An Unexpected Visitor

Someone (admittedly, could have been me) left the garden gate open last night, and this saucy lady wandered in.

What a gorgeous, silky pelt! She seems quite friendly and not at all perturbed by humans, but went about digging up grubs and mostly leaving my seedlings alone. My elder daughter named her Fluffy. Left the gate open, and she wandered out again sometime before 10am.

Planted so far: beets, carrots, kale, tomatoes, one pepper, one eggplant, basil (half devoured by caterpillars already, must acquire more), zucchini, peas, kale, cucumbers, broccoli, beans. Garlic, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and herbs are all doing well, the arugula has come back nicely, and the asparagus has been producing like gangbusters. Had a huge pile of it for dinner last night. Still looking to acquire spaghetti squash seedlings, and then I will declare planting to be done.

Signs of Spring

Yesterday, I spotted the first carpenter bee of the season. Today, harvested the first two spears of asparagus. Since there's really no good way to divide two spears among four people, I chopped it up and made a delicious risotto of it along with shallots, tomatoes, spinach, and chives, accompanied by grilled steak kabobs. Mmmmm... spring.

I Can See Soil Again

Whuf! A year went by, and I hardly noticed.

Last summer, our gardening largely fell off our roadmap as a close family member was diagnosed with cancer and then died in early September with merciful swiftness. Dealing with the estate ate our fall, and then came winter. Epic, mind-bogglingly terrible winter. Snow every day for days on end. Over 100 inches of snow. I'm still astonished that our greenhouse came through the snow unscathed. Mind you, good things did come out of this. The girls went showshoeing for the first time. I wrote a novel.

But today, on the final day of March, the sun is shining brightly, the thermometer reads 45 degF, and I can see the tops of the garden bed peeking out from beneath the snow at last.

Time to plant peas.

Wait. What???

Somehow, spring crept up on me. I think all the normal triggers that make me think of planting were buried deep under mountains of snow. But suddenly, last week, I saw the winter kale peeking out from all that white, and it hit me. I haven't ordered seeds. I haven't planned a blessed thing for this year.

To be fair, I can't blame it all on the weather. Over the last season, I came to realize that I'm just not physically capable of coping with a 2200 sq. ft. garden. I can't keep up with the seeding and planting and weeding and watering and harvesting. My body complains and breaks down on me. I spend days recovering. When we planned our garden, we were wildly optimistic and overambitious. Now, after three seasons, we know our limitations.

I sat down with my husband and planned out this year's garden in all of five minutes. We will plant in only fourteen beds, and we'll plant only our bare necessities: peas, broccoli, lettuce, kale, carrots, beets, cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, zucchini, bell peppers, basil, and summer squash. Of these, I'm only starting the broccoli, kale, and cukes in the greenhouse (currently rented out anyway). The rest, I'll direct seed or buy. Of course, we also have our perennial beds: raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, asparagus, herbs, and the amazing neverending arugula.

The rest of the beds are up for grabs. I'm sure our girls will snag one or two for flowers. The others will lie fallow or be cover cropped. If you live nearby, and you're interested in using a bed or two for yourself, let me know.

ASPARAGUS! Also, Overwintered Kale

The Jersey Supreme asparagus crowns we planted last spring came through gloriously. I gently raked away the leaf cover today and found about two dozen of these:

I'm not used to having so much fresh produce in the spring, but with overwintered kale and arugula, self-seeded lettuce, and spinach and lamb's quarters in the greenhouse, we are eating very, very well.

I planted this kale last fall, and it overwintered quite nicely. We hardly touched it all winter because we were still harvesting from the spring kale until February! Now the fall kale is greening up and growing like gangbusters. I have to remember this trick for getting fresh produce early in the season.

Seed Shopping on a Budget

I love saving seeds and using them year after year to grow my own vegetables, not just because it's free, but because I'm perpetuating a genetic line. And sometimes I get surprising results and hybridizations, which always makes me feel a bit like Gregor Mendel. But even saving seed, I always need to buy some seed, too. Some varieties I use, like Winterbor kale or Sungold cherry tomatoes, are hybrids, so I can't save their seed. Sometimes I just want to try something new.

