Pruning Our Concord Grape Vine

Too much vegetative growth and lower grape yield
can be the result of not pruning your grape vine enough.
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011. Do not copy.

This year our Concord Grape vine, now about 3 years old, did really well. It produced 7 pounds of grapes that we harvested, plus those eaten by the chipmunks. Those grapes, in turn, yielded just about 7 liters of wine which is aging peacefully on a shelf. It will sit for at least a year before we open the first bottle and see how we've done with the first batch from our own grapes.

The knock on Concord grape wine is that it tends to be highly acidic and can be a bit harsh on the palate. There are steps that can be taken to minimize this or correct it entirely, but we made a very basic batch without taking any of those steps this year. I'll taste it next year just before preparing next season's batch and decide then whether to make alterations to the basic approach we took this year.

Meanwhile, it is the end of the season and although it has been unseasonably warm (the forsythia is blooming again for the second time since September), the growing season is over and it is time to prune the grape vine. This should only be done once it drops its leaves and is definitely shut down for the winter.

Grape vines should be pruned very heavily. I am training mine to weave in and around the spindles of our back deck railing so that it will look as though we have a living green railing next year and beyond, so I'll leave a little more of the vine structure this year for shaping.

For a really good guide to pruning grapes, check out this page from Ohio State University's Extension Service.

Most people tend to either neglect pruning their grape vines altogether or prune far too lightly. The result of under pruning is that the grape vine has so many branches and leaves that it has to spend too much energy building and maintaining that vegetative growth that the yield of fruit suffers. Let's face it, the main point of having a grape vine is to produce grapes, so pruning for maximum fruit yield should be an important part of your pre-winter grape vine maintenance.

One way to determine if your pruning regimen is working is to weigh your grapes each year. If your total harvest starts dropping and there was no unusual cause that you can identify (very bad weather, disease, etc.), then you may want to revisit the way you're pruning the vine.

Next spring we are planning to add another variety of grape vine as well. We are looking for a good hardy vine and will probably look at those grape varieties that grow well in upstate New York as the winter's are similar there. We'd like to get a sweeter grape that is better for eating or producing a more palatable sweet wine. I'll keep you informed as we make the decision on which variety we get. Whichever it is, we'll expect very few grapes the first year after planting as the plant concentrates on establishing itself rather than fruiting.

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Read my blog entry on the Grape Tumid Gallmaker, an insect that creates unusual growths on the vine tendrils or grape stems.

Putting up Green Beans by Blanching and Freezing Them

"Green beans are one of most prolific vegetable plants in my garden, year after year. Once the plants start producing, they'll keep producing green beans all season long. The pole bean varieties will continue growing and actually increase their production over time as the plant continues to get bigger and bigger. With just six pole bean plants in my garden, I am picking them at least two days out of three and getting more than my wife and I can eat each time we pick." So what do we do? We blanch and freeze the excess and enjoy green beans all year round.

Read more about how to optimize production of green beans and blanch and freeze them here.

Exotic pets?

I like animals. I have two dogs, a cat and a yard full of chickens. I understand the appeal of keeping exotic animals as pets, whether its a giant snake or a money swinging from the rafters of your house. However, increasingly the animals used as exotic pets are becoming endangered or threatened in their own natural habitats because of illegal poaching fueled by the money involved in the buying and selling of exotic animals.

Read more about Parrot Poaching in Jamaica here.

Poaching can devastate entire ecosystems by removing or dramatically reducing the populations of key species from the food chain. Furthermore, it can actually have the opposite effect as people grow tired of caring for their exotic pets and release them into the wild in parts of the world where they are not native. These exotic pets, if the environment is suitable, can multiply and become a nuisance invasive species in thes areas.

One example of this is the growing population of wild Burmese pythons living in the Florida Everglades says National Geographic. These snaes are imported into the United States by the hundreds of thousands. Often, they grow too large for their owners to handle safely and are released or they may escape.

