1.5 Ounces of Prevention

I like to think that part of my competence as a gardener has to do with learning from mistakes.  The way most of us start out is with some Dirt and Transplants.  After years of trial and error we advance to Soil and Seeds.  We plot and plan.  We kill and strategize.  We have our rituals all designed around avoidance.  Avoidance of pests.  Avoidance of failure.

You might ask me "do you have trouble with slugs?"  My answer would be "yes and no".  Not since the year of the cucumber failure.  I used to have trouble, now I avoid trouble.  We learn what is coming next.  We research and exercise solutions. Do I have any trouble with slugs?  No.  But that's not because I live in a slug free world.  It's because I kill every one I see.  Every time I plant cucumbers or lettuce I sprinkle Sluggo all over that very day.  I sprinkle Sluggo in the strawberries.  I pack it into the cracks and crevices that look like a slug hotel.  I don't have trouble with slugs because I am always at war with them.  ...even if they don't appear to be here.  I fight them before they arrive.  The same with squash bugs, deer, asparagus beetles, raccoons and flea beetles.  I am always at war.  Seems silly when there is no sign of the enemy?  Well, no.  That's just proof that the war is going well.  I'm winning!

Last year's battle was against fusarium wilt.  This is caused by bacteria in the soil.  It rots the roots and stems where they touch the soil, and the plant "damps off".  Perfectly good seedlings keel over.  Sometimes they rot before they even poke through the ground.  It's disheartening.  I struggled to keep ahead of it.

Large gaps are evident in my bush bean row where seedlings
damped off before they could become established.

I had the problem in two beds, one with black beans and one with bush green beans.  I've had this trouble in particularly wet years where I actually had algae growing on the soil surface in full sun, but waiting a few weeks and replanting solved the problem.  Not last year.  There seemed to be no stopping it.

Discoloration of the stems is the first sign of the problem

But one thing I noticed was that the black beans planted in the bed I'd amended for the cucumbers, were outpacing the wilt with their vigorous growth.    I could stand at the bed and see where I had added the blood meal (a source of Nitrogen).  The beans along the cuke row were thriving, but the beans on the other side were struggling to survive.  So... this could be prevented.

I added blood meal to the right side of the bed, but none to the left side.

This year I took several steps to ensure my beans survived.  First, I rotated them to a different bed which hopefully won't have a wilt problem.  Secondly, I solarized the bed in the spring, cooking the bad bacteria and warming the soil.  Thirdly I added blood meal to all my beds.  And fouthly, I inoculated them.   That isn't exactly what it sounds like.  Inoculation sounds as if I am giving them an immunity to disease, which I'm not.  I used a product that encourages "the formation of high-nitrogen nodules on plant roots for richer soil, bigger plants, and better yields".  .  I'm doing my best to help the plants outpace the enemy.

The inoculent came in a 1.5 ounce packet.  A black, powdery mystery substance.  You damped your seeds, roll them in the black, powdery mystery substance, and plant.  So far so good.  I planted two rows of purple and yellow beans from seeds packed for 2014, and on a whim used up the green ones packed for 2011.  The old seeds turned to mush and only a couple sprouted, so instead I've added a row of lettuce thinned from another bed.  The two goods rows are doing just fine.

In fact, I went a little over board.  These should really be thinned.

To Buy or Not To Buy - That Is The Question

With all this talk of buying plants, you may wonder what I am buying.  Aren't true Gardeners supposed to grow everything themselves?  Well, yes and no.  There are only so many hours in the day, so spend accordingly.  There are also only so many dollars in the budget.

1.  Perennials:  We always seem to be adding landscape space.  While I am generally happy to admire a well mulched, freshly edged, EMPTY landscape space, Tim is automatically compelled to fill it with something.  Well, for ME to fill it with something.   Some of my existing plantings may become unbalance because of plants dying out and not growing well.  

