Black Walnut Obsession and Other Updates

Thistle Down and Black Walnuts

Yes, I suppose I am obsessing.  Have 5 or 6 more five gallon buckets full to hull and dry.  And after spending 2 hours with a hammer cracking them to win barely a cup of nut meats, I ponied up $40 and bought a purpose built nut cracker.  I spent an hour learning to use it, and I think I will be able to shell 2 cups or so of nut meats an hour after a little practice.  Yay!  Black walnuts for baking this winter.  And maybe some to give away.  At $20 a pound or so on Amazon, I should make back my $40 this season.

Tiny Red Spider among the floating bubbles of Morning Dew.

One of the reasons I am so slow at stomping on walnuts (to husk them) and putting them into my bucket is because I am always distracted by some little insect or, in this case, a tiny arachnid.  Less than 1/4 inch long, this little red spider is a marvel of industry.  The whole web is about 5 inches across, and covered in morning dew.

Last of the Summer Basil.

I feel bad that with all the abundance of Basil that we had this year, I did not put more up for winter stews and spaghetti sauce.  But, I did dash out on the evening before our first hard frost and gather up a few trays to dry.   I also got a tray of lemon balm, Melissa Officinalis, to dry to add to tea this winter.

Walnut Harvesting Update

After some small experimentation, I have decided that, for my small scale processing, the boot method looks like it will work.

The one showing ridges is ready for drying - the others need another round of cleaning.

1. Look for walnuts where the husk has darkened on on side
2. Step on walnut with heel of "mucky boot" and squash
3. With rubber/latex glove, "squirt" walnut out of hull
4. Leave hull to decompose right where it is
5. Fill 5 gallon bucket until bucket is about half full
6. Use the "jet" setting on a hose sprayer nozzle to spray walnuts in the bucket until water just covers the walnuts
7. Use a 3 prong hand cultivator to mix the walnuts against each other until the water is really dark
8. I am discarding the water where I am trying to kill weeds on my gravel driveway
9. Repeat the rinsing cycle a few times
10. Spread nuts out to dry

I was able to process three times as many walnuts as my first try (4 hours for a mixing bowl full of walnuts) - in about half an hour.  I could have probably cut the time down, but I spent a lot of the time picking up walnuts being slow and lazy.  If I had put some energy into it, I'm sure I could have picked up that many walnuts in a much shorter time period. 

From what I have read, Black Walnuts often only produce every other year or every 3rd year or so. There are still buckets of walnuts to harvest, so I am assuming this is one of the "good" years. So gotta harvest enough to have walnuts for a few years of brownies and banana bread! (And I say that like I actually bake...)

These ones have been drying for about a week now. 

Black Walnut Harvesting

American Black Walnut - July 2015

Back in March and April (2105), when all of the trees had begun to leaf out, this one lone tree in the middle of the pasture remained leafless.  Earlier in the winter, my husband had cut vines as thick as my wrist from around her.  As all the other trees stirred to life, we thought that perhaps we were to late in rescuing her from the strangling vines.  By May, however, she began to leaf out, and as Summer brought warm rains and sunshine, she came into her own.  By July we knew she was going to gift us with many gallons of walnuts.

In less than 5 minutes I had gathered a 5 gallon bucket full.
There are at least 15 more gallons from her, and twice as much from her sister.

Fast forward to Autumn:  October has been cool and drizzly so far.  Portents of winter, but also the harbinger of garlic planting season and the walnut harvest.  I donned a sweat shirt, shorts, and mucky boots (after all, I'm from Northern Nevada, and it wasn't that cold), and headed out to try my hand at preparing walnuts.  Native North American Black Walnuts, to be exact.  I had watched my YouTube videos and read various blog posts, and now I was finally going to do it.

Being too lazy to find my small hammer, I substituted my small crescent wrench.

