Garden Notes 2012 – 1st Post.

Straight Eight cucumbers breaking ground.

I decided to try my hand at strawberries this year. The variety is Loran. 

At the end of last year I had thought I would move the garden out into the yard, but for several reasons, the most prominent being that I am lazy, I decided against it. This year it will again be on the south side of the house. I removed the three Burning Bushes that were there to make room. I have also decided, again mainly because I am lazy, that I will grow only foods that I can pick, slice and eat. This means I am limiting my crop to tomatoes, cucumbers and strawberries, because those are the only three things I can think of that fit the requirement, except carrots, which I have never had much success with. I am open to suggestions.

This Is the Final Post of 2011. See You Next Year.

On the day after a day of cold rain the sky is a brilliant blue, thanks to the high-pressure system that blew in hard from the Rocky Mountains. It brought along a cold wind that has stripped the trees of all but their most obstinate leaves. Fall has been a disappointment this year. The colors that I look forward to have been muted, as if the trees got lazy and conspired to just phone it in. In a typical year the big maple on the corner glows like an orange flame. This year it changed from green to grocery-sack brown almost overnight. The red maples across the street, the same ones I made a point to photograph last year, could muster only a washed-out shade of pink before they cashed in early. They are usually among the last to give up their leaves. Now they are completely bare. If I researched the matter I’m sure I would learn that our two-month dry spell is the main culprit in all of this. The timing of it was lousy.

I have decided to build a raised bed near the property line of our backyard next spring. This decision was reached after a careful study of the trajectory of the sun, the positioning and growth-potential of the trees, and my recently reached conclusion that there is no longer any reason to reserve that part of the lawn for the growing of grass because, for the third year in a row, all the grass was burned away by  the heat of the sun, despite the best efforts of our professionally-installed sprinkler system. Besides, there is no longer any need to preserve the yard for appearances sake, which for years we felt obliged to do since there are no fences separating us from our neighbors. But now, since most of said neighbors have littered their yards with toddler toys, outdoor furniture of questionable taste and other miscellaneous clutter, I no longer feel bound by this obligation. So I will build a 12’ x 4’ raised bed of pressure-treated pine, and I will stain it either white or brown to match the deck, and I will plant my tomatoes there, and probably my greens, too, and maybe some peppers. I will still use the beds on the side of the house, probably for cucumbers, and I may try pole-beans again. Who knows, I might even try some yellow squash. It’s not like I won’t have the space, and the pain of my failure just a few short months ago is already a faded memory.

On this cloudy October afternoon the temperatures are in the upper forties and a cold wind is blowing from the north. It seems like a good time for a garden update, possibly the final one. Believe it or not, two tomato plants are still thriving. Last week they provided a mini-harvest of eight or ten tomatoes. They were not quite as tasty as those in mid-summer but were still hands-down better than store bought. The vines still bear several good-size green tomatoes. Whether or not they make it to a dinner plate remains to be seen, as they get very little sun now and do not give the impression they are in any hurry to ripen before the first freeze, which should be any day now. I have lettuce and spinach in containers that have done well since being planted a few weeks ago. Unlike their counterparts in the beds, I can control the amount of sunlight they get, and it seems to make a big difference. The kale is progressing slowly but I may soon have some leaves I can blend in a smoothie. I don’t have any expectations for it beyond that. Our leaves have been falling for a while now. I will turn as many as I can into compost for next year. There is something about the act of making compost makes me feel like I am part of something greater than myself. It’s hard to explain, but it feels good and right and valuable in some small way. It’s an innate sense, something that I am wired to do. All of us probably are. It’s strange.

Yesterday I pulled the two tomato plants in the small bed. They still had several good-size green fruits on them but most were infested with worms. Even if they hadn’t been I don’t think the days are long enough or the nights warm enough for them to ripen before the first frost. I managed to get one good red one, but that was it. I still have two more plants with green fruit so I will use them to test my theory. They have worms too but I don’t think it is quite as bad as the others. I planted spinach in the bed. It will be my “winter-over” spinach, which I discovered by accident last year.

