It Runs in the Family

 I've written before about my gardening roots.  I literally grew up in a greenhouse.  My parents owned a commercial retail nursery where they sold vegetables and bedding plants and started all of their own stock from seed or cuttings.  My grandfather also had a commercial greenhouse and even developed his own variety of tomatoes.  I remember these greenhouses very well, but oh to be able to go back now 20 years into my gardening career.

My PaPaw and I in Mom and Dad's geranium house. 
Dad background left.

My PaPaw taught high school shop and math, but he also farmed.  Afterall, there were 16 more hours in a day.  And PaPaw never did things by halves.  If he wanted to grow plants, he needed a greenhouse.  If he wanted an apple, he planted an orchard.  Then he needed a cider press.  And so on and so forth.

Hoeing Tobacco June 1973

Every time my Dad and I talk about our gardens, I find out some other little tidbit that proves that gardening skills are inheritable.  For instance, I did not remember my grandmother growing dahlias.  One day, a couple of years ago, my father wandered into my garden to find me pruning dahlias.  "Oh you're growing dahlias now.  Your MaMaw showed dahlias.  She belonged to the Dahlia Society."  I did not know that.  

Last fall, when I told him I was developing a knack for growing sweet potatoes "Dad sold sweet potato slips by the thousands.  One Cent a piece.  He had a forcing bed with heat flues running along it under the soil where he would force the slips."  I didn't remember that either.  My grandfather puttered in his greenhouse until he was 90, so I did get a chance to ask a lot of questions, but a lot of the commercial aspects of the farm had dwindled over the years.

A few weeks ago, after talking to my Dad again, and debating the different methods of storing tubers, it occurred to me that I actually have Ye Olde Family Greenhouse Album.  I wonder what I could learn from those pictures if I looked again.

Photography has changed a whole lot in fifty years.  Things were a lot different when you had a finite amount of film and you never knew what you had until you picked them up at the store.  But there it was, running westward from the house in front of the apple orchard.... maybe 75 feet of dahlias.  That's a lot more dahlias than I grow!  

The nice thing about computers is that you can scan a picture in and fiddle with the color.

Yep, them are dahlias

So where would the forcing bed have been?  Dad said it ran up the slope so that the heat would rise...

Here we go.  A whole cold frame system.  I wonder what else he had in there?

You wouldn't think a school teacher would have a whole lot of time to grow things in the spring.  I always thought that the greenhouse really hit its stride after he retired.  Here is the first greenhouse.  It predates the tomato hot house.  It was torn down and replaced before I was born.

If I had a greenhouse this size I could get ALL my vegetables in it.

Below the tomato hot house in the background as Dad and PaPaw move the greenhouse furnace out of the way so they can build the new greenhouse on the same site.

A bigger better greenhouse!  Twice the length and wider as well.

You can see from this picture the grade that would have made the heat rise through the flue in the cold frame.  The cold frame would have been on the far side of this new structure running half the length.

Below is how I remember the greenhouse.  This is the view from their back yard.  

1975

So that is where my gardening instincts come from.  Apparently, it was inevitable that I would grow dahlias and master sweet potatoes.  And, one thing that greatly interests my Dad, I am finally figuring out how to grow a decent cantaloupe.  In New York no less.  It requires some experimenting and some fussing, but my ancestors will not rest easy until we've figured it out.

My Green Thumb(s)

Green Thumb: according to the Old Farmer's Almanac, it may have originated during the reign of King Edward I who was so fond of green peas that he kept half a dozen serfs to shell them.  The serf with the greenest thumb from shelling the most peas won a prize.  That seems like a very likely origin to me!

This has been a great season for peas.  I have peas as far as the eye can see.  I bring a stool to the garden and pick two handed as if I were milking cows (which I've done plenty of in my day).  I grab a handful of peas and use my index finger to pop the stem up and off.  Then there is the shelling.  The green has to be scrubbed off of my fingers with a pumice stone, and my thumbnail still has a faint green glow.

Three of four beds of peas.

The bin in our freezer allotted to peas is full to overflowing.  The remainder of the peas this week will have to be eaten not stored.  One bed is picked completely clean and needs to be removed right now to make way for bush beans.  

