Fastest pickles in the west. Or anywhere for that matter.

Um, are your cucumbers suddenly all, "HI! We're here! And we brought all of our friends!"?

Because ours are. BOY HOWDY are they.

But, since we've long run out of pickles from last year's crop of cucumbers, we're OK with it. In the sense that we're totally thrilled.

You can't tell from this photo, but we're doing handstands and cheers and stuff.

And since we haven't had homemade pickles since some time over the winter when our cupboard ran empty, we want this year's pickles NOW.

But canning pickles takes sooooooooooooooo long, right? Then they have to sit in the cupboard and cure for a while before they're really good.

Thankfully, there's the mighty refrigerator pickle.

Oh, refrigerator pickles - they are our spring time savior. Just when we can't wait any longer for the first crunch of pickle season, refrigerator pickles fill the bill like total pros. And you don't even have to have that many cucumbers to fill this recipe. Seriously, all it takes is about 3-4 cucumbers and a pint jar and you're good to go.

Or 12. We're not picky.

And - hey if you happen to have lemons coming in this time of year and a bit of dill growing in your garden somewhere, you're about to be pretty pleased with this recipe.

Indie Farms' Favorite Fridge Pickles 

Makes 1 pint
Ingredients
3-4 smallish pickling cucumbers (we like National Pickling, Homemade Pickles, Solly Beiler and Boothby's Blonds a lot for this)
4 garlic cloves, peeled
1 lemon, sliced horizontally
1 sprig of fresh dill
3/4 cup vinegar (white vinegar is fine, apple cider vinegar is good, too)
3/4 cup water
1 T whole peppercorns
2 t kosher or sea salt (just don't use table salt)

To make

1. Wash those cucumbers and slice off the tips (this keeps them from bittering up - ew)
2. Boil some water in a small pot and give those cukes a quick dunk (10 seconds is plenty). This will improve the flavor of your pickles. Promise.
3. Combine vinegar, water and salt in a small pot and bring to a boil
4. Add a couple of the lemon slices, the peppercorns and the garlic to the jar. Then pack in your cucumbers and dill sprig and top with another lemon slice.
5. Pour the brine over the cucumbers and fill the jar to 1/4" from the rim 
6. Screw on the lid and put your pickles in the fridge for a day
7. 24 hours later - EAT PICKLES WOO!

See, wasn't that easy? It was. And in a day you're going to be crunching your face off with pickle glory. So, you know, enjoy that.

The deal with fertilizing

You know what's the #1 thing I see people do with their vegetable gardens that keeps them from having a badass harvest?

They don't feed their plants.

Me so hungry

Sure - they may add some compost or something when they put the plants in the ground in the spring time and you KNOW they're watering the ever loving hell out of that garden for oh a month or so anyway, but I hardly see anyone go back to feed their plants with even a general purpose fertilizer.

Feeding - or fertilizing - is a crucial element in the Growing Your Own Food process. Without feeding your plants, they're not going to have enough nutrients available through simply foraging in the soil with their root systems to produce the kind of big belly filling harvests that I know you want.

Now THAT is a harvest

Right? Don't we all put our vegetable plants in the ground expecting to be able to return with a big ol' basket to fill to the brim?

Yes. Yes we do. I can see you nodding your heads.

Let me put it to you the way that it was put to me:

Plants need food to make food. 

This harvest was not produced on water alone

Oh. Right.

Just like you wouldn't just give a kid glass after glass of water and expect them to grow up big and strong, your vegetable plants need more than just water to produce food for you to eat.

Not that I'm insinuating that you feed your kids so that you can eat them or anything - that's just weird - but I think you see what I'm getting at.

If you were a tomato plant, you'd be drooling at this compost tea right now

Fertilizing is important. It's how our hard working vegetable plants go from simply surviving to thriving and producing.

But how do you fertilize different vegetable plants? Do they all like the same things? Do they take their meals three times a day? How much time are we really talking about here? And, come on, does it really make that big of a difference?

I'm glad you asked.

How to fertilize different vegetable plants
So, you are totally right to wonder whether different plants want different fertilizers - they do. In some part.

I'll have my dressing on the side, please.

See, all vegetable plants need the same 16-18 macro and micro nutrients to carry out their biological processes. Some of these are macro nutrients, which they need more of (hence the "macro") for the more fundamental of processes like building cells and photosynthesis and some are micro nutrients, which they need trace amounts of to carry out more specialized processes like production of fruit and seeds and protection from stress.

