Mid-Summer Bounty

31 July, 2012 Reply
Harvest from my Garden on July 31st

After feeling very discouraged today’s harvest was way past amazing.

After last week’s disaster with my tomato plants, I was pretty discouraged with the harvest I was expecting from my garden, yet again. Seems since we’ve moved into this house I can’t do anything right to keep a garden going from spring to fall.

Today my garden decided to let me know it’s doing well and producing just fine. I walked out the door to find three melons had dropped from the vine overnight and not one critter had taken a bite out of them. I was shocked. I was going to do some work in another area, but realized I needed to harvest, yet again. There were several cucumbers, a few beans (they’ll get going again once it cools a little bit). Then I started working on the herbs. I have five kinds of basil in my garden; sweet, lemon, licorice, holy and an unknown variety; and I started harvesting each variety. The pile began to grow and grow as I went from one plant to the next. Then I realized that my sage was humongous! I harvested some of that. I cut back some of the old stems of the oregano I transplanted and there were a bunch of new shoots on the top, which I harvested. Then on to the sisho. I harvested just a few branches of that because I didn’t know if it would hold well in water. It’s doing fine.

Last, but not least I turned to my dismal looking tomato plants and found that they were so grateful to be unburied that, although they look terrible, they had plenty of goodies for me to pick.

Bounty everywhere. Here's a closer look.

Here’s a closer look at some of today’s harvest.

From feeling like I had nothing to harvest in my garden, to my kitchen overflowing with goodies. What a pick-me-up if I ever had one. For lunch today I fixed some of our tomatoes and a few of a particular kind of bean that I was doing a test on, plus some zuch (purchased), in a coconut milk/tahini sauce. As seasoning I put in some of every single herb I harvested today and it was fantastic. I topped it off with a handful of fresh yellow cherry tomatoes and it was a meal fit for a king!

From bummed to blissful in one morning’s work.

Have you ever had any surprises in your garden? Has a plant produced when you thought it wouldn’t or maybe you planted something for the first time and it was spectacular? Share your stories and your pics. I’d love to see them.

A New Garden Experiment

26 July, 2012 Reply

My System Doesn’t Work

I’ve made a decision. After spending the last two mornings rescuing my tomato plants from over-zealous bean plants I realized that my gardening has not been very successful in the past few years. This year everything started out great, but now, as the weather gets really hot, the gardens are looking miserable and the production that was so abundant earlier has stopped. Disease is setting in on many plants, and others are not producing much of anything.

Learning How To Communicate With Nature

Many years ago I purchased a book called Perelandra Garden Workshop by Machaelle Small Wright. At the time I was all excited about it, but the techniques seemed cumbersome and after working with it for a short time I dropped it, because I just didn’t have that many hours in the day.

I’m giving the book a second look. I’m going to give the techniques a try, a real try this time. However, I will probably try to find shortcuts to getting the information, as having to ask 100 questions to get the answer to one problems is still too time consuming. I have a lot of knowledge under my belt now, though. A lot of understanding about energy and how to work with it, so it should be a faster process.

Her technique involves working with all the energy spirits or devas that oversee an area. They know what is going on in the area, what the soil needs, what the plants need, where placement of plants will be most beneficial for the plants success, etc. Now, whether you believe in devas or nature spirits really doesn’t matter, because, in essence what you are doing is tapping into the energy field that nature resides on. That you can’t deny exists. Science has proven that we’re 99% energy. That the physical form that we see is not really solid, etc. So, what I’m going to do is start to work with the energy of the property we live on and get it balanced so that the plants and my family can flourish.

Right now I feel more like I’m on a battlefield and all I do is go from one skirmish to the next. If I had taken the time to connect with the energy of the garden, the tomato plants, and the bean plants before I allowed them in the same garden together I would have gotten a huge no from the tomato plants.

