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The archived items will stay here.

Interesting Blooms

Here are a few interesting blooms you don't see every day.

The one on the left is a persimmon tree. Not showy at all, in fact it's nearly impossible to tell that it's blooming at all. The blooms all face downward and they are well concealed with leaves. They smell a little like rotting meat too. They must rely on alternative pollinators. This asian "hana fuyu" persimmon is supposed to be self pollinating but it's always better to have multiple trees. At the moment it's the only one we have however.


This is the first time this tree has ever bloomed. It buds on new wood.






Here is an interesting bloom many people may not have seen before, it's vetch. These blooms are very small.

On the right is some volunteer honeysuckle that is in full bloom. Honeysuckle is very fragrant! I wasn't aware of this but it is said to have many herbal actions and is widely used in Traditional Chinese Medicine. It's said to be cooling, so a good thing for fevers.

Here are some links: altnature.com bearmedicinal

The hibiscus overwintered inside and is now beginning to bloom. That's a showy flower! They've got some medicinal/culinary properties too. Hibiscus tea is one common usage for the flowers.

The next bloom is valerian. It has hundreds tiny flowers and a very fragrant licorice aroma. The seeds are very tiny and resemble sea anemones. They float on the breeze like dandelions.

Beebalm or bergamot has a very interesting flower. Beebalm is also referred to as Oswego tea and can be used to make a good tasting tea which I prefer to the usual tea.

Where to begin

If you want to learn more about permaculture the best place to start is with the founder himself, Bill Mollison.

There is a free online resource from Networkearth.org that has Bill's lectures from 1994 in Texas.

There's no better place to start learning about permaculture for zero money!

Link to the new site.

A Sad Day

When I went out this morning there were ten fish floating in the pond. They were gone, it was too late. I didn't think losing gold fish would bother me much but I guess it does actually.

Because of my own stupidity they died. I left the hose running in the pond for several hours and for whatever reason, I think lack of oxygen, they didn't make it.

I'm not one hundred percent sure exactly what the cause was still but I think that since the water level was above the spill pipe the water didn't get aerated properly.

They lived through the winter, and the time that the pond didn't even have a filter. So I'm scratching my head on this one.

Later on in the day I lost one more and one isn't looking good. So there are five left, even though I only put ten in originally. Most of the big ones died.

Chorizo, chickpeas, poached eggs, FFF

Choizo w/ chickpeas & poached egg

This Friday's food forage dish was chorizo with chickpeas topped with poached egg.

The eggs came directly from our own chickens.

I used Mexican chorizo from Pine Street Market.




The chickpeas were our one cheat this week since there isn't a local source for them. We used dried beans and let them soak for a few hours first. Then into boiling water with one cinnamon stick.

Saute a diced onion and then add in the chorizo. Let this cook for a while before adding in the chickpeas. Then top the chickpeas and chorizo up with chicken stock. Let simmer for about an hour.

When ready to serve top with a poached egg. Each egg takes four minutes so don't forget to allow for the correct amount of time.

The greens are going pretty well in the raised beds now. They are on the eastern side of the house and it is about the only place that gets full sun.

Salad with truffle vinaigrette

I made a salad from lettuce growing in a raised bed we have here. This is a very good light and tangy vinaigrette for hot weather.

Truffle vinaigrette:

1 - tspn Dijon mustard
2 - tblspn honey
1- tspn white truffle oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup olive oil
salt
pepper

Combine Dijon, honey and lemon juice in a measuring cup

While stirring, drizzle in some good olive oil to form an emulsion. Add truffle oil.

That's it!

I topped the salad with Goat's Milk cheese crafted locally from Capra Gia.

It isn't local but it's worth getting, Edmond Fallot dijon mustard, nothing can compete.

You can get it from iGourmet.com.

Georgia Olive Oil is made here in Georgia and is available from their online store if you cannot find it locally.











You can always find out what is available to you locally at Local Harvest.

