Borage for Courage

Winery Placement

2009-03-15T18:10:00.000-07:00

Those darned seedlings still haven't sprouted, and I've decided to put a heating mat under them to raise their temp to a good 80 degrees or so. That'll show 'em!

Consequentially, you get another winery entry. Placement is a big issue, as you have to pick a region that grows the grapes you want to make into wine, pick a community that you want to spend the rest of your life in, and pick a specific spot that will net you the most profit.

For many people, these criteria would lead them west to the winery powerhouses of California, Oregon, and Washington. In my case, a combination of a Midwesterner's distrust of the west coast and a desire to not migrate *too* far from my home state of Ohio has led me to decide that my winery must be east of the Mississippi. It's a fine balancing act, though.

I've narrowed my search down to five states: Ohio, New York, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina.

I've chosen Ohio as an "easy" option. My and my brother's family, as well as our two wives' families all live in Ohio, which is a significant resource base. In addition, the land is cheap. However, the wines that come out of Ohio are often weak and limited in variety, and there aren't many wineries.

New York is another easy one. It is the best wine state east of the Mississippi, and the third or fourth best overall. It has a lot of wineries, high-quality wine, and a good variety of wine varieties. My wife and I have been to the Finger Lakes several times, and love the Ithaca area. Problem is, it's cold, and the land costs are above average.

The next three aren't quite as easy. Maryland and Virginia are both warmer than Ohio, and have an average selection of wineries, average wines, and average variety. However, the land cost is astronomical.

North Carolina is the last option, though it's the weakest of the five. North Carolina produces somewhat sad wines, has the smallest variety of the bunch, and the smallest number of wineries. However, the land cost is average, it's warm, and we have extended family that have weak ties there.

This being said, the location we pick is likely to be an area I haven't even thought of at this point, as we're nowhere near the capital necessary to start this venture. Maybe by the time we set out, global warming will have made Delaware the perfect winemaking state. Who knows?

Winery Dreams

2009-03-09T16:32:00.000-07:00

While we're waiting on the seeds planted Sunday to sprout (and thus give me a useful picture to post), let me take time to share with you my ultimate goal. Simply put, I dream of combining my love of horticulture and my love of wine into the ownership of a winery/vineyard east of the Mississippi. To this end, I've been researching incessantly for over three years. From alcohol-related bureaucracy to the most cost efficient tractor for a vineyard, I've been poring over everything I can get my hands on.

Most resources I've found say that starting a winery under romantic notions is an awful idea, and that it should be approached with a clear head and as a solid business venture. Despite this, the draw of country living, doing something with tradition and history attached to it, making my own hours, being close to home to help raise my children, making a living by at least partly working with plants, and participating in the blend of art and science that is winemaking really stimulates something powerful and elemental in my gut.

However, I'm always grounded again when it comes to figuring out the cost of this dream. Even if I started with just a vineyard, the cost to buy ten acres, plow it, plant it, install the hardware and bring it to fruition is well over two hundred thousand dollars. My current means will not provide me this level of disposable income for tens of years, let alone the three to five million bucks it'd take to do it perfectly as I'd want it. Enter: funding.

Funding comes in two forms. The first involves involving my brother in the process. This is an extremely good idea anyways, as he's a very good people person, a better manager/leader, a solid guy, shares my love of wine and dream of winemaking, has this insane luckiness about him, and with his doctor wife, doing much better financially than I. This is difficult in the short term, as he's tied heavily to his current location due to work and family issues, and just had a kid in January. The second form involves, well, let's give it a fancy name and call it the Hand of God. Whether it involves winning that free house on HGTV, winning the lottery, or finding an investor who is willing to wait five to seven years before seeing a profit, this is difficult both in the short and long term, because it relies on fate or luck, two things I'm not so good at influencing.

I suppose my best bet at influencing the funding issue is to make this blog so popular that people scream to sponsor me. So...uh, invite your friends! And uh, a free bottle of wine to blog followers once I get set up! Yeah, that's the ticket.

