Oh, Garden!

There are two reasons that I've been neglecting and avoiding this space. One, my garden sucked eggs this year. Two, we have a baby on the way, so I was pregnant and sick for most of the summer. I still had a garden this season. I did have some successful harvests. However, I had the worst gardening season I've ever had in my 8 or so years of gardening.

To begin, I had the toughest time getting beans to germinate and grow into plants. The first batch never made an appearance above the soil. The second batch was mowed down by creatures. The third batch was mowed down by creatures. Eventually, I was able to make a humble harvest of green beans, but not nearly enough. I froze two quarts. And they're already gone.

For some reason my basil and carrots and some winter squash seemed to suffer from poor germination. I haven't been able to pin it on any one factor.

Next, and this is really the biggest issue, is that I got pregnant in June, found out in July, and was almost entirely worthless for physical labor in the humid heat of this past summer. I cursed the sun. I really hated sunny days for some reason. The first several weeks were like one long, slow migraine headache.

But I forgave myself as I was growing a baby instead of veggies!

By the time I started feeling better (um, mid-September) the damage had been done. I was able to keep the garden hobbling along with weed management, watering, and harvesting. It was a good year for chard, broccoli, new potatoes, butternut squash, eggplant, sweet bell peppers, garlic, snap peas, and spinach. Though, here's the most depressing thing about my garden: blight. I had blight on things I didn't know got blight. Of course my potatoes are a mess, blighted and scabby. I have yet to dig them and find out if anything is salvageable. My tomatoes started off with blight and are ending with blight, though we've been able to harvest some and use them right away. The crazy thing is that the carrots got some kind of blight. They pretty much all died back and are now just getting going. Baby carrots is what I will harvest I guess.

So, my favorite crops, carrots and potatoes, were a massive failure. The summer squash just never took off (which I realize is probably a blessing in disguise. I'm still using *last year's* frozen, shredded summer squash in zucchini bread.)  I will never grow broccoli again. I must have picked off a thousand green cabbage worms.

It was pretty depressing out there. The saddest thing is looking forward to next year without tomatoes or potatoes. The only solution I can think of is to take a break from that plant family.

So, now I'm working on this other growing project: the new kid. Next gardening season will be something else! The baby is due in March, so I'm hoping to be ready for some backyard gardening with the little one by May.,

Harvesting Butternut Squash

Winter squash is probably my favorite garden food. I love it baked, roasted, or whipped into a spicy soup.
I actually harvested two butternut squash today. One looks perfectly tan and ripe and basically fell off of the wilting vine. The other one still has faint green stripes and I kind of yanked it off of the vine by accident. So, I have an experiment on my hands. I've never grown butternuts before, so I'm not sure when the best time to harvest them is. I know that this summer's consistent heat and humidity has fast-forwarded everything into ripening sooner than expected, so I wouldn't be surprised if the mostly ripe-looking squash is ready. The other one could have used a couple more weeks I think. But we'll just have to see. Though I'm anxious to cut them open, I'm going to let them ripen a couple weeks on the counter.

Here's a link to Purdue U's extension with some advice for harvesting winter squash:
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/ext/winsquash.html

Letter from the Garden

Dear Reader,

I hope these words find you well and enjoying the long days of summer. It's early in the morning as I write and already warm and humid. After two days of haltingly chilly breezes, the hot soup of summer air is promising to collect and linger. The tomatoes, squash, and celery will thrive. I've pulled up the last of the peas to make room for tomatoes and more rows of carrots. Always planting more carrots! I just walked out to the garden this morning and had that falling down feeling I get when the garden is on its way. No more skinny rows of spiky seedlings in need of protection. You walk among the rows and feel surrounded, maybe even overtaken, by the towering and sprawling green. I recently heard a friend say, "It's not worth it to try to grow carrots in this clay soil when you can buy them so cheap at the grocery store these days." True, I thought. But my soil is getting more carrot-friendly all the time. And there really isn't a carrot in the grocery store as good as the ones I dig up in December. Sometimes I'd rather dig and compost and plant and water and weed and sacrifice a carrot or two to a swallowtail caterpillar than make another trip to the grocery store. (Though once, for two minutes, I looked at the slugs and beetles and half-eaten leaves and the blight and the deer tracks along the row of topless beets and didn't mind someone else growing my food for me!)

Sometimes growing a garden seems like the most everyday obvious thing to me. Lots of people do it. But in that way it's also like having children. Lots of people do it, but it can be a life-changing, challenging adventure that wakes you up to small miracles. The way gardens change the landscape and its people can be subtle. Maybe it's just a quiet, steady pulsing sign reading, "It's Possible" among numerous loud voices yelling, "No You Can't." Maybe it speaks to just one individual; maybe it's talking to a whole community.