Once Upon a Time I bought some Black Eyed Susans....
And maybe a Hosta... or two

You can easily propagate your own perennials by Dividing or re-Seeding.  About 12 years ago I bought some Black Eyed Susans.  I now have BES in several places, have given some away, and on occasion will wheel a barrow out to the compost pile and murder them.  

And now they are every where

Same with Hosta and Phlox.  One well established and thriving planting can supply a neighborhood for generations to come.   But sometimes you just need something new.  Or something Right Now. So you pay for something that, with a little diligence, you probably could have gotten for free.

The simplest way to make sure you are matching your existing plantings
without remembering what variety they were is to divide or seed from what you already have.

2.  Vegetables:  Yes I do buy some vegetable starts.  A gal can't do everything.  There is an excellent blog here on Northwest Edible Life that perfectly explains what seedlings to buy or not to buy and why.  I plan my spring cold frame real estate carefully for early Lettuce, hardening off indoor starts, successive plantings of Summer Squash, Cucumbers, and Cantaloupes etc.  I have room for 8 flats at any given time plus a little edge space for keeping warm watering cans and a tub of potting mix.  Sometimes I feel I have room to plant Herbs or a certain variety of annual flower.  But they have to fit into the timing and space provided by the frame. 

I try to stick with a "hot" color pallet in the vegetable garden.  I only use red, orange and yellow.
Some years I buy Profusion Zinnia seeds by color so I know I will have only those colors.

I have two grow lights and heat mats (and space to put them in) to start seedlings indoors.  These are devoted to my Tomatoes, Eggplants and Peppers.  Sometimes I like to try new things like Jalapenos and I don’t have a preference for the variety so I will pick up a likely candidate at the nursery just to get me started.  The biggest problem with buying vegetables commercially is the limited selection and generic labeling (or miss-labeling).  Tag says Red Bell Pepper.  Yes but what KIND of Red Bell Pepper?  If I really like it will I ever be able to find the same variety again?  Or next year will you sell me another Red Bell Pepper variety with the same generic tag?  I am a self-professed Tomato Snob.  I want what I want when I want it.  I am also a well-rooted Eggplant Snob.  I don’t want to grow Black Beauty Eggplant every year.    And I am fast becoming a Pepper Snob.

Not everyone grows Purple Beauty bell peppers, and certainly not
people who buy their transplants around here.

There are some other vegetables that just don’t transplant well, but that doesn’t stop greenhouses from selling them to the unsuspecting public.  My neighbors routinely plant a couple of packs of Bush Bean transplants.  Hmmm… interesting.  Four plants for the price of 30 seeds.  To each his own.  The Beans transplant and produce well and they routinely have beans weeks before I do. But when they brought out the four packs of Carrots!  Now this was an experiment worth watching.  Carrots!  I kept mum but my eyes peeled.  I happened to be present the day the Carrot crop was harvested.  Neighbor Mike began pulling first one, and then a half dozen of the most fascinating Carrot Knots I’ve ever seen.  He was perplexed.  “What is WRONG with my carrots?!?”   Pest damage?  Some strange disease?  I couldn’t help but chuckle as I walked over to inspect.  “Didn’t get your roots plumbed when you transplanted them huh?”  After all, a Carrot is merely a root.  Even he managed to find the humor in it.

3.  Herbs: This seems like one of the most obvious grow your own projects in the garden.  Every housewife in America can grow that stuff on her kitchen windowsill.  With the cost and variety of seeds available only a dummy would buy a Basil plant.  Well count me in.  I don’t have the inclination to fiddle with Basil anymore.  Or Cilantro.  Just give me a couple of pots and I’ll be on my way, thankyouverymuch.  

One Red Rubin Basil seedling will soon become a shrub

I do have well established crops of the hardy, woody stemmed Herbs planted in permanent locations.  The Catnip shows up here and there in the garden each spring and I rip the little buggers out by the roots and put them in a large planter where they belong.  But they will wander off… they always do.  I doubt I will ever have to buy Catnip ever again.  I am helplessly drawn to the Herb selection at every greenhouse.  An unusual variegated variety will get me all excited.  I just can’t resist them.  I really don’t use them, not as much as they deserve to be.  So they grow happily and un-harvested to shrub size, attracting pollinators with their blossoms and self-seeding themselves all over the place willy nilly.