Forest Garden

Now that it's finally spring, here is a short tour of some of the trees in the young forest garden.

Boston Butt w/ poke and turnips

Pork Shoulder w/ Poke Weed

The poke is really getting large now and they won't be worth eating if they get too big, zero food miles.

I boiled them first in a large pot.

Turnips were from Freedom Farmers Market at the Carter Center.

I roasted a boston butt in the dutch oven on 250 for about seven hours with carrots from Straight from the Backyard.

The meat comes from Gum Creek Farms.

I sauteed the turnips and poke in garlic and bacon from Pine Street Market.


Salad with balsamic vinaigrette

I made a salad from lettuce growing in a raised bed we have here.

Balsamic vinaigrette:

1 - tblspn dijon mustard
1- tblspn good balsamic vinegar

Combine both in a measuring cup

While stirring mustard and balsamic, drizzle in some good olive oil to form an emulsion.

That's it!

I topped the salad with Goat's Milk cheese crafted locally from Capra Gia.

It isn't local but it's worth getting, Edmond Fallot dijon mustard, nothing can compete.

You can get it from iGourmet.com.

Georgia Olive Oil is made here in Georgia and is available from their online store if you cannot find it locally.

Strippaggio of Atlanta sells olive oil and balsamic vinegar in their online store, it's very good.








You can always find out what is available to you locally at Local Harvest.

Burgers with poached egg, FFF

Earlier in the week we visited the Spotted Trotter's location in Krog Street Market and bought some of their special secret burger blend. We used this to make patties with for the grill.

They wouldn't say exactly what was in the blend but I'm pretty sure it's ground beef with some pork blended in. There was lots of flare ups from grease. I just had to watch it extra closely. They came out fantastic.

We used eggs from our own chickens and poached them to put over the burgers. We didn't use any bread at all just some Dijon mustard. It was very simple but very delicious.

Krog Street Market is a very happening new market on Krog Street, home of the scariest tunnel in America. Not cookie cutter and not overrun with posers yet it's a cool place to visit.

I even paid $10 for a chocolate bar from Xocolatl! It was good but I'm not sure how anything that has thousands of embodied food miles can be labeled sustainable.

And by the way, Ford Fry's newest restaurant Superica ain't bad either!

Bees

Yesterday about ten thousand new arrivals showed up.

Bees!

In February we attended a beekeeping class and ordered some bees. They let me know they were ready and I drove over there yesterday and picked them up. It's about an hours drive out in the country.

I'm beginning to think that the apple trees didn't get pollinated and I'm positive that's the case for at least one of them. Hopefully having bees on the property will mitigate that. (I should have done it by hand though)

Transferring frames from the nuc

The bees came in what is called a "nuc". So they were bees that already had a queen and had been together. I drove them home in the floorboard of the truck, per the beekeepers directions. They were taped in with a piece of screen. They came with five frames that already had honey and brood.

Today they were coming back loaded with pollen that was bright yellow. I don't know what it is but it might be poplar because I see them going up.

These bees are adjusted to this climate since they are from very close by so hopefully they will do fine. As far as I can tell there aren't anymore honeybees nearby so they have pretty much free reign right now.

Food movies

We've watched a couple of good documentaries lately about food. Eating Alabama and Urban Fruit. They are both available on Amazon Prime.

Swale tour

Friday's Foraged Food

Friday's meal with all local ingredients was awesome!

Duck breast over sauteed pokeweed and hostas with poached egg and goats milk cheese.

Pine Street Market had duck breast in house on Friday and I picked up a couple. I also used their bacon in the sauteed greens.

I always pick up goat's milk cheese from Capra Gia every Thursday at the Tucker Farmers Market.

The eggs came all the way from the side of the house, around 30 feet. Zero food miles.

Hostas

Rounding out this dish was pokeweed and hostas plucked from the backyard. It was a variation on a Fried Poke Sallet recipe that I got here.