No Foresight Causes Disaster

Here’s how it unfolded for me. I planned to put the tomato plants in a certain garden, because you need to move them from year to year, so as not to allow disease to settle into the soil. So, you try not to plant them in the same place for three years. This has been a challenge for me, because we don’t have all our garden space finished and finding a garden that hasn’t had a tomato plant in it for three years can be a challenge. Anyway, I chose the garden, but had to clear it out of some major weeds. That took some time and during that time a bunch of volunteer bean plants came up. These beans did extremely well in our heat and humidity last year so I just left them. I planted the tomatoes amongst the small bean sprouts and waited to see what happened.

At first it seemed like a good match. They were growing at about the same rate and the beans were actually holding the tomatoes up. Then things started to turn south. I found that some of the bean plants were smothering the three hot pepper plants I had put in the garden, so I moved the beans to the outside edge of that part of the garden.

My poor tomatoes are devastated.

Time to try a new method of knowing what my plants need. This tomato was beautiful and healthy just a couple weeks ago. Now, because of damp conditions and the beans stopping the air movement it is just a twig with a couple tomatoes hanging on the end of them.

This last week I realized that I wasn’t seeing very many tomatoes on my plants and on closer inspection I realized that the beans were trying to make the tomatoes their trellis and they were in-fact now smothering the tomato plants.

Because of circumstances I wasn’t able to get to them until this week and in that one week disease set in and my tomato plants, which were huge and beautiful, are now a mass of black leaves, early blight has struck again. I was so careful not to water them from above this spring, but the leaves of the beans held moisture in around the tomato plant, which was a prescription for disaster.

So, for the past two days I’ve been hacking back bean plants until they are just around the edges of the entire garden and trying to salvage at least some of the tomato plants. I don’t know if I have, we’ll have to see how they fare, now that they are no longer buried.

I’ll do some testing to see if there is anything I can do to curtail the early blight and get the plants healthy again, but I fear that there’s not much that can be done this year.

So, instead of guessing and putting out fires over and over, I’m going to ask the land and the plants what they want and need and give them that. Hopefully then I can start to see healthy productive plants in all gardens every year.

I’ll keep you apprised with the progress and any modifications I do to Machaelle’s program to make it simpler to use.

How Do You Communicate With Nature?

If anyone out there has used Machaelle’s method I’d love to hear from you. Or maybe you have some other method of communicating with nature that you could recommend.

 

We’re covered!

24 July, 2012 1 Comment

This past weekend we finally finished the roof on the back deck. It rocks! It took us a lot of time to get the deck reworked the way we wanted it, but it was worth it. We sat outside the other day and just enjoyed the evening slowly enveloping us. It was great.

We’re not necessarily fast workers, but we’re thorough. Here’s the progress of our humble respite.

Our Deck Before Remodel

Ugly, ugly, ugly. A huge eyesore! (Photo 1)

Not Move In Ready

When I first saw the deck I immediately decided I wanted the steps moved so that they were beside the deck instead of sticking out into usable ground. The other problem was that they put the steps on the corner away from the house, which meant there was an area that got no sun and wasn’t good for much of anything except catching all the bits and pieces of “treasures” my husband had for his various inventions! It was a catastrophe and was soon overgrown with weeds in amongst all his findings. Not only that the wood was very tired looking. It was only six years old when we moved in, but it had not been preserved or cleaned at all during that time. So the color of the wood was a dark grey and it looked very unappealing. Worst of all it was set so that it is in the blistering sun from around 8 in the morning until 5 or so in the evening. Meaning that it was unusable. We put an indoor/outdoor thermometer out there and the average summer temperature was over 110˚F!

Our deck was still an eyesore 5 years later!

Five years later it still looks pretty unappealing! (Photo 2)

Inside First

When we first moved in we didn’t really have time to spend outside as we were remodeling the inside of the house. We don’t have any outbuildings or a garage on our property, so we tried to put up a tarp over the deck so that we could cut the flooring and other outside and to keep down the sawdust. Photo 1 is of the deck after a big windstorm tore our tarp to shreds and left us with a 20th century looking sculpture in its place. As you can see we had a lot of stuff stored all around the deck, because at least under the deck provided a bit of protection. I also had all the plants I’d brought from the other property setting back there waiting for me to find them permanent homes.

