There’s something in the air…

Precipitation. Copious amounts of moisture. It’s been raining all morning. There’s been more rain this past week than sun. Don’t get me wrong — it’s great for my plants and the area in general. But this rain inhibits the amount of work I can do in the morning. And that forces me to work either during the hottest part of the day or at night, when the mosquitoes party.

But I will re-stake my tomatoes. Mark my words.

TWO MONTHS!?

I’m terrible at journaling. I’ve always known it; always wanted to be better at it. But COME ON. Two months of nothing! No words! Considering the flurry of growth in the last two months, I am quite appalled at myself.

To catch everyone up…I am now in the process of tending some beautifully vigorous plants, and mourning the lack of others.

These are the vegetables currently growing in my garden:

• Winter squash (2 varieties)
• Summer squash (2 varieties)
• Cucumber, Delikatesse
• Bush bean, Dragon tongue
• Soybean, Envy
• Lima bean, Fordhook potato
• Melon (2 varieties)
• Okra, Burgundy
• Eggplant, Black beauty — these eggplants were purchased. My nine eggplant seedlings were killed in an early summer squall!
• Tomato (6 varieties)
• Pepper (6 varieties)
• Cardoon
• Red cabbage
• Lettuce
• Radicchio
• Leek, Giant Musselburgh
• Broccoli, Romanesco
• Pea (2 varieties)
• Scarlet runner bean
• Arugula
• Spinach
• Dill
• Sage
• Lavender
• Italian oregano
• Beet (2 varieties)
• Swiss chard (2 varieties)
• Kohlrabi
• Amaranth, Love-lies-bleeding
• Sweetcorn, Country gentleman
• Florence fennel — it’s funny, because I ended up planting these and then forgot about them. And now they’re popping up in the strangest places — the front yard, the compost pile. But I’m letting them grow. We’ll see if they fatten up.

Plus, a selection of flowers: sunflower, zinnia, six different kinds of poppy, and a ton of nasturtium.

I didn’t end up planting several types of vegetables, though. And some of the things I planted didn’t sprout — namely, carrots and onions! I’m not sure if winds carried the seeds off, or if it was too warm for the seeds to germinate (which makes less sense to me), but I suppose I’ll have to give it another go next season.

I’m going to leave off for now, but I’ll leave you with some photos of the plants right now.

Stay hairy!

glory be!

swiss chard

lilliputian zinnias

hey thanks, cabbage worms

genetic mutant tomato blossom

hairy little poppy bud

Logistics, as promised

I want to devote a post to some of the decisions I made in planning this garden. Going into it, I knew there were certain qualities my garden should have:

• a large variety of plants
• completely organic
• companion planting
• started from seed, garnished with love

I spent a lot of time reading and researching. Two books were especially helpful to me, and I’d recommend them to anyone interested in beginning or transitioning to an organic garden: Grow Organic by Doug Oster and Jessica Walliser, and Organic Gardening by Geoff Hamilton. Both provide great tips and insight. Organic Gardening is rather cut and dry, but the spartan writing is well-supplemented by exceedingly helpful, step-by-step instruction on the technical aspects of gardening. It has been my go-to source for sowing seeds, plot planning, tools, soil amendments, everything. In tone (and title), Grow Organic is the reverse; its anecdotal style makes it more fun to read but a little harder to resource. As I considered plot planning, I consulted Carrots Love Tomatoes, a well-known book about companion planting. I think that arming myself with all this knowledge far in advance will serve me well this growing season.

As I began to contemplate purchasing seed, I realized that I wouldn’t buy seed locally. The only seed company advertising “organic” was Burpee, but a) I don’t like Burpee’s selection, and b) it was too early in the year to find any seed in stores. (This was in January/February.) I started scouring the interwebs for seed companies. In the end, I seriously considered three sources: Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, Baker Creek Seed Company in Mansfield, Missouri, and Heirloom Seeds in southwestern Pennsylvania. Then came the lists of pros and cons for each source. SSE offers a nice, if somewhat limited selection, but their prices for seed packets are through the damn roof. Baker Creek prices seeds on a sliding scale, according to scarcity of seed, and their selection is the largest and most varied of the three. Heirloom Seeds has the lowest prices of all, and they are family-run (which I like), but they apparently can’t handle a high volume of orders and ended up closing their website for about a month and half. So that took Heirloom Seeds out of the running.

