Violets in Winter

I made two statements in the last week that nobody should every say. The first was "I don't get sick." The second: "I don't believe in hand sanitizer." I am being punished for both of those statements.



Stuck at home for yet another day, we made do with what we had lying around. We painted rocks, assembled some left-over sun-catcher kits, read MANY chapters of How To Speak Dragonese, and snuck in a few games of handball between torrential downpours of rain and hail. None of us are inside-all-day folks, even when sick, so the combination of germs and inclement weather has us a bit stir crazy. As I was washing dishes at the sink, my oldest son said "Mom, it's SNOWING!!!" "No, Moses, that is hail," I replied without looking up. "Mom, it really is snow! Look!" And, as usual, he was right. Amongst the rain drops, huge fluffy white snow flakes were floating down from the sky. Each one melted before even touching the ground, but they were enchanting. The three of us stood there with our pathetic drippy noses, gazing out the sliding glass door in silence, enjoying the excitement of snowflakes. It was nice.



I wonder how the violets on the lawn are holding up to all this weather. They show their pretty little faces every February and it excites me every time. Until moving "up the hill" when I was in high school, I had never seen purple flowers growing in a green lawn before. It seems so rebellious of nature to think up something like that. Everything seems so excited for spring - violets on the ground and lots of blossoms on trees. All while we are being told that we may wake up to a fresh blanket of snow tomorrow. I wonder how my freshly sprouted pea plants are doing out there with all this cold and hail. I'll check tomorrow - for now I'll sit here and enjoy my tea.

Processing Sunflower Seeds

Last week while it was dark and rainy outside, I decided to "process" one of my sunflowers. It has been hanging in the pantry to cure since mid autumn, and it was nice and dry and ready to be dealt with. Also, I had run out of sunflower seeds, which I usually toast and put on salads, and wasn't in the mood to drive all the way to Whole Foods to replenish my stash. Why spend money when I had a huge sunflower hanging right in the middle of the house?

I had a helper for the first and most satisfying part of the operation: getting the seeds out of the flower. Something about picking those seeds out and seeing just how many there are is very satisfying. Then we were on to phase two: hulling the seeds. My helper quickly lost interest as it became apparent that this is a tedious and SLOW process.

Before I even harvested my sunflowers, I looked into sunflower seed hullers, and it seems there isn't much available for the non-commercial, home sunflower grower. If you want to build a huller (or want to build one for me,) you can find instructions here. I was excited at first, but then I read the "tools required" part of the instructions: Table Saw. Drill Press. Band Saw. Saber Saw. Frankly, it would be easier and cheaper to patronize the bulk foods aisle at Whole Foods every week than build my own sunflower seed huller. This article gives a few at-home methods of hulling the seeds; the first two didn't work at all. Maybe I wasn't smashing the seeds hard enough?

I resorted to hulling my sunflower seeds like a squirrel - biting the shell to crack it and using my fingers to pry the inner part out. After an hour and a half I had just under 1/4 cup of edible seeds. Which, by the way, I couldn't in good conscience share with anyone else, since every single one of them had been in my mouth. Definitely not time effective. They sure tasted great, though. I earned those darn sunflower seeds! When every last seed had been cracked and opened up (and about a third of the seeds in the flower were just empty shells), I had about 1/2 cup of sunflower seeds. Again, neither time nor cost effective. My dreams of making my own sunflower seed butter had disappeared and I began revising my garden plans: maybe filling an entire bed with sunflowers doesn't make sense after all.

My husband tells me there is an old tabletop grain mill in the barn, which I plan to dust off and try using. Everything I've read indicates that is the most effective at-home way of hulling these yummy seeds. I still have three dried flowers hanging up, waiting to be processed. I'll let you know how it goes.

Just in the nick of time

The bulb packages said "plant before the first frost" and I unknowingly put it off until the very last day. The morning after I got these guys in the ground, we woke up to a layer of crystalized dew on the yard and it was harder than usual to get out of our warm beds. Normally daydreams of what will grow in the spring keep me motivated while planting, but putting these bulbs in the ground required me pick-axing solid chunks of dirt out small sections at a time, cursing the daffodil bulbs all the while. "SIX INCHES below the surface?!?!?" I'm sure the beautiful border of daffodil, ranunculus, anemone, and hyacinth flowers will have all been worth it this spring. (By the way, NINETY Ranunculus bulbs is way more bulbs that you need. Thanks Costco, but next time I won't be buying in bulk.)

And I apologize for being more absent here on the blog that I have intended. I share a big birthday weekend with a newly-4-year-old, and we had a lot of social engagements to attend between those special days and celebrating the end of soccer season. I hope you are all doing well and growing some great stuff!

Sunflower Seeds part 2

Never to be outdone, my dad has completely upstaged my sunflower success. Early in the summer, he casually mentioned that it might be nice to plant a few sunflowers, and wondered if I had any extra seeds. My four sunflowers had happily sprouted, so I gave him the half-empty package of seeds and told him he could keep it. He proceeded to plant and grow TWENTY gigantic sunflowers.

These things are mammoth! The stems are probably 4-5 inches in diameter, like small tree trunks. And I can't even fathom how many seeds he is going to have once they are all dried up.

The boys and I had a blast harvesting the flowers with Papa. Each newly cut flower was a challenge of strength: who would be strong enough to carry THIS ONE to the basement??? By the end of it we were completely covered in dust and sunflower sap, but it was the best kind of fun. My dad seemed pretty proud of his haul - and his basement is looking like a real farmer's larder. One shelf full of pumpkins, another of winter squash, and twenty enormous sunflowers hanging from the ceiling waiting for their seeds to dry out. It is awesome.

