Room to expand

This weekend we bought 2 acres in Battleground Washington, close to Vancouver. It will give us room to spread out. Currently it's all in a "before" state. Lots of room to plant and grow. Doubtless in need of a lot of compost too.

View from the driveway and side street, looking Southeast. I don't see that there's been an attempt at gardening, beyond a few shrubs and trees.  The blooming tree is a red buckeye.

It's mostly grass. Lots of room to start a small orchard and garden plots.

These photos were from late May. It's not as green now. This is the view looking North, from the main street.

This camera ket changing the color settings. The grass is not really fluorescent.  Looking up at the house.  The blackberries on the right aren't hurting anything, and if we get to them will provide some juicy berries next month.

Looking down from the house. Lots of room for gardening, as noted earlier.

Here is that neglected iris. From the shape, it appears to be an old variety. Newer ones are more ruffled. I plan to move it, divide, and also bring many more to a dedicated iris bed or two. Or 3, or more.  Something where I can control weeds and let the irises really shine.

Allium gigantium

Decided to dig these up. The cluster was nice, but I would like to have them spread around the garden some more. Allium gigantium makes a brief, very colorful show. Then the leaves die down and that's all for the year. This bunch consisted of one bulb, planted about 5 years ago. Now there are multiple. It's a very rich corner of the garden, lots of compost over the years. No surprise they've done well.

I will let these dry out until it's time to plant fall bulbs. They will be in the basement, cool and dry, stored same as onions. I'm impressed with the size, and number of bulbs. Also some little new starts, for future big bulbs.

Trigridia

First one I've ever bloomed. Nice.

Making Hybrid Iris, Iris update

An update on the seed pods.  They continue to swell.  Now the color is becoming more pale, starting to brown.  I take that as a sign if imminent maturity.

I walk past this every day. I water it occasionally so that it won't dry out. The original rhizomes are growing a bit as well.  The pine cones are an impromptu mulch additive.  I collect them when walking the dogs and throw them around on the mulch.  They add interest, and eventually break down like the rest of the bark chips.  They dont seem to cause a problem to the irises.

The edging rings are working well for keeping weeds out. I still go in and groom the soil a bit.  I pull weeds as soon as they are visible.  Irises that I have not dug up and transferred to the new little beds are more weedy.  This is easier to maintain.  Since I've watered these to get them established, they are growing more leaves.  I may stop watering them next month, so they can harden off for winter.  Some of these are miniatures that I rescued from a bed so covered with grass the plants were not visible, and most died off.  I'm glad they are growing again.

These rings are slightly raised above the surrounding area, to improve drainage.  They dry out quickly, which is what I want this winter.

Plums From Seed, part 2.

There are many conflicting versions regarding how to sprout wild plum, and other stone fruit seeds. I have a pretty good supply, from collecting plums. They have been washed and allowed to dry. Most are in an envelope after being allowed to dry overnight. Based on several you-tube videos, I chose 5 pits for removal of the hull. I used a vice grip so I could adjust the force, and because I don't have a nutcracker.

Vice grip and plum pits, dried overnight. These are wild plums. The pits are the size of a sweet cherry seed.

The first pit flew across the room. I used a little more finesse for the others. They cracked easily, releasing the inner kernel. Cool! They look undamaged.

I moistened a paper towel, squeezed out the excess, wrapped the pits, placed them in a ziplock back, and placed them in the fridge. Now I need to wait one to 2 months. After that, I don't know - if they start growing, it's the wrong season (fall) to plant outside, but maybe they'll grow on the window sill. I did a web search on coat removal and stratification and scarification. Coat removal would be a "complete" version of scarification. It appears that coat removal is beneficial for germinating seeds of fruits with pits, and many other seeds. In addition, stratification for peaches and plums, by refrigerating, shoulf last about 10 weeks. For example, from Iowa State Horticultural News, Cherry, Peach, and Plum (Prunus species) Harvest fruit when full mature. Remove the seed. Seed may be sown in the fall or stratified seed may be planted in the spring. Stratify the seeds at 33 to 41 F. The sour cherry (Prunus cerasus) requires 90 to 150 days, the peach (Prunus persica) 98 to 105 days, and European plum (Prunus domestica) 90 days. Seed of plums and peaches should be planted 2 inches deep. Sow the seed of sour cherry at a depth of 1/2 inch.

Garlic Harvest. Container gardening.

Garlic did very well in containers. Sine one container garlic was falling over and drying out, I pulled up about half. Here they are:

I left in the still-firm plants, only pulling out the drier looking ones. This is Inchelium Red.

Interesting variation of size. I really don't think so many could be grown in this size space in the ground. This is half of the container's plants. This method works very well for me.