At Long Last The Yard

Five long years later (Photo 2) you can see that not much has changed. We have picked up most of the mess and I’ve planted most of the plants, but it is still a very sad looking excuse for a deck and we still never use it. This is the first year we really did anything on the yard as we worked on the interior for the first three years, then spent two summers in India. Finally a summer to get some real gardens in.

Power washing made an amazing transformation.

Here’s the difference between before and after power washing. I want a power washer! (Photo 3)

Last summer we power washed the entire thing (Photo 3) and moved the stairs to their new location (Photo 4). It made a huge difference. The deck no longer looked so tired. Then I started to paint it. I only got that partially done, due to the fact that it kept raining and the wood would never dry out long enough for me to do much.

Commitment To Completion

This spring I begged my husband to work with me until the job was completed and I’m glad to say he did. I’ve always promised to be honest about our projects. This one took much longer than it really needed to. We only worked on it about a hour a day until we got ready to put up the rafters and put down the roofing. There’s so much to be done on the property that we felt that we couldn’t just give all our attention to the deck. So each day we would put up one board. Of course there were some days we couldn’t work on it at all, and some we spent a little more time, but it took us about 2 months to do what could have been done in one or two weekends if we’d really given it our all.

Moving the stairs made a huge difference.

Now the stairs are an asset and help to set off the herb garden that is at their base. (Photo 4)

We found some interesting things. First, they didn’t cut the railings the right length on one corner. That was the reason the railing on the other side was hanging by a thread. We cut the board properly and now it is much more secure. We had a lot of niggling to do to get everything together as the wood was old, had warped and often didn’t want us to screw something tight to it. We measured and remeasured and still made a 1/2” mistake on one corner, but you can’t tell. None of it was terribly hard, except getting my husband and I on the same book and page. We have very different styles of doing things and I finally had to just let go of my laid back, throw it together style, because he was going to draw perfectly scaled pictures before he cut one piece.

A Bit More To Go

The white really brightens up the deck.

Although the base of the deck still needs a lot of work, we now have a lovely place with lots of loving memories hung about it to spend our summer evenings. (Photo 5)

Of course it’s not completely done, as the first paint I bought was not very good (Valspar) and a good portion of it peeled off over the winter. So, we found another paint that has polyurethane in it (I didn’t win the battle for latex paint), and we’ll give that a try.

What you’re seeing in the after photos is about 75% complete, as the painting will take some time.

I’ve already dressed it up with all the gifts friends and family have given us over the years (Photo 5) and once the painting is done I’ll get the plants back on it. Hopefully within the next week, so we get a chance to enjoy it completely decked out (pun intended).

Share Your Handiwork

Have you ever reworked an eyesore on your property and been thrilled with the results? Share you story with all of us. I love to hear them.

Too Much of a Good Thing

19 July, 2012 Reply

It is interesting to me how a plant in one location can be just as calm and polite as can be, but in another climate become wild and untamable. Take kudzu for instance, in Japan it is a nice tame vine that grows rapidly, but not uncontrollably to make vast amounts of feed for animals. Put it in the southern portion of the US and it suddenly shows its dark side. It takes over whole hillsides, climbing towering trees and slowly killing them by smothering them in darkness. Or Japanese honeysuckle. Ask anyone living in the mid-Atlantic and south and they’ll all have their tale of the “Battle with the Honeysuckle.”

You can hardly see the daylillies

Rudbekia taking over daylilies.
After cleaning you can see both of them.

I’m finding that some plants that I’ve grown gracefully in other areas of the country are quickly turning into invasives here in the mid-Atlantic. Black-eye Susans (Rudbekia) almost swallowed an entire garden in just three years. Just this past week I had to do damage control and uncover the plants that were now nearly suffocated under it.

I’d always wanted Pink Turtlehead (Chelone), not only because of the cool name, but because the flowers really look like turtleheads. However, it has now swallowed one shrub and two lillies. This fall it will be moved to a location where it can do little damage to anything around it.

Then I heard about an ageratum that was a perennial. I’d grown the annual quite a few times, because I thought their soft puffy flowers were cute. The perennial is also nice, but about 3’ tall, instead of the annual’s 12”. The only problem is the seeds go everywhere and almost all of them sprout. So you soon have ageratum in every garden in your yard whether you want it or not.

