Sunflower Progress

The sunflower beds are off to a great start this year.  Nearly every seed that I planted came up along with many volunteers that the birds planted for me last fall.  The beds run along the eastern edge of the yard along the road and will be a beautiful wall of flowers once they start to bloom.  It will be a nice privacy screen for my yard and it will provide some extra shade for my chicken pens once they get a little taller.  It will also provide some good winter forage for the chickens while helping to reduce my feed bill once the sunflowers have ripened.

These were planted only a month ago and they are growing very quickly.  Some of the plants are already over a foot tall and they seem to just keep growing faster in these long days of early summer.  The row on the left should be mostly giant sunflowers and the row on the right should be a good mix of red and yellow sunflowers to add some color to the screen.  Many of the plants have tiny flowers starting to show in the center of all their leaves so it should only be a few more weeks until I have a wall of sunflowers in my front yard.

Potato Recovery

The frost that we had here a few weeks ago really did a number on my potato patch.  The hardiest potatoes were the purple vikings and they seemed mostly unaffected by the frost.  The yukon gold and the red chieftain potatoes didn't do as well.  Both varieties died back to the level of the mulch that covered the bed.  I was happy to discover that the plants were hardy enough to start making a comeback just a couple weeks after the cold snap and started putting out new growth again.  I think the chieftains are having a better time of it than the yukon gold, but both are making progress.

The purple vikings are the row on the left, the yukon golds run down the middle row and the red chieftains are in the row on the right.  The purple vikings have already begun to flower, so they should be making lots of potatoes for me this summer since they are doing so well.  I also had a bed that I left to the volunteer potatoes that came up from last year, so that should round out my harvest when the time comes.

There are a few other random crops in this bed like carrots, turnips and chard, but a good portion of it is volunteer potatoes - purple viking I think, so I will be eating lots of purple potatoes this winter. 

Finishing Spring Spinach

I planted spinach alongside my peas early this spring and was rewarded with a number of fresh spinach salads for the past few months.  Now the plants are at their peak and have loads of huge, thick, juicy leaves.  They are also on the verge of bolting because of the heat here.  Spinach is a cold weather crop and once they go to seed, the leaves become bitter and tough.  This is probably my last chance to harvest my spring spinach before it becomes less palatable.

I want to go through and do a big harvest and freeze as much as I can for future use, but honestly I am not a huge fan of cooked spinach, so this probably isn't the best use of this crop for me.  Feeding it to the chickens would at least save me a little money of chicken food as well as give them a super nutritious meal.  

Once the spinach is removed from the bed I will plant the space with a crop of parsnips.  I don't want to leave an empty space in the garden during the most productive time of the year.  The parsnips will take all summer to grow and I can leave them in the ground for storage until I am ready to harvest them in winter.

Finally Planting Peppers and Tomatoes

Spring got off to a late start this year and I was glad that I waited to plant out my summer crops.  I was waiting for my starts to get big enough, but they were in such bad shape that I decided to bite the bullet and buy starts from the local nursery.  Lucky for me I had waited long enough that they had put the vegetable starts on sale, so I got a great deal and was able to fill out my garden for under $20.  I bought seven varieties of peppers and three different varieties of tomatoes.  To this total I added two more tomato plants from the farmers market a couple of weeks ago and two of my healthiest looking seedlings that were still tiny compared to the ones that I had bought from the nursery.

I planted them all out in the early morning before the sun was hitting the garden.  The night before was spent setting up the tomato trellis and drip irrigation in the beds to get them ready for the final planting.  The peppers were planted in two rows down the bed, each with their own drip line.  The tomatoes were staggered on either side of their trellis and each side got two drip lines.  I wanted to make sure that the tomatoes will be getting plenty of water.

Finally all of my garden beds are growing something!  I think I will be plenty busy this summer canning salsa and tomato sauces once these crops start producing for me.

