Okay, I admit it. I love tools–especially well-made hand tools. About a year ago I became enamored with purchasing a grub hoe. A grub hoe is a heavy-duty long-handled tool which can be used to dig and till soil much more efficiently than a shovel. It was once a common American hand tool, and even today it is the primary tool for countless South American, African, and Asian farmers. There’s just one problem: you can’t buy one here.

Most gardeners will agree that the choices among hand tools at most home centers and hardware stores is extremely limited. Only the most basic tools are sold, and options are dominated by poorly made imports with weak handle connections and dull blades. I always find it amazing that we can put a man on the moon but we can no longer make a decent garden hoe. I searched nearby stores and the Internet, but eventually our garden was tilled by a helpful neighbor with a John Deere tractor, and I ground an edge on our poorly made garden hoe which was passable for weeding.

Fast forward a year, and Robin again needs seed beds prepared for planting onion starts. If only I had a grub hoe … so I threw caution to the wind and ordered from EasyDigging.com. The sales-pitch style of their website puts me off, but it’s a small business and they appear to sell sturdy tools made in Brazil and Britain. (The fact that contrary farmer Gene Logsdon put in a good word for one of their products didn’t hurt either.) Of course, the biggest problem with ordering online is that the shipping for one tool rivals the cost of the tool, so you can’t buy just one, can you?

My tools arrived Tuesday in a well-packed box, and I set about assembling and admiring them. The castings won’t win any awards (none of the blades are dead-square to the handle), but they are plenty sturdy and pre-ground to a decent edge. From right to left, here’s a description of each tool:

• Fork Hoe – This is a cultivating tool that I plan to use to break up dirt clods, stir compost, and tear up weeds in loose soil. Further uses are described in this Fine Gardening article.
• 4″ Grub Hoe – The steeply set blade and long handle on this tool are optimized for digging. I plan to use this narrower grub hoe to break new ground for garden beds. I’m hoping this little human-powered tiller will be efficient enough for us to postpone any plans to buy a gas-powered tiller. I also plan to carry this tool on occasional pasture walks to quickly eradicate undesirable plants, such as blackberries and Bull Thistles. This is the tool mentioned by Gene Logsdon in his treatise on the hoe.
• 6″ Grub Hoe – A wider grub hoe for faster digging in looser soil or when I’m feeling more energetic.
• 8″ Italian Grape Hoe – This is the only true weeding hoe in the bunch as indicated by the shallower blade angle and the lighter weight. The wide blade should be great for clearing large swaths of weeds in garden paths and around established plants.

So, am I satiated with tools for a while? Not likely. Robin tells me that the weeding this year will be largely my responsibility, so I’m still going to need a nice light hoe for the fine work. I’m hoping to find something marvelous at an estate sale, but if that doesn’t work out I know where I can find a nice one locally. And of course, once you have one nice garden hoe, you’ll think of others you need: perhaps a scuffle hoe, a collinear hoe or even a wheel hoe …

Lee hung the garden gate today. It looks pretty nice I think. This is a big improvement over the cattle panel tied to the post which always tried to snag your clothes.

Before we can move our chickens into the garden, we need a proper garden gate for the 4′ north entrance. Thus far, our temporary gates have been lengths of cattle panels wire tied together and either tied (south gate) or propped (north gate) against the fence posts. This keeps out the deer, but any chicken-hungry dog could push past the north gate.

I priced pre-made chain link gates, but thought I could build something prettier for less money. The basic plan is to build a rectangular frame out of cedar and add a diagonal cross brace. After accounting for hinges and latches, the gate needed to be 43″ wide by 6′6″ high.

I decided to build the gate using all mortise and tenon joinery. This is arguably overkill for a garden gate, but has three advantages:

• Strength – Few joints are stronger than a glued mortise and tenon
• Appearance – By cutting through-mortises and leaving the tenons slightly long the joinery is emphasized for appearance
• Practice – I hope to build a number of different pieces of furniture and fixtures in our house, so I need every opportunity to practice woodworking techniques without the stress of expensive woods and critical eyes

This shows the basic joint used at all four corners of the gate. I cut the tenon (narrowed rectangular end) on the table saw using both a tenoning jig and some nipping away with a stop block. The mortise (rectangular hole) was cut with a router. I’ve owned a router for 3 years, and I’m sad to say this is the first time I’ve actually used it. Wow, lots of fun! This was much easier than the drill and chisel technique I used on the corbels. (Some chiseling is still required to square up the corners and smooth out alignment issues.)