I only harvested a small 5 gallon bucket of fallen walnuts, and I was pretty sure I could process those by hand.  I had seen a video where the hulls were tapped all around with a hammer and then twisted off of the hard shell.  This seemed like an easy, no stress, low tech way to spend a Saturday afternoon on the back porch looking out at the drizzle.  Since I couldn't find my small hammer, I convinced myself that the back of a crescent wrench head was probably a better shape for mashing walnut husks, anyway.  And, indeed, it worked well.  As walnut juices stain, I was forewarned, and wore heavy dish washing gloves.  I listened to some TED talks and got into the rhythm of tap-tap-tap and twist.  I got to where I could hull one in less than half a minute.

After hulling 5 gallons of walnuts, the husks still added up to nearly 5 gallons.

Hulling the walnuts takes off the husk and most of the "fruit," but the walnuts are still covered in a fair amount of gunky stuff.  I can see where pressure washing them might make the final cleaning much easier than the method I used, but walnut husks and leaves contain juglone, and juglone prevents other plants from growing.  So I used the wash 'em in a bucket method and scrub 'em with a wire bristled grill brush.  I poured the resulting black water and sludge where I did not want anything to grow.  While husking 5 gallons of walnuts by hand was not a major ordeal, hand cleaning was.  Definitely going to look for a better method of washing them.

 

5 gallon bucket of un-husked walnuts equals one large mixing bowl of shell-on nuts.

All and all, I spent four hours to get on mixing bowl full of nuts.  And I haven't even shelled them yet.  They will need to hang out and dry for a few to several weeks, depending on temperature and humidity before I can crack them and find out what the actual harvest will be.  Still, even though I need a method that will scale, I'm pretty happy with this modest haul.

Can't wait for them to dry so I can crack some open and eat them!

Autumn Fancy

An eclectic bit of this and that from the late summer garden...

Not sure why this little dew dusted critter was wandering around the basil.  All of its cohorts were munching on passion fruit leaves.  I moved it over, and he/she began munching.

This is the passion flower vine this type of caterpillar (cats) usually haunts.  Your run of the mill passiflora.  Runs wild here, but the cats keep it under control.  Hoping to harvest some seed when the fruits ripen.

Fresh bean harvest for a summer soup.  Italian Rose (red & white), various cow peas, and some white beans of unknown origin... because I am not so good at the record keeping thing.  Fresh beans in soup - totally different experience than dried beans.  So smooth and full of flavor.  Too bad the Italian Rose lose their speckles and turn to a pale pinkish tan color when cooked.  But still, jummy (short for "just yummy")!  I will certainly be growing more of those next year, and isolating them so I can save my own seed.

Italian Rose bean pods, Pink Eye Purple Hulled cow peas, and likely Hssiao yellow cherry tomatoes and Mini Bell yellow bell peppers.  Looks like a sunflower petal, also.  Something ate the petals on on of my sunflowers, so I harvested the rest of the petals from that one, and dried them to use in tea this winter.

More jummy stuff from the morning harvest in late August.  Roma VF toms from seeds that I've been saving (hoarding) for more than 5 years. 

Harvest Begins

Worked my bottom off to get raised beds made, mulch retrieved and distributed, seeds and seedlings planted, and hand watering all the babies until I secured enough lengths of hose to bring external water to the garden.  So much energy to bring outside inputs to the system.  And now, right along with our 90+ *F temps and endless days of rain, the garden is now heading into output mode.

Costoluto Genovese

Pollinators

Just a quick post for the 4th of July.

 

The wild field on the West side of the house that merges into the adjacent unmanaged property is filled with many blooming plants - Queen Ann's Lace, yellow Rudebeckia that somewhere along the line escaped formal cultivation, some type of white Dasies, and mats of Passion Flower vines, plus other things that I can't see from the driveway.  The pollinators and other wild critters love making that area their home.  The East pasture, however, butts up against suburbia and trimmed lawns.  That pasture gets mowed at least once a week, and the most that gets to bloom are low growing clovers.  Luckily, if you build it, they will come.  I let some of the pasture weeds grow and bloom around the edges of the garden, and that brought some intrepid insects.  And then the clary sage bloomed - and the bees came.  And, apparently the bees also like the nectar from the blooms of plain old cow peas.  The sage is about done, but the cow peas are just beginning.