Can't see the stokesia for the rudbekia

Black-eyed Susan nearly smothered a stokesia
After some clearing out you can finally see it.

I always thought mint was going to be the only thing I needed to reign in, but I’m finding lots of things that grow much larger and spread much farther than in more northern climes.

Also, I’m having lots of things come up from seed that otherwise wouldn’t. I already mentioned the ageratum, but I have two new daylilies, and one of them doesn’t look like either parent. This year I have a brand new shasta daisy and even my camellias have babies all around their base, which I will pot up and move into the greenhouse this fall.

I’ve also learned that if I have enough patience and don’t disturb the soil too much, I will have an unending supply of moss rose, cosmos, holy basil, bronze fennel, catnip, clown flower, celosia, dill, cypress vine, sweet annie; and at least some volunteer zinnias, wave petunias (these you have to be very patient as they come up late), and various onesies of vegetables. I hardly bought an annual for the entire yard this year!

I love gardening, because it is a continuous learning process. There’s always something new to learn about. Now let’s see, I think I need to research peach diseases for next year so we get to eat more of our crop.

Rescuing A Baby Bird

10 July, 2012 Reply

When you live in the country you have to learn how to live with nature. Sometimes that means protecting your crops from the very nature you love. In order for us to get any of our blueberries we’ve found it necessary to cover them with bird netting. I’ve written about this before and how we’ve come up with a nice fairly elegant, yet inexpensive and easy to erect system.

A couple days ago I was making my morning rounds, watering everything in sight because of the extreme heat wave we’ve been having, when out of the corner of my eyes I saw movement up by the blueberries. I looked again and decided I needed to check things out.

Baby mockingbird

“Hey, watcha think you’re doin’. I’m supposed to be hiding here.” Even after being rescued by me the baby bird was not willing to pose for a portrait!

When I got to the berries there was a fledgling terribly tangled up in the bird netting that was actually erected to keep its parents from eating every berry. I carefully picked the little one up and found that it was so tangled that I wasn’t going to be able to get it out without help. I went and got my husband and a pair of scissors. Even though I don’t want the birds to get the berries, I would rathe have a hole in my netting then a dead baby bird on my hands.

I carefully held the baby in my hand, moving it so that cutting the netting and not cutting the bird would be easy. Slowly we released one foot, then one wing, then the head, and the last wing popped free.

At this point I closed my hands around the tiny thing to keep it calm. We fetched a box and mesh covering so we could make sure the bird was OK. While it was in my hands, it was as calm as could be and even closed its eyes, but as soon as we put it in the box it was at attention. It sat up totally alert and with fear in its eyes. I thought this was funny, since we’d just rescued it and it had liked resting in my hand. I tried, in vain, to get it to drink a little water, since we didn’t know how long it had been tangled and whether it might be dehydrated. It would have none of it.

So, after about 20 minutes I took the makeshift cage to the front yard where the nest had been, right next to the front door, and set it down. I watched from a distance to make sure Mom and Dad came around, which they did within 5 minutes. I then uncovered the bird to let Mom or Dad feed it, and stood at a long distance to make sure they would come back and care for it, which they did.

After some time I had to go back out and move the baby out of the box as it couldn’t figure out how to get out. It at once headed for shelter and began calling to Mom and Dad. It was still under the bush late that evening, with Mom and Dad watching over it. By early morning it had flow the coup, so to speak.

One of my thrills in living out of the city atmosphere is that I get to be more intimately involved in nature. That is the third nest of birds I’ve watched this year and the second fledgling I’ve helped out.

I’m sure many of you have had even more incredible experiences with nature. I’d love to hear your stories, and I’m sure my readers would, too.

A Garden Always Has Surprises

5 July, 2012 Reply

Even after gardening for more than 50 years, yep, I’ve been gardening since before I started school, I learn something new, or see something different. This year is no exception.

Goldfinch munching on anise hyssop seed in my front garden.

I didn’t know that goldfinch like anise hyssop seed. Caught this guy having his breakfast in my front garden.