Large rocks shelter and warm these herbs and keep them alive through harsh winters

4.  Annuals: There are plenty of annual plants that can be started from seed, cuttings, or even wintered over.  My grandfather and mother-in-law had Geraniums as old as I am.  They would just bring the pots in every winter, put them in the barn or the basement, and haul them back out in the spring.  My mother had Petunia plant (maybe still does. ) that we picked up at my PaPaw’s greenhouse back in the early years when the Wave Petunias first came out. That was back around 1998 or 99 and I know I saw it in the dining room last year, rambling up towards the drapery rod.  I could keep a “seed” Geranium over each year and start my own cuttings in January and save myself $60 every year.  If I were so inclined.  But I’m not.  I’ve considered pulling the Marigold volunteers each spring and potting them up alongside the Catnip.  That project interests me a bit more.

A tub of Calibrocha "Million Bells" Petunias can add color to any corner

So each year I adjust my shopping list keeping old favorites and adding new novelties.  I lurk about the local nurseries and scatter color all over our acreage.  Shades of pink and white around the house, hot red orange and yellow for the garden, and on to the side yard whose remoteness enables me to play with the color pallet each year.  I don't have a "flower garden" and yet I still manage to plant almost 100 Marigolds, 20 Geraniums, a few dozen Petunias, Portulaca, Alysum and various and sundry Spike and Vinca and other fillers.  I find volunteer Petunias and Portulaca in the midst of Sweet Potatoes and Cucumbers.  I don't pull them.  They're not really weeds.  They're just trying to give me my money's worth.

What's that peaking thru the carrot tops?  A Petunia!

To Plant a Garden is to Believe in Tomorrow

I read this sweet little inspiration phrase in a gardening book, and my first reaction was “yet so many garden with total disregard for tomorrow”  For example, people who plant in the ground before the last frost date or buy over-grown root-bound potted plants and hanging baskets they will never water. 

I guess I am the tomorrow kind of gardener.  I am always the one buying the short, stocky plants that haven’t bloomed yet.  When I see a particularly nice combination potted up, I march right past those and head out to buy the individual components to plant up myself.  That way I get younger and healthier plants that are not already root bound and hard to maintain.

A basket full of Calibrocha may look beautiful today, but buying the individual plants
and planting fewer per pot will make them easier to maintain.  These baskets usually burn out
for me within 6 weeks while my own plantings peak a little later.

Today I passed up the rack of hopelessly wind burned pepper plants and went through the show room with it’s tempting selection of a little of this and a little of that and back to greenhouse # 8 (out of 21 in the large glamorous garden center with the concrete walkways and shopping carts) and found the protected and fresh stock of pepper plants, pulling flats out so I could step back to the wall with the shortest, deepest green and most enticing plants.

Newly germinated seeds shelter in the warmth of the cold frame
along with annuals fresh out of the commercial greenhouse.

Gardening is about patience.  Sometimes you get instant gratification by going out and buying a beautiful selection of plants or shrubs and transforming a dull or unkempt portion of your garden into a virtual Eden.  But usually gardening is a long process.  In the last post I wondered how many greenhouses I would manage to visit this year.  So far six at least once, and I am on the third round for several suppliers.  I have also visited two Big Box garden departments for various supplies, and have two more greenhouses on my wish list mainly for tourism purposes. 

A trunk full of Geraniums will take over
an hour to transplant properly

Why so many trips?  Because it won’t all fit in my car all at once.  And if it did, the sheer enormity of the task would be overwhelming.  I walk into a well stocked greenhouse and I am immediately overwhelmed and underwhelmed at once.  There are so many beautiful choices, but the I can’t always find the exact variety or color I have in mind.  If I did manage to find everything I wanted all at once, I would not have room to stage everything and keep it protected until it is safe to plant and I certainly wouldn't have the energy to plant it all at once.  This must be done in stages. 