Burmese pythons are now sharing space at the top of the Everglades food chain with the alligator. In some cases, pythons are even killing alligators. These are very big, and very mean snakes. They also feed on birds and bird eggs putting many of the rare bird species in the everglades at risk from this newly introduced, but rapidly multiplying predator.

While it's easy to see the havoc that top predators can do when introduced to a new ecosystem, even seemingly harmless animals can have unintended consequences and be very harmful to local species when wrecklessly introduced.

If you want to see and learn about these exotic animals, visit a local zoo that aids in preserving rare species. During a recent trip to the York Zoo in Maine, I too some photos of the capybara. Click here to view photos that I took of the capybara, the world's largest rodent which is native to South and Central America. Upon retunring home, I was surprised to discover that even this animal is now being kept as pets in the United States.

Spring planting

After a week or two of rain and cold temperatures, known in New England as Mud Season, we are now into full summer with 80 degree temperatures. Technically it's not summer for another month, but close enough. Tomatoes that are hardened off (gradullay accustomed to the harsh UV of the sun and the temperature extremes of night and day) can be planted outdoors now with almost no risk of frost kill.

Already growing in our gardens outdoors are:
strawberries (blossoms forming now)
Concord grapes (flower bud clusters forming -lots of them!)
apples (several varieties- blossoms fading now)
asparagus (We've already harvested two batches this spring.)
chives (ready to harvest)
garlic (from outdoor overwintered bulbs)
leeks (second year for seed)
chocolate mint
cilantro (tender to frost, but it self-seeded from last year and I guess it knows when it's safe to start growing)
lemon thyme (ready to harvest)
oregano (ready to harvest)
lovage (ready to harvest)
wintergreen (growing wild throughout our forest)
rosemary (freshly planted)
blackberries
garlic chives (ready to harvest)
(I had also planted Jerusalem artichokes, but they were eaten by moles (or voles or some other such little burrowing beastie)

Today, May 26th, I planted:
red cabbage
summer squash (yellow straight-neck)
cucumbers (Marketmore)
fennel
pickling cucumbers
tomatoes (roma, brandywine red, and another indeterminate heirloom variety whose name escapes me at the moment)

In the house I have:
1 large brandywine red tomato which I plant to grow throuhg the fall and into winter as long as I can keep it healthy and fruiting
6 miscellaneous miniature hot pepper (chili) plants in an Aerogarden
two freshly cloned brandywine red tomato plants

Those are the edilbes that we have growing at present. I'll add more soon, beets, green beans and others to be determined.

Bartering turkey for rabbits

In addition to vegetable from our gardens, we raise both chickens and turkeys for eggs and meat. Recently, we traded with another family we know. We gave them a dressed turkey a few weeks ago, and today they gave us the first of two dressed rabbits. That way we both end up with a wider variety of locally grown food than we would if we only ate what we raised ourselves.

We are lucky to live in a rural area where there are many small farms, and farmers' markets at least four days a week with easy driving distance, so we have access to a wide variety of localy grown produce and other food products. Bartering, however, lets us trade something we have in abundance with someone else in a similar circumstance with different commodities.

At any rate, we are looking forward to our rabbit dinner. I was surprised to see how big the rabbit is, it has much more meat than I thought it would. The only other dressed rabbit i had seen up close was a wild rabbit from a hunter about 30 years ago. It was much thinner and smaller than the domestic meat rabbit which we just received.

Food Supply Safety: Exploding Melons

This article about exploding melons in China points out another reason to try to grow as much of your own food as possible and to buy the rest from trusted, preferably local sources. In many countries laws governing which chemicals can be used on food crops or even livestock intended for human consumption are very lax. Even if such rules are in place, enforcement is often spotty at best.

In the case of this specific example, farmers in China were adding excessive amounts of forchlorfenuron on their watermelon crops. This chemical is designed to make the fruit grow faster, rapidly expanding its size and weight. For crops sold by the pound, this can mean additional profit for the farmer.