A good way to go about feeding your plants what they need throughout the growing season, beyond your usual soil building and composting regimen, is to side dress (or apply to the soil around your plants) with a balanced organic vegetable-specific fertilizer, fertilizer tea or compost tea on a regular basis throughout the growing season in amounts based on the growth stage of your plants.

If you don't have access to worm castings to make tea, you can also make a fertilizer tea from a good organic vegetable fertilizer like Gardner & Bloome's Tomato, Vegetable & Herb fertilizer.

A bonus of using a good balanced and organic fertilizer is that it'll usually also have added beneficial soil microbes and mycorrhizae that will boost productivity of the root systems, fend off soil pathogens and other good science-y stuff that I won't weigh you down with right now.

Just know - you're probably not getting all this goodness with the synthetic stuff. It's the fast food cheeseburger of plant foods and it's not doing your garden any favors.

When to fertilize your vegetable plants
We like to side dress all of our vegetables, fruits and herbs with worm casting tea on a monthly basis throughout the growing season, starting with the first flower set or, in the case of vining plants, when the vines start to run.

Can you hear the dinner bell? Because we can.

Depending on the vegetable fertilizer you use, you may only fertilize once every 4-6 weeks. Take a read of the package instructions.

The crucial feeding times are when your plants are performing the most energy-sucking activities like producing flowers, sending out vines and setting fruit, so these are also a good reminders that it's time to feed.

Once you have the general purpose vegetable fertilizer going, you can focus on providing the specific nutrients that your individual crops need.

For instance, broccoli needs a little extra boron to form solid stems and tomatoes need calcium to avoid blossom end rot.

What kind of results you can expect
Fertilizing isn't a miracle or a cure all or any other kind of mystical magic silver bullet for your vegetable garden, but it is the difference between a so-so harvest and an awesome one.  It's also the difference between vegetables that look good but taste sorta bland and ones that knock you back in your chair with WHY DOESN'T ALL FOOD TASTE LIKE THIS?! flavor. It can also be the difference between plants that are attacked by pests and plants that are healthy and vigorous.

When you combine a feeding plan with soil building, companion planting, crop rotation and appropriate watering, your harvests will boom, your pest problems won't be so severe and your garden will thrive like it means business.

And business is gooooooooooooooood

The deal with companion planting

So, good call all you Facebooking Indie Farmers, on picking companion planting for today's blog post.

Cucumbers and nasturtium - they make the cutest couple

Companion planting is one of those topics that gets tossed around in gardeny circles and, like one of you said, brings with it some measure of "wizardry". And while wizardry is cool because it implies that there are awesome results involved, it also comes with a heavy dose of mystery and mystery is not helpful when you're trying to do something that produces an actual result.

We want to dispel mystery when it comes to vegetable gardening because we want you to grow lots of food and mystery does not put tomatoes on the vine, so to speak. So, let's keep the awesome results of companion planting and ditch the mysterious whimsy that can plague this useful practice.

We're not really into whimsy, is what I'm saying, but we are REALLY into growing food. So, there you go.

Why are we even doing this?
It's not because we like to make our lives complicated, that's for sure. It's also not because we think the vegetable garden needs prettying up. It's because we want to grow a lot of food and this is one thing we can do to help that along.

We use companion planting for a few main reasons:

1. To repel insect pests
2. To attract beneficials
3. To create some kind of helpful environment for your crops to grow

The most famous beneficial insect - The Aphid Monster, aka - ladybeetle.

You'll get other benefits from companion planting, like pretty scenery or cut flowers for bouquets, but if you want to focus on prettying up a space or filling your fancy vases, take your butt over to the perennial landscaping and wave your herbaceous paintbrush around where it'll be most useful. The vegetable garden is for growing vegetables.

How do we even do this?
One way to approach companion planting, and the way we do it, is to look at the crops we're growing and figure out what those crops need that a companion plant can give them.

So, in the case of cucumbers and other cucurbits, for example, we want to repel the marauding advances of the sap sucking cucumber beetle. You can use a row cover over the plants to keep the beetles from connecting with the plants until they start to flower and/or you can plant nasturtium which grow a lofty semi-dense cover of foliage and flowers around your cucumbers.