On one side the hoop house with a frost cover shelters tender seedlings
from direct sun and wind.  On the other side, sturdier, hardened off
plants await transplanting after threat of frost.

Last Friday I planted 16 gallon size perennials in the new rock arrangements between the trees.  This is in an area that was previously lawn and requires digging through sod and amending the soil.  Rain storms were rolling through and I had to do it in stages.  Plant six plants, get rained out, pack up, flee to the house, check the laundry, check the weather radar, start all over again.  Then on Sunday I planted a whole flat of marigolds.  With list in hand I made my rounds depositing the planned number of packs in each area, then I went back through with a trowel digging them in.  Saturday I filled large pots and added soil to the stationary planters, shoveling compost and wrestling with heavy pots.  Today I was back to the nurseries for another car full of plants.

Half of a rainy day's work

Another reason to do this gradually is that greenhouses stage their plants in cycles.  They can’t do it all at once either.  First come the perennials and hardier plants, then the bedding plants and vegetables, and finally the hanging baskets and combination pots for the finishing touches and color refreshers.  I have hanging baskets on my list and I know the best place to get what I want, but they are still in their beginning stages and not yet beautiful and tempting.

The bad news is that half of our clump Birch tree died.
The good news is the smooth red bark of the branches make
an attractive support for the pot of 3 foot high Sweet Peas.

Back at home I have a large population of plants to harden off and coddle and protect until after threat of frost and high winds.  The most finicky live in the cold frame and must be moved in and out and placed in sheltered spots until they become hardened to the sun and the winds.  There are adolescent plants who have graduated to the garden paths and which can be covered with my miniature hoop house if frost threatens.  Then there are plants ready to go in the ground, staged beside their intended beds, waiting for a free moment between weeding and watering and mulching and carrying to get settled into their permanent homes.  Today’s work was to pot up some decorative pots of Portulaca and Nasturtium.  I still have 15 (a trunk full of) Geraniums to fetch, carry home, and plant.  But there’s always tomorrow.

The garden peas are doing well, and the oldest planting of leaf
lettuce is supplying us with salad greens.

And All of a Sudden It's May

And it feels like June.  But that's OK by me.   This is the fun part of the year.  You can sleep with the window open, falling asleep to the sounds of tree frogs and awakening to the singing of birds.  There is a lot to do but we're still not over the rapture of being outside in the sunshine at any temperature above 10*F.  And it's Spring Cleaning time.

I was thinking the other day that the only thing I do anymore is clean.  Clean the house, wash the car, do the dishes, wash the laundry, bathe the horse, clean the saddle, scrub some boots, sweep the steps, shampoo the cat (yes, she needed it), paint the benches, shower, wash the dishes (again)... you get the idea.  This weekend we washed the front porch which involves taking all the rockers out in the sun, hosing the road dirt off the walls and floor, and washing the furniture before putting it all back again.  Now I can invite guests to come sit out there without worrying that they might ruin their clothes.  I even washed our mailbox.  It was so icky with road dirt,  Whenever I put a pretty pink enveloped greeting card in there I'd cringe.  But I felt like an obsessive compulsive nut standing out there by the side of the road with a pail of hot soapy water and a brush.

It is also Spring Landscape Blitzkreig time when we go through about 20 cubic yards (no joke) of mulch and cut over 800 feet of edging (I measured on the GIS site). It used to be 650 feet, but to streamline the mowing pattern, Tim turned five 60 inch circles around the Linden trees (80 feet of edge) into one long six foot wide swath (216 feet of edge).  Now he can zip down the line at 15 mph instead of turning precise circles.

My husband's idea of the perfect pin-up girl

Above is what I think must be my husband's ideal Pin-up girl.  It isn't her svelte figure or her lovely brunette complexion...no it's that edging shovel.  Hey even I wouldn't mind if she wanted to stop by and help with the edging.  My fetching smile disappears sometime around day three (800 stomps of the 7 inch spade).   Tim is always saying to me "If you have a boyfriend, now would be a good time to fess up.  I have a lot of work to do this weekend, and it sure would help if he'd stop by and give me a hand."

