Spring 2012 – Here we come!

Last week when faux summer staged a show, we headed to the garden to do some clean up. Since then, the change in the weather has had us lagging a bit. We worry that the weather trends might produce an unusually dry summer, but nonetheless, we are moving forward with our crops. Seedlings of chard, tomato, lettuce and such have been planted and are growing albeit slowly due to the sudden departure of the sun this week. I have hopes, but may need to take some additional action (grow light).  If all else fails, we can always head to Goose Cover Gardens and spend all of our hard-earned money on lovely healthy plants!

I have such gardener’s envy. None so much as when I visit one of my favorite garden blogs Skippy’s Garden. Today I found another wonderful blog The Curious Gardner – a site from a gardener in  Singapore. I read with a combination of amusement and angst as The Curious Gardner describes the wait for his/her red lady papaya and the marauding birds and insects that kept getting to it first!  Ah, we all know that pain do we not?

To recap last year’s garden which was our first season in our new spot closer to the front, we had a lot of work to do to get it ready.

We constructed three raised beds and discovered that a massive boulder occupies a good percentage of our plot.  Luckily, we just grew our butternut squash over it.  There were pluses and minuses of the new location.  One, the soil is splendid except it appears to be infected with club root and our broccoli failed as a result – no more broccoli there.  Sow bugs were a massive menace and they ate our ripe tomatoes right on the vine.  On the positive side, our butternut yielded 52 squash from 4 plants!  The romaine was massive, simply gorgeous and the biggest I have ever seen.  The chard produced wildly right up until frost.  We had immense squash plants, but not as many squash as we had hoped – enough to eat and give away, so no major complaint except the insidious vine borers and the mildew from all that rain!

The beds have been amended with compost from Brick Ends Farm in Hamilton.   There remains much, much work to do and we must disinfect all of our tools and shoes so as not to spread the dreaded clubroot!

A piece of exciting news!  Okay, I exaggerate, but I am going to post the instructions for making your own sweet potato slips!

Yes, sweet potatoes and why the heck not?

Until next time, Namaste and welcome Spring 2012!  Now…I wonder what Skippy is doing over in his garden in Belmont?

Diane

P.S.  Skippy doesn’t actually garden (being that he is a dog) but it is his garden.

Finally back!

Well, my good intentions on starting this blog were sidetracked by grad school, but I am back! Although the gardening year is nearly at a close, it is time to recap and plan for the coming season. We changed garden plots this year and were quite pleased that we did. We had much success with our zucchini and summer squash and our Waltham butternut. The pill bugs were incredibly bad and mildew of all sorts plagued the wet garden….but you can’t change the weather. Sorry for the delay in posting and it won’t happen again!

Polish Linguisa

What does Polish Linguisa have to do with gardening one might wonder? It might surprise you to know that you can grow it in your garden! Yes, it is true! How do I know? I just planted it in my garden! Look, here is a photo..I am not kidding!

http://www.reimerseeds.com/polish-linguisa-tomato.aspx

Summer 2010 is off to a great start!

It’s been a long time since I blogged.   I have been sidelined with injuries and have also been studying for my SPHR exam while applying to graduate school (at long last).  However, Andrew and I returned to the garden this weekend to begin our season.  What awaited us was horrifying – I should have taken photos, but it was too embarassing.  In spite of being in the garden in March and cleaning it out, or maybe even because of that, we had grown a crop of weeds without equal.  24 inch tall danelions greeted us along with a carpet of other weeds.  As a result, we spent much of this gorgeous weekend pulling weeds and wishing we had taken Peter’s advice to rototill – silly me.   

Yesterday, Memorial day, was hazy due to smoke sweeping down from wildfires in Quebec, but otherwise pleasant.  We put in a full 8 hours and we planted tomatoes, potatoes, broccoli, squash and lettuce.  Here’s the best part!  I grew some of those tomatoes and broccoli from seed!  Yes, I coddled them for about 12 weeks and moved them from window to window to get sun.  On warm days they went on my front stoop in the am and out on the deck in the pm.  Still, they did not look very promising.  I persevered and the other day, I looked at them and was amazed to see that  hey had totally filled out.  In fact they are just as big and healthy as the once we purchased at Goose Cove! 

Like a proud parent, I planted 3 Burpee Organic heirloom beefsteaks and one mortgage lifter heirloom tomato along with a few from Goose Cove (black from Tula and a couple of others I can’t remember).  I also planted four or five Green Goliath broccoli I grew along with the others I purchased.  Andrew grew some Little Caesar Romaine and a bunch of Roma tomatoes that we planted too.  All in all we planted 5 types of Romaine!  I still need to plant some cabbage and butternut squash. 

This year we omitted the beans completely (disasterous numbers of been beatles live at the garden) – pointless unless an integrated pest management program is undertaken.  I fear the same with those nasty squash vine borers and I hope we can fight them off this year, we will try.

