Update: June 2014

Garden is finally in good shape (I think) for the year.

It was a late spring.  There I was, planting a tomato, eggplant, pepper and two basil plants in May simply because it was, well, May.  But the temperatures were still April-ish.  I think the Genovese basil and Early Girl tomato will be fine, despite stunted growth.  The Thai basil, pepper and eggplant look pretty pathetic.  I've got plenty of dried Thai basil, so I'll probably just get another eggplant.  Also a few peppers.

But on the bright side ...

Strawberries were a first this year, and they were successful (and delicious).  Black raspberries are looking awesome, and red are producing, yet have brownish leaves.  Corn is up, beans just planted today, as well as okra and a muskmelon experiment.  As of this hour, the garden is officially weed-free.  Tomorrow that won't be the case, but that's ok.  My little plot is looking pretty nice, neat and fertile.  A neighbor gifted me several tomato varieties I hadn't heard of, and they're now planted and caged.

I made a makeshift deer fence on a small budget.  So far it has worked, even though it looks just as flimsy as it actually is.  I've been eating strawberries and red raspberries, so that's already an improvement over last year.  Wish I'd thought to bring my camera, but today was all about getting caught up!

Process of elimination

The deer are extremely invasive this year, eating almost everything I have.  I'll need to put up a fence this fall for next year.

For now, here's an incomplete list of what deer DON'T eat, based on personal observation:

basil
thyme
kale
hot peppers
dried out garlic/onion stalks
cilantro that's gone to seed
lettuce that's gone to seed
garden hoses
bits of plastic trash & beer cans

I think that's about it.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods

I recall one delightful autumn evening last year at Ravenna, sitting by the creek side with a beer and my pipe, weary from a day of clearing brush in the sun with my scythe and playing with my brand new broad axe.  If you could do anything right now, be anywhere, be anyone, what would you choose?  The water, framed on both sides by steeply forested hills, trickled by, bearing yellow and orange leaves south towards the Potomac.  The air was slightly crisp with an occasional gentle breeze.  The only other sound besides the creek was the distant yips of a coyote pack.  This, I felt.  This.

So Google Reader is dead.  In looking for alternative ways to read my subscriptions of personal blogs, I’d forgotten I had one myself.  Then I asked myself what the purpose of a blog is for someone who is not inclined to be the focus of attention.  Then I remembered.

A running chronicle helps the author remember and take stock of how much has been learned through trial, error and experience.

With my food production exploits in the garden, every year my “agricultural laboratory” has yielded more and more crops and required less toil.  Though, for the life of me, I still can’t get peas to thrive.

The Ravenna orchard has expanded.  The two apple trees have miraculously never been mauled by the deer, which are everywhere here until muzzleloader season starts in October.  Then, to the frustration of my friends who hunt, they disappear.  Completely.  Even from the neighboring state forest.  Amazing adaptive quality, like the cicadas which stay in the earth for a specific prime number of years in order to confuse their predators.  So this year, I planted a sour cherry, sweet cherry and a pear tree in the same area.  I have also been bringing up raspberry plants as they expand from the original shrub I bought for $20 something like seven years ago.

But there are new lessons to be learned, construction being the most immediate.  My current shelter, a rusting old trailer, is impossible to heat up in the dead of winter.  I’ve spent too many mornings unwilling to do anything because it required exiting the sleeping bag and all the blankets I could get my hands on in the dark.  I need a place where I can use a wood burning stove, with room for a bed and a table.

The plan is already in my head.  Like gardening, this will be a prolonged class taught by those two exacting professors: Nature and experience.

post-summer solstice update

It's damn hot out there. Here's an update on how things are faring in the fertile food factory:

Spinach has long since shot up to go to seed, so I'm waiting to collect the seeds for a fall and/or spring crop. Lettuce is not far behind. Cilantro is going to seed as well, but it is still keeping plenty of leaves at the base.

I'm still getting a few raspberries. I'm pretty sure we've passed the peak though. Corn and beans are growing well, and my zucchini plants are huge and starting to produce a lot.

Small green tomatoes are forming on my Early Girl variety and a few of my volunteer cherry tomato plants. Thanks to some trading with the neighbors, I have a new plant in my plot: callaloo (apparently a.k.a. amaranth). Many of my neighbors are from the Caribbean islands, and just as I gift my volunteer tomatoes, dill and fennel plants, in return I've received okra, black eyed peas, and now callaloo. I was told I could eat it raw, which would be great since then I'd have something leafy for my salads during the summer. But I'd also like to veganize the famous Calaloo soup.

This spring I learned two important gardening lessons.