I didn't have as much pokeweed as I needed because it is just now beginning to come up. The hostas have already gotten pretty big so I substituted them for what I lacked in poke.

You are supposed to boil the pokeweed in two changes of water before you eat it. But I don't really think you need to do that with very young pokeweed. You only harvest the leaves. Mature pokeweed that is red can make you sick if you don't boil it first. It tastes like spinach to me.

I boiled the poke and then I sauteed that and the hostas in the bacon grease with garlic and soy sauce. The soy sauce was not locally sourced. The hostas wilt down very quickly kind of like radicchio. It eats just like a lettuce. It is very popular in Asian countries.

I sauteed the duck breast skin side down on high heat for a few minutes, starting with a cold pan. This allows the fat to render out. Flip it over and then put it in a 200 degree oven for 6 - 8 minutes. It's best when rare.

Poached eggs are incredibly simple. Bring water to a boil. I like to swirl it before dropping in the egg. Then just crack the egg into the water and let it boil for 4 minutes. Remove it to a bowl of water.

This dish came out seriously good, better than I expected. It's the first time I've cooked pokeweed. I had no idea hostas were eatable until very recently and the yard is full of them. They come back every year whether you want them to or not. Poke salad was a staple not that long ago. Now it's been deemed poisonous by the internet and is fatal to even look at. But I don't buy it. Something so ubiquitous as to have a song written about it can't be that bad!

Paleo

I've been essentially "paleo" for about three years. I don't really worry about adhering to letter of it at all, I just know when I don't feel good and when I do. So it's really been a case for me of cutting out most carbs. No bread, potatoes, rice or pasta. I've also discovered that cream really knocks me down flat. The longer you stay off of carbs the more sensitive you become to them, in my experience. In the beginning I could eat a sandwich with a bun and it didn't affect me much but now it does more so.

There's been a lot of cancer around me lately, unfortunately, and no one has gotten well. They've been convinced by their doctors to undergo certain treatments that to me seem archaic at best and barbaric at worst. The whole point of growing our own food is to maintain health. If you go to the industrial food supplier you are at their mercy. Sickness is a booming business.

It isn't my job to convince people that the food they eat is making them sick, people will subscribe to whatever line of thinking they wish. I can only say what my belief is based on the information that is out there. There's cause and effect, but not everyone correlates it. I gravitate toward the school of thought that sees that we were once relatively unaffected by autoimmune disease in the recent past and then examines why that was? What changed? In my mind it's a foregone conclusion.

With that in mind, I recently stumbled upon the Caveman Doctor who's podcast I really enjoy. I thought his talk about his profession, which is a radio oncologist, was very candid.

Foraged Food Friday's

I've been kicking this idea around in my head for a while, a completely local meal at least one day of the week. Beginning this weekend I will post what our meal consists of.

The rule is everything has to either come from your yard, or has traveled for less than an a couple of hours. Nothing from the grocery store.

A strong emphasis will be placed on foraged food, hence the name. Farmers markets are probably the best way to meet the criteria.

(okay, olive oil, soy sauce, wine are exceptions to the rule)

Thinking outside the food box can be a challenge so to get some ideas there are a few forage related links posted.





Wild Food

Southern Forager

Swales

February

Apr

The swale berms have really greened up. In February we topped them off with some compost and seeded them. It was a mixture of mustard, clover, cilantro, nasturtium, lupine, calendula, dill, chamomile, and
bergamot.

You can get a good idea of the amount of slope they yard has by looking at the fence line in the background. I've only seen this swales full on a few occasions. Water used to race down to the corner of the lot and pond up there. It would stand for a day or two sometimes. It doesn't do that anymore.

Feb

The hugel beds have also begun to green up. After I applied the compost I seeded them, mostly with mustard seeds but also some other things as well. The mix contained white clover, two varieties of mustard, millet, parsnip, echinacea, chamomile, dill and cilantro.