And so it begins (again)

2009-03-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

Today's seed-planting day in the Borage for Courage household, as the seeds have been soaking in wet paper towel for the requisite twenty-four hours. I was good and ended up under 15 dollars for seeds this year. However, as I mentioned, I will be leaning more heavily on nursery plants, so that'll be a cost down the road. As you can see from the picture, this year I'm growing one German Red Strawberry, two Chapmans, two Brandywines, one tomatillo, one Sungold, one Gardener's Delight, one Matina, one Kellogg's Breakfast, and one Green Zebra in the tomato category. For the peppers, we have Joe E Parker, two Fish peppers, a Mirasol, and an Ancho. For eggplants, there's two Rossa Biancas. In miscellaneous stuff, I'm growing three flatleaf Italian parsleys this year, because frankly, I can't find a single use where my typical crinkleleaf parsley is better. Can you? I know now that Stevia from seed is nigh impossible, but I had a couple dozen leftover seeds from when I was unaware, so I figured I'd give it one last go. And I'm going to try my hand again at growing Salad Burnet, because bizarre salad enhancements amuse me.

This garden is looking more and more like a gallery of past years' failures. Chapman and German Red Strawberry tomatoes, as well as Joe E Parker and Fish peppers died when I forgot to water the seedlings last year during a bout of the flu. Rossa Bianca was grown in horrible conditions two years ago, and couldn't manage to produce anything of edible size by the end of the season. The Stevia put up a feeble millimeter-wide set of primary leaves last year, then just fell over and died. So I'm probably dooming myself from the start. But doesn't doom make for the best blogging?

Another Season

2009-02-15T21:18:00.000-08:00

Gah, looks like five months have slipped on by. Since then, my wife has become pregnant with our first child, and the puppy's now almost seven months old, so... I've been busy.

Because of the aforementioned pregnancy and a birth right in the middle of the growing season (July 19th), this year is going to be a bit more simplified. Instead of starting my leek seeds in February and painstakingly getting them above two inches high, I'm scrapping that for leeks from the nursery in May. Instead of getting all-new tomato and pepper seeds, I'm keeping most of the same plants from last year, save for a couple new ones.

That's not to say there won't be new adventures and new recipes this year. I may even convince my wife to let me preserve this year. In addition, this year my blog will include my rantings and ravings about my long-term goal, as it does connect tangentially to gardening: my desire to run a winery and vineyard by the year 2020.

So here's to another fabulous season. May it outshine the last.

A New Member

2008-09-15T14:15:00.000-07:00

This is both a report and an apology. Repology, perhaps? The apology part is straightforward. I haven't blogged in over a week, mostly due to not having much in the way of picture-worthy stuff. I have an overabundance of tomatoes, but most of them are starting to get squishy, and thus not terribly photo worthy. The dishes I've been making with them, like tabouli and normal, run-of-the-mill beef tacos, aren't really exciting. It's getting to the end of the season, and I've kindasorta stopped weeding, so overall pictures aren't so nice. I guess the peppers are starting to turn color, so that'll likely be my next blog. That, or another on eggplants. Man, those have been doing better than I ever could have expected!

But on to the report section. My wife and I have been thinking about getting a dog for months, if not years, but decided against it for a few reasons. Sunday, however, we passed a local pet charity outside of Petsmart with a bunch of dogs for adoption, and it's there that we met Inara. Half beagle, half lab (I like to think the beagle was the male for the sake of hilarity) and all cuteness, she was abandoned down in Southeast Ohio, and the foster parents named her after a escort-for-kings character on Firefly, a show my wife and I both like, because he thought she was a good companion. Well, that was such an amusing reason that we had to keep the name.

Of course, we got her on the day that Hurricane Ike came through, so that has created some hilarity of its own in dodging the massive debris that's fallen down in the yard, and going out at 1AM in 60 mph winds so she can pee. Ike did some fair damage to my garden, unfortunately, knocking down two tomato stakes, knocking two or three green tomatoes off the stalks, cracking the stem of my brandywine, and knocking flat a few of my pepper plants. I just simply don't have the time (or energy, frankly) to go out there and fix things, however, due to this bundle of energy. I had to walk her for over a mile before she'd sleep and allow me to write this entry and get a couple things done around the house. This dog is going to either get me in shape, or gnaw my hand off.

