Kerry’s Garden

The first batch of mini adobe bricks are drying in the sun. I ended up making a form to make four 3″x4″x1.5″ blocks at a time. I wanted to start slow so I decided to make a small batch today. I sifted out the large pieces of clay with a 1/2″ mesh screen and mixed 1 3 gallon bucket of clay soil and 1 3 gallon bucket of sand in the wheel barrow. I used an 18 gallon plastic rubbermaid type container to mix the dry mix with water. I love the feeling of the mud squishing up between my toes. I ended up getting 52 bricks with some mud left over for next time. I would have made more but I ran out of the boards I was making them on. There is probably enough clay for 8 or 10 more. In all reality if I make a batch like this every weekend I will be doing good. You wouldn’t think stomping around in mud would be that tiring. I was wiped by the time I was done though.

While looking for materials for my newest project I have become a big fan of Craigslist. Yesterday I hit the mother load. While doing a search for fire brick I located an elderly gentleman about an hour away with a truck load of old fire brick. He wanted $65 for the lot. While I only NEEDED a fraction of the amount he was selling (116+several halves and 14+several pieces of 12″x15″ slabs), purchasing what I would need new would have cost me about half of what I paid for the truckload and the quality would have been much less. So… after MUCH sweating and many trips to the back corner of his yard, my poor old truck was loaded to the gills and off we set. Thank God Tia went with me. I would probably still be carting bricks if I had to do it myself. Concerned that I would end up breaking down on the way home, we took it slow. My old truck has over 400,000 miles on it and she performed like a champ. Go Ford!

FF several hours and my truck has been emptied, we are exhausted, and two beautiful piles of Temper fire brick are awaiting duty. The question then became do I still build the cob/adobe oven or do I go ahead and build the oven entirely out of the fire brick. I checked the Pompeii plans and I do have enough for an oven larger than I had planned to build. Being the obsessing (aka focused) individual that I am, I found myself waking several times during the night to ponder my dilemma. This morning I decided to go ahead with the cob oven as planned with one alteration. I would build adobe bricks first and use those for the oven. The fact that I have never done this before and that in all likelihood we will move from here within the next 5-10 years, I decided to wait on building a ‘permanent’ oven and get my feet wet on the mud oven. I decided to go with the ‘build the bricks first’ approach after reading about an oven redo using such a procedure. It was written by the same gentleman that wrote the book I have been using as a reference for this project. Proceeding this way will allow me to build the bricks I need at my leisure and put it all together in a shorter time once I finish the foundation.

The totally cool thing about these bricks is that they came from an old boiler where I went to college. They have been sitting in this back yard since 1979, long before I was a student. Talk about coming full circle.

What does one do with 8 bags of tube sand and a VERY large pile of sticks? Build an earth oven of course. Also known as a cob or adobe oven by those who build and use them. They have been around forever and are recently coming into favor as a cheap way of making a wood fired oven. I ran into the idea while browsing the net this weekend. I’ve always wanted a brick oven and wasn’t willing or able to outlay the money required to build one or have one made. I read a post on some blog about cob ovens and instantly knew I HAD to build one. The basic ingredients are clay, sand, straw or manure, and lots of sweat.

So far I have located a source for the clay subsoil without having to dig up my yard. I have 8 broken tubes of sand that you put in the back of the truck during the winter for traction, a few bricks and a site picked out. Today when I came home, the city had cut down a couple of pear trees that lined the street and left the nicely cut wood in my yard. A couple of dozen trips with the dolly and I have next year’s wood all stacked up.

After reading Kiko Denzer’s book ‘Build Your Own Earth Oven’ that I picked up from the library on Saturday, I made a test brick using about half sand and half clay. I cannot believe how solid this thing is already. I can’t even make a dent with my fingernail. I also did the water test and it looks like the clay is fairly pure.

I think I am going to do a cinder block foundation surrounded by field stones. The foundation needs to be about 4′ in diameter. I am hoping to get this thing built before the end of the summer.

Looks like this is going to be the best blackberry harvest that I’ve had in several years. It takes two years from shoot to berry. A a lot that can happen during that time. Lack of rain, too much rain, disease, deer, wind and winter temps can thwart a berries journey into being. The weather this year will determine the canes that come up this year and next to some extent. Also the rain or lack thereof will contribute to the number and size of the berries. All of the good weather in the world is for naught if I don’t get them covered prior to ripening. The birds will pick them clean if given a change.

This is the second picking of the season. The batch I picked a couple of days ago was just enough for a cobbler.

This morning I was pondering what to eat for breakfast. Bowl in hand, I remembered the berries. How cool is it to be able to take your bowl to the garden and pick your breakfast? Blueberries and a raspberries topped off with a little Fil Mjolk. A breakfast is born. It doesn’t get much better than this.

Even if you don’t have a large yard there are berries that will grow in containers. My blueberries have been in 5 gallon buckets for almost 10 years. Every few years I take them out and rejuvenate them by dividing, replenishing the soil etc. Strawberries do great in containers as do figs. I know a lady that is even growing raspberries in a container. I haven’t tried it but would imagine that gooseberries would probably do fine in containers too.

It isn’t even 9am and to look at me one would think I had been working in the yard all day. The humidity is rather high, to be expected with all of the rain we have had lately. The highs have been in the upper 80s – low 90s and being the heat wimp I am my gardening outings are pretty much limited to early mornings and evenings. I am on vacation for the next two weeks so I will have a number of extended mornings to play.

Yesterday I finished harvesting the red and white currants. I have a 1 gallon batch of red currant wine from last year’s frozen berries brewing. It tasted pretty good with the light alcohol fizz as it went into the secondary. The recipe calls for leaving it for at least two years before drinking.

The blackberries should be rip within the next couple of weeks. I will have to net them this week or early next.

The spring crop of raspberries has been very disappointing. There really isn’t one. My typical m.o. with the raspberries is to alternate the two beds for spring crops. In other words a bed is cut to the ground in the winter every other year. The bed that was supposed to have a spring crop this year went wild sending up new canes. This will make for a bumper fall crop sans any catastrophies, but I am missing the early berries.

The beans are up and not nearly as thick as I would have hoped. I didn’t get the germination I usually do with the Southern States seeds. There should be enough to enjoy them though.

The gooseberries are about to start. It looks like it will be a bumper crop again this year. I have a 1 gallon batch of gooseberry wine brewing from last year’s berries in the basement.

The figs are looking like they don’t have a care in the world. I really expected some rust as wet as it has been but nothing yet.

I sprayed the grapes with the organic fungicide (Serenade) yesterday but I am afraid I was too late as I saw some black rot on several clusters.

I got the posts and cages in the ground for the tomatoes today. I will tie them up tomorrow. So far the deer and rabbits have respected the fence.

I was rather disappointed to see that what was white echinacea last year has come up purple this year. They either don’t come true to seed or there was cross pollination. I thought at least I would see last year’s white flowers but nothing yet.

The birds seem to be leaving the blueberries alone this year. It could be that the mulberry next to the porch where they are growing is full of berries or it could be that they are a little more hidden among the other plants on the porch. In either case I am grateful not to have to fool with covering them this year.

It may be hard to see by the photo but this used to be a half barrel FULL of strawberries. That was till the deer got to it. It sits about 10′ from the corner of the house. I believe it was a deer and not a rabbit because on the ground next to this are more strawberry leaves. Surely a rabbit would have hit them first. Normally the deer are content topping my willows and keeping the grapes pruned. This is the first time one has left evidence of venturing this close to the house. Is nothing safe from these ravenous animals?