Apr

The real important thing is to get the compost stabilized with roots so that the rain won't wash it away. The mustard seed has done a good job so far. The other things, not so much. They may sprout later on as it warms up. Squirrels took some of the seed, but I'm not sure how much. Without the straw on top birds would have gotten it all.

Spring

I've read lots of books about designing a food forest and its all well and good when it's a diagram, but it doesn't work the way it's written down.

You can plant rye and vetch and clover everywhere in the yard but whether or not it grows where you plant it is a different story. Nature does what it's going to do. We don't control it.

Nature does everything on her own schedule. I've waited so long for seeds to germinate I forgot that I ever planted them in the first place. Nature knew to wait, I didn't.

No food forest is man-made. Nature does all the work plus another million things we can't even imagine. We're only designers and although we be feeble designers at that, it doesn't matter, not when we have the powerful ally of nature.

"If you do something right, it will do a lot more right itself." - Bill Mollison

I read a long time ago that frogs spend the winter on the bottom of ponds. I never thought there was any truth to that but that's exactly where I see them at all the time since I cleaned the pond. There are four or five that hang out there that the dog chases around, even diving in for them sometimes.

Comfrey has erupted from out of nowhere already. It's like it's not there one day and fully grown the next. Plants grow a lot at night.

Nectarine

The peach trees had LOTS of blossoms on them and fruit is starting to set. The asian pear tree bloomed, plum, cherry, apricot, nectarine but I don't know if they have set any fruit or not. Last year all of the cherries shriveled up and died. The birds got all of the peaches. We got one apricot out of two that grew.

There are tons of blueberry blooms. We had a decent amount last year and they grow throughout the year.

Asian pear

There were three grapevines that we put in last year that have made it through the winter. One made it to the top of the fence vertically but didn't get anywhere horizontally before winter. Hopefully, I can get it trained along the top of the fence this year and maybe get some fruit.

I also overwintered four more grapevines in the house that just got planted on the other side of the fence. They are muscadines.

We've had good luck with raspberries so we put in about ten more varieties. We've not had good luck with blackberries however. There are some wild ones in the zone 5 area but they haven't ever produced.

We've had elderberry for several years and it's grown well but never bloomed yet. Most of our gooseberries died from the heat I think. This year I sourced some closer to home that might do much better.

Old Southern Apples

Since I've been delving into the southern apple world lately a lot of information has come to light. It's a shame that we southerners have, for the most part, lost a lot of our heritage in the food department.

"The modern fast paced urbanized South has moved so far from its agrarian past that large parts of its heritage have been virtually forgotten. Southerners delight in restoring old houses and urban neighborhoods, and many city dwellers buy old farms and restore the buildings for a weekend retreat. But our unique southern heritage is more than Victorian houses and heart-pine floors, mahogany furniture and Coin silver; it is also Bloody Butcher corn, Red Ripper peas, Ledmon watermelons, Greensboro peaches, upland cotton, Gold Dollar tobacco and James grapes. These are living threads that lead directly back to three hundred years of southern agrarian past." - L. Calhoun

By some estimates, the south had upwards of 16,000 apple varieties. Today there are maybe five varieties in the grocery store, all shipped in from Oregon, and completely useless for nearly any purpose.

Old Southern Apples is a book written by Lee Calhoun in 1982. It was re-issued in 2010. I just received a copy of it. I'm always amazed when I find out things that I didn't know. This book is truly an eye-opener.

Until lately I've always just assumed an apple was an apple, however that's not the case at all. Depending on the variety, apples have specific uses. Some apples are good for eating whole but most aren't. Some apples are perfect for baking because they hold up well and don't turn to mush in the oven. Some apples you wouldn't want to eat at all but make great hard ciders. Some apples are harder than baseballs and don't seem to be good for anything but become perfectly ripe just in time for Christmas dinner. They call these "keepers". Some apples were grown strictly to feed to livestock. There is also apple brandy, cider vinegar, and apple butter.