Nasturtium and cucumbers - the early days

The nasturtium flowers look a lot like cucurbit flowers (particularly the yellow ones), which is one reason this may be effective, but the plants give shelter to beneficial spiders and other predators, keep the plants from stressing due to excessive heat and evaporation, and create a physical obstacle for cucumber beetles, which may be other reasons for its awesomeness.

Bonus - Nasturtium just happens to have edible flowers and look great in cut flower bouquets, so...score.

What about tomatoes? Don't we all want as many tomatoes as possible? Yes. The answer is yes. This is one reason that we plant basil around our tomatoes. Some studies show that when basil is planted around tomatoes to the tune of one basil plant every 10 inches or so, you can increase tomato yields by up to 20%, but you still need to water, feed and care for your tomato plants to keep them healthy.

Tomatoes and basil (...and nasturtium because it goes everywhere. In a good way.)

If you want to repel the monstrous chewing power of the tomato hornworm, marigolds can attract the small but mighty brachonid wasp that will parasitize and kill tomato hornworms. Which makes up for the fact that marigolds are hideous.

That's right - I just came right out and said it - they're ugly. I wouldn't plant marigolds unless I knew they did good things in the garden, which they do A LOT, so there.

The kids used to beat me up in school, but now they're all jealous of my celebrity.

Does your lettuce always bolt before you have other gardeny stuff to make salad? That's because it doesn't like the heat that your other salad crops might like and it would appreciate some shade, already. So give it some.

Plant a trellis or tepee of pole beans over your lettuce to shade it from the afternoon sun's scorchy rays. The lettuce is a light feeder, so won't deplete the soil's nutrients and beans are a nitrogen fixer, so a pairing like this actually leaves your soil in better condition than it was in to begin with. Good times.

Pole beans and lettuce - a power couple.

So, when you're looking for good companions for your vegetable crops, figure out what you're trying to repel, attract or create with your companion planting and then find a companion plant that does that thing.

No whimsical planting because oh that looks pretty there or oh I've run out of places to plant cut flowers so I'll just stick them right here oh yes that's fine, OK?

Now, go grow some food.

Make a seed bank. An awesome awesome seed bank.

I know that we're not the only ones with seed organizing skeletons in our closet.

Like, someone calling us seed hoarders might not be 100% off the mark. What with the half used packets of seeds peaking out of shoeboxes and potting bench drawers and such with incoherent scribbles attempting to convey planting dates or planting conditions or...well we don't really know what.

I think you know what we're talking about here.

But we're on the straight and narrow these days and it has made seed starting and saving SO much easier. And faster. And less fraught with self-reflection and wasted money. I mean, how many times have you bought more seeds just to realize later that WHOOPS! Already had those. when you were rifling through a drawer in your potting shed?

Yeah. Us too.

Then we got organized. And you can, too.

Here's how:

Gather your materials

• Rectangular plastic box with sealing lid (we like this one with dividers, but use anything that you already have or that you like)
• Small plastic zipper bags that will fit inside your box when filled
• Colored paper about the same size as your bags
• Blank address labels that will fit on your bags
• Something to write with
• Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalll of your seed packets 

Make your seed bank
Firstly, take your shoeboxes and drawers and flower pots and back pockets and empty them of all of your seed packets.

1. Sort your packets
Trash:

• Empty packets
  Don't get all sentimental over the pretty photos or hieroglyphics you've drawn on there. Toss! Cleanse!
• Expired packets 
  Take a look at this chart for seed viability dates and toss any seeds you have that are expired. Especially if the seeds have been stored in...ahem...less than ideal conditions. (A hot garage is no place to store seeds if you want to extend their shelf life. We learned this the hard way.)
• Unknown seeds 
  Anything rolling around in dust at the bottom of your shoebox gets tossed. Be strong - it needs to happen.

Save:

• Any packet that is younger than its expiration date with at least a few seeds left
  

2. Label your new seed packets
Next, sit down with your now vetted seed collection and fill out a label for each packet of seeds with the plant type (Pepper, Hot), variety (Padron), Year (2013), Lot # (if available) and source (Johnny's).

Then apply the labels to bags, orienting the labels the same way on each bag so that they'll be easy to read when being rifled through.

3. Fill your new packets
Go back to your pile of dirty and worn seed packets and empty the seeds from each packet into its corresponding labeled bag. Zip them closed, pressing the air out of the bag as you go.