I planted both Penelope Peas and Garden Sweet Peas.  I probably won't bother with the Garden Sweet again.  They are very tall which makes them space-efficient, and they continue to produce over a longer time period as they continue to grow, but the pods are small having only about five peas each.  Penelope, however, has nine, ten or eleven peas in each slender pod (I found one with 12 last night) which makes them much easier to both pick and shell.

Sometimes you just have to move along.  My pole beans have been very sluggish.  The Monte Gusto were particularly stunted.  I pulled most of them out and replanted to see if that helps.  I think this week I will also try them in another bed on the tall peas trellis.

The cucumber plants are growing like crazy.  

Both rows are now in.

I love purple cabbage!

Potato grow bags with Dark Red Norland

The tomato plants have really hit their stride and 

I now have the expectation of some tomatoes

Black Brandywine Babies

This will definitely be a Vitaverde Cauliflower and not a Broccoli.
Many broccoli are now on their way to being ready

When I haven't been gardening I have been orcharding.

This is June Drop time for the apples, but almost nothing is dropping.  There are not many multiple apple clusters, so I have not had to thin them.  I use sandwich bags to keep the sooty blotch and insects away.  I have bagged 95 apples on the heavy producer, and more than 15 on the other tree.  I am not sure what I would do with that many 13 ounce apples!  Last year I bagged 36 and 13!

The Collective Unconscious

This year I have joined several gardening groups on Facebook.  All day long I can look at photos of people's beautiful gardens and discuss the finer points of gardening.  On the other hand my Facebook feed is bombarded with an international array of pests and problems, to the point where I dream at night that I have tomato horn worms!

"Joe Gardener" has a Facebook page which attracts a lot of master gardeners 

with great set ups and a wealth of knowledge.

His was one of the gardens I used as inspiration as we planned our garden

I've also come to realize that there are a lot of people who jump feet first into gardening with absolutely no idea what they're doing.  They grab a used bucket or maybe an array of recycled containers, fill it with dirt and start putting in tomato plants.  Then they start asking about ideas to keep the rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels, deer and raccoons from destroying everything and for help identifying diseases.  Now that's not necessarily a problem, we all learn by doing but maybe buy a comprehensive garden reference book and flip through it once or twice?

The Big Book of Kitchen Gardens is a good start

Throughout the day I send instant messages to my co-worker with some of the really funny ones.  We both grew up out in the country and obviously take for granted a lot of farmer common sense that does not get distributed in the city.  For example, cow manure is good, don't water the garden EVERY day until it wilts from exhaustion and more importantly how to tell the difference between Indian strawberries and poison ivy!

Just so we're clear:  This is wild strawberry

and this is poison ivy

But besides seeing enough poor soil, blossom end rot and powdery mildew on a daily basis to give any gardener an extreme case of paranoia, I also pick up a lot of random useful information to stash away for future use.  Interesting facts like although tomato horn worms blend in with your tomato stems, they also glow under black light making them easy to hunt in the dark

Tomato Horn Worms under black light

Reading about everyone else's challenges day by day, and seeing all of the bad things that can happen, makes me very grateful for my well constructed, nearly pest free garden. I stop to reflect on what has made me successful as a gardener.  Certainly there is some inherited aptitude and collective gardening unconscious (in Jungian psychology the part of the unconscious mind that is derived from ancestral memory and experience and is common to all humankind, as distinct from the individual's unconscious)
There is upbringing since I learned to transplant seedlings about the same time I learned to write my name.  There is my tendency to be curious and read extensively about whatever subject interest me at the time.  There is the fact that I live out in the wide open rural countryside where pests have to travel a bit between gardens.  And I think a lot of it has to do with the structure and management of the garden itself.

Look at my garden and tell me what you don't see.  You don't see native grasses, "weeds", trees or shrubs up against the fence.  You don't see an untended field full of insects and critters.  You don't see other houses or gardens nearby.  What you do see is wide open gravel paths which discourage creepy crawlies and allow good airflow and sunlight to rule the garden, and you see a very sturdy fence.  I think a lot of critters walk by, glance in and think "parking lot".  That's one luxury of living on acreage in the country.  Lack of space is not a problem.

Of course the Facebook world is not solely populated by beginners.  There are a lot of accomplished gardeners there to help the newbies and to debate the minutia of gardening knowledge.  One such fellow posted on a couple of groups asking if he should mulch his vegetable garden and if so what material should he use?  After about an hour he announced that he had learned two different approaches to it.  "Absolutely NOT" and "Absolutely YES".