When I do go shopping for seeds, I'm always surprised by the final bill. 20 or 30 packets of seeds at $4 each adds up fast! This year, I carefully checked across several catalogs for the lowest prices on seeds. I found that well established companies like Johnny's Selected Seeds, Territorial Seed Company, and Seeds of Change charged about a dollar more per packet. Now, one argument I've heard is that the amounts differ, so I also checked the amounts in the packets. Here's a comparison on some common seeds I priced. SoC = Seeds of Change, NGC = The Natural Gardening Company, SESE = Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Seed Variety	Johnny's	SoC	NGC	Territorial	SESE
Arugula (Roquette)	$3.95 (500 seeds)	---	---	$2.80 (1g (~660 seeds))	$2.25 (1g (~660 seeds))
Chioggia Beet	3.95 (350 seeds)	---	---	3.85 (5g (~385 seeds))	2.50 (3g (~230 seeds))
Oregon Giant Peas	3.65 (250 seeds)	$3.49 (~50 seeds)	$2.75 (125 seeds)	2.05 (1oz)	2.50 (28 g)
Garlic Chives	3.65 (200 seeds)	3.49 (200 seeds)	2.50 (225 seeds)	2.35 (225 seeds)	2.25 (175 seeds)
Veronica Cauliflower	8.95 (100 seeds)	3.49 (50 seeds)	4.50 (25 seeds)	4.30 (25 seeds)	---

Quantity can matter. If I'm planning to plant a lot of beets, buying 5g from Territorial Seeds makes better financial sense than 3g at Southern Exposure (in this case, only SESE has organic seed, so I'll buy there). But I really, really do not need a ton of garlic chive seeds. I fact, I want about five. So buying the minimum amount for the minimum price from SESE is the clever plan. And why on earth would I pay nine bucks for twenty times as much Veronica seed as I need?

So I've done my shopping and made my choices. More on that when I can figure out how to get it from csv format to HTML without breaking Blogger.

Planning a Lazy Garden

Outside, the snow is coming down fast and heavy, but inside, I'm basking in the glow of seed catalogs. Oh, yes, it's that time of year. Bear-like, I've come out of hibernation to start planning my garden. And that begins with reflecting on last year's garden.

Overambitious is the phrase that immediately springs to mind. We planted thickly and with wild abandon, and we were socked with too much food and overcrowded beds. The other word that comes to mind is disease. We had mosaic virus, early blight, and some fungal infection on the squash. So while we were swimming in tomatillos, ground cherries, and basil, we lost most of our summer and winter squash and had some mighty unhappy tomato plants.

Many of our experiments were dismal failures: the potato boxes fared very poorly, yielding less potatoes than when we planted in rows. The edamame interplanted with corn was wildly successful, but it shaded out the corn. (Pause. Think about that phrase for just a second. Edamame is a bush bean, not a climbing bean. It shaded out the corn by growing faster than the corn seedlings could.) The garlic rotted in the ground, and the onions barely produced at all. Overall, it was a lot of work for disappointing results.

This year, my plan is to be lazy.

I want to plant the simplest, easiest garden I can and concentrate only on the foods we eat most or foods we can't get elsewhere. That means no corn (takes up too much space for too little yield), no potatoes (low yield), no onions or leeks (I'm terrible at growing them anyway).

Garden Plan 2014 - Click to embiggen.

Our focus this year is going to be on the basics: beans, peas, carrots, kale, broccoli, cucumbers, and tomatoes. We'll use arugula and lettuce for weed cover and for those shady spots where it's hard to grow much of anything. Our asparagus should be ready for harvest this year, too, and we're hoping the New Zealand spinach we planted last year comes back. And of course, we have our strawberries and raspberries ready to produce under all that snow.