Fingerling Potatoes

2008-09-06T16:33:00.000-07:00

Cost/benefit analyses. We try to do them as gardeners, saying, "Oh, it'll be much cheaper to grow x instead of buy it in the store. I'm just saving money." It rarely works out that way, does it? That's one of the main reasons I was drawn to fingerling potatoes. In the store, they're about $3.99 a pound when you can find them. So I figured, hey, 5 bucks for a few seed pieces, get 3-4 pounds, for a net profit of around seven bucks, and super-fresh fingerlings. Well, I got the super-fresh fingerlings, but after paying for soil and all the fertilizer these plants kept eating (oh, how they nom nom nom the fertilizer!), I probably came close to breaking even. If I would have been going organic for these potatoes, I would have been well in the hole.

I would have left these guys well enough alone for a couple more weeks, but the squirrels are getting aggressive, and had begun to unearth the plants as they started to die back and were stealing the potatoes. I didn't even realize they liked raw potatoes.

These in the picture are my Russian Banana fingerlings, chosen because they're supposed to be fairly versatile, in addition to the fact that I've had them before and enjoyed them. The range in sizes, though, is pretty insane. Everything from the size of a pea to the size of a real baking potato on these guys, which is going to make cooking them a chore.

Thyme Tomatoes

2008-09-01T08:12:00.000-07:00

I've grown a wide variety of tomatoes this year. The gold-colored Kellogg's Breakfast and Sungolds, the gold and pink striped Hillbillies, the pink Brandywines, the red Soldackis, Camp Joys and Romas, and the purple Cherokee Purples and Black Cherries. Mix and match that with the Green Zebras my mother in law is growing down the street, and you have the makings of some really pretty dishes.

The best recipes to show off this variety of color and flavor are often the simplest ones, and this recipe is about as simple as you can without taking your salt shaker out to the vines. Simply slice a wide variety of colors of tomatoes, and arrange them nicely on a platter. Drizzle olive oil on the slices, and generously sprinkle fresh thyme leaves on the slices. Lemon thyme is particularly good for this, especially the variegated kind. Lay the leftover stalks on the tomatoes decoratively. Set the platter out in the sun for twenty minutes, then serve. Easy as pie.

What do you do with the mid-season glut?

2008-08-24T11:32:00.000-07:00

This problem has plagued gardeners for time immemorial: the feast and famine of favored vegetables. A month ago, I was begging for ripe tomatoes, now I have more than I know what to do with. In another month, I'll be wishing for them again. Such is life. So what do you do when you have too much of a good thing? While I highly recommend veggie art like I've made here, there are a few good recipes for this point in the season to utilize your top ingredients quickly. One of my favorites is one we call midsummer's pasta. Its quality is really reflected in the ingredients, so if you are forced to use store-bought tomatoes, non-fresh mozzarella, low quality olive oil, or wilted, week-old store basil, don't even bother.

Midsummer's Pasta (serves 3-4)

1/2 lb fresh mozzarella, diced
4 medium garden tomatoes, diced (I like red, purple and pink ones for this, but yellow/gold might be good)
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2 cup good extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh garden basil
2 tsp Kosher salt
Fresh ground pepper
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
3/4 lb dry linguine

Add cheese, tomato, garlic, oil, basil and salt to a mixing bowl and season liberally with the pepper. Mix it together, making sure to coat everything in the oil. Let sit at room temperature for a half hour.

While you're waiting, cook the pasta according to package directions in a pot of salted water until al dente. Drain, and return it to the pot.

Fold the tomato mixture into the pasta while the pasta's still warm, mixing well. Serve warm or at room temperature, depending on your taste.

This is refreshing on a hot summer night with a good pinot grigio.