10 Proven Uses for Epsom Salt in the Garden

For every dozen people who swear that Epsom Salts are the key to green plants, there will be someone who can scientifically debunk the myth.  Companion planting - new age liberal hocus pocus.  Planting by the moon - archaic mumbo jumbo.  Compost tea - hogwash.  Pruning tomato suckers - why bother.  Eggshells, Coffee Grounds, Banana Peels - ineffectual

So what is the answer?  Just listen and learn and practice some good old fashioned trial and error.  And don't lose sleep over someone else's horn worms.

August Wrap Up: Garden Wonders

A first for my garden: the ornamental sweet potato vines are flowering

This has been quite an extraordinary growing season.  All the inevitabilities I'd planned for never happened.  We have had almost no bad bugs (there were so few they were holding singles mixers).  We have had no (zero, zilch, nada) powdery mildew.  We had very little late blight or other bacterial problems.  It has been hot and humid with little rain, sultry nights and wilting afternoons.  And the plants are loving it.  Because of this I am seeing things I wouldn't normally see in my garden.  The sweet potato vines are flowering lovely lavender flowers.  My first planting of zucchini still looks young and healthy and we have cantaloupes.  Big ones.

Not only are the vines flowering but they are rambling down the walks.

The Zucchini Jungle

A few years ago I learned to plant two zucchini seeds together.  That way one vine grows left and the other one heads right and they form an attractive, symmetrical mound instead of a one sided sprawl.  There are 6 seeds in this pile.  Two right in the center and then to the right, two more later plantings one in each corner.  I have not trimmed a single leaf out.

It was past time to renovate the strawberry bed.  It can be a lot of work, but I used the Stihl gas power trimmer with the scythe attachment.  So instead of spending 30 minutes with scissors.....

...I spent about 3 minutes with the trimmer.  After raking the leaves away I trimmed the runners by hand and began thinning.  Because of my Strawberry Problem I have learned that I do not want plants growing within a foot of the edge, and they need to be thinner in the middle.

My goal is two rows about a foot wide.  I will probably do more thinning but I was a bit thinned out.  The runners are by no means done for the year and they will send out runners again in the spring which will all need to be removed.  This is also the time to sprinkle a balanced fertilizer into the bed and mulch with compost if necessary.

Now about those cantaloupes.  Two years ago we had nice (although small) cantaloupes.  Last year I did not get a single melon as the cucumber beetles killed every single plant before the fruit could ripen.   I've reached the age and stage of gardening that when I realize I am fighting a losing battle, I pull out the plants and say "better luck next year".  There really is no point in nursing a plant along for just a few substandard fruit.  It is better to remove the food source / breeding environment for that pest and know that next year they will not be as plentiful.  If your crop is over run by the bad bugs, rip it out and burn it.  Just get it over with.

This year we've had good luck.  I've seen no more than half a dozen beetles.  The vines are healthy and productive and the melons are large.  These came from seeds I saved from cantaloupes we bought at a farmer's market last year.  And they're putting out big ol' melons.  I also planted the Burpee Sweet N' Early and they have been both early and sweet although again, single serving size.

No powdery mildew and no cucumber beetles means healthy cucumber plants.  I have pulled out four plants from nursery transplants that were yellowing and giving up (spring planted Marketmore tends to do that) but my second, third and fourth plantings are all producing.

How many times have I said I love these cucumber trellises?  You have to watch now and then and reposition some cukes or they could catch in the grid and grow funny shaped.  But having the vines up in a layer not only allows the cukes to hang straight and easy to pick, but the pollinators have access to the flowers from all angles.

The pepper and basil bed is doing well.
Plenty of Jalapenos but very few bell peppers.

The Tomato Jungle is healthy with just a few lower leaves needing to be removed.

How many cherry tomatoes can a single person eat in a day?  A quart?
Most days.  But not every day.  And because of no rain, almost none of them are splitting.
I have Sungold tomatoes coming out of my ears.

The fall lettuce babies are up.

Have you ever seen so much Vinca Vine?

Last year I bought four 4" pots of vinca vine for my combination pots.  I put them in the cold frame over the winter, and this spring I trimmed them back to nothing and re-potted them.  Now they look like a veil rambling all over the patio.