While forchlorfenuron is used in the United Stated for certain fruits such as kiwi and grapes, amounts are regulated. In China, it seems, at least some farmers got the idea that if a little is good, more is better. While much of the fruit so treated has burst and become worthless, thanks in part to the heavy rains that magnified the effect of the chemical causing the melons to grow so quickly that the rinds split open and ruined the crops in the field, different weather conditions could have resulted in a different outcome.

Here are the USDA safety findings for forchlorfenuron.  Studies on animals show that it can result in low body weight, low birth weight, and some significant kidney problems in animals. No comprehensive human tests have been conducted. It's not clear how much of the chemical was being used in China or what concentrations were found int he flesh of the fruit. So there is no way of knowing how the dosage compares to that used in the animal tests.

This, unfortunately, is not the only case of tainted food supplies from China and other sources. Melamine has been found in milk, eggs, baby formula and other food products in China. In one famous case, a supplier was even marketing the toxic by-product of plastic manufacture as a protein content enhancement to food processors. Because a chemical in it mimics one tested for in protein tests, it essentially caused a false positive result in protein testing for foods.

Only a very small percentage of food entering the United States (or even food produced within the United States) is ever tested for these kinds of contaminants. As a consumer, you simply can't know what's in most of the food you eat if you buy food produced in large commercial operations, especially those from regions where the existence or effectiveness regulations and oversight is dubious, at best. If, however, you grow your own food, you are in control of what goes in it. If you buy from local farms, you can often actually visit them as see their operations or at least talk to someone from that farm and ask questions abotu their practices.

Eating local foods, gardening and raisng your own food are not just good for the environment, they can protect you, individually, from the risk of dangerous chemical contaminants that may be added to the food supply without your knowledge or consent.

Chicken Breeds: Research First!

Before anyone steps into the ongoing learning process of becoming a backyard chicken owner, it is absolutely imperative that they do a little research first. After you have acquired a basic understanding of what it takes to raise happy, healthy chickens, you need to research chicken breeds.

I got a phone call from a complete stranger the other day that highlights why researching chicken breeds before buying them is so important. This woman called me in desperation. She had an assortment of different chicken breeds including Cornish X chickens that she acquired at the beginning of April this year, about 7 weeks ago.

She was nearly frantic about the Cornish X chickens. She told me, as I could have guessed, that they were much, much larger than the other breeds of chickens she had acquired at the same time. They were not active like the others, and she feared for their health after recently reading that Cornish X left to continue growing are prone to severe leg injuries and even heart problems because they have been bred to gain weight faster than ordinary chickens and to achieve a total weight far in excess of what most other breeds can ever reach. This strains the ability of their legs to hold them up and strains their hearts and other organs which have to deal with their rapid growth and very high body fat content.

She said that here 7 week old Cornish X birds were already about ten pounds in body weight. For most chickens, adult weight is less than that. She said she recently read about the potential for these birds to have health issues and wanted to sell them to someone who would use them for meat birds. She said she was constitutionally unable to butcher the chickens herself, even though she knew it was probably the most humane thing she could do for these particular birds.

Lest you think I am overstating the case, let me tell you that I have seen cases where owners of Cornish X chickens have let them get to 10-12 weeks of age. A significant percentage of these birds develop severe and painful leg problems. These problems include legs actually breaking under the bird's own weight and other debilitating structural injuries. Chickens are simply not engineered to get that big. While a careful feeding regimen can slow their growth and postpone some of these health issues, that's only a delaying tactic.