The most fun thing I learned this year is that goldfinches like to eat the seeds out of anise hyssop. Last year I started a few anise hyssop plants from seed. By the end of the season they were about 12” tall and had not bloomed. This year, however, they are in full glory. They are over 3’ tall and covered in blossoms. Of course I knew they were bee and butterfly attractors, but was surprised the other morning when I caught a glimpse of a goldfinch sitting atop one of the plants and obviously eating something.

The next day was trimming day and I was cutting back some of the nearly spent flowers on the anise hyssop in hopes of spurring it on to produce more. When I brought them in to harvest the leaves for tea I noticed tiny black dots all over the cutting board. It was then I realized that the goldfinch was eating the seeds off of these amazing plants.

The next morning I opened the front door to find the goldfinch sitting atop one of the plants again. I ran to my office and grabbed my camera. He was enjoying the seeds so much he didn’t pay hardly any attention to me until I got to within about 15’. Then he got uncomfortable and flew away. I managed to catch a few moderately good pictures, but just the thrill of having him be so nonchalant about my presence and allowing me to get so close was the best part.

Other things I’ve learned recently are: never ever water your tomatoes from above, at least in this area, as they will get early blight. This year I put the drip in as soon as I planted them and I have the stockiest most beautiful, covered in tiny tomatoes, plants I’ve had since we moved to this area.

More compost is the cry of the soils here. Every time I rototill in more compost that particular garden flourishes and produces way more than it did the year before. Even though I know that rototilling is not something you want to do all the time because it breaks up the soil organisms, at least until I get the perfect blend of hard acid clay with good compost I’ll just have to let them rebuild at least once every two years.

Last year my melons just sat there. They grew about 3’ long and never produced a ripened melon. I amended the plot they’re in this spring and they are nearly to the top of the 6’ trellis and I have at least 5 melons coming on already (these are small melons, so I trellis them).

Poison ivy makes an itchy patch, but is not nearly as bad as chigger bites. Yes, I had my first run-in with poison ivy this spring. It wasn’t nearly as bad as most people make it out to be. I will be attacking it soon, and I will wear protective clothing and use plastic gloves and bags, though, because no poison ivy is even better!

Have you had any new discoveries in your garden this year? If so please share them with us, so we can all enjoy and maybe even learn something to help us in our own gardens.

First Impressions

3 July, 2012 Reply
I like this leaf motif mailbox post

I think this would look nice in white, with my purple clematis blooming on it.

What Does Your Mailbox Say About You?

One of the first things people see, sometimes even before they see your house, is your mailbox. Most people don’t give much thought to what they’re putting out, and it shows.

Next time you’re out and about, take a note of people’s mailboxes. In our area most people have the wooden posts you can get from the big box home improvement stores, because that’s what their builder put in. It usually has a rusted mailbox on the top, often times with a hinge that no longer holds the box closed.

Now think about the mailboxes you’ve seen that actually stuck with you. Of course there’s the really creative ones that are made out of some sort of found junk or a tree stump. Even if you go more conventional, you’ll find the mailboxes that you remember are ones that made a statement about the people and their care of the property, even before you met them.

Does Your Mailbox Post Need To Do Double or Triple Duty?

The reason I’m thinking about this so much right now is we need to replace our mailbox post. The cheap wooden one, that the builder put in, is now eaten half way through by wood eating ants and sometime soon it is probably going to topple.

My immediate thought is to look at decorative mailbox posts, in something other than wood. I have one main consideration. I have a clematis in my mailbox garden and it needs something to climb on, a ready made trellis of sorts. The other consideration is that I want an English country garden sort of feel. I was thinking white to go with the house, and the picket fence and arbor we’ll be putting in this fall. Maybe copper or bronze could work, too. I just know I don’t want black. I’ve seen some pretty ones with vining leaf motifs on them. I’ll keep looking, as I’ve probably have several months before it gets critical to replace the existing one.

If you’re in the market for a new mailbox and/or post, keep in mind that functionality isn’t everything. What do you want people to think about you before they meet you? Your mailbox helps set the right tone.