My seed catalog from Baker Creek arrived in the middle of February, and I must admit, it’s worse than pornography. The company was founded by a fellow named Jere Gettle at the tender age of seventeen, and in ten years it’s expanded rapidly. The main seed bank is located in the heart of the Ozarks, and apparently the town of Mansfield is a haven for crazy hill people and bluegrass bandits. Jere Gettle not only owns the seed bank but the historic town surrounding the seed bank. The company sponsors festivals during the spring and summer, featuring Jere wearing a lot of fringed western wear and the kind of rugged individualism that makes the Tea Party so terrifying. As in, a “return to simpler values” (read: many unregistered guns and giant watermelons and let’s forget about women’s lib). Still, I couldn’t help but feel a kinship with Mr. Gettle and his enterprise. The man travels the world looking for unusual, rare and heirloom seeds. And he’s hilarious.

All snarkiness aside, I really admire the spirit of Baker Creek Seed Company. Their products aren’t certified organic because they seem to be firmly against bureaucracy and big business. And yes, there are implications of individual effort, small business and a disdain for government intrusion and said implications reek of blue-collar conservatism, but in this case I think it’s right. Agriculture has become big business. Gross. Everyone should possess a knowledge of cultivation and a desire to grow their own food. Not for social or political reasons, but simply because it’s better for you. I can’t believe that most people don’t realize or just don’t care that the produce they buy in stores is almost always picked under-ripe and shipped hundreds or even thousands of miles to their respective destinations. The quality of the produce is terrible and the taste is sub par. Once a vegetable is picked from a plant, all the natural sugars in the plant’s nutrient make-up begin to convert into starch. Goodbye, flavor.

Okay. Off the soapbox.

I ended up ordering nearly all my vegetable and herb seeds from Baker Creek, with the exception of seed potatoes and winter squash. I also ordered a fair number of flower seeds from Baker Creek, and the rest I ordered from a company called Select Seeds (specializing in heirloom flowers).

And here’s my seed list, moms!

Vegetable.

• Beet, ‘Bull’s blood’ & ‘Chioggia’ (candy stripes!)
• Bush bean, ‘Dragon tongue’
• Cucumber, ‘Delikatesse’
• Strawberry, ‘Yellow wonder’ (yellow! YLLW!)
• Broccoli, ‘Romanesco’ (hello)
• Kohlrabi, ‘Early purple Vienna’
• Onion, ‘Tropeana lunga’ & ‘Yellow of Parma’
• Green onion, ‘Tokyo white bunching’
• Brussels sprouts, ‘Long Island improved’
• Cabbage, ‘Mammoth red rock’
• Chard, ‘Fordhook giant’ & ‘Bright lights’
• Kale, ‘Lacinato’ & ‘Blue curled Scotch’
• Radish, ‘Long black Spanish’ & ‘Hailstone’
• Spinach, ‘Bloomsdale’
• Cardoon, ‘Gobbo di Nizzia’
• Fennel, ‘Di Firenze’
• Bush lima bean, ‘Fordhook potato’
• Carrot, ‘Danvers half-long’ ‘ Chantenay royal’ & ‘Muscade’
• Scorzonera, ‘Geante noire de Russie’ (I hear scorzonera is finicky…I’m waiting to plant it in autumn)
• Watermelon, ‘Sugar baby’
• Tomato, ‘Carbon’ ‘Cream sausage’ ‘Green grape’ ‘Violet jasper’ ‘Hillbilly’ & ‘Henderson’s pink ponderosa’
• Pepper, ‘Sweet banana’ ‘Quadrato d’asti rosso’ (red bell) ‘Fish’ ‘Caribbean red habanero’ & ‘Pasilla bajio’ (Fish peppers are an African-American heirloom from Maryland and pasilla bajio peppers are used to make mole sauce ay ay I cannot wait for mole)
• Amaranth, ‘Love-lies-bleeding’
• Arugula, ‘Wild rocket’
• Lettuce, ‘Rocky top mix’ & ‘Tom Thumb’ (Tom Thumb is a butterhead type that only grows 3-4″ in diameter!)
• Radicchio, ‘Castelfranco libra’
• Red orach
• Scarlet runner bean
• Garden pea, ‘Wando’
• Sugar snap pea
• Bush soybean, ‘Envy’
• Leek, ‘Giant Musselburgh’
• Melon, ‘Delice de la table’
• Summer squash, ‘Striata d’italia’ & ‘Bennings green tint scallop’
• Winter squash, ‘Potimarron’
• Pole bean, ‘Rattlesnake’
• Sweet corn, ‘Country gentleman’ (shoe peg variety — kernels grow all willy nilly instead of uniform rows)
• Pumpkin, ‘Galeux d’eysines’
• Ground cherry
• Tomatillo, ‘Purple’
• Eggplant, ‘Rosa bianca’
• Okra, ‘Burgundy’
• Potato, ‘Rose Finn apple’

