Growing Garlic

Central Oregon is a great place to grow garlic and why not try your hand at it since it’s so easy to get.  You can go to a garden center if you want a toughneck variety or something a bit exotic or you can just pick up some garlic while in the grocery store and use it as well.  It’s that simple folks.  Follow the advice of the video below and you’ll have great garlic cloves of your own from your garden very soon.  Also, don’t forget that almost every part of the garlic plant from its shoots to its flowers are fantastic seasonings in their own right, not just the bulbs which most folks are familiar with.  With garlic a staple in many types of food, why not grow your own?  You can even grow it in your kitchen window and use the leaves to spice things up along with a basil plant’s leaves and make some incredible, fresh homemade pesto!

Courtesy of oldfarmlars

How to Grow Yer Own Spuds

I grew up the grandson of a Heppner wheat and potato farmer/cattle rancher.  If there’s one thing I love, it’s potatoes in all their forms.  Fried, baked, grilled, mashed, you name it, I’ll eat it.  That all being said, I realized the other day I had NEVER tried to grow a potato plant myself.  Well, today I tend to rectify this by planting some Russian Reds and French Fingerling potatoes that I picked up at my local garden center, Moonfire and Sun here on the Eastside of Bend.   They carry a variety of certified seed potatoes and I chose two that I like to use in cooking to experiment with since it was my first time with this particular crop.   I think I am going to try them in containers as my raised beds are spoken for already…

Somewhere Between Heppner and Condon…

Courtesy of Howcast

Courtesy of OsmocoteGarden

 

The 411 on Mason Bees

For those of you not in the know, let me tell you a little secret.  See, you always hear about the the common European Honey Bee as a pollinator, and, while a proficient pollinator, it is FAR outdone by its native Northwest cousin, the Mason or Orchard Mason Bee.  These bees can out pollinate conventional honey bees by a factor of 1000’s (!) and are easily attracted by a very simple wood block nest you can make in an afternoon in your spare time with some scrap wood you probably having laying around.   BEST OF ALL: THEY SUPER RARELY STING SO ARE SAFE FOR KIDS AND PETS!  What else would you expect from a native Northwesterner like the Mason Bee?  😉

Overview of mason bees courtesy of GardenTime.tv:

How to guide to make your own simple Mason Bee Block courtesy of Dave’s Bees.com:

Up close and personal with a mason bee building her nest by maculifrons

Bare Root Fruit Tree Planting and Pruning

It’s still early Spring in the High Desert, but it’s a great time to think about planting a tree soon if you were considering doing so this year.  In that vein, here’s a great how to video guide to planting and then trimming a bare root fruit tree brought to us by Raintree Nursery and their resident horticulturalist, Theresa Knudsen.

Note: The presenter mentions rhizomes. These mycorrhizal fungi help protect against diseases and,because the trees below are bare root, there are no beneficial symbiotic fungi attached to the roots via soil and, thus, adding rhizomes is recommended.  Mycorrhizal fungi often look like strips or patches of a white mold. DO NOT FREAK! This is a GOOD thing as they are often present in very healthy soil.  If you have plenty of these in the soil you are planting the tree in, you can proceed without adding any additional packages of rhizomes.

DIY Rain Barrel…

Check out this simple how-to lesson for putting together a rain barrel.  Rain barrels help with both storing rain water for later use in the dry summers and helps to control erosion and flooding during sudden, fierce downpours.

Courtesy of envirosponsible:

Grape Pruning: The Rundown

This first video is for beginners and those trying to train a second year grape vine.  It goes over the basics as to how to establish your main vine’s trunk and how to select the right shoots to become your next year’s fruiting canes.  I also heartily recommend OSU’s “Growing Grapes in Your Home Garden” as it will provide you with a great foundation for  grape growing.

Courtesy of ehowgarden:

These next two videos show pruning on mature vines but I think they also do a great job of clearly illustrating selective pruning techniques and how vineyards take care to ensure each grape cluster has adequate air flow to prevent disease and molds/fungi, space to grow, etc..

Courtesy of Avio Wines, Sutter Creek, CA

Courtesy of Furney’s Nursery – Des Moines, WA

Spring has Sprung – An “Official” agropedia Update

Spring is finally here in the High Desert and as we wait for the purple clouds and icy rain of March and April to transition gracefully into the vibrance and warmth of May and June, I thought I would take advantage of the turning of the Seasons to keep you up to date with our latest goings on and plans going forward until this Summer.

To date, agropedia has been chosen to be one of the next ventures that VentureBox Bend is sponsoring in the next round of classes starting this July. Ideally, I would like to hit the ground running as much as possible so as to maximize my exposure to their mentors’ valuable advice and input.