This is awful. I have worms in my tomatoes. They are not horn worms but another smaller kind that burrow into the tomatoes to unleash their mayhem. I think they are called fruit worms. I’m not sure what to do about them. I don’t want to spray the plants with pesticide but I can hardly sit by and watch them be destroyed either. I’ll have to study on it.

September has finally arrived. I heard the marching band practicing at the high school earlier this morning and the tarp is on the swimming pool across the street. (note: the pool was closed about a week early because of an unpleasant bacteria being found in many of the pools in town, so it was done as a precaution, much to the consternation of the neighborhood kids, bless their little hearts) Despite the nasty things I said about August in an earlier post it was not all that bad, weather-wise. The temperatures were bearable and we had plenty of rain. I have never seen it so green at this time of the year. I have also never seen so many mosquitoes. They are not normally a problem and I hope this doesn’t mean there has been an evolutionary shift and we will have to deal with them every year in the future. I thought I left that annoyance behind in Arkansas. Global warming is surely behind it. On second thought it’s probably George Bush’s fault. Anyway, the cucumber vines are spent and they will be pulled this weekend, which is Labor Day Weekend. I have lettuce, spinach and kale sown in some of the beds where there is space. I started them in a flat and transplanted them after about two and a half weeks. I plan to sow some more seed directly as space opens up. I also transplanted some of the leaf lettuce to a container so we’ll see how that works. The tomatoes are still producing but the fruit is getting smaller. I don’t know if they are just running their course of if they have sapped the ground of all it’s nutrients. I don’t see any point in feeding them at this late date but that could be a mistake. The vines are monstrous and do not appear to be slowing down. If I was growing them for the vines alone they would be Grand Champions.

These mutants were waiting for me when I returned yesterday from seven days out of town. I'm almost afraid to cut into them. I will be pulling the vines this weekend. Cucumber season is over.

It’s time for the mid-August update. First, the tomatoes. We are happy with the Better Boys and/or the Celebrity’s. The truth is we got them mixed up after the big harvest and I am not sure which was which. Whatever the case, one or both of them are the meaty, baseball-size tomatoes I remember from my father’s gardens. The Early Girls were smaller by comparison and they don’t have quite the same good flavor. Since they don’t seem to mature that much faster than the others I think I will leave them off the list next year and try something else. The cucumbers are still producing at a steady rate and so far only one has been bitter and that was our fault for leaving it on the vine too long. Tendergreen Burpless is a good variety, tolerant of the heat and worth planting again next year. And what about the beans? With much regret I have to say they were not a success. They grew well enough. That was not the problem. The bottom line is I don’t have enough space to produce the volume needed to cook them the way I like them. I think next year I will not bother with them. I can’t think of a replacement for them just yet. Luckily I have all fall and winter to mull it over. I used the first of the compost yesterday in a bed where I will plant cool season greens. For future reference, I should not put pine needles in the compost. They take much to long to break down, plus they stick me, even through gardening gloves, and it hurts. Gardening may be exasperating at times, but it should not be physically painful, too. From now on I will stick with leaves and kitchen scraps. I have to remember to keep the compost  moist and to turn it every two or three weeks. The trash can has exceeded my expectations as a composting vessel and I think I am going to add a second one.

I saw the garden for the first time in eight days on Friday (2 days ago). There was a bounty of tomatoes waiting to be picked. Every plant was a contributor. I guess my worry about insufficient sunlight was unfounded. Good to know. There were three large cucumbers on the vine that should have been picked days ago. One of them was bitter. Not a good sign. Hopefully the others will be OK. I turned the compost again this morning. It is coming right along and should be ready by September 1. I have turned it about five times so far, and added water a couple of times to keep it moist. The weather is still very hot and has been, consistently, for weeks.

Early Girl