Herbs.

• Dill
• Summer savory
• Yarrow
• Chamomile (German)
• Broad leaf sage
• Oregano
• Borage
• Caraway
• Italian parsley
• Spearmint
• Bee balm
• Common chives
• Russian tarragon
• Cumin
• Anise hyssop
• Cinnamon basil
• Genovese basil
• Sweet mace

Flowers.

• Nasturtium, ‘Milkmaid’ ‘Black velvet’ ‘Empress of India’ & ‘Vesuvius’ (Nasturtium is a completely edible flower! The leaves have a peppery taste…)
• Calendula ‘Pot marigold’
• Poppy (I’m planting at least four varieties, both perennial and annual)
• Lilliputian zinnias!
• Arikara sunflowers
• Nicotiana
• Catmint
• Honeywort
• Feverfew, ‘Virgo’
• Morning glory, ‘Flying saucers’
• Amish cockscomb

Whoa, dogie. So much happening! So much to do. More to post later.

Stay hairy, me loves.

Ha…I just remembered that today my neighbor asked me if she can contribute to our compost with her vegetable clippings…and then we had a twenty-minute long conversation about gardening and vegetables and female cottonwood trees…it was nice.

Holy cats! (continued)

Picking up where I left off, sans delirium, I have more or less abandoned my life favoring a whirlwind of dirt, seedlings, manure and magic. I’m rapidly learning to identify all manner of crawling creeps, like the common earwig and white grub. I know how to exterminate them organically (if not humanely) — straw traps for earwigs, beer for slugs. I’ve even identified the elusive red spider I spotted yesterday:

The woodlouse spider. Harmless to humans, deadly to woodlice (sow bugs). I can only imagine what a tedious battle royale that would be.

Currently, the uniplot is quite littered with upturned roots and clumps of grass. I began to rake it today, dragging all the debris off the surface to get a better idea of what remained rooted in the ground. Not much, thank goodness. Just a stubborn bit of grass here and there, struggling bitterly to stay stationary. NO WAY SUCKA. ‘TIS TIME TO SAY GOODNIGHT.

Don’t worry, I’m not leaving. That’s just what I kept shouting at my victims.

I transferred some tomato seedlings this afternoon because I worry that I’m not giving my seedlings enough root room. So much goes on below the surface to make the seedling strong enough to keep stretching its neck to the sun. The nature of Nature continues to astound and surprise.

By Friday I hope to get cold crops transplanted and all my seeds planted. This will involve a lot of work, including but not limited to:

• clearing the remaining soil of debris
• digging in soil amendments
• double digging to break up the subsoil and form raised beds
• cutting black landscaping fabric down to various impossible sizes

I am looking forward to it, but these tasks seem slightly daunting when I look at them written down. I would like to expand more on the logistics of things, but I think I should do it in a separate post. I’d also like to discuss the seed varieties I’m using and why I chose them.

PHOTO TIMES.

Holy cats!