In the acknowledgements of Old Southern Apples, Lee thanks Tom Brown of North Carolina for his dedication to apple hunting. Many of the apples listed as extinct in the 1982 edition have been found in the latest edition thanks to Tom. His yearly newsletters alone are worth a visit to his website.

I recently bought 8 apple trees from Tom and I can't wait until summer to order some more from him.

I didn't specify which trees I wanted so I left it up to him. Here is what he sent me. Betcha never heard of these before;

Betsy Deaton
Camack's Sweet
Red June
Red Kane
Fleming
Winter Banana
Magnum Bonum
Jelly Flower

If you start looking for them you'll find lots of websites about southern apples, here's a few:


Big Horse Creek

Century Farm Orchard

Urban Homestead

Vintage Virginia Apples

NY Times article on Lee

Seriously!?

I took a picture of this sign that is in Publix today. I saw it a long time ago but never had my camera with me before.

Why are fruits and vegetables COATED with wax, resin, or shellac? (Shellac is made from a secretion that comes from the lac bug used for finishing furniture.)

The answer is, because they are trying to fool you. Their belief is that your food must be doctored for you to buy it.

The quality of the food is completely irrelevant. It only has to look good, it doesn't have to be nutritious.

Is it any wonder there is so much cancer today? Even the so-called "healthy" food is airbrushed with chemicals.

Don't eat this crap, just don't.

With the exception of avocados and citrus, everything listed on the sign can be grown in your own yard. It won't look like the stuff in the grocery store but it'll taste a hundred percent better and it won't give you cancer.

Trees!

Ison's bare root trees

Over the last couple of weeks a lot of the trees that I ordered in February have been arriving. I've dug many a hole lately. But I enjoy doing it. I used several nurseries that I haven't tried before. The first one was Ison's nursery in Georgia.

I received about eight  2 - 3' bareroot trees and they were all less than twelve dollars apiece. They were mostly plum trees.

It took most of the day to plant the trees and three elderberry bushes. I still have lots of raspberries to plant.

The entire shipment was as follows:

Crandall black currant
Red lake currant
John & Adams elderberry
White Imperial currant
Anne raspberry
Cumberland black raspberry
Dorma red raspberry
Heritage raspberry
Jewel black raspberry
Nantahala raspberry
Polana raspberry
Royalty purple raspberry
Loganberry
Redchief nectarine
Sundollar nectarine
Black ruby plum
Byron Gold plum
Ruby sweet plum
Stanley plum
Orange quince
Smyrna quince

They were out of a couple of things that I ordered and they refunded that portion. They were very easy to work with and the trees seemed very good. Cost $241.

I also ordered some trees from Hidden Springs Nursery in Tennessee. The trees they sent were all really small. I was expecting bigger trees after what Ison's sent. Here's what they sent me:

Apple - Arkansas Black, Black Limbertwig, Hubbardston Nonsuch, Paducah
Cornelian cherry - Bodacious
Gooseberry - Captivator, Sabine
Mayhaw - Big Red, Heavy
Quince - Cooke's Jumbo, Meech's Prolific

$214

Tom Brown Apples

By far the best shipment of trees I got came from Tom Brown of North Carolina. Tom collects old southern apple varieties and preserves them. I sent Tom a message that I wanted some trees and that he could pick them out, the more obscure the better. He got back to me shortly and sent me eight southern varieties that I've never even heard of! They were all about three feet tall and really nice. He didn't even collect any money before he sent them. He told me to just mail him a check after they arrive!

Betsy Deaton, Fleming, Red Kane, Camack Sweet, Winter Banana, Magnum Bonum, Jellyflower and Red June were the ones he sent. I have to study up on them soon. $125

I also like the fact that these trees come from trees that were "rescued" more or less and were on the verge of being lost forever. Apples are not true to type with seeds, so each apple tree is a graft from another tree. Keeping these old southern varieties around is important because they are adapted to our weather whereas most apple trees you see for sale are northern varieties that aren't adapted to the heat we get and the apple quality suffers.