1. The "last spring frost" date cannot be trusted. As soon as I put tomatoes, peppers, basil and eggplant out, it turned really cold a couple of nights. While it didn't kill all the plants, they've never quite recovered and are still short, stunted, and for the most part, not producing. I was in a rush to put everything out April 15 because things were quite crowded under my set of indoor grow lights. Next year I either need to start fewer plants indoors or find a better way to prioritize what can go out and what probably should stay in another week or two.

2. The bicycle is the community gardener's best friend. Seriously, that's the case for me, living about a half to 3/4 mile away from the plot. In previous years, I only had time to stop by maybe once a week since I was either walking or driving, which meant not only that weeds quickly got out of hand and I didn't water as much as I needed to, but I missed out on peak times to harvest. Now that I'm regularly biking to work, I'm there 2-3 times a week in the mornings. Raspberries get ripe every couple of days and 1 ft. zucchinis appear out of nowhere. It's good to stop by every two days to keep the machine slowly smoothly. Plus the mosquitos don't seem quite as bad in the mornings.

meanwhile at Ravenna ...

Here's a pic of one of my apple trees. It's the Spitzenburg variety I'd mentioned earlier. I know it doesn't look so nice cramped up in chicken wire, but there are so many deer up there and young fruit trees are a delicacy for them. I'm also trying to encourage it to grow up, rather than out, so it will be less vulnerable to the varments later on.
And here are the grapes. Both doing well so far. Will there be concords on the table late this summer? That would be an unanticipated bonus.

Cascade hops, now sprouted, and hopefully will soon be climbing the string I laid out. The centennial hops has now also appeared.

Spudzinnabarrell - (n), faux German, see definition below

Spring 2010 - the good, the bad and the ugly thus far in the living laboratory:

Check out how crazy happy my oregano plant is. This has been its best year ever & I've been regularly snipping bits off to dry the leaves. That's a bok choy plant in the foreground which also seems to be flourishing. Too bad only one survived the early spring transplanting.

Corn and beans are progressing, as are the zucchini and muskmelons I planted in between the clumps. I ate a couple of ripe raspberries when I stopped by on my way to work yesterday.

But the tomato & eggplant plants I've grown from seed and the replacements I've bought at the farmer's market are looking pretty dim. They're not growing well at all, and a couple more died. I'm blaming the weather since it got unseasonably cold a few times this spring. But perhaps there was something preventative I could have done (more mulch when I saw the temperature was going to drop or some other kind of covering?). The silver lining is that the "gold current" cherry tomato plants which have spread as prolifically as the dill and fennel plants are having another good year. Anyone want one? They produce loads of small yellow tomatoes - perfect size for salads. I've got plenty of plants to spare.

But a brand new thing this year is my experiment growing potatoes in a barrell. In late March I bought a couple of old-looking yukon golds, kept them around until the sprouts were fairly prominent, and planted them in a plastic trash can I had drilled holes in for drainage.

Here's how the experiment was looking yesterday morning:



Looking good, eh? Well, then I did this:

Are you crazy Steve?? Why would you cover up those perfectly good potato plants?

Well, because I learned that potato tubers grow in the space between the soil surface and where the plants have started. All I needed to do (supposedly) is leave some foliage above the soil line. The plants will continue to grow and probably spill over the side of the barrell in a month or two.

Harvest depends upon if you like new potatoes or want to wait for the full-size ones. New potatoes are around once the plants have finished flowering. But full tuber maturity will be in late fall after the plants have died back completely. Decisions, decisions.

and we're back ...

Sorry for the absence, folks.

Today is significant in the annals of the 2010 garden since I stopped by this morning and gathered all the ingredients for my lunch salad today (red & green lettuce, spinach, dill, cilantro, parsley and oregano).

But things have been moving along in the meantime. I planted six batches of corn and they're starting to come up. I'll follow with some beans either next week or two weeks from now.

I sounded all smug when I said something like "I don't think it will freeze again after April 15." I was barely right. Last week it got damn cold and nearly had frost at night. The tomatoes and eggplants I had carefully grown indoors the last few months? When I came by on Sunday, it looked like they were all goners. I sheepishly made my way to the farmer's market to buy replacements.

"Don't water them!" my garden neighbor (not the mean one) warned me, when I told him what had happened. He was right. After a warm week, I think two out of the four plants might make it. The other two are barely clinging to life, but perhaps there's a chance.

Anyone out there want any dill or mint plants? They're coming up wild. I can even give you a volunteer raspberry plant since I noticed Ed's not just expanding, but apparently spawning as well.