Whatta day, whatta life! The past two days have been so productive, friends. After much waiting, and a little sleight of hand, the yard that once looked like a barren, desolate wasteland is on its way to fertility. And abundance. And worms! So many worms, fat and thin, long and short, eatin’ dirt and spittin’ it out! We moved a very large pile of dirt this afternoon, and I swear there was an eager annelid in every shovelful. I can’t describe what a strangely encouraging sight they were. Today I saw many insects, in fact. And arachnids — jumping spiders leaping out of clods of dirt and piles of twigs, and an unusual red spider I could not identify. I saw several slugs, and boy was I peeved. Yesterday three fat grubs made an appearance in the compost heap, and today a cockroach and a big black beetle ran across my shoe. I saw an earwig with my own eyes for the first time, and the bees were buzzing around the early spring flowers. So much life in the ground, from miniscule mites to mighty moles. Unbelievable. The birds finally wised up and dove into the veritable smorgasbord we laid out for them.

We finally picked up a roto-tiller, and the thing is a beast. It really does get the job done. T tamed the creature and harnessed its raw power to turn up the grass and daylilies that prior proliferated the yard. I’m hoping the unseasonably warm weather will wilt the uprooted pests and tomorrow I’ll rake them away, like skimming cream off milk. And then I get to dig in compost and manure and bone meal, creating a deep and fertile receptacle for the little greenies I’m about to transplant.

Ugh. I’m so worn out from the last few days, and a bit delusional (if you couldn’t already tell). I think it’s time for sleeping, and I’ll post photos(!) tomorrow.

Stay hairy, my brothers.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Oh my. I’ve severely neglected this little lady the month or so. Not that I’ve abandoned any efforts, mind you. It’s just…things have been in flux. You know, the little things — taxes, overhauling my life, etc. Due to my recent move (!!) I haven’t photographed much of what I’ve been doing. But I’ll have you know, the seedlings are lookin’ fly. The broccoli seedlings are happy and strong and I managed to revive some sad little honeyworts. The honeywort is an unusual plant, and I’ve done a bit of reading up on it to know what to expect. The plant is native to the Mediterranean but will survive in cooler climates as a half-hardy annual or tender perennial. It’s not too common in these parts, though the plant itself has been noted since the sixteenth century. According to sources, the plant suffers greatly from ‘transplant shock’, but my seedlings are still relatively small so this may not occur when I transplant.

Bought a heating mat, and it’s worked absolute wonders for starting tomatoes, peppers and other fruit-bearing plants. They popped the hell up in like 3 days; let me assure you, I cannot WAIT to get these plants in the ground! It’s all happening in the next week…I’ll keep you posted…

A hateful shade of winter

Ugh. Humdrum. Sink scum.

This weather sucks.

I can deal with cold and dry. I can deal with rain. But snow? Really. I thought we were past all that. Apparently no.

No matter. There’s something useful to be gleaned from any situation. I raked portions of the yard the other day, so this snow, when it melts, will actually benefit the soil. I just wish I could’ve tilled a bit before it happened.

In happier news: sowed more seeds yesterday! Brassicas — red cabbage and broccoli. Also cardoon (somewhere betwixt artichoke and thistle), and some early lettuce. The lettuce variety is ‘Tom Thumb’, and the heads will only grow to about 4″ in diameter! So cute. Also some flowers. Hollyhock ‘Nigra’ (a deep purplish black variety) and ‘Peaches ‘n’ Dreams’ (dumbest name ever; a double flowered creamy apricot variety), catmint, honeywort, and feverfew. The leeklings look good; they’re growing at a nice clip. Next on my list? Fruit-bearing vegetables like tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. But probably not ’til the beginning of next month. In the meantime, we’re working on our compost and preparing the yard for its transformation! I’m also gearing up to buy herb and flower seed from my favorite catalog, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

Oh, and my co-worker Adam — a fellow particularly keen on permaculture and sustainable living — gave us a rain barrel! We have another plastic drum that we’ll convert into a second rain barrel. I’m thinking about painting them, like the gorgeous barrel my friend’s husband recently designed. (Look at that! It’s breathtaking!)

Moral of the story: the weather is at its lamest, but this kink is only temporary. Soon, Spring will be a’springin’!

Plant of the day: Arisaema sikokianum, ‘Japanese jack-in-the-pulpit’

A relative of the North American jack-in-the-pulpit. Definitely the most intriguing flowering plant I’ve seen. A member of the Arisaema genus, rightfully nicknamed ‘cobra lilies’. Sinuous, showy and striking. And definitely poisonous. If I could grow a whole shade garden full of jack-in-the-pulpits, I would.