Laying the Groundwork

Still lots to do, but some good stuff accomplished.

The raised beds.

The peas have risen!

Hardneck garlic planted last fall.

Softneck garlic also planted last fall.

Cabbages that survived the winter.

Next weekend, the fence!

Genesis Project

What a weekend. Helped a chum pull out an old patio and scored a bunch of 6" x 6" pressure treated beams on Saturday. They should be great, unless they leach arsenic into the soil and the tomatoes kill us all. Then Sunday Jill and I laid out the outline of the fenced garden and put the beams in place. These things are crazy heavy - Jill couldn't even lift them. We still need to cut a couple of them in half with the skill saw. Here's what it looks like.

Beams, hop pole in the background.

Beams laid out.

Plot number 1.

I manually turned over the soil. Dug down a foot to a foot and a half and buried the grass. My assistant slowed progress by performing an anthropological study of what we found down there. Was actually some interesting stuff - a rusty trowel of indeterminate age, glass and charcoal fragments, an old bottle - intact! Interesting. The bed looks pretty good, although there are a ton of roots in there. Next we have to add some compost.

Still no fence. Perhaps next weekend.

Garlic is looking great. Problem with the peas - some of them ended up sitting on the surface of the dirt. Weird. I covered them back over a bit, then poured a pail full of potting soil over them - just a thin layer. one of the ones on the surface had sprouted slightly. Good progress. Some of the peppers Jill planted indoors have sprouted as well.

Waiting for Germination

While we wait for germination, here's a new picture of the crocuses from the other day.

Seeding Antics

Today we planted some seeds indoors. We've got a great setup for growing seedlings.

Three types of peppers and 10 types of tomatoes. Peppers: Yankee Bell, Early Jalapeno, Hungarian Hot Wax. Tomatoes:

Let the Gardening...BEGIN

The first steps toward this year's garden have been taken. We weeded and dug up a bed in the backyard side garden and planted Sugar Snap Peas in the NE half and Sugar Sprint Peas in the SW half. According to the package, we'll have peas in 2 months from both. We planted them 2 inches apart in rows roughly 4 inches apart.

We also weeded, raked, and planted the NE half of the side garden with leeks. Those will take a bit over 3 months to get to harvest. The SW half is still planted with garlic from last fall's planting. They're just starting to poke through the straw now.

The beds are looking pretty good, didn't take too long. The weather was very cloudy and there was a fine mist that hampered our efforts a bit. We actually moved a lot of the stones around in the backyard side garden to accomodate our peas. Then we mixed in a bit of peat moss and some ashes with the soil. Just peat mosss with the leeks.

The backyard side garden...

The side garden...

Those two plants at the end are cabbages from last year. They never did head up. Don't have the heart to pull them out.

Finally, some crocuses came up in the rock garden. Spring must really be here.

Loafing Around the House

Just a quick note, whipped up a batch of the no knead bread in the mixer. Short photo review.

Buttered the bowl, placed in the warmer with a bowl of water

20 minutes later

20 minutes after that

Split into two halves, loaded one into the preheated baking pan, made a ball of the other. Did add the water to a preheated pan as well.

About 15 min into the 30 min bake. Oh yeah, looking good.

The loaf

Interior of the ball

The ball fresh from the oven...

...and thirty minutes later.

The one thing I neglected was slashing the top of the loaves. I always seem to leave out at least one step or get it wrong somehow. Still, aside from the loaf that was insufficiently cooked none of it has gone to waste.

More Breadfest

It was 9 lbs of dough, give or take. We burned through it in 3 batches of bread. The third batch was one large loaf. Because it was kind of sticky, it ended up being kind of unattractive. And pretty flat. And because it was bigger than previous loaves, it was not completely cooked at the 30 minute mark. Disappointing. But the crust was superbly crusty, as with every loaf. Cooking the bread with water in the oven is definitely the best lesson from this effort.

I prepared the third loaf on Saturday - a mere 5 days after making the batch. I didn't notice and sourdough notes in the final loaf at all, I guess these take longer to develop. Anyway, here's what it looked like.

The crust was great, but the shape was more like a calzone than the large ball I'd hoped for. Perhaps the wet dough method is just not up to making a tall loaf. Here's a cross section.

As you can see, not quite fully cooked. Just 5 or 10 more minutes would have completed the job.

Thoughts

A couple things I did learn from this experience. Baking bread on high heat with a pan of water in the oven is a great way to go. Good bread can be made from just water, flour, salt and yeast.

But I want bread that will be suitable for sandwiches. Duncan needs sandwich bread, and I don't want to send him to school with a lunch of preservatives if I can avoid it. So I went out and bought some bread pans. I whipped up a batch of the same dough I used. Here's how it went.

The wet dough

After 50 min rising

30 min later

Flagship loaf

The crumb

This worked out ok, and the bigger loaf should do ok for sandwiches. Once again, crust was great. Next attempt I'm going to try a bit less water and see if it'll stand up better on it's own. Also I need to set the pan up better so it won't stick. I just used cooking spray this time. Maybe cooking spray + a little flour next time. From what I've found on the internet, seems like the pan should be hot when you put the risen loaf in. Instead I let the loaf rise in the pan.

On the garden front, we're scraping the walls in the basement to prep it for painting with a concrete sealant. Should get that done this coming Friday. Then we'll get the seedling set up arranged and get a bunch of our plants going next weekend - peppers and tomatoes at least. Today was warm, we did some yard work. Feels like spring is coming.