The Linden trees Before and After

Besides Spring Cleaning and Landscape Blitzkreig things are ticking along in the garden like clockwork.  The peas are up, the strawberries are replanted, the lettuce is ready for transplanting and the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant seedlings have moved out to the cold frame under a layer of shade cloth.  My father even announced that he was going to go ahead and plant tomatoes well aware that he might have to cover them more than once.  Or 20 times! 

And that long swath of mulch between the Lindens has been arranged with clusters of boulders from the farm.  I plan on planting grass-like perennials around them to add interest.  Mostly day lillies and Siberian irises and strong smelling herbs and other things the deer don't bother (much).  I've been wandering the nurseries and greenhouses with a note pad writing down varieties and prices and sizes.  I feel like a secret shopper or price spy.  But the growers know me by sight and they're used to my wandering around for hours reading tags and poking at plants and leaving with nothing but a flat of marigolds and a bag of blood meal.  I always come armed with a box and garden clogs and I remind myself of my mother's favorite greenhouse patron who used to show up wearing rubber dish gloves.  May is when I indulge in my own version of Agri-Tourism.  Let's see how many greenhouses I can get to this year!

This is the porch last May 24, so no, our flowers are not this nice yet!

April Happenings: Spring is Here

We've made a start on the edging and mulching

The lettuce has just poked through and it is hard to believe
that these teeny tiny leaves will amount to anything

The Daffodils are just beginning

The peas came up on Thursday, Day 14 and
I planted the second planting on Friday evening

Tomatoes are seeded, peppers are just making a sho
 and the egg plants are looking luscious

Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme

After such a long cold winter it is so nice to finally have our outdoor life start up again.  Even if it is work.  I spent yesterday filling pots, counting pots, ordering more pots and running out of potting soil.  Today, after run to the store for more soil, and a trip to the farm for some composted horse manure, I began seeding lettuce in the cold frame. Tim commented as we left Home Depot with out respective items, that I am always buying stuff to grow things: soil, seeds, soil ammendments, and Tim is always buying something to kill things: weed killer, traps, poison....  I also cleaned a perennial bed, and rearranged my herb garden.

In a corner along the walkway from the garden shed to the vegetable garden, I have a grouping of large rocks which shelter my "perennial" herb garden.  The rocks hold heat as long as they can and shelter the herbs from the winter weather.  There are many herbs that grow back well from established roots and seed and may be considered perennial in your climate zone.  Most of those are invasive herbs like mints, Oregano and Lemon Balm, all of which I keep along the back side of a perennial bed, under the tree line where the tree roots starve them of moisture and the limbs limit their sunlight.  They still manage to survive tho not get out of hand too badly.  They sure do ramble.

Spearmint can often be found wild along stream beds

In the rock cluster along my vegetable garden walk way I keep my Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.  I know that list sounds unimaginative and that there are a lot of other herbs to be had in a garden, but these are some of the old stand-bys.  We’ve all heard the Simon and Garfunkel song Scarborough Fair, and Carly Simon also recorded a nice version of it a couple of years ago.  Have you ever wondered what it meant?  

Sunshine Fair II by Marty Leone pictures exactly the kind of country fair I imagine when I hear the song Scarborough Fair

Scarborough Fair is a traditional ballad that originated in England and parts of it trace back to as far as 1690.  The song relates the tale of a young man who instructs the listener to tell his former love to perform for him a series of impossible tasks, such as making him a shirt without a seam and then washing it in a dry well, adding that if she completes these tasks he will take her back.   The herbs in the song symbolize virtues the singer wishes his true love and himself to have, in order to make it possible for her to come back again. 