Two grocery store garlic heads, average size, are shown for comparison. I'm amazed at the size of these garlic heads. This may be variety and technique. I think they are larger than last year's crop. They've had successive generations to adapt to my conditions - I think I've been growing them about 8 years. I will leave these in the shade and out of rain to dry out for a week. It's in the 80s outside. I'm not putting them in the sun - one ear when I did that, they cooked. They will be stored in the cool dry basement in a single layer, in a cardboard box.

Onions, Garlic in Containers. Allium harvest.

It's July in the Maritime Pacific Northwest, so onions, garlic, and other alliums are ripening off. The garlic and elephant garlic are not quit there, so I've left them in their containers. They won't get further water, however. Same for the container of Egyptian Walking Onions.

This was my first experiment growing White Potato Onions (heritage multiplier onion) in containers. I didn't get all of the weeds pulled in late Spring, but they did well anyway. Pleased at the size and number of onions. Two weeks ago, I moved the containers out of the rain and sun, to the north side of the house, to dry off without baking. That's a good part about the containers.  I was concerned about these last fall for 2 reasons.  First, I planted them late, so I didn't know if they would get off to a good start.  Second, I was concerned the plastic containers would either heat up too much, or freeze too much.  They did fine.

Here are the White Potato Onions,  pulled up. This is one container of onions. I don't think you could have so many in an equivalent 2 foot diameter disk in the soil. I will leave them here to dry out. It's in the 80s today so they should dry in a week.

One of the garlic containers. This one is hardneck garlic.  Hardneck garlic forms a scape - the flower head that creates tiny bulbils if allowed to mature.  In early June, we removed the scapes and stir fried them - yummy flavor.  Early removal of scapes is thought to increase the size and yield of the final garlic bulbs.    The plants are starting to dry out. I hope it doesn't rain. These wooden containers are too heavy to move to a sheltered spot.  Since this is the hardneck, it's the  German White Porcelain garlic that I bought and planted last fall.  I forgot to label them, but that's how I can tell the difference.  Glad I sorted that out.  Also it makes sense, because I planted the extra cloves of German White in with strawberries and peppers, and those also sent up scapes.

This one is the softneck garlic.  Softneck garlic does not have a scape.  Inchelium Red garlic, which is what I started with a few years ago, is softneck.  So now I have identified the varieties.

These Allium gigantium were in an inconvenient location. The flower stalks were completely brown, dry, and crispy, so OK to dig up. These started as one bulb about 2 years ago, so pretty good yield here, 5 bulbs. They'll get stored in the garage in paper bags, when dried off, and be replanted in the fall. They are the size of a medium onion.  I don't know if they are edible, and not all that interested in finding out.  However, they area an onion and garlic relative, and are ripening at the same time as the onions, so I included them here.

This Egyptian Walking Onion was mixed in with the White Potato Onions. I could tell because of the "head" of onions that it produced. It's not quite ready to harvest, but I did anyway. I want to see if it will dry off like the other onions, for storage.

Plums. Backyard Orchard Culture

Not ripe yet, but getting closer. This is the best crop so far from Hollywood and Shiro.

Shiro. Hard to see in the picture, since the plums are green.  They will show better when they change color to yellow. I love these plums

Hollywood. Ditto - the most I've had from this tree. I like that the leaves are purple, which makes the purple plums less visible to birds and bypassers.I love these plums, too.

These are a yellow wild plum, the size of a sweet cherry. They have a sweet, sprightly flavor. The tree is down the street, and it doesn't look like anyone is eating them. I picked up the plums from the street, cleaned the seeds, and will plant some now in flower pots, to stay moist and germinate over winter or next spring; plant some in the fall in containers an place outside or in the fridge, and give some away. Even though they are small, they ripen with cherries, much earlier than the other plums. They are as big as sweet cherries, so they can be thought of as a "different cherry" to make the small size more acceptable - but they really are plums. Very juicy and sweet.

Here are the cleaned seeds. The seeds on the plaid washcloth are wild cherry seeds. Two years ago I saved some, planted them, then neglected to water the little trees in the hot summer, and they died. I want to try again, using backyard orchard culture methods of dwarfing by summer pruning.

Creating Hybrid Iris

While the irises were blooming, I diligently transferred pollen among varieties. I may have pollinated 30 flowers - lost count. Of those, only 3 flowers "took".  That's all I need - no room for zillions of iris seedlings.

This was Spiced Custard pollinated by Immortality.   I did not bag the flowers, so it's possible there is cross pollinaton with a different variety.  The pods remind me a bit of poppy seed pods.  

This was an un-named purple/blue iris rescue, pollinated by Liaison.  In general, I pollinated blues with blues, and yellows or oranges with yellows or oranges, and anything with white.

Lilies

I've been going around the yard cross pollinating various lilies.  Anything that happens to be in bloom, crossed with anything else that happens to be in bloom. I am sticking with pollinating Asiatics with Asiatics. and Orientals with Orientals. I don't know the names of any of these. They happen to be blooming today.