Now create your alphabetized dividers using different colored paper for vegetables, flowers, herbs and cover crops. You can use different categories, too, this is just how we've sorted things out and we like it, so maybe you will too. We can't be sure. We're not you.

For each of your categories, create alphabetized dividers for each so that you have, for example, a green vegetable divider with an A on it and one with a B on it and so on.

4. Fill up your seed bank
Sort your bagged seeds into their alphabetized and categorized spot, pop the lid on and, if you're a spreadsheet dork like we are, make for the computer.

4+. Dork out
The final step here, if you really want to keep a handle on your seeds, is to keep a running inventory of your stock so that when you sit down to order seeds next season you don't have to manually rifle through your now organized seed storage to know what you have and don't have.

We use a Google Spreadsheet to keep track of our seed inventory and update it as we add and use seeds from our stash. Feel free to make a copy of the template and use it for your garden.

When that's all done, pop your boxed seeds into the freezer or just tuck into a cool, dark place until next season.

And, of course, breathe a big fat sigh of satisfaction at the super organized seed collection you have.

Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhh...that's better.

Beans go boom

I've always liked growing beans.

They aren't bothered by much in the way of pests, they're good for the soil (they fix it with nitrogen), they produce a sometimes overwhelming reliable crop and they cover a structure like it's nobody's business.

And a covered structure in a garden can be a really good thing if you don't have a lot of growing space, want to grow both cooler weather and warmer weather crops and tend to have crops that overlap seasons.

Pole beans are perfect for all of these scenarios.

We really like Fortex pole beans because they're a thinner filet bean that tends to get longer rather than fatter if left on the poles a little too long. And, let's be clear, these things grow and produce fast, so plan to be out picking them every day or be prepared to find some big boys dangling off of those vines.

But since they grow fast and have a pretty long garden life (planted in mid-spring, they'll grow until fall), they can be put in once the days start to warm up a bit and the shade from their scary fast growing vines can protect those early spring crops that don't so much love the warming temperatures.

Like, say, lettuce for instance.

Pole bean seeds are also really easy to save for following seasons. Just leave them on the vines until they're dry and the seeds are rattling around in the pods like weird shaped maracas and then shuck the pods and save the beans in a breathable container (a paper bag or envelope works pretty well) for a few months until no moisture remains. After that they can be stored in a jar or plastic bag without worrying about any moisture fouling up the works.

In the spring time, like right about now, put a few between two sheets of a moistened paper towel on a plate in your kitchen for a few days and, while keeping that paper towel wet, watch for them to sprout.

I think this is where the idea for a mace came from.

 

Once they've sprouted, toss any that didn't sprout and then head out to your garden fence, trellis or tepee to get them planted.

Poke a hole in your loamy garden soil about two knuckles deep and drop the sprouted seed into the hole, root down.

Cover with soil, water thoroughly and then wait for the seedling to emerge.

After that, well, ready your harvest baskets because...

Beans go BOOM

Poo and pretty flowers

It's the first day of spring so let's make poo brew!

What? Isn't that what you do to celebrate?

Sorry, first let's look at some pretty flowers...

Ahhh...happy spring to us all.

Now let's make poo brew. Or, more specifically, worm casting tea.

This poo brew, or worm casting tea for the conservatives of you out there, is simply the harvested worm castings from your worm bin steeped in water and then strained of debris.

This tea can then be applied as a gentle all-purpose fertilizer to young vegetable seedlings and perennials alike.

You can spray it on plants' leaves or water it in to the soil to give them a good nutritious boost and to add an extra layer of defense against pests and pathogens.

You don't have to worry about burning your plants with worm casting tea like you might with other fertilizers and you can feed your growing plants every other week or so for increased productivity.

So let's do this...

1.  Add a handful of worm castings to a five gallon bucket filled with about three gallons of raw (unsoftened) water or rain water.
   
   
   
2. Stir the castings into a dark brew and allow it to sit uncovered for 24-48 hours. You can come back and stir it about halfway through if you like, but don't let it sit for too long because it will go anaerobic and stink to high heaven. Seriously, now.
   
3. Once it has been sitting and the solids have settled at the bottom, pour the tea through a fine mesh strainer into another bucket. Don't let any bits of debris fall into your strained tea because it will clog your sprayer.
   
   
   
4. Pour your strained tea into a pump sprayer if you want to apply to your plants' leaves or into a watering can to apply directly to the soil.
   