Bee sipping nectar from a cow pea flower.

Almost Summer

Of course I didn't get everything out that I wanted to; however, we are coming down to the wire.  Mid-to End of June is the last possible planting from seed for plants that will take 120 days to mature.  Means pumpkins and winter squash and sweet potatoes.  Not as many planted out as I could have, but with names like Rogue vif d'Estampes and Musque de Provence, I had to plant out at least a few pumpkin seeds.  These are my little Rogues.  The largest leaves are about the size of my hand.  Eventually, they should have leaves the size of a dinner plate or larger.  Planted too close together, of course, and I don't have the heart to thin.  I should know that in this climate I should get near 100% germination, and I know to space them further apart... knowing and executing are different, though... The clippings are from my wildly overgrown Sweet Marjoram, spread around the base of the pumpkins in hopes that it confuses the senses of that arch nemesis, the Squash Vine Borer.  There is also a tiny Lemon Balm tucked in there for the same purpose - and because I just love Lemon Balm.  I even love the Latin name, melissa officinalis.  

Rogue vif d'Estampes with melissa officinales

My Musques were planted on June 5th and broke ground on June 9th, right after the rains, just as expected.  I know the gardening is easier if I can time things to work with Mother Nature, but that doesn't always happen.  Luckily, last Saturday, I was able to put out some more seeds in anticipating of the drenching rains and slightly cooler temps (in the 80's F instead of 90's F).  The Musques, zuchhini, and Waltham Butternut Squash that I planted are all up and out of the ground.

Something I did plant out early enough, were peppers.  And while most still only have tiny little nubbins of peppers on them along with bountiful blooms, a few have some nice looking specimens.  I believe this is a Texas A&M (TAM) Jalapeño.  The canopy of the plant really does shade and protect the peppers - for the sake of the photograph, I am holding the upper leaves away from the fruit.

Texas A&M Jalapeño Peppers

 Did I mention rain?  And heat?  And humidity?  The Summer Crops are loving it.  So is the free mulch that I've been able to gather from the city.  These delicate sliver-gray mushrooms are barely and inch tall on slender stalks.  They bloom in clusters of 2 to 50 in the wood mulch on the overnight after a rain.  By mid morning, they are starting to fade, like the one on the right.  By the time the late morning sun touches them, they are gone, only to reappear after the next storm.

My "rainy day" mushrooms

Other wild things to delight the senses are these roses.  Simple, sweet, and growing with abandon everywhere, if we let them.  I am sure that they will happily and easily fill the whole garden and pasture given even 1/10th of a chance.  I give them the fence line by the house.  That's probably too much.  But I am gullible and taken in by their simple beauty.  Still, thank goodness for a husband with a riding lawn mower...

Wild Roses - thorny and invasive, but too sweet to totally eradicate

Early June

I never see these little butterflies until I water. And everywhere I water down the mulch, they arrive by 10s and 20s and more, to extract water from the wood chips. They drink from droplets, but more commonly, they unfurl their slender proboscis and send it deep into the mulch.  Ten minutes later, they have all disappeared.  I think they are a type of Hairstreak butterfly.  Worms in my beans and peas - possibly caterpillars for these tiny beauties.

Tiny butterflies flock to the freshly moistened mulch to sip water.

Clary Sage: Blue Monday and Pink Sunday. They are fresh and pretty in the warm sun of late Spring. They will not look so good after the heat of a July Summer Sun. They are both open pollinated. I wonder if they cross-pollinated, and if so, will I see their progeny?  I have enough seed to grow this again next year.  The pink and purple bracts are not the actual flowers.  The actual flowers are small and barely noticeable.  Bumblebees loved these.