When the gods are against you

2008-08-14T16:33:00.000-07:00

Rain. Sometimes, it's a savior. Other times, it's well, less than a savior. I put off watering my plants the last couple days, and was planning on doing it today. Today, however, the weather had other plans. It came down in buckets, creating major flooding, flooding the inside of my house (because I was dumb and left the windows open 2 inches) and major problems in my garden. Not only is it messing with the water level of my tomatoes (thus raising the chance of blossom end rot and splitting Sungolds), but the volume of water actually *broke* one of my tomato stakes right off, luckily
not breaking the stem, but knocking four green Brandywines off the vine. Those of you that grow Brandywines know I can't afford to lose those, they might end up being a full third of my harvest of that variety.

Also, rain messes with my plans for my hot peppers. Hot peppers, as many of you know, get hotter when they're starved for moisture after the fruit is on the vine. I'm growing mostly hot peppers that are on the low end of my tolerance, heat-wise, so I was going to strain them a little bit to bring them more into the medium-salsa range. This flood kind of screws those plans.

On the other end of the spectrum, I grew cabbages for the first time this year, and I think the lack of moisture for the last week made the rabbits a bit more daring, and they took a chunk out of one this morning. So out comes the harvesting knife, despite wanting to grow them a little bigger. I'd rather have two large-softball sized ones with a bunny-sized chunk out of them than nothing worth eating, though. If the bunnies just could have waited until later today, they could have had all the water they could have wanted.

Que sera sera.

Botanical Genocide

2008-08-07T17:37:00.000-07:00

As you’ve heard me mention in my two previous entries, my garden had somewhat of an…accident early in the season. I utilize two four foot sun-spectrum fluorescent grow bulbs to grow plants from seed in my basement, typically starting in February with my leeks, early March for my peppers and eggplants, and mid-March for my tomatoes. Various herbs and other vegetables are started between those dates.

I had great success with this for two years at the duplex, not only raising tomatoes and peppers from seed, but keeping my perennial herbs alive over the winter. However, this year, I moved to a house with a large, somewhat moist basement. The dehumidifier that the previous tenant left with the house wasn’t sufficient to keep the basement from smelling musty, so I set up the one we bought for the duplex as well. Even this wasn’t apparently sufficient, as I had an outbreak of powdery mildew amongst my herbs in February. Fearing for this year’s crop, I cranked down both dehumidifiers to 35% humidity to stop and prevent further outbreak.

Life at 35% humidity was hard on my plants, and I had to water two or three times a day to fight against the dehumidifiers. Seedlings were often wilty by the time I got to them. But things came to a head in April when I came down ill with the flu, and forgot to water one day. That apparently was enough. My Purple Haze eggplants, Chapman and German Red Strawberry tomatoes, Fish, Ancho, NuMex, Hungarian Wax, and Lipstick peppers, as well as my cache of stevia, salad burnet and leeks were all severely dehydrated or dead. By the time I took a long-weekend vacation in early May, the aforementioned were dead, and my stocks of several other plants were severely depleted.

So for the first time in three years, I was forced to actually buy vegetable plants at the nursery this season. This was tough, as I get quite a bit of joy out of picking the exact plants I want over the winter, and was particularly looking forward to the Fish and Lipstick peppers. While I was able to find Hungarian Wax and Ancho peppers at the nursery, everything else ended up being a bit of a concession.

How am I going to fix this next year? Of that, I’m unsure. With powdery mildew on one end, and dehydration on the other, I’m stuck either finding some way to constantly water just the soil, or enclose the plants to become their own climate, and find some other way to avoid powdery mildew.

Eggplants, eggplants, the viable fruit?

2008-08-03T08:55:00.001-07:00

Eggplants are a funny thing. The agricultural branch of the Ohio State University considers them "...of limited importance." We use eggplants in our household somewhat infrequently, but when we do use them, they are given a certain reverence. They're a bizarre, mealy, almost bready fruit, related to the tomato and potato, but from their loins is borne the heavenly baba ghanouj.