I could not take the chickens off her hands because I am using a strict quarantine policy now. In my first year of chicken keeping, I did add adult chickens from other flocks to my flock. In one case, after adding some new birds, I had a couple of them die mysteriously exhibiting symptoms of a contagious poultry disease. I could have lost my entire flock and ended up with the pathogens present in my soil for any future chickens I raised. Fortunately, that wasn't the case and the rest of the flock is doing fine. In any case, I resolved that I would not risk bringing in chickens from any other flock again. I simply can't know their health or the conditions under which they were raised. The risk to the health of the rest of my birds is just too high.

The woman who called me wanted to know how to sell her Cornish X broiler chickens to someone who would butcher them humanely for food. I suggested the Farm & Garden section of Craigslist. It is quite common to see chickens of various ages available for sale there and most buyers are fairly knowledgeable.

Taking the responsibility of raising and caring for any animal whether it is a family pet or a farm animal ultimately intended for the dinner table should not be taken lightly. Just as you wouldn't get a dog without knowing if it were a pit bull or a Chihuahua, you shouldn't acquire chickens or any other animal without first researching the specific breed so that you fully understand its needs and basic characteristics.

Cornish X (also called Cornish Cross) chickens are a hybrid breed specifically designed to be used for meat. They grow extremely fast and are not built to last into adulthood. While it is possible for Cornish X chickens to live into adulthood if raised under the right conditions, it generally requires special care from an experienced chicken owner who knows the specific inherent liabilities of the breed.

Fragrant viburnum

Fragrant viburnum (Viburnum carlesii) in bloom
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2012.

Every year we attend the 4-H fundraising auction in Pomfret, Connecticut. Right outside the door of the hall in which the auction is held, there is a very large viburnum bush which is always in full bloom during the auction in early May. The clusters of pink blossoms are beautiful to look at, but even more notable is the scent of the viburnum. The fragrance is exquisite and pervades the entire area for a few weeks each spring.

Since the first time my wife saw the flowering bush there, she wanted one for our yard. Unfortunately, we hadn't been able to find one at an area nursery. We finally got a small one in 2009 and planted it beside the back deck of our house. The idea is that the fragrance of the viburnum will waft up as we sit out on the deck in the springtime, especially when it gets bigger.

Once it finishes blooming this spring, I'm actually going to take some cuttings from the fragrant viburnum and propagate it. I'd like to add a half dozen more of them around the yard. While some plants are relatively easy to root without rooting hormone, I find that most trees and woody bushes do better with some rooting hormone applied. I have a powder version containing 0.1% Indole-3-butyric acid. For a yield of six new plants that actually take root, I'll probably take 12 cuttings, so that I end up with too many rather than risk too few.

The Fragrant Viburnum (Viburnum carlesii), sometimes called Koreanspice, grows about six feet tall and six feet wide. Some specimens can get larger if conditions are right. They are hardy in growing zones 4-7. The one we've had for a couple of winters here on a mountain in southern New Hampshire is doing quite well and has had no evidence of winter die-off.

The flowers are a light pink to white. Like many plants that put on such effusive displays, the flowers of the fragrant viburnum are short-lived. In a couple of weeks, they wilt and fall away. Like the forsythia, next year's flowers are formed from growth that occurs shortly after this year's flowers drop off the plant. Unlike the forsythia, however, the viburnum tends to grow a bit more slowly and with more control. If pruning is needed, it should be done in the spring after the fragrant flowers have died away.

4H auction and broiler chicks

The 4H club is an organization designed to develop leadership in young people with a strong focus on agriculture. They offer summer camps and many fine youth programs throughout the country. The 4H club in Pomfret, Connecticut, holds an annual auction to raise funds for the camp. We have attended every year for at least a decade since my son went to summer camp there and had a wonderful time.

This year, my wife went while I stayed home to work. She ended up buying 50 Cornish X (also called Cornish Cross) broiler chicks. She paid $22.50 for the entire lot of 50 chicks. That's about 47 cents each. These same chicks will cost you about $1.87 plus postage from a commercial poultry breeder and are often sold for between $5-6 each locally. They are a special proprietary breed and are only available through breeders licensed by the breed owner.