Here’s a close-up of the same joint after assembly. The cross brace also used mortise and tenon joints, but I used blind mortises (nothing pokes through).

The gate frame is of wood, but I decided to use cattle panels to fill the openings. I dry fit the whole gate on the floor, and then laid a piece of cattle panel onto the top and bottom spaces. The position of each panel wire was marked on the wood, and the wire was marked 1″ past the beginning of the frame. Then I drilled holes in the frame where each wire would align, and cut the wires so they would extend into each hole.

The effect is that the wire panels appear to grow out of the gate frame. This required a very fixed assembly order, and I made the mistake of drilling holes for some of the wires in the diagonal in two directions, causing much straining and bending to get them to fit. The picture on the left shows the metal panels inserted into the diagonal and the top and bottom rails. We are about to align and glue the vertical stiles to complete the gate.

Robin and I were both really happy with how the gate turned out, and we started talking about how to finish it. It’s made of cedar, a nice dimensionally stable wood, but sun and rain will make their mark and without a finish it will turn grey and brittle over the years. I did a bunch of research on outdoor finishes, and narrowed our choices down to two: a good latex exterior paint (10 years between scraping, sanding, and re-painting), or a penetrating oil stain (1 to 2 years between coats). We both decided to opt for vain-but-beautiful and chose the penetrating oil. The yearly maintenance is pretty low-effort, and we didn’t want to cover up that wood grain. This is also a test case for an eventual cedar fence Robin would like to build around her garden.

We chose Superdeck transparent stain, mainly because it was the best product we could find in a quart size. It uses a Linseed oil base, but that’s pretty much the only natural thing about it. If we didn’t need the gate up so soon, I would have ordered a quart of Penofin Verde which uses all natural oils and vegetable resins and is VOC and petroleum free. Sign me up!

Penetrating oils are easy to apply. You just brush on the stain, give it time to dry, and then wipe off the excess with a rag. The gate is now resting by the front door, ready to be hung on the fence tomorrow.

Back in September I was feeling glum about my troubles with growing sweet corn, but also feeling hopeful about the popcorn I grew. Well, Lee and I finally popped some of that Strawberry corn and it was AMAZING! I have never eaten popcorn that was so flavorful. It tasted so good that I didn’t even feel the need to put butter on it. Needless to say we are very excited about growing popcorn again next year. Lee says I should ditch the sweet corn and just grow a huge patch of the popcorn.

I find myself staring at the cabbage patterns every time I slice one open. They are so pretty. I only got three cabbages from my garden that did well. We have been eating purple cabbage soup for dinner. Looks gross but tastes awesome.

It’s been crazy the last four weeks during the home improvements. I finally moved back in two nights ago and it is very cold. We have to insulate somehow before winter totally hits. The garden is mostly done for the year. I am just getting in some of the last vegetables.

The pumpkins turned out beautiful beyond belief. I gave four of them away since we didn’t get pigs like expected. I’m not sure whether I will can the pumpkin or make pumpkin pie. I will toast the seeds though.

I got three Lady Godiva’s. I thought I was doing well until my mom told me that she got 37 Lady Godiva’s off of her two plants. Somehow I think my mom’s nice soil combined with better bee pollination really makes for an amazing turnout. I’ve already cooked some of the seeds. I heated up oil, dumped them into the pan, and then salted them generously and they turned out amazing. This is a plant that I will definitely be growing next year. Even the pulp and rind didn’t go to waste as the chickens love them.

My Banana Pink Jumbo winter squash is very big. I plan on just cutting them up and freezing the chunks to later use in hot winter soups. One thing that I noticed being really off in the garden was the pollination of almost all of my squash. I barely got anything off of the plants. Lee plans of getting honey bees next year so that should really help out the garden.

I got a few melons that barely made it in time before the cold weather hit. This was another first for me to grow. I didn’t get them in early enough due to some seedling failures. A couple spoonfuls and that was it.

Finally, I am trying a new weed block approach. The weeds got a little away from me this summer. This is what one of the garden pathways looked like. Not good.