Right now my garden is showing me all that I've learned over the years. My tomatoes are spaced and staked just right. My carrots are still squeezed in tight next to each other so I can pull up young ones as they all bulk up. The cool season spinach and peas have produced abundant harvests for the first time and now they are gone, letting the warm weather crops take their turn. Everything seems to be working just a little better this year. The soil just keeps getting richer and darker. There's so much to learn, and yet, what do you really need to know to grow a garden? Seed, water, soil, sun, pay attention.

It's been really interesting to listen to the changing bird chorus around the garden. All spring and summer the indigo buntings have been singing their little blue hearts out. I can hear one right now just as constant as the clock hands. Cardinals have been quiet until recently. The warbling vireos and chipping sparrows must be on their second or third broods, because they're quiet too. There's a red-winged blackbird that screams its metallic call notes from the small dead ash tree in the front yard every morning, every evening. A carolina wren showed up the past two evenings, singing it's bright strong galloping song. The somewhat rare dickcissel has left since the farmer finally cut the fallow field for silage, and all the nesting sparrows and blackbirds dispersed in what I can only imagine was desperate horror. The turkey vultures circled for hours that afternoon over eerily quiet fields.

Well, it's early and there's plenty to do. I should probably get on my way. The garlic is curing in the shade and I need to make sure it stays in the shade as the sun moves up and over. The black raspberries are at their peak and need to be picked. It's always difficult to get motivated to put on long-sleeves, hat and bug net, and then get buzzed by mosquitoes and ripped apart by thorns while wading through a sea of poison ivy. You forget all that when you spread the jam later, no middle-man grocery store or barcode price tag to distract from the experience. Makes you feel lucky.

Time to get back to work! Or not. Hope your summer is rolling along just fine, in and out of the garden.
All my best,
Molly

Panniers

After getting really cranky with some annoying marketing awhile ago I thought I'd share a very exciting purchase I've made recently. I'm happy to say that the consumer experience this time was lovely, probably because I knew what I wanted but also because the bike shop is pretty laid back. I was running a lot of errands on my bike, and I was wearing a small backpack to carry water and miscellaneous things I needed for the errands. It put a constraint on what I could accomplish with my bike. It was also kind of hot (warm, I mean. Ha.) I've been thinking about what I needed for several months (I tend to think for a long time before purchasing anything beyond groceries). One night, I stopped by the bike shop to get a bike rack for the back of the bike and to see what they had for packs or panniers. Panniers are bags that attach to a bike (or a motorcycle, or a donkey, etc.) and get filled up with stuff you need to carry but can't because you need to hold onto the handlebars (or reins). The word "pannier", which took me a little while to realize, comes from the french for "bread basket."

I probably could have settled for the bike rack and just found some way to strap stuff onto the back. However, this little beauty of a bag was exactly what I wanted. Above is a picture of my bike before I took off for the library, post-office, and grocery store. The main compartment is made of "cooler" type material, so it keeps things cold. The pockets on the side...

...expand downward and become panniers! This is my bike as I returned from the errands with eggs (all of them intact!), ingredients for cheesecake, and a package of toilet paper. 

The farmer's market is just 4 or 5 miles away, as is the grocery store. I've recently discovered an alternate route that keeps me off of the main road into town. It's 2.3 miles longer, but it's worth it for the easy cruising I get to do instead of bracing to be hit every time a car passes at 60 mph. Next problem to solve: bugs in my hair.

Diatomaceous Earth In Action

This seedling kind of reminds me of a sick little E.T. all ghost-white and pitiful. But what you see there is diatomaceous earth. It's not a chemical; it's actually the crushed cell walls of unicellular algae. Diatoms live in water and when they die they sink to the bottom and form a crust of diatomaceous earth. 

The powder is actually made up of lots of jagged edges from the perspective of a tiny little insect. The powder has a dessicating effect on insects that spend too much time in it. It's not pleasant, I know. But I put it on potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplant to keep flea beetles from killing the seedlings. I use it for a short period of time in the spring before my plants are flowering. Once it rains, it's useless, so it's pretty labor intensive in that you must reapply it after each rain. 

Over the years I've continued to use it because it keeps the flea beetles from killing or devastating seedlings. I haven't heard too many people talk about using it. I know it's pretty horrible to breathe on a regular basis. It's fairly cheap. I feel better using it than just about any other pest control (besides structural things and crop rotation). 

I put my eggplant seedlings in the ground one afternoon and by the next day all of the leaves looked like they'd been shot with a shot gun. The flea beetles were hitting them pretty hard, so I've been dusting them regularly. They've managed to put out two or three healthy leaves each. When they've got a good healthy start, I'll back off and hope the plants can weather a little munching.