The particular trait that makes this breed of chickens desirable is that they grow amazingly fast. Cornish X chickens are ready to be butchered in 6-8 weeks after hatching. At that point, you'll expect a 4-5 pound dressed weight. That makes them much more economical than ordinary breeds which might take 5 months to reach their finished size.

The downside to the Cornish X breed is that they grow so quickly by a combination of genetics, eating continuously and not moving around enough to burn calories. Others who have raised them said that if you don't put their drinking water a few dozen yards away from their food, they'll never get up and walk. They are reported to simply sit in front of the feeder trough, eat and sleep. If the ground is bare dirt, as feeder areas often are, that means they sit in the dirt and mud, and even their own poop for days at a time. Now this only happens when they are older and nearing their harvest weight and their are ways around it.

As chicks, Cornish X birds behave much like any other. A little less active, a little more voracious at the feeder, but pretty much ordinary. As they grow and put on weight, they become less and less active. By moving the feeders, separating water from food, and making them move around in order to get what they want, you can keep them somewhat active. I'll report back with my own experience with this breed once we get them and start them growing.

At any rate, the other downside of Cornish X chickens is that the excess weight and fat is a heavy load on their hearts. If allowed to continue growing to full adulthood, they tend to die, presumably of heart attacks. This, say other Cornish Cross owners, starts to become a significant risk at around 12 weeks old. Furthermore, the Cornish Cross breed is a hybrid. Reportedly, it is derived from mixing four separate breeds of parent stock. I don't know the exact combination. That means that Cornish X don't breed true. If you were to get some that survived long enough and were able to breed them, the resulting chicks would be a hodge-podge of all possible variations of the four parent breeds, but not fast-growing Cornish X chickens.

Cornish X, therefore, are suited to one purpose: being raised for meat. They may be the most efficient feed to body weight converters in the world of agriculture, outperforming tilapia, pigs, cows, and just about everything else. People who are not prepared to butcher them, should not have Cornish X chickens.

This will be our first direct experience with raising this breed although we have raised other breeds of chickens and have seen Cornish X's at other local farms. We'll keep them separated from our older (egg-laying) flock, for their own protection. Adult chickens don't take well to the introduction of new chicks unless there's a fierce mother hen to defend them, or a gradual secure introduction can be made over time.

Wild edibles: Japanese Knotweed



Japanese knotweed

Photo by KENPEI

Creative Commons Attribution, S-A 3.0

As I was driving along today between Rochester and Dover, I noticed many thick stands of Japanese knotweed beside the road. The plants are at the perfect stage for eating just now (early May) in New Hampshire. If I had time to stop, I could have harvested bushels of the stuff. I'm not a big fan of the taste when eaten raw although many are, but adding a sweet component to the sour knotweed in something like a knotweed-strawberry pie makes it quite good.

Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica or Polygonum cuspidatum) is a very common invasive plant in New England and throughout the United States. At first glance it looks something like bamboo, and is sometimes even called American bamboo even though it is not a member of the bamboo family. It grows very rapidly during the spring and summer, then dies off in winter. The roots survive, however, and even a small root fragment can produce a new plant.

Japanese Knotweed is often found along roadsides because of the way in which it propagates. Snow plows here in New England often catch a bit of the roadside dirt, including knotweed root fragments and push them further on down the road. In the spring these travelled roots produce plants in the new location, and eventually spread to form a new stand or thicket of knotweed.

Japanese knotweed is actually being harvested and used commercially now. If you look on the ingredients of a bottle of the health supplement resveratrol, you'll see that the reseveratrol is most likely extracted from Japanese knotweed.

The young shoots of Japanese knotweed can be eaten. They have a sour taste, not unlike rhubarb. That's because they contain some of the same chemical make-up as rhubarb. Those with a sensitivity to rhubarb should therefore avoid knotweed as well.