Remember the pile of frustration which used to be a functional wheelbarrow?  I buried it nose up in the landscape and planted one geranium and 4 Wave petunias in front of it.  It is hard to capture the light but the geraniums just glow against its rusty backdrop.

So those are the wonders of my garden this year,  That's one thing I like about gardening.  Every year you see something you didn't expect: sweet potato flowers, very big cantaloupes and huge veils of vinca.

Growing up in a Greenhouse

In May my favorite activity is visiting every greenhouse for a 20 mile radius. And my favorite color is green. Why? Well because I grew up in a greenhouse! Literally.

My parents met at the University of Kentucky. They both emerged with degrees in Horticulture (you can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think) , and within a couple of years, had returned to my mother's home town to buy the Busti Greenhouses. For about 5 years we actually lived IN the greenhouse. Our little 2 bedroom house was attached to the end of the two original greenhouses.

When we arrived, the greenhouses still had their original glass panes. The roofs were soon replaced with plastic because having loose glass panes falling on your plants and customers is rather inconvenient. But the greenhouses retained their vintage charm. I remember a concrete slab near the end of one house had a date in the 1920s scratched into it.

The center of our home was the Sales Room. Mom cozied up the sales bench by stapling bright plastic picnic table clothes over it. I would sit on the counter for hours blowing bubbles, sniffing flowers, and examining the bright pictures on the seed packs and boxes.

As I grew up I advanced to stapling boxes and punching the sales numbers into the old cash register. My family sold out when I was a teenager, but I returned during college to work in the summers. Memorial Day Weekend was our big sales time, but the two or three weeks leading up to it were utter mayhem as well. My mother planted hundreds of combination pots that were set out in the cemeteries on "Decoration Day". And, if the normal mayhem was insufficient, Mom would invite the radio station in for a remote broadcast, put on a pot of Marigold Chowder and dye her thumb green.

The existing, more contemporary, outlying greenhouses were inefficient, so one of the first things Dad did was tear them down and replace them with modern hoop houses or "Quansuts". We referred to them as "The Tomato House", "The Petunia House", "The Marigold House" and "The Pansy House" based on what dominated their contents.

I remember watching them scrape the ground level with the plow on our Allis Chalmers Model B, and I spent a lot of time with my own tiny tools digging in the mud.

I was three years old.

I spent my formative years playing in dirt. My inherited Marx farmsets were set up on the dirt and the animals grazed on freshly plowed fields full of perlite and peat moss. Each spring my Dad would "make dirt" which involved mixing the various contents and cooking the resulting potting mix to sterilize it. I still love the smell of warm dirt. Any dirt bin or wheelbarrow full of the stuff was my playpen.

This was the view out of the picture window in our dining room, hundreds of geraniums grown from cuttings. We grew almost everything we sold. We didn't ship it in from large wholesale growers. Everything was started in the warm and steamy seed room. My mother still has the weathered doors from the seed room hanging on her wall as rustic art. All the planting dates and amounts were entered in a grimy ledger.

My little sister got a chance to grow up in the greenhouse too. Mom put her out of harms way in her own "hanging basket".

My Dad shows Holly how to transplant Wizard Mix Coleus.

Greenhousing runs in my family. My father's father took a summer hobby (he was a shop and math teacher) and turned it into a full time job during his retirement. Above are PaPaw's Barlow Greenhouses in Shelbyville, KY. They are now gone, and Fletcher Lane runs to their west in honor of my MaMaw Mary Fletcher Hodges Barlow.

The inside of Barlow Greenhouses. In my eye, these modern houses were never as charming or esthetically pleasing as Busti's vintage houses.

THE actual honest to goodness original Rototiller™.

Much like all facial tissues are not Kleenex, and not all adhesive bandages are Band-Aids... Not all rotary tillers are Rototillers. PaPaw is tilling the soil inside the newly constructed tomato house. The dirt in Kentucky smells completely different from the dirt in New York.

Each spring I anxiously await the opening of the greenhouses. I walk methodically through each one looking for old friends and new varieties. Both the Busti Greenhouses and the Barlow Greenhouses have been flattened to the ground and erased, but their legacy lives on.

PaPaw and I in the geranium house. Dad is back in the upper left corner. Look at those clay pots and peat pots! How Retro!

Hey Mom, how come you're not in any of these pictures? Probably the same reason I'm not in any of my gardening pictures!