Nurseries

It seems like every spring and fall all of the big box stores have lots of ornamental and fruit trees for sale that they've marked way up. A lot of times if you buy these trees you will find that they are root bound when you get them home or that they have some sort of disease or they're just poor quality to start with. I've had all of the above happen to me. That's why I stopped getting trees from those places. It's better to order trees from a reputable nursery or go there yourself if it's close enough.

The trees from a nursery will usually be bare root trees. The price will be much cheaper and the quality will be much better. There will also be many more varieties.

Fruit

Raintree Nursery OR

One Green World OR

Hidden Springs Nursery TN

Ison's GA

Blueberries

Finch NC

Apples

Kuffel Creek CA

Tom Brown  NC - Tom Brown seeks out lost varieties of apples in the South and saves them. There are literally thousands!

Bulk Tree Seeds

Lovelace

Root Stock

Forrest Keeling

Lawyer Nursery

Flowers

Eden Brothers

Bulk Fungi

Fungi Perfecti

Comfrey

Coe's Comfrey

Olives

Georgia Olive Farms

Huge List

Persimmons - There's a few more cultivars of American persimmons than I realized!

Persimmonpudding

Treco

Fedco

Berm seeding

On the left is how it looked earlier in the week. A little snow fell. I guess everyone stayed at home.

before

It was nice weather today, so I took the opportunity to seed my swale berms, even though I'm rolling the dice a little.

There is rain in the forecast and I need to get the berms mulched over to prevent the compost from washing away.
A big bag of white clover just arrived this week so I made a mixture for the berm from the seeds I have on hand.



The mix contained white clover, two varieties of mustard, millet, parsnip, echinacea, chamomile, dill and cilantro.

after

After I seeded the berm I covered it with wheat straw which holds moisture very well. It is suppose to rain tonight and warm up a lot next week, into the sixties. I'm taking a risk seeding the berm now and having everything germinate and then lose it later with another bout of cold weather. However I've noticed that when I've sowed seeds at the wrong time they've just sat there and eventually germinated when the conditions were right.

The berms are mostly clay. I've tried planting them before but nothing has gotten very much traction, especially when they dry out. Hopefully the top dressing of mulch will get the process going this year.

I also put in around 30 or so comfrey cuttings that I received this week from Coe's comfrey. So I've probably got around a dozen put into the berm.

Compost

The county composts some of the solid wastes and you can go get as much as you want for free. I went and got a truck load recently to add to the hugel beds and the swale berms. The pile in the picture is about twelve feet tall. It seems like it's decent compost. I've used it before. I just cannot afford to buy a ton of compost so it's a nice option.

It took me about half an hour to load the truck. I could have put more in but my arms wore out so I stopped. It took much longer to roll one wheelbarrow load at a time from the driveway into the backyard. That's the hard part.

Swale

On the right is the compost spread out onto the swale berms on the downhill side. These are ditches on contour that catch rainwater. The water then slowly soaks into the ground. Note the pitch of the terrain by the green fence in the background. It's fairly steep. I will plant in a wide selection seeds here as soon as it warms up.

Probable plants will include, mustard, parsnip, daikon, comfrey, calendula, dill, yarrow, bee balm, fennel, chamomile, parsley, chicory, echinacea, garlic.

Hugelkultur mound

I also spread some compost onto the top hugelbed. I will seed it with a similar mix as the swale berms.

This element is above ground as opposed to the swale. The septic tank drainfield is in this vicinity so we are containing the plantings above ground or only ground covers. I am avoiding putting trees into this area.

Green Deane

By far the best site on the internet for information about foraging from your yard is Eat The Weeds.com. It is the site of Green Deane.