Anyway, the point of all this is that because Japanese knotweed is a virulent invasive species, it is one of the wild edibles that you can harvest with wild abandon. If you pull up all the available shoots from any given patch, that's ok with knotweed, but definitely not ok with native wild edible plants. Even though you are not likely to get all the roots to eradicate the knotweed patch, you'll still be slowing down its spread at the very least.

When knotweed gets larger it is more fibrous and woody like real bamboo. So it must be harvested young to be eaten. They are good up until they get about two feet tall, just peel off the thin stringy layer on the outside and chop off the leaves at the top. You can cook them up as a substitute for rhubarb in most recipes or eat them raw.

Free landscaping stock, transplanting

One of the best things about growing plants that are native to and very hardy in the area where you live is that they tend to reproduce. This gives you free landscape stock to use elsewhere on your property. A short list of cold-hardy perennials, shrubs, and trees for northern climates can be found here.

I just finished digging up three brand new forsythia bushes from around the one big one that we had in our yard. Forsythias reproduce mainly by a form of self cloning. The tips of the long braches that extend out along the plant's perimeter will eventually droop down to the ground and take root. In just one year of growth after these new rots begin to take hold, new shoots as much as two to three feet tall will mark a new plant that can be separated from the parent plant and transplanted.

Simple Tips for Eco-Friendly Landscaping

Our big forsythia has a diameter of perhaps twenty feet from branch tip to branch tip. Around its perimeter are perhaps 15 small plants. Each one is made up of many individual shoots coming out of the ground from a common root ball. When you dig them up, you should keep the clusters together to avoid damaging the roots too much trying to separate them. This will also help the young plants to look fuller and more colorful while they are still small.

The proper time to transplant varies by the type of plant. Generally, I like to do it in the spring. The ground is moist and not likely to dry out or require too much extra watering and many plants here in New England are already in the "re-establishing mode." That means they are actively sending out new feeder roots to fuel the development of new spring leaves and flowers as well as the year's new growth. If you dig them up without damaging too many of the roots that have laready begun growing, you can take advantage of this spring activity and the transplants can get off to a strong start in their new locations. Depending upon the plant species, this may differ a bit from conventional advice, but it works well for me as long as I provide the TLC needed after transplanting.

As with any newly transplanted landscape stock, keep a close eye on it for a few weeks to make sure it stays healthy. If roots are damaged or if, as with a forsythis you have to cut around a root ball to keep it manageable, you need to watch for signs that the plant isn't getting enough water through its remaining root system. If it starts wilting or loosing leaves, that's a sure sign of dehydration and the plant should be thoroughly watered until it no longer wilts between waterings.

As eco-friendly gardners, using collected rainwater for this purpose is a good idea, especially for those who live in areas where clean water sources are overtaxed by increasing human demand.

OK, now I'm off to separate some irises that have multiplied to the point of overcrowding.

Happy Gardening!

Easter snow for New England

After several days of warm weather last week that almost had us convinced that it was spring time, today we have two inches of snow. Fortunately, the only things we have planetd in the garden so far are plants that can withstand a little cold and snow. We have Jersualem artichokes in the ground. We've planted garden peas and lettuce. And of course, we've separated and replanted the garlic that was left in the ground as seed stock from last autumn.

There are also a number of perennials that are already growing. Strawberry plants are also growing already and we've dug and separted them. Chives, garlic chives, thyme, lemon thyme, and a few other herbs are already coming up and turning green as well. We don't expect these to be harmed at all by the brief return of wintry weather.

It isn't cold enough to hurt anything else that might be budding up around the yard like apple trees, lilacs, or any of the bulb plants (crocus, daffodil, and such) that are poking up through the ground either.

What the snow will do is keep the soil wet. That puts jerusalem artichoke tuber cuttings at slight risk of rot, but they are in a well-drained area so they should be ok.

The rest of our summer vegetables are still indoors, in seed starting trays, completely oblivious to the elements outdoors.