• Parsley was said to take away the bitterness of heavy vegetables, and medieval doctors took this in a spiritual sense as well.  We all know Love cannot thrive with bitterness.
• Sage has been known to symbolize strength for thousands of years
• Rosemary represents faithfulness, love and remembrance.  The herb also stands for sensibility and prudence. Rosemary is associated with feminine love, because it’s very strong and tough, although it grows slowly
• Thyme symbolizes courage. At the time this song was written, knights used to wear images of thyme in their shields when they went to combat, which their ladies embroidered in them

Although these herbs may seem commonplace in a garden, there are many unique varieties.  I love variegated leaves and I was able to find several variegated varieties to plant last year. I have green and white Sage whose new leaves are a deep pink or purple, yellow and green Sage, and variegated Thyme

The minuscule leaves of Variegated Thyme are my favorite

Purple or Tri-Color Sage

Variegated Sage

I don't devote much time to herbs, and honestly I do not use them in cooking as much as I should, but in April when you are starved for something green and alive, a collection of bedraggled herbs are a virtual Miracle.  I had made notes last fall as to what I wanted to change about this little grouping, and this was the perfect time to do it when the plants are still dormant and just beginning to awaken.

The Herb Garden Today

 I moved the large Purple Sage which I had transplanted last summer from some large pots that had overwintered to the center, and rescued the small green and yellow Sage from the center and moved it to the edge putting an ample amount of compost beneath it.  The taller parsley, which I hadn't expected to survive at all was moved to the back between a pair of day lillies.

The Parsley not only survived the deer trimming it off, but the coldest February
on record with many nights below -20*F

After our busy day of hauling and shoveling and scooping, we sat in our chaise lounge chairs and watched the birds. Two years ago I put up a blue bird box.  Last year the house wrens got to it first.  I don't begrudge the house wrens their home, but they are such shy little birds that they are merely an idea of a bird on the edge of your peripheral vision and never seen.  Today, Tim said, that obviously the blue birds had gotten the utilities turned on and they were in and out inspecting the place and making plans for the future,  This is the beginning.  From now until Mid-Summer it's all uphill from here.

Spring Cleaning

With the weather warming up and the sun shining it is time to air out the house, chase the dust bunnies out of forgotten corners and give everything the once over.  Historically, back in the days when house were heated by wood or coal stoves, there would be quite a layer of coal dust and soot over everything.  House wives would wash down their walls, take the rugs out the beat and use a lot of elbow grease.  When wall paper became more common place, spring cleaning got a little more complicated.  You couldn't necessarily attack your walls with hot soapy water.  The paper would come right off.  So a substance was needed that you could spread on your wallpaper and then safely peel off taking the dirt with it.  After coal stoves went by the wayside, the manufacturers of wallpaper cleaners were in a bind.  Kutol had a bit of a brainstorm, added a little color and sold it as a toy.  And Play-Doh was born.

I've been giving the house a little more attention lately, and the sunny afternoons allow me to see the dirt in the corners a little better, but I'm glad I don't have to spread Play-Doh all over my walls.  I mention a couple of post ago that I have all the equipment to do laundry the old fashioned way - by hand.  I have copper boilers, wash tubs, wash boards, wringers, rug beater, hand plungers to agitate the wash, wooden tongs to pick the whites out of the boiling water, pulleys to run my clothes line across the alley, and line spreaders to keep my lines from tangling together.  I even have line winders, an old line prop to raise the line up and keep the sheets off the lawn and a host of clothes pins.

About a week ago my mother emailed me and said "Mickey left something here for you."  Mickey is the gal who has a nice little greenhouse where she starts her own plants for growing saleable produce and sells the extras.  She always has something unique and more than once she has saved me with some fun tomato variety when mine failed.  For instance the year my Absinthe plants failed to germinate but Mickey had some! 

 Mickey also like old stuff.  Last spring she mentioned that she had a box of clothes pins I might like.  And that was what she left at Mom's house (along with a loaf of home made bread for Mom).  So now I have a nice original box of clothes pins for my laundry collection,  Thanks Mickey!

And on a gardening note the sun finally came out enough for my Crocuses to open up :)