Recently in The garden Category
I'm not taking about these bears (which I could use more of in my garden if I knew what brought them in), but instead I'm taking about these bears. I would say, and have said as I'm furiously knocking on wood, that I could have spent the summer dealing with a Noah's Ark full of pesky, garden-munching, soul-crushing critters that foiled my green-thumb attempts at every turn but I haven't really needed to. As it is, I've come to grips with the waves of deer and their fawns who had, up until last week, let the impatients planted around the house blossom and fill out to give it a quaint, cottage feel. Then those fuckers mowed them down entirely. But I'm not bitter, mostly. And that's about it. The big fence around the garden has done its job but I actually also believe I just don't have a critter problem. That fence wouldn't keep out woodchucks, rabbits, or porcupines but I haven't seen any evidence of them anyway. The chipmuncks and squirrels, while pervasive, simply eat the birdseed but they're cute and we do have birds so it's fine. But then there are bears.
We don't see the bears usually come through our place, but this year, like clock work, they've come meandering through and just made a mess of things. Early May had them up-end a trashcan we'd left outside. No harm, no foul...that was our error and so we moved the trashcan in and that was then. Then about six weeks ago, a weekly sweep of our property by the bears took down and smashed every fucking bird-feeder we had. So far, we've gone through 7 gold-finch feeders and 5 regular bird-feeders. In an act of defiance, we suspended a regular feeder way up in a tree with a rope so that only the birds could get to it...until the bear climbed up and swipped the rope with its paw and dropped the thing to get at the seed. All that is fine, sorta, but our last remaining feeder, bolted to the corner of the garden was hit hard sometime last night and left for ruin. And the thing is, I'm all about nature. I wouldn't even mind so much if they'd just do it while we were around so I could get it on film and post it on the blog. Is that too much to ask?
I walked out into the garden this weekend to this. My GOD. The faithful, dutiful attention I've provided Le Jardin Beau all summer and now I have a garden plot so choked with overgrown aggression that I'm stymied. And for anyone who has read "The Ruins" this summer, you all will know exactly the creepy feeling I got when I was crawling on my hands and knees behind the tomato beds and a tendril of something ever so gently caressed the back of my neck. I practically SHIT myself. It says something when I'm sort of afraid to go into my own garden, I think.
On the other hand, I wouldn't be my mother's son if I didn't want my garden to be something for and about nature so I'm proud that I have a garden and flowerbeds attracting hummingbirds (even though the thick, heavy humming of the damn thing almost made me shit myself again because I couldn't see what it was and thought I'd mucked around in a hornet's nest). Here's the close up if you can't find Waldo.
My one and only strategy out of everything I'd planted this year, was to create a lush, flower-filled environment around our little fountain up on the deck. This is where I started and this is where we are today.
I'm finishing the third month of gardening this weekend and it is becoming as difficult for me to start accepting that the summer really is coming to a close. School starts for everyone this month, the hot, dog-days of summer should be burning themselves out soon (hopefully), and the nights should start to cool down. August for me is always a month of exhaustion; just too many hot, humid days taking their toll in ways that have me constructing excuses not to leave my office or meet up with people or do anything that requires more than laying around all day, reading and sweating.
The garden suffers from this laziness too. By now, what had once worried me as being too sparse and underplanted is now a wild riot of vines and stalks, flowers and fruit, all spilling over the edges of the beds, making it almost impossible to navigate through them. It is this faith that gardeners must hold on to and believe when they first plant in May: that thing will grow and they'll do so in very big, very broad, far-reaching ways. Had I not used the square-foot garden method, I'd be out killing myself with weeding but the close-knit planting technique almost eliminates weeding and the few stray green things that I can't identify get nipped pretty early. My lazy days just have me out wandering around the beds, checking out the tomatoes and picking cucumbers but not in any determined or focused way. Meandering is what I do, just bending over a plant here and there, looking and enjoying for no apparent reason. That is the best thing about my garden right now: of course I'm getting crazy about the tomatoes ripening (and I might have snuck three grape tomatoes that were ready and calling to me) but overall, there isn't that much produce. Lots of cucumbers of course, a week and a half of beans, and now the tomatoes, but that's it. Everything else is just there because it's there. Flowers, non-producing peppers, herbs, and other stuff I stuck in just to see what it would do. It's almost Zen gardening, I suspect. No real expectations so no real worrying on my part about what will happen. I'm totally into this chilled-out approach.