Two years ago, I decided to try my hand at growing eggplants from seed, when I saw an ad in Seed Savers for a lavender and white Italian eggplant by the name of Rosa Bianca. At the time, I was living in a duplex, and had a long, 18 inch by 20 foot flower garden I was allowed to use, but was not allowed to remove the heavy clay in that bed due to the landlord using the clay as a failsafe against basement flooding. It was facing the south with good sun, however, and I fertilized it, so I was hoping I could still pull it off. How wrong I was.

By the time of the first frosts, despite all the pampering I could do outside of removing clay, the plant only had two eggplants on it, one the size of a cherry tomato, the other the size of a nectarine. I was frustrated and disappointed, and decided that eggplants simply needed a longer season than I was able to provide them, and thus, didn't try to grow them last season.

This season, however, I'm in a house, and built a few raised beds filled with a decent balance of aged horse manure, hay, topsoil, a little clay, sand, and peat. As such, I decided to try my hand at eggplants again. While the ones I grew from seed (Purple Haze) died in the basement (I really misjudged the climate down there, I guess), I picked up three plants from the nursery (two standard Black Beauties and a Fairy Tale), and put them in next to my peppers. Now they're going gangbusters. The Fairy Tale plant (shown at top) has at least eight eggplants on it, and they're growing rapidly. The Black Beauties (on bottom) are being a bit more conservative, with one that has an avocado-sized eggplant, and the other that has a grape-sized one. Hopefully they'll pick up with the heat of summer.

I've found that interplanting chamomile with my peppers and eggplants is really working out; I think I'll do that again next year. The chamomile has invited hundreds of those little hover wasps (Tachon...something?) to my garden, which have really kept down the insectoid pest population. Now, if they'd just swarm together into an invertebrate Voltron and fend off the rabbits, I'd plant chamomile everywhere. In addition to the hover wasps, the chamomile is shading the fruit of the peppers and and eggplants, making the peppers feel like they're packed together (which they seem to like for some reason), and making a nice apply smell when I brush past. I really ought to go out there and dry some, but I'm just afraid of taking the flowers away from those nice wasps.

The First Ripe Tomato

2008-08-02T08:27:00.000-07:00

If I had to pick one vegetable (well, fruit) to define gardening for me, it would be the tomato. The hearkening of the first ripe tomato ushers in the 'harvest' portion of the year, and from as early as I can remember, I was climbing up onto my mother's washing machine to get to the lacquered, woven-stick basket for tomatoes out of the cupboard, then heading out the back door towards the garden to collect ripe ones.

Today marks the day of the tomato, as I pick my very first ripe ones of the season. That honor goes to the first in line of my ten tomato plants, my Sungold.

This wasn't too much of a surprise, as they've pretty consistently been first the two years previous, though a few Riesentraubes gave them a run for their money last year. Sungolds also mark my first true concession into the realm of hybrid tomatoes since I've begun growing my own plants from seed. You simply cannot get the flavor and sugar of a Sungold in anything I've found in heirloom tomatoes. Other than the fact that they split when they've seen too much water at one time, the Sungold is quite possibly the perfect cherry tomato.

A Grand Adventure

2008-07-30T19:40:00.000-07:00

How does one properly begin a saga, a trek, a tour de force? Some wise sages would probably blather on about a single step, and they likely wouldn't be wrong.

So here I am. Twenty-seven years old, living on a little less than a third of an acre in the heart of what I'd call the city, and what my wife would call suburbia. We moved into this house in November of 2007 after spending many years in dorm rooms or apartments, and even a rented duplex. Stories of these will come in time.

My influences for becoming a gardener are diverse and plentiful. My mother is a gardener, and I grew up helping in the garden. My maternal grandmother is well-known for her green thumb. My home was only a few hundred feet away from cornfields, and many of my friends in school had families in farming. And most importantly, I've personally had an interest in plants since I was a young child, using my Reader's Digest North American Wildlife book from the age of 5 to identify wild plants in the world around me.

Do any of these really make a gardener a gardener, though? At the end of the day, gardening seems to be a study in tenacity. Coincidence or not, blogging seems to be a study in tenacity as well. Hopefully, these will come together, and I will have a successful gardening blog. Who knows? It could happen.