The snow is a reminder, however, that no matter how many seventy degree days we get in the early New England spring, there is always the possibility of cold and snow until we get into late May. Even then it's possible, although much rarer.

Keeping seed stock for self-sufficient spring planting

One of the ways in we try to become more self-sufficient as gardeners is to keep our own seed stock at the end of the year so that we can grow or own crops year after year without buying seeds. This doesn’t work well for everything we grow. For some things we’re still better off buying commercially available seeds, but  garlic works quite well in the New England climate and is also one of the easiest to propagate.

Read more with complete step by step instructions and photos on how to propagate and plant garlic...

Photo by Brad Sylvester, all rights reserved

Reducing your home's energy needs

One of the ways in which we live a greener lifestyle is to use energy more efficiently. Properly insulated homes, energy efficient appliances and lights, and good energy use habits all play a major role in reducing our electricity usage.

Since we are drawing electricity from the grid, our power comes in large part from the burning of fossil fuels. Reducing the amount of electricity we use, therefore, also reduces the amount of greenhouse gases that are released into the atmosphere.

One way in which the average homeowner can make sure their home is as energy efficient as possible is to conduct a DIY home energy audit. the link below is an article I wrote in my capacity as the Manchester Green Living Examiner which gives some detailed information on home energy audits and links to find even more detailed information from official sources.

• DIY Home Energy Audit Information

Starting vegetable seeds indoors

There are some parts of the country where the growing season is so long that you can wait to plant most ordinary vegetables directly outdoors, if you should forget to start them indoors. New Hampshire is not one of those places. The growing season here runs just about 120 days between the average last day of spring frost and the average first day of autumn frost.

For those keeping score at home, that's May 20th to September 20th, just four short months. To be fair, there are some hardy garden plants that aren't really bothered by a little frost every now and then. Spinach, cabbage, brussel sprouts, and a few others can be planted outdoors as soon as the soil can be worked. Of course, if the soil is too cold, then the seeds will remain dormant and risk rotting if the soil is also too wet.

Other vegetables are too delicate to place outdoors until the danger of frost has passed. These include staples of the New England garden like tomatoes, summer squash, cucumbers, and tender herbs like basil. These delicate plants should be started indoors to get a head start on the short growing season.

For most of these, six weeks before the last date of frost is the right time to start them indoors. Varying from that timing depends upon the amount of space you have and your level of gardening ability.

If you have trouble keeping house plants alive, then you're probably going to be better off waiting until about four weeks before the plants can go outside. That gives you less time to screw things up.

On the other hand, if you are very confident in your ability to nurture house plants, then you can go as long as eight weeks indoors, but you may need to transplant them into larger pots once they outgrow the initial seed-starting trays.

In any case, even if the temperatures are warm enough you can't simply take your indoor plants and put them outside in the garden without acclimating them to the conditions to which they'll be exposed there. Just as deadly to seedlings that are used to being indoors is direct sunlight.

If you take tomato plants that you started indoors and place them directly outdoors in a sunny garden, they'll be badly burned and maybe killed completely by the harsh sunlight. They are simply not used to it. You need to give them a chance to gradually toughen up or harden off.

That's done by controlled exposure to the outdoor elements. If you move your seed trays to an unheated three seasons porch they can get used to colder night temperatures. To get them ready for the sun, you can put them outdoors for short periods of time, bringing them in before they are over-exposed. Start with the gentle sunlight of the morning hours and work your way up to full midday sun over time.

Another option is to go ahead and plant them outdoors in the sun, but protect them from the harshest solar rays during the heat of the day. You might cover them with a translucent row cover that knocks some of the strength out of the sun, and keeps them warmer at night until the plants are a little stronger.

So, the point of all this is that I have several varieties of tomatoes, hot peppers and a couple of pickling cucumber bushes already started a couple weeks ago, and the rest of the plants will be starting this week.