Of course the months put into this year's garden will serve to guide me for next year. While I still have a good month or two left in this season, some things have become apparent to me already that I need to change up for next year:
Plant fewer nasturtiums. I bought one clot of these edible flowers and stuck it in one of the beds but all the rest I grew from seed, not expecting them to do much. Which was really, really wrong. All the green lily-pad type leaves in this picture are nasturtiums. They vine and grow very big, but are very succulent and floppy if you try to arrange them. They also, unbeknownst to me, have a rather good vining capability so one of them actually found the tomato trellis by itself and vined up, giving the rather dull tomato vines some much needed color (and as I type this, I shudder at the thought of the vines after finishing 'The Ruins' this weekend). Nasturtiums are a good ground cover to keep the soil moist, but by August, they've overtaking everything and are kind of annoying me. Next year I'll do fewer and start training them on the trellises for effect only.
Watch the various plant heights - I have stuff stuffed into places willy-nilly. It's sorta OK and I'm not looking for any English Garden hard-ass rules and regulations, but I could do better with a little fore-thought.
Add more color - I need more flowers or colored-leafing plants scattered around. The coleus did me well this year so I'm going to stick with more of that. I'll probably ditch the snap-dragons since they got way to big and lanky for my tastes, but I'll keep some of the petunias, sweet-potato vine, and the different salvia I tried.
Use the lettuce and herbs- I planted these simply as a ground cover this year. It was just a "what will it do" kind of thing. The lettuce I planted it late (even in May, I thought it might be too hot and the stuff would go to seed too quickly) but it has been doing just fine, even though I've yet to go out and pick it to eat. The only explanation is, I need to see what it does first. Now I know and now I know I can pick it and eat it. I will probably still put in a late summer/early fall planting of lettuce this year to use to eat. The herbs are perennials so as long as I mulch them, they'll be back bigger and better than ever next year.
And that's what I've learned so far. I've been extraordinarily lucky in that I've had very little destruction or disease in my garden. The critters around have left almost everything alone and the worst of it is the basil that has had some little green bug munching away on it. Unlike others, I think I've gotten away with murder in the garden this year and can't really complain.
More pictures here.
Finally, finally, finally. We've been gathering produce from the garden for the last two weeks, mostly just cucumbers and green beans for now; the tomatoes are growing but still green. Finally this weekend we had enough time and enough cucumbers to pickle. We gathered all the stuff , chilled the cukes down, then presto-chango, we got pickles; 15 pints, 9 pints of Forever Crisp Dill and 6 pints of my favorite, Bread and Butters. Now we just have to wait a couple weeks and then check them out.
Jeff's one request for the garden was to grow cucumbers. Odd, I know...and somewhat suggestive in an almost dirty way. But I'm game and since I absolutely drew the line when he also asked for corn, I thought it was the least I could do to put out a few cucumbers. He's overall goal, though, was not cucumbers per se, but rather, the infamous and highly sought-after Stein Family Pickle Recipe that everyone talks about but which no one, apparently, has ever written down. Jeff recalls Aunt Kitty's pickles the way someone who smells a pine tree recalls a favorite, perfect Christmas.
So part one of Summer of Pickles was to get some cucumbers up and running. Like the problems with the tomatoes and peppers, I had to buy them in multi-packs so the idea of only putting out two or three cucumber vines turned into putting out eight. And somehow, by last count, two more have spontaneously generated from God knows where. Anyone uninitiated in the ways of vine-bearing vegetables should know that ONE vine of anything: squash, eggplants, zuchini, etc. is plenty. Two is enough to put some away for a cold, winter's day. Eight (or ten) is just ridiculous. Jeff didn't quite grasp this when I sent him out to the garden to count all the little yellow blooms covering the vines. He wanted to know why he was counting them and I said, "because you're going to have a cucumber for every one of those blooms." He now has some concerns.
As there are many ways to skin a cat, there are as many ways to make pickles. Typically canning can be employed as well as just throwing them into crocks with a brick on top (if you can find crocks anymore). Jeff's family's recipe, while written down now, is vague and carries the even worse warning about doing anything wrong that would make the pickles soggy and soft as well as being unflavorful. Apparently no one should even bother attempting them if you're going the way of soggy. I've never made pickles one way or another, preferring to buy my bread-n-butter stackers from Vlasik, but who am I not to take on a homemaker's challenge like making and putting up pickles. So I've hired the great lady up in our neck of the woods who was canning and preserving from before she could walk, to come and teach us all she knows about pickles. She also has a family recipe she's willing to share with us so I think this is going to be a win for everyone.