Therefore, I’ve established a new business, agropedia LLC, with the State of Oregon as a vehicle for doing just that.  While I know that I will have to transition to a C corp at some point to issue shares to investors should I get that far, an LLC helps me in terms of creating a layer of protection between my nascent business and my personal belongings as well as provides a cost center for the bills associated with a startup.  Next up, I’m having a very talented friend help out with getting some logo work done and then it’s off to the USPTO for trademark/patent submissions.  While the patent submission will take A LOT of work and will most likely drag on until agropedia is properly capitalized and I’m able to throw more resources at it, I feel like working through the patent application form helps me in marshaling my thoughts and keeps me focused on the technology end.

While I am trying to slowly move forward in those areas, I’m also trying to devour as much VC related info/insight I can. I have read a good deal of material by Steve Blank, Eric Ries, and others in regards to the lean startup methodology and the concept of iterative development and the creation and deployment of a Minimally Viable Product (MVP) to gauge customer reaction/feedback and document possible improvements and “pivots”.  I have also read some work by various VC’s themselves and the best I’ve come across so far has been, “Mastering the VC Game” by Jeffrey Bussgang. It’s a quick, enjoyable, and informative book and well worth investing a couple hours into if you ever wanted to understand the inner workings of venture capital firms and their partners.

I will also continue blogging on WordPress and Facebook in order to spread the word, get feedback, and further refine agropedia’s business plan and market assumptions.  When we get to our VentureBox sessions, my hope is that I can focus on getting assistance with my financial projection documents and get pointed to some great coders that are interested in doing some interesting, fun work. Well just have to wait and see I guess…

What I have to remember to keep in perspective, is this: This is all a side project at this point as I am still plugging away at my day job  which is paying the bills and mortgage. So if I have been neglecting getting back to you, or I just haven’t seemed too talkative, I apologize and can only ask that you please keep the above activities in mind and know that it isn’t being done on purpose; I’m just really busy at the moment.

That is the our Spring round-up and a preview of some of the major activities/goals/milestones ahead.

Sooooo, with all of that said, I’d like to give a warm welcome to Spring, say adieu to Winter, and get back to work in Sev’s Garden, it’s been TOO long…

Cold Hardy Herbs for Central Oregon

I believe an herb garden is an essential part of every kitchen garden, providing fresh, flavorful seasonings for the cook and his or her happy diners. It also saves money and time as you can easily have a plethora of useful spices that you would otherwise have to run out and buy to put into that spaghetti sauce, for example.  Although gardeners in Central Oregon might not be able to overwinter a border of jasmine, but there are many hardy perennial herbs and self-seeding annual herbs that you CAN use in your garden. Others can be brought inside and grown as houseplants for the winter.  If a plant is hardy to one or two zones above yours, it might be worth trying, as long as you have a good snow cover or give it plenty of mulch for the winter and don’t mind possibly losing it in a very harsh winter.  You never know though, you might have the perfect micro climate for it to survive and establish itself.

 From Culinary Herbs for Short-Season Gardeners, the following is a list of herbs for colder zones like Bend and wider Central Oregon:

Herbs hardy to zone 2: Hyssop, juniper, Turkestan rose (Rosa rugosa).

Herbs hardy to zone 3: Agrimony, caraway, catnip, English chamomile, chives, upland cress, garlic, hops, horseradish, peppermint, spearmint, parsley (usually only lives 2 or 3 years), dog rose (Rosa canina), garden sorrel and French sorrel.

Herbs hardy to zone 4: Angelica, lemon balm, bee balm, garlic chives, sweet cicely, anise hyssop, lovage, lesser calamint, mountain mint, garden sage, winter savory, French tarragon, thyme.

Herbs hardy to zone 5: Lavender, exotic mint hybrids (apple, ginger, orange, chocolate, etc.), large-flowered calamint.

Herbs grown as annuals: Basil, chervil, garden cress, fennel, fenugreek, scented geraniums, sweet marjoram, korean mint, mexican mint marigold, white and brown mustard (grown for seeds), nasturtiums, Greek oregano, rosemary, summer savory.

Annual herbs that reseed themselves: Borage, false chamomile, coriander, dill (to zone 3), pot marigold (Calendula officinalis), flat-leaved parsley, opium poppy (for seeds, of course).

Herbs that can be overwintered indoors: Sweet marjoram, Greek oregano, rosemary, thyme.

Safe Organic Solutions to Common Garden Pests

Howdini shows us how we can first distinguish whether there is actually a pest problem or if it’s just an ornamental issue, and then shows several common products one can use to control particularly bad infestations should it truly be necessary…

Urban Worm Farming Solution

Permaculture News from Australia gives us a look at an urban worm farm solution that can help you turn your kitchen’s organic scraps into castings and tea for fertilizing your vegetable or flower garden without having to use a compost bin.  So if you’ve tried to compost before and been less than successful, this is another low maintenance and extremely easy way to both lessen your household waste and provide valuable soil conditioning.