Harvesting Garlic Scapes

Garlic scapes are one of those things that come out a garden that you would never ever find at a grocery store.  Farmers market maybe, but only for a very short time frame.  Growing your own hardneck garlic is the best way to experience what fresh green garlic tastes like.  Hardneck garlic sends up a flowering stalk in late spring, shortly before the bulbs would be ready for harvest.  They are very subtle in the beginning because they look a lot like the leaves of the plant.  As they grow they curve back on themselves and when they have made a nice little loop, they are best for harvesting.

 When I harvest them, I cut them as close to the leaves as I can.  The long stalk is tender and can be chopped and used like garlic cloves to flavor any recipe.  I usually use the whole stalk and most of the flower, just discarding the tough ends of the scape.

Once harvested scapes are best used fresh, but they will keep in a jar of water for a few days if you pick too many at once.  I am trying to just harvest them and use them as I go until they are gone.  They don't all flower at exactly the same time, so this spreads out my harvest over several weeks as they ripen.  

I will be watching my garlic crop now for signs that the bulbs are ready to harvest.  I have read that you should harvest the bulbs when the bottom two to three leaves have turned brown.  Some of the plants are definitely starting to look a little brown around the edges, so I should be removing the irrigation in that bed to let it dry out a little.  Hopefully in just a couple more weeks I will be harvesting the rest of my garlic crop.

Peak Pea Production

The longer days of late spring have been very good for production in my garden.  A few weeks ago the peas had begun to flower and now they are in full swing.

I wasn't paying very close attention to them for a few days and when I went to check on them I found that they were in dire need of a harvest!  I picked nearly a quart of peas from this ten foot row of peas!

I was surprised by the volume I was able to pick since these plants weren't very tall.  This was a new variety to me this year and I am happy with the results.  They don't seem to have any trouble producing a good quantity of peas in a small area.  

I checked them again a couple days later and was rewarded with another quart of pea pods!

I know the harvest won't last long as the heat of early summer comes on.  I am just happy to be harvesting a new crop and expanding my diet from the preserved foods of last fall.  I will eat as much as I can fresh, then freeze the rest to use at my convenience.  The more I pick, the more they will grow until they die back in the summer heat.  I am so happy for my fresh spring harvests!

Portland Trail

I had a few hours to myself after work this afternoon, so I decided to get in a little warm up hike.  I wanted to try a new trail for a change so I picked one that branches off the perimeter trail that goes around the city of Ouray.  The Portland trail is a loop that has many branch off points that can take you to see a number of waterfalls and the remains of abandoned mines.  The total length of the trail was around four miles and it took me about two hours to complete (taking snack breaks and stopping for pictures along the way).

Most of the trail winds through a tall pine forest.  There were many downed trees dotting the mountainsides and a multitude of wildflowers were beginning to add splashes of color in the shady understory of the forest.

There were a few aspen groves along the trail as well, the bright white trunks and light green foliage contrasting the somber dark greens of the surrounding pines.

Wild flowers were abundant in many places, some took up residence in sunny meadows and others sheltered themselves in the shade of the forest.

Trailing Fleabane

Locoweed

Creeping Bayberry

Larkspur

White Locoweed (love the pink details in these flowers)

This is a flower stalk from a Western Chokecherry.  The air was thick with it's floral scent and the hum of bees as I walked past.

I also chanced upon a large puffball that was past it's prime.   Maybe next year I will be able to catch some of them when they come up in the spring.

There were quite a few small lookout points along the way, each offering a good vantage point to view the surrounding mountains.

This view was where I took a snack break halfway through the hike.  The wall of mountains at the end of this valley is known as the amphitheater for good reason.

 A few waterfalls cascaded down the steep rock faces across the way and into the valley below.

The hike loops back on itself and the occasional glimpses of mountains through the trees make the hike to get to these memorable views worth it.

The trail began and ended alongside this babbling stream.  This area is known as the baby bathtubs and is so named because of the numerous pools that formed as the water cut it's way through this layer of rock on it's way down the mountain.