Of course, I can't resist a little experimentation. This year, I'm cultivating a wild plant called yerba del manzo in New Mexico, yerba mansa in California, and lizard's tail in Appalachia. Yerba del manzo has been used for centuries as a medicinal plant to treat the common cold, skin disorders, and even cancer. It likes swampy soil, so I'm putting it in the soggy southern corners of the garden. It's also a perennial, so if I can get it established this year, I don't have to worry about it again.

I'm going to try for another crop of Mexican oregano, which completely failed last year, along with celery, cumin, and stevia. I firmly resisted anything more complicated, like celeriac and sweet potatoes (given my terrible track record with root crops).

Given the terrible blight we had last year, I'm also going to try out some new tomato varieties. High on my list:

• Red House Free Standing from Seeds of Change – a rare determinate variety that requires no staking. Takes a while to mature, though (80-90 days)
• Legend from Territorial Seeds/Seeds of Change – Early maturing (60-70 days) and incredibly disease resistant. "Staking is optional." Really? We shall see.
• Abraham Lincoln from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange - “Highly recommended where foliage disease is a problem”
• Amy Apricot from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange – An open-pollinated alternative to SunGold. “Many tasters preferred Amy's Apricot to Sungold.”
• Peron from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange - “Called sprayless because the vigorous vines need no treatment.”

I'll give a complete seed rundown in my next post.

2013 Midseason Report

Well, it's midseason, and this has been a disappointing year for a number of reasons. Overall, it's been a cool, rather wet summer. Today's high was 74 degF, in the middle of August when we normally have blistering heat. Also, our yard is shadier this year than last year. Our neighbor's Norway maples are just that much bigger, and more of the garden is in shade. In another few years, I may have to revert a good chunk of garden to lawn, or possibly just grow a lot more strawberries. And finally, rather mysteriously, my earthworms seem to have all vanished. This worries me more than everything else combined. Well, whatever the reason, it's been a tough year so far.

The potatoes keep not being ready. They should have been ready by the end of June. I think I made a mistake in placement. When we realized that our drip irrigation system would be blocked by our potato boxes, I reasonably moved the boxes to the ends of the rows. But there were two problems I hadn't considered. First, that's the shady end of the garden. Second, we discovered that the water pressure isn't high enough to push water up the drip tape into the tops of the boxes. Poor sunlight and less water equals poor production.

The squashes are having a tough time with fungal infections in all this rain. Five out of six of my zucchini plants' stems rotted out. Only one robust plant remains, the source of the impressive 16-inch zukes. (I am definitely saving that seed!) Similarly, the spaghetti squash, kabocha squash, and pumpkins are struggling, and the patty pans have yet to produce a single fruit.

The cucumbers are dying back two weeks early due to unseasonably cool weather. This has a pleasant counterbalance: the broccoli is still producing happily in the middle of August. This weekend, I'll be planting fall peas in their place, and I have more broccoli and cauliflower starting in the greenhouse.

The corn has been... odd. Only half of the blue corn came up at all. I started some more in the greenhouse and planted it, but it has yet to put out pollen, and I'm concerned the ears on the older stalks won't pollinate properly. Meanwhile, the sweet corn came up fine, but no one warned me that edamame grows four feet tall! It's overgrowing and stunting the corn, so I'm not looking at a great crop there either.

Several attempts to reseed carrots have simply failed, and I'm not sure why.

But we do have some nice successes. The tomatoes, despite quite a bit of early blight, are going gangbusters now. This weekend, I'm hoping to make tomato jelly. The New Zealand spinach was a huge success and very tasty. The eggplants and peppers are starting to come in, the beets have been growing like mad, and the beans and kale are as prolific as ever. And the basil! Big bushy beautiful basil! We have quite a few cantaloupes on the vine but not many watermelons. I have no idea if they'll make it to ripeness in this cool weather. In fact, even with the disappointments, we are hard pressed to keep up with harvesting, though that may have more to do with me going back to work.

So perhaps it's just as well that we're not inundated with food. Still, I can't help feeling disappointed. I grand plans for canning, and thus far, I've put up only three quarts of bread-and-butter pickles and two quarts of raspberry preserves, plus two gallon bags of frozen beans. Well, it's only midseason. We'll see what the fall brings.