Sunflower Seeds

Speaking of seeds, how about some sunflower seeds? Sunflowers are my all time favorite thing to grow. They are easy, hardy, and there really isn't anything quite like the look of a gigantic sunny yellow flower towering over your vegetable patch to bring a smile to your face. Plus, after they get all brown and shriveled up, there is a treasure trove of delicious (and nutritious!) seeds inside of them to be eaten. Oh, and the dried up sunflower stalks make excellent ninja swords.

Since I actually planted my sunflowers in the spring this year, they blossomed at the same time all my other vegetables blossomed, so I think the bees they attracted really boosted pollination in my garden. As soon as those huge flowers opened up they were absolutely swarmed with bees (we're hoping they are the bees from my husband's new bee hive... more on that later).

If you grew your own sunflowers this year, here is how to tell when the seeds are ready to be harvested. Once the petals are gone and the back of the flower turns yellow, like this:

you can cut the flower head off - leave about 12 inches or so of stem. If your flower is 8 feet tall, be careful how you cut it because that thing is dang heavy and could hurt if it came crashing down on top of your head. Hypothetically speaking. Anywho, the seeds are not quite ready to be removed from the flower at this point, so if you have nice dry weather and can keep the birds away from your seeds, you could opt not to cut off the flower head and allow the seeds to cure in the garden. Last year I did that and a couple unexpected rains got the seeds wet which resulted in mold, so this year I cut them and brought them in. Hang your cut flower somewhere warmish and dry - I have one in the food pantry and three in the barn. Once the back of the flower turns brown, you are ready to harvest your seeds. They should come out pretty easily, but you will make a mess, so it's best to do that part outside.

I plan on using these tips to roast our own seeds - looks easy enough. Of course I'll save a few to plant for next year too.

So here's my quick list of why you should plant sunflowers in your garden next year:

1.) They are super easy to grow - just poke in a seed, water it and watch it grow.

2.) They don't require much space. Yes, they are tall, but not at all wide. I have a friend who lives in a tiny apartment and she grew a gigantic sunflower in a pot on her tiny outside porch. They fit nicely amongst your vegetables.

3.) They will make you smile.

4.) They will make your neighbors smile.

5.) You get approximately a bazillion seeds from one gigantic sunflower. That's a pretty high yield on your investment of one seed and some water.

6.) Sunflower seeds help lower bad cholesterol, raise good cholesterol, are very high in protein and amino acids. They also contain high levels of anti-oxidant, B vitamins, calcium, iron, manganese, zinc, copper, magnesium, and selenium.

7.) They attract pollinators to your garden which will give you hight vegetable yields.

8.) Think of all the ninja swords you could make out of one 8 foot long sunflower stalk. Or you could skip the cutting and just make a javelin. The possibilities are endless.

9.) Cheese. That's right. You can make cheese out of them. And anything that can be made into cheese simply must be grown.

And now I will step off my sunflower soapbox. :)

Mystery growth

A few months ago I planted an entire bed of my dad's garden with brussels sprouts. My dad's garden beds are so luxurious - he has installed a drip irrigation system on a timer! That means he doesn't ever have to go out there to water anything. Revolutionary, I know. Anywho, I stuck the seeds in the dirt along with some compost from my compost pile and proceeded to ignore them, taking full advantage of the self-watering feature. When I finally made my way out there to check on things, the brussels sprouts were doing wonderfully. There was also a mysterious other plant growing amongst the sprouts. It was growing much more quickly and blossomed with a bunch of medium-sized yellow and white flowers I had never seen before. It was not like any weed we have ever grown up here, either. For a little while I thought (wistfully) that somehow my okra seeds had gotten mixed in with the brussels sprouts seeds and I was going to have an okra crop after all. My dad was sure they were bell peppers. Well, over the weekend I headed back out there and this is what I saw:

It is Chinese Lantern! Holy exotic accidental cultivation! Never in a million years would I have grown Chinese Lantern on purpose. I DID buy fake Chinese Lantern at Pier 1 and used it to decorate my living room, but grow it??? I guess some of these seeds got accidentally mixed into my brussels sprouts packet, and I am SO glad they did.

I did a little research and it seems that while most people grow Chinese Lantern because of how pretty it is, the "lanterns" eventually develop a Chinese Lantern Berry inside, which can be harvested once the husk dries out. It reportedly tastes like a green tomato and can be used in both savory and sweet preparations. It is very rare to happen upon Chinese Lantern Berries, too, as you can imagine.

So now I am trying to decide if I should let the plants continue to grow and develop their rare berries, or if I should pick these beautiful flowers and try to dry them. Then I could ditch my plastic Chinese Lanterns and decorate with the real thing. Any suggestions?

While admiring my surprise flowers, I also noticed that my brussels sprouts have a terrible infestation of aphids. Aren't they ugly?

I took this picture after I had treated them with insecticidal soap. Sounds sophisticated, but all I did was mix 1 tablespoon of liquid soap with 1 quart of water, put it in a washed-out Windex bottle, and sprayed it everywhere I saw aphids. I read that when it is wet the soap acts as a toxin to the bugs but doesn't harm the plants. The only bad thing about using insecticidal soap is that it kills good bugs as well as the bad ones. So I think I will do one more round of soap spray, then buy a little container of lady bugs at OSH to replenish my good bugs. I'll keep you posted on whether or not it works. I'm determined to keep this garden organic!

P.S. The dog is doing much better, thanks for asking. His wounds are healing nicely, almost as quickly as his pride. He's back to running around the farm with us and getting into trouble.