There is a forum there that has helped me over the last couple of years to identify many "weeds" from the yard. It turns out that many, many things are edible.

Just to name a few: sorrel, begonia, henbit, dandelion, pokeweed.

If it's edible, he's probably done a video on it!

Purslane

Spatulated leaves are purslane

I found some purslane (Portulaca oleracea) in the yard today. It's edible and medicinal.

According to Green Deane, "Regardless of what one calls it, purslane contains more omega 3 fatty acids than any other plant source in the solar system, and an extraordinary amount for a plant, some 8.5 mg for every gram of weight.  It has vitamin A, B, C and E — six times more E than spinach — beta carotene — seven times more of that than carrots — magnesium, calcium, potassium, folate, lithium — keep you sane — iron and is 2.5% protein. Two pigments, one in the leaves and one in the yellow blossoms, have been proven anti-mutagenic in lab studies, meaning they help keep human cells from mutating, which is how cancer gets started. And you get all that for about 15 calories per 100 gram (three ounce) serving. As a mild diuretic, it might even lower your blood pressure as well. "

I don't remember ever seeing it before in the yard and it was growing in a shady area. 

Mid-winter update

Two eggs per day now...usually. It's easy to tell who's egg is who's since they are such different colors. The light colored one is Cleo's and the darker one is Blondie's. Blondie's eggshells are very thick and kind of hard to break. Cleo's crack very easily and it's mostly yolk. I think she is a Jersey Giant. Hopefully they will all be laying very soon.

Fall Elderberry cuttings 

Elderberry cutting in 10"pot

The elderberry cuttings I took in the summer have done well. They are indoors and continue to put on new growth. It's basically a bullet proof plant to propagate.

Most of the goji berry cuttings have done well also. I have at least a dozen of them growing in pots indoors now. I believe that I paid around $15 for the one that I bought and it was about the same size as the ones I have potted.

Propagated goji

The goji's are just ridiculously easy to propagate. I don't remember having a single one not strike.

I cut up a long branch that fell off into little pieces and nearly all of them are now growing. Only the green section of the limb didn't take, all of the woody pieces are living in a couple of coffee cups filled with rain water.

Probably 10 or 12 4" long cuttings.

A few of the fig cuttings are now growing in pots. But I didn't have one hundred percent success with them.

I have a few of the raspberry root cuttings that are still going but they haven't been very vigorous. I think they are dormant.

Most of the comfrey root cuttings survived but the cats were eating the leaves and they got set back some, they are starting to rebound now. I put several goji, elderberry and comfrey plants from cuttings into the yard in the fall. The elderberry I put into a raised bed is going good but the cold hurt the goji a bit. The others in the yard got hammered by the chickens so it remains to be seen if they will come back up in the spring. I think there is a good chance they will.

Persimmon seedling

Seedlings
There are a few seedlings coming along quite well at the moment as well. Back in the summer I put about thirty wild persimmon seeds in a flat and of those two germinated. I put them in pots in the fall and they are indoors now. Persimmons grow very slowly. The tap root goes way down before the above ground growth shows itself. Both of them still have the seeds attached.

Lately, I've started a few citrus seeds from some fruit from the market. I've got four grapefruits growing from seeds I started with the damp paper towel method.

I also saved ten quince seeds and put them in a damp paper towel inside a zip bag and one of them germinated. It's now in a pot.

Quince seedling

Five tangerines germinated using the same method as well. I transplanted those over the weekend.  They are yet to break the soil.

I saved a lot of Bosc pear seeds and they are in the refrigerator until spring because they need to be stratified before they will germinate.

Grapefruit

Although the fruit trees in the yard are said to be dormant over the winter, that isn't exactly the case. Buds have been forming on a lot of the trees and also some of the shrubs have them too. So they aren't totally "asleep". The apricot has by far the most but the peaches also have a lot too. The last frost date for us is the last week of March, so it's just around the corner.