Andrew decided we should bring in our own compost this year as we did not get very good results with the horse manure last year though, it occurs to me that it might have contributed greatly to those 24 inch dandelions.  Actually, I grew 24 inch dandelions last year in Wolf Hill’s performance mulch.  Never mind that I told the man at Wolf Hill that adding compost to bark mulch seemed like it would encourage weeds to grow rather than smother them.  When he assured me that it was “unlikely”, I bought the darned stuff in spite of my intuition.  Guess what?  It grew some of the biggest weeds I have ever seen and they came straight up throug 4 inches of performance mulch!  Some performance – pretty poor performance. 

Andrew used his Sears Craftsman convertible gas line trimmer with hedge trimmer attachment to chop down some of the weeds that surround our garden and keep encroaching.   He wasn’t happy about being there, but he knows that I need the help.  He’s soo good to me!

Today I stopped by  the garden to cover my potato soil.  I arrived just as a woman from the neighborhood was loading up on the garden’s compost.   I hope she isn’t responsible for the carrot caper from late last fall.  I have spoken with her before, she’s an artist who lives nearby.  In fact, she was at the garden on Sunday chatting with a few other gardeners and I spoke with her then.  Today, she was there helping herself to the compost.  Kind of makes you wonder…doesn’t it?

Anyway, we are off to a new season and soon more posts and photos.  We have number of new gardeners this year and it appears that we have a full house.  My garden is far behind the others, but at least most of it is in.  If the heat trend continues, we will surely face water restrictions in the coming months, so I need to get my rudimentary rain barrel back in shape.  My brother made it last year and while he get’s an A for effort, the execution was well….well-intended.  I think he better stick to those fabulous pickles he makes!

Spring 2010!

Spring 2010 lies just around the corner!  In the dark recesses of our late winter homes, many of us are planning for the upcoming gardening season.  Seeds have been secured and seedlings started.  This will be my year to try growing from seed to widen the variety of crops I grow.  It makes no sense to grow in the garden what I can easily purchase easily (and cheaply) at my local market.  Instead, I am drawn to variety’s that are more interesting.  Top of my list will be Woodprarie Farms rose gold potato which Bruce introduced me to last summer.  I’m also intriqued by their tomato seed and will order “banana legs” and “speckled roman”.  I can’t wait to get them underway! 

I’ve had the pictures from last season’s garden to reflect upon during dark winter days and I am looking forward to a whole new season in the garden. Last year I tossed around the idea of doing a recipe book and I am thinking that we should kick it into gear this season.  Ieas for the blog are always welcome.  So much to look forward to!

Fall settles in at the Garden

Although Andrew and I were not able to attend last weekend’s garden cleanup, the garden is never far from our mind.  We frequently discuss what worked and what didn’t.  We have vowed never to plant beans again UNLESS we convince our fellow gardeners to get those lovely indian wasps that devour bean beetle larvae.  It’s a shame that we didn’t do it this year because beans, pole, bush and all others are an easy, productive and therefore, satisfying crop to grow.

Today, as I gaze out my patio doors into the woodland beyond my house, the leaves are transforming by the hour it seems.  Hints of red and orange are a nice surprise in the otherwise golden woods of beach and oak.  Here and there a glow the color of a summer sunset surprises in the midst of so much green and gold.  I must get out to put compost around my lone sugar maple to encourage it to grow vigorously.  The ash has already been ravaged of its golden-brown leaves by last weekends storm,  The frisky winds created a golden shower of falling leaves that now lay like sprinkles upon every square inch of my lawn.

I await the stone masons return to repair my patio, but I have yet to see them.  Soon it will be too late.  I do hope they come.

Winters cold and barrenness will surely erase much of the painful reality of summer 2009 and replace it will the anticipation of another year.  By February we will be starting seedlings and eagerly waiting for another spring and summer that will culminate in a bountiful harvest  – we hope. 

Already I am planning to order asparagus crowns to build my asparagus bed.  During a walk in Annisquam in late spring, I found a crop of asparagus awaiting me along the side of the road.  They were not on anyone’s property and some already were 1 1/2 feet high.  I harvested what I could and they were delicious.  Long ago planted and apparently forgotten, this happy find has inspired me to plant my own in the little garden in the Lanesville woods.

Now, however, fall is deeply upon us and there is a sadness in its overwhelming beauty that turns melancholy the souls of poets.  Thus, I come into this season with a bit of regret for a season lost, but the joy of knowing that my fellow gardeners are right there with me and we will carry on.  Wait until next year. 

With ever shortening days we will soon hibernate until spring 2010 rolls around.  But, here on the blog we will plan for the softening of the sweet rich earth next spring and the promise that a new year will hold in our garden in the woods.

Namaste,

Diane

Wild morning…

Heading out to an early appointment this am, I encountered a flock of wild turkeys hanging out in the southbound lane of Washington Street across from the O’Maley school.  I had to beep my horn at them as they seemed oblivious to traffic.  Returning home through Essex, I saw a less familiar sight yet – Two long haired sheep were grazing along 133 just north of the Cox Reservation (ECGA).  I suspect they had gotten out somehow and I hope they were corralled before any harm came to them.

Diane