   
   

That's it.

If you want to use the solids that settled during the steeping process (How resourceful! I knew I liked you.), they can be spread alongside established plants as a nutritious side dressing.

Feed young seedlings with worm compost tea after they've been in their growing medium for about three weeks to replenish the nutrients lost during leaching and feed established plants every other week or so during the growing season.

Is it tea time? I'd like some crisps, too, if I may.

Otherwise known as poo

I don't know about you guys, but we've been hearing more and more about worm castings, worm casting tea and the amazing benefits of all of it for the garden.

Worm castings, otherwise just known as worm poo, are a pretty magical substance. Think better root structure (which means more robust plants), pest control, soil porosity (like water and nutrients can make it to the roots which have more room to grow and penetrate the soil), organic nutrient delivery, no risk of burning (like you'd have with synthetic fertilizers) and so on.

So given all of those bonuses and the relatively small scale operation required for keeping worms, we decided to try vermicomposting (the fancy word for worm keeping) in the test garden so that we could harvest our own worm castings, make worm casting tea and, you know, take on about 500 new pets without having to relocate to a multi-acre farm site since those don't really exist within the confines of Santa Clara County.

Last weekend we harvested our first full batch of castings from our single worm bin operation and thought we'd show you the goods that will be available for purchase along with our vegetable seedlings later this spring and - if you're considering starting up a worm operation, or you have one going and haven't harvested yet, here's a little step-by-step that should help you on your way to raking in all that poo goodness.

Hey - poo can be good.

How to Harvest Worm Castings

There are actually a few ways to do this, but we're using a method that involves hand sorting. This is good if you have a decent outdoor area with good light and want to hold on to as many worms, their cocoons and castings as possible.

We are greedy, so this is how we do it.

Before you decide to harvest your worms, let them go without their weekly meals for at least a week so that you don't have to sort out too much unprocessed food.

Materials

Plastic sheeting - about 6' square

One 5 gallon bucket
Another container for your separated worms
About one pound of food scraps
Enough shredded newsprint (black and white stuff only, please) to build a 2-4" layer on the bottom of your bin
Water to wet your newsprint
Patience. Oh so much patience.

Harvesting

1. Set up your harvest area with the plastic sheeting, new bedding at the ready, food for the apres-sorting feast back in the bin, a water source and your containers for castings and worms.

Sorting area

Bin - pre-sorting

New bedding all ready to go

2. Turn your worm bin over onto the center of the plastic and sort your worms into many (we had a dozen) pyramidal piles.

Overturned worm bin. Mmmm...

Pyramidal piles with worms racing to the bottom.

3. Wait about 10 minutes so that the worms can all travel to the bottom of the piles (they don't like the light) and then go from one pile to the next scooping off the top of the piles into your castings bucket and the worms into your worm container.

These were some unprocessed snacks that went right back into the bin.

This is a good time to set up your bin anew by putting the bedding material in the bottom of the bin (we used shredded paper and tissue), wetting it until it's the consistency of a damp sponge and setting it near your sorting operation.

About those piles: you can revisit the piles after one pass through to make sure you got all the worms out or just do all of the sorting the first time through.

If you come across any unprocessed food scraps, just chuck them back into the awaiting bin full of new bedding.

This whole corner went back into the bin. Next time we'll hold out on the meals for longer than a week.

4. When you're done sorting (and this can take a while, especially if it's not very bright where you're working and the worms take their sweet time heading for the basement), empty your worms into the new bin, add food to one corner and cover everything (worms and all) with a fresh cover layer of shredded paper.

We sent the worms back with some of their castings, too. To make it homier. Also because it's tedious work otherwise.

Apres-sorting feast.

New cover layer tucking in our wiggly friends.

Add the cover and then stow it away in its safe spot - somewhere shady, cool and protected.

And with those amazing worm castings, you can either spread them on your crops and plants as a side dressing (a few handfuls for every 50 square feet or so) and water them in, or you can make worm casting tea.

Make worm casting tea
In your 5 gallon bucket, add a handful or two of worm castings. Fill the bucket about 3/4 with water and let steep for up to 2 days. Strain the liquid through cheesecloth into a garden sprayer or watering can and use it within 48 hours by spraying directly onto the leaves and soil of your plants.  You can also use the strained castings as a diluted top dressing for the soil.

Channel your inner Native American and waste nothing! Not even poo.