 

 I love the garden this time of year.   Everything is new and fresh, and the possibilities are still endless.  The days are warm, but the nights remain mild, with mornings sunny but still with a cool light breeze.  The torrential rains and hot, humid days of Summer have not yet arrived.  And the weeds have not yet rallied and taken over.

This year was a year of trials - I planted a lot of varieties, but not much of anything.  See what survived and thrived, and what limped and wimped out. 

Little Critters

Had fun with my Camera stalking some little creatures.  More can be found on my Facebook Photography page, along with other photos of our property.

Soldier Beetle - One of the "Good Guys"

Same Soldier Beetle - on Cilantro Bloom

Less than 1" long Grasshopper on Tomato Leaf

1/4" long Grasshopper on the edge of a Pepper leaf.

Pollinator on a Snow Pea Flower

Garden Update Bed #2

Bed #2 is part of the Northern set of beds, and is the second from the East side.  Most people in North America would probably have numbered their beds from left to right; however, there is a method to the madness.  I numbered them in the order that they were created, and I created them East to West.

Bed #2 is the first of my herb beds.  As such, while it contains some extra tomato and pepper plants, and also has a little row of petunias, it has a lot of perennial herbs, such as lavender and oregano.  If it looks like there was no plan, just remember that "no plan survives the battlefield."  Bed #2 is about 8 feet long and about 3 feet wide.  The beans were an after thought attempt to fill some extra spaces so that weeds would not fill those areas.  Don't know yet if that tactic will be successful.

The pictures in this blog are actually quite large.  You may have to have your browser open in a new window, and you may have to change your browser setting to "show images full sized."  This is different for each browser, so changing those settings is beyond the scope of this post.

Bed #2 - The First Herb Bed, 30 May 2015

 

Plant Key Below

1. Weedy pasture, mostly mowed; however, I have let the Daisies and (what I think is) Queen Ann's Lace grow and bloom.  What I am aggressively working to eliminate is the Honey Suckle and Multifora Rose that is trying to take over.
2. Tomato
3. Tomato
4. Beans
5. Cilantro
6. Bee Balm (not really visible in this photo) - It's a sun-lover in some areas, but since we get some brutal summer sun, it seems to be happy hiding under the tomato plants
7. Several Pepper Plants
8. Dark Opal Purple Basil - 2 or 3 plants
9. One red onion - you can see one of its thin leaves in this photo
10. Upright Rosemary - also not visible - hidden by peppers - it probably needs more sun and I probably planted things too close
11. Beans
12. Petunias - they are just laughing at the heat.
13. Mrs. Burns Lemon Basil - far superior than Sweet Danni Lemon Basil in my opinion.  It is starting to bud out.  I pinched the first set of buds off a few weeks ago; however, I'm going to let this set flower.
14. Difficult to see, but there are two Ozark Beauty strawberry plants.  I've harvested 6 small, sweet strawberries from them so far.
15. White Sweet Alysum - there's a purple one in there, too, somewhere.  They are both doing really well in fairly dense shade.  There is also a Creeping Rosemary in there.  It seems to be happily creeping into hidden sunny spots.
16. Hidecote Lavender #1 is in there somewhere along with Greek Oregano
17. More Beans and Petunias
18. Hidecote Lavender #2
19. Lemon Thyme
20. More Peppers (I had a lot of extra peppers from Bed #1.  In retrospect, I probably should have just made a whole second bed for them.)
21. Sweet Marjoram
22. Sheep Nose Pimento Peppers - the one on the right was a "barely surviving, late to germinate, runt" - and it has almost caught up with the size of all of the other Sheep Noses.
23. I've begun "pegging out" the Sweet Marjoram to produce more plants.  It and the Lemon Thyme are both growing so vigorously that I should have many baby plants by mid-June.