And here is one of a gazillion baby cukes on its way to making us Pickle-licious.
Last week was such a short weekend because of being in Ohio, I didn't even get my camera out while I was out in the garden. This week though, things continue to grow but with no rain during the week, everything seems to have slowed a bit. That being said, the tomatoes are coming along nicely and I'm getting blooms already that will soon grow to be the fruit off the vine. The cucumbers are finally starting to strech out a bit so I got them started on the string so they can start growing up. The beans are taking off rapidly and I expect produce from them in a month or so.
I didn't post pics from last week because I was tired of just shooting dirt with some sprigs of green. All the better to wait until this weekend after a week of rain. The garden is bursting out, growing like, well, growing like weeds, I guess. Here are some comparisons from last week to this week:
Beds of tomatoes last week and this week.
Pole beans last week and this week.
And an overall, this is where I was a month ago, this is where we are today.
Yowzer!
Three weeks after starting, the garden is done and in and nothing has died yet though the cinnamon and oriental basil are struggling. Nothing is really growing yet but I can tell things have rooted and are finding their new home with mondo compost suitable.
That being said, everything but the impatients are in. The deck is litered with pots and while it doesn't look like much now, give it a month and it'll be a jungle. I also moved some extra tomato plants into containers for the deck in my first attempt to do some container gardening. I threw in some basil and cilantro to the pots for a full-out italian mix. I have no idea how I'm going to stake those tomatoes but I've got about two weeks to figure it out.
Things are thriving. Green and moist and verdant and things I'd feared dead are pushing up and starting to live again. I noted in my gardening journal but it's worth repeating: nature is amazing. I'm having a ball.
Ironically, or not so much, the english to french translation of "the beautiful garden" is le beau jardin. Since Beau is my name, how could I pass up that kind of a translation? And the garden, while many might argue isn't quite beautiful yet, is beautiful to me.
I've been waiting almost three years to have a place where I could dig around in the dirt. Lack of a fence then two years of graduate school put me off for a bit, but I'm roaring back to my green-thumb life and my amateur gardener hat is back in place.
What's particular about my garden is that I'm following the Square-foot gardening method, made famous through this book which was recommended to me be a great friend of Jeff's. She encouraged and inspired me to make my own soil, raise the beds, and really take the book to heart. I built the raised beds last fall and had them half filled with a compost/top soil/peat moss mixture. Last week, I had a fresh load of compost delivered and finished them off yesterday. Having a bug up my ass today, I hauled Jeff down to the farm and garden center just to look. A butt load of cheddar later, I have just under half the garden in, focusing on tomatoes and herbs with a few plots of lettus today. I think I'm about four weeks too late on the lettus as it likes the cooler weather but I thought I'd try to sneak in a batch and see what happens. I think I should have the rest of the garden out next weekend and then concentrate on the flowers for the porch and deck.
I'm not sure about the rest of the country and world but for upstate New York, March has been the coldest, most inhospitable month I can remember for some time. Two years ago when Mom was dying, March had the good manners to be warm enough to let us open the windows and bring in some of the outside world she loved so much. It was such a fortunate thing at such a horrible time.
But March this year had snow and sleet and gray skies. The last piles of snow were actually still melting this weekend before the downpours that have flooded our valley worse then back in September from Hurricane Ivan. Our yard was positively swimming all weekend and we were housebound.
And now April is here and after a several year hiatus, my gardening ire is all raised up and needing to be scratched. I have piles of compost and topsoil coming next week while we're on vacation so when we get back, I can start building my raised beds in the new garden enclosure we had built last year. I'm making all the dirt for the garden in those raised beds, a fluffy mixture of peat, compost, top soil, sand, bone meal, vermiculite, and earthworms. I remember back when we first moved how I would toss and turn at night, thinking about getting a garden out and now I'm feeling the same kind of excitement starting to grow deep inside. April is starting off cold and wet but I know it's going to change abruptly and soon it'll be warm enough to get some seedlings out and get our flowerbeds all ready. I have big plans and dreams for roses and clematis and some pots of boldly colored annuals paired together.
It's been too long of a break but I'm ready to jump back into it again. Full force and dirty hands.