For next years garden I am changing the row layout. Along with that I am using cardboard and straw for the garden pathways. I made sure to strip off all the tape on the cardboard and to make sure there weren’t any staples. Then I just laid the cardboard down in the walkways and put a nice thick layer of straw down on top of it. My garlic bed got the first trial out for this weed block approach. I plan on saving all my cardboard this winter and then when the new garden season comes, just using this approach for the rest of the garden.

I grew two varieties of popcorn this year. One variety was Early Pink and the other variety was Strawberry. I pulled a head off of each type to see how they were coming along. When the end of the warm spell ends this week I plan on harvesting all the popcorn. This is a new thing for me to grow so I hope it pops. Maybe I will become a master popcorn grower instead of a troubled sweet corn grower.

The Strawberry variety is absolutely beautiful. The ears only grow to about 2” to 3” and the corn stalks grow about 4′ tall. Just looking at it makes me want to hang it on a wall. Except I don’t have any walls to hang it on and somehow I think it would get lost in the studs.

The Early Pink variety was planted right next to my sweet corn. So you can see some of the sweet corn yellow kernels in the corn. Next year I will be better about spacing my corn varieties. But I won’t worry about it too much as they just won’t pop when I get around to making popcorn this winter. Early Pink ears get around 5” to 6” long and the stalk grows about 5′ tall. You can see the size, color, and kernel difference in this picture.

I have tried growing corn for the last four years. Somehow it never works out for me. This is the first year I have tried growing it in Oregon. The previous years tried were in Arizona. I may have possibly got it right the last year I lived in Arizona, but will never know for sure as we moved before the corn was ready.

This year in Oregon I tried two types of corn. Popcorn and sweet corn. The sweet corn was supposed to be an early heirloom variety. What went wrong I’m not sure. Other than it was me trying to grow it. The ear was suppose to be 5 to 7 inches long. But when it was that size it wasn’t ripe as the kernels were white and not yellow. So I wait and wait and finally I harvest because the stalks are starting to die.

I am excited because I *think* this may be the year I finally get it right. As I am shucking the corn I first notice that I have some colors in a few of the corn kernels. So a phone call to my mom reveals that there was some cross pollination with the popcorn variety that was grown right next to them. Usually there is a space buffer which I didn’t do. You could feel the difference in the colored kernel and yellow kernel. The colored kernel was harder.

A couple of the ears had a lovely addition of a corn earworm. I just cut the bad part off.

After shucking all the ears I still had to get rid of quite a few that just hadn’t developed. They were still pale. Oh well, so next step of cooking a few ears. My mouth was watering just waiting for them to finish. On went the butter, salt, and pepper. First bite was going to be grand… Yeah, it wasn’t grand. The corn was not sweet, it was mushy, and just didn’t have a nice taste. Lee and I both didn’t finish our two ears.

I need to blanch all the ears of corn that are left. I figure I can use them in soups or something. Next year I can try again. One day I will get it right. With better soil fertility and a new corn seed maybe I will finally master growing corn.

I am experimenting for the first time on saving bean seeds. I let the bean pods dry out on the plant. When the bean pods felt really hard I picked them off. Here is a picture of the dried Bingo bean pods. It’s really exciting splitting them open and seeing the dried beans in them.

It really makes sense to save your bean seed for next years planting since most legume species rarely cross. I am going to try and save seed from some plants that my mom gave me to try out.

Dragon’s Tongue beans. Aren’t they beautiful?

Jacob’s Cattle Gasless beans. For some reason these beans really produced a lot of seed.

Bingo beans. I just shelled these ones today. I will let them set out for a few days to finish drying all the way.

Lima beans. I barely got any pods that set on this year. That was most likely due to the hot weather. I probably won’t save any seed from them as there isn’t enough and I don’t really like lima beans.

To make sure that I don’t have a problem with bean weevils, I will put the seed into the freezer for a few days. I figure if it all works well I will be money ahead not having to purchase my bean seed next year. If it doesn’t, then no big deal as I was buying my bean seed every year anyways. Might as well try it.

My sunflowers had finished flowering a while ago. After each sunflower leaves had turned yellow and dead I cut the head off it. So far I have four heads cut and drying. I didn’t want to leave them out in the garden as I was afraid the birds and squirrels would harvest the seeds before I could get to them. Funny thing is, no animal has tried harvesting them yet. This is the first time I have ever got a sunflower head full of seeds. I am feeling very shocked.