ENOUGH!

It seems like this has been my mantra for several months. Not that this is a new idea to me. It's that lately the sentiment comes with an exclamation point.

I'm sure this is in large part due to my move to the suburbs. Uhgh. I understand that busy, important people need to get where they're going fast. I just wish they'd consider the beating heart and smooshy, tender brains inside the person on the bike they just nearly ran over with their SUV. I understand that people have no idea what else they're supposed to do besides run all manner of internal combustion engines over their quarter acre lawn and spray gallons of poisons to keep the drug dependent carpets glowing green. I understand that people need to buy and sell and make a living. But I just don't drink the kool-aid that makes me think all this noise and waste and poison is awesome. 

This really started building this spring when I applied for a job at a local running store. I call it a running store because they market mostly to runners. I run. I love running. I also hike and bike and swim. I've been doing these things for many years, so I figured I could be useful there and enjoy the interactions with people. (Okay, and I'm a teacher looking for work in the wrong place at the wrong time.) I sat down and talked to the management. I rode my bike to the interview, and I'm pretty sure that that threw off the stuffy old lady (without a strand of hair askew) that interviewed me first. She had a pinched little squirmy look on her face that made me want to jump from the fancy store balcony, run past her shiny Lexus, and pedal away on my bike. I couldn't help but get the impression that she was offended that I'd come to a job interview on a bike. She was really proud of the indoor rainforest that filled half of the store, though! Afterward, I started looking around at people running. Everywhere there seemed to be a perfectly matched little running outfit bouncing up and down along the sidewalk. I started seeing ads for running gear and stickers and water bottles and it's all fun and games until you forget that it's JUST RUNNING! All you need are some socks and shoes to do it. You don't even need special breathable undies and a technical fabric t-shirt and an iPod holder and Gatorade and barefeet-shaped plastic shoes. Not that you can't use some of that stuff. The running store is full of overpriced nonsense. The management barely does any running or hiking themselves. Yet, we're all buying what they're pushing. (Okay, perhaps I would have made a terrible salesperson.)

Yesterday I went into a greenhouse looking for bell peppers because I'd somehow forgotten to pick up pepper plants. After shuffling through a local greenhouse full of extra-fancy garden gloves and metallic orbs and sun hats and garden videos and rocks with words on them and other shiny objects, I had that feeling again... the feeling I had in the running store that is also a rainforest. As I added up the cost of the plants I'd picked out I thought, "These people aren't selling me what I want. They're selling me dreams. Dreams I don't need." So, I walked out. I went down the road to a different, humbler greenhouse I'd never visited before. Turns out they were having a sale: $.49 for all plants. Each plant a buck fifty cheaper than the other greenhouse, so I got enough to fill the rest of my garden beds! And none of that "You're not cool enough until you buy one of these, and some of these, and lots of these" hypnotizing I'm sick of.

I followed my gut when it said, "ENOUGH!"  I just couldn't take anymore of the ostentatious show in place of authenticity. I'm weary of being sold the idea of something, instead of simply finding quality goods and services and knowledgeable, engaged people. Listen people, I do these things (running and gardening) so that I can create my own experience. I don't need to be sold your idea of the experience. I just need some plants, some seeds, some running shoes. I won't be shopping at those places that feel they need to sell me their dreams. I'm perfectly capable of creating those myself, thank you very much.

Things You Won't Find in a Grocery Store: Radish Greens and Seed Pods

Aside from the handful of crisp, perfectly purple gumball-sized radishes I harvested on May 4, my radish harvest was a bust this year (due to root maggots, ew), until...

I discovered that the spicy roots aren't the only parts of a radish plant you can eat. First, I tried sautéing the greens. You might be thinking, "Wait a minute! Don't radish greens have tiny little scratchy hairs on them? Ew."  That's what my first thought was. I will also add that my radish greens had tiny little holes in them from flea beetles. It wasn't looking promising. Still, I brought piles of greens inside, washed them, cut them up, and cooked them with butter, garlic, and dried cayenne peppers. I ended up adding lots of black pepper after they were done too. We were also eating pasta and tomato sauce for dinner, so we ended up adding the cooked greens on top of the pasta and then topping that with cheese. (It's possible we could have cooked and eaten an old sneaker in this manner and enjoyed it just the same.) They were very good. It always feels good to add green stuff to dinner. I will certainly never compost my radish greens again!

I let my radish plants go to seed, so this means I have radish seed pods. I actually prefer these seed pods to the radishes! They taste just like radishes, only juicier. 

I had almost given up on radishes completely until these discoveries. Maybe someday I'll discover the secrets to a root-maggot-free radish. I would grow radishes for their greens and pods again next year, especially because they are an early, fast-growing vegetable.