't yet broken down to the pile. If it's early in the summer, let the compost dry on a tarp before storing it. If it is still wet, it will continue to break down in storage, reducing the amount of compost you have available.

I have a good supply of compost on hand, so the finished compost from this summer will be spread on the beds next spring. I'll also add compost in mid-summer or fall, before late-season planting.

Lush

The last month has been dry, with little rain, but the abundant rain earlier in the summer put a lot of moisture in the soil and has resulted in some very lush growth. Both the sweet potatoes and winter squash have spread their vines far and wide, almost swallowing up adjacent garden beds.

On the insect front, the Japanese beetles seem to have finally died off after their mid-summer rampage. It seems everyone was seeing many more of these beetles this summer. We can only hope that they are at the peak of their growth curve. We did notice that when the beetles were in the grape vines on a large wooden fence on the east side of our yard, that house sparrows were spending a lot of time on the fence hunting and eating the beetles. 

Perfect weather

After a hot, wet July in which we saw over 10" of rain, August has started out warm and dry, with a couple days of nice soaking rain. We harvested our onions last weekend and they've been curing outside all week. We canned our first batch of tomatoes last week as well. Everything is looking very lush, and it's getting hard to keep up with eating everything that is turning ripe. Our single cucumber plant has produced over 20 cucumbers so far and is still going strong.

Currently harvesting: blueberries, carrots, tomatoes, basil, new potatoes, radishes, onions, bok choy, green beans, beets, swiss chard, broccoli, collards.

Morning harvest

This is the time of year that all the gardeners look forward to, when all the planning and preparation pays off. We've had a stretch of hot weather which seems to ripen tomatoes and cucumbers almost overnight. The sweet potatoes and winter squash vines are spreading quickly and may threaten to take over our patio by fall.

We also harvested our garlic last weekend. We hang them downstairs to cure, where it is relatively cool and dry, though there isn't much ventilation. We grew ten different varieties this year, and harvested around 70 heads. We planted the garlic in two different patches, since it is a natural pest repellent. It seemed to work very well next to our cabbage, which in the past had their seedlings ravaged by insects and later on were home to slugs. This year they were almost pest-free.

More berries

Three years after planting our blueberry plants, we are finally harvesting some fruit. The first year we pinched off the fruit blossoms as they formed so that the plants would devote their energy to developing and strengthening their root systems. The last two winters, rabbits have also nibbled on many of the bare branches when they were covered with snow.

But this year we've seen nice large clusters of blossoms which are now ripening. Blueberry plants take several years to reach their peak yield, but can produce for thirty years, so we hope to see a lot more berries in the future. Part of this first pint went into our favorite vehicle for blueberries, a plate of pancakes.