Zero heating cost goal for next winter

Every year, our goal is to get a little more self-sufficient. This year, one of our goals is to be entirely self-sufficient in the heating of our 2400 square foot New England mountain home for the 2011/2012 winter season. that means between four and five cords of dried wood needs to be stocked up, starting right about now.

Unfortunately, we still have snow which makes it difficult to get through the wooded areas of our yard to cut down trees. I won't take down so many trees that it impacts the long-term health of the forested area of our yard. My goals is to pull enough wood every year to heat our house, not just for a year or two.

Wood, properly split, stacked and covered can take about 5-6 months to dry enough for buring in a typcial wood stove. We'll need to start burning in late October Which means we would need some wood already drying by now. Fortunately, we have about three-quarters of a cord of seasoned wood already in the wood shed. While we'll use a little more before this spring kicks into gear, it should be minimal.

The rule of thumb for sustainable wood harvesting is that you can pull about a cord of wood per acre of mature forest. Our property is five acres in total with about 1 acre either cleared or with very young trees. that leaves four acres and should provide us with four cords every year. By using it conservatively, that should get us through a typical winter.

Within the next 3 weeks, before the trees leaf out, I want to have all the trees for next winter's firewood felled. From there, if I get one cord split and stacked each month, we should be all set.

I fell the trees and cut them into 16-20 inch lengths with a chainsaw. Which will use a few gallons of gas over the course of the summer, so technically, the cost of the gas and chain oil should fall under heating costs, which makes us not fully self-sufficient in that area. I'll track those costs this year, just to see how much a year's worth of heating does cost. Likewise, if we have a professional chimney sweep come out and clean the chimney, that is a heating cost as well. I may do that myself this year, we'll see.

Once the logs are cut to length, my son and I split it all by hand with a 16 pound maul, after carrying the lengths over an average distance of about 150 yards up a steep grade (about a 20 degree incline) to the splitting/ stacking area. That is a significant workout for both of us, so four cords this summer should have us in pretty good shape by autumn.

The wood shed holds about three cords and the rest we'll stack and cover close to one of the side doors of the house so we don't have to carry it very far through the winter snows when we need it. That will be the first wood we split this year, and the first we burn starting in late October.

A cord, by the way, is 128 cubic feet of wood as split and stacked. It's defined as a stack of wood measuring four feet wide, four feet high, and eight feet long. In our neck of the woods, the going rate for a cord of split dried firewood is about $285, delivered. You can buy a cord of unseasoned wood for about $200, delivered.

Chickens, forage vs. purchased chicken feed

This morning, I had to run out and pick up chicken feed for the chickens we have. There are roughly 38 chickens running around our still mostly snow-covered yard. It is just not possible to let chickens here live solely off of natural forage.

The snowy and freezing cold New England winters ensure that there are between four and six months in which chickens would be unable to find any food, much less enough nutrition to keep them healthy. Furthermore, with 38 chickens and three turkeys, at present, we don't have enough land to provide them with adequate forage.

We keep them in three small coops, locked up at night for protection against the plentiful predators that hunt the forests around our house. The coops are fenced in, but the chickens consider the five foot high fence to be more of a suggestion than an actual rule. They fly over it at will and can be found throghout the cleared area of our property at any given time during the day. They avoid the forested part for the most part, except for the small portion of the penned-in area which is forested.

keeping 38 chickens full time is too many for our needs and our space. We'd like to keep about a dozen adults or so for the most part, but I didn't butcher enough of them before winter set in and had no appetite to pluck and clean chickens in temperatures so cold that you can barely feel your fingers.

Now, I've got to go repair the hinges on the door of one of the coops before it gets warm enough for predators to start hunting in earnest again. last year, the coop that needs repairing survived several attempts by a black bear to rip it apart and get the chickens from inside during the night. With the shape the hinges are in now, however, I don't think it would keep the bear out. So, it's off to fix them.