About the Gardens

Farm implements from the Jamestown Settlement.

On a recent trip to Kentucky, our friend PJ complained that there was too much "animal stuff" and too little "garden stuff" on this blog. Frankly, as a writer of these wee posts, animals do more interesting things with greater frequency than do corn plants. Weather occasionally trumps both. That said, I suppose we should tell you all a little about the characteristics of our gardens.

Technically, I suppose, there are four. Our Walled Garden is just that, an area roughly 50' square off the back of the house enclosed by a high block wall, thoughtfully rough stuccoed, and more or less white in color. Inside, there are a large number of flowering bushes grown too large for their situation, four dwarf peaches, a nearly-standard size apple tree, and a similarly sized peach tree. The soil is heavy, mainly comprised of re-purposed pond muck, and very damp at times. Thus far, we haven't decided what to do with the space as it has spent two summers as a doggy day care for Mr. Rufus and friends, who tore it to pieces. This year we've let it go wild.... yes, there will be hell to pay for letting the weeds come up when we do rehab the space... we have gorgeous volunteer thistles, sunflowers, hostas (unmolested by racing canines,) and the occasional "proper flower" to enjoy. The place is a terrible mess but until we can commit ourselves to taking out a whole lot of beautiful plants it's not very useable even when kept nice and tidy. The chickens find this garden a delightful source of bugs and seeds, for which we are most grateful.

Outside the walk-out basement is the Upper Garden, comprised of established, mostly super-dwarf, fruit trees and a number of cedar raised beds we put in our first summer. These raised beds have turned out to be more trouble than pleasure and, as Mrs. Fuzzy's prodigious project list allows, everything will come out. The ground will be smoothed and the space will be returned to a lovely, flat, lawn with a very large, easily maintained, stone planter hosting potentially unruly medicinal plants (comfrey, mugwort...) and a small (150 gallon) water feature for water lilies and papyrus plants. This will greatly improve the basement "viewshed."

The"Lower Garden," also known as Mrs. Fuzzy's garden, is comprised of six 47' rows three feet wide divided into five beds each. These range in length between three and fifteen feet long (most being either five or eight feet) with a nominal 12" walking space between them. As the soil here lacks any native organic matter the management of this area this year is mainly for soil improvement. Yes, folks, that's right, Mrs. Fuzzy has grown 423 square feet of oats, 282 square feet of field peas, and 141 square feet of inedible radishes solely for the benefit of the soil. (and about 300 square feet will remain in these things for a while.) Another row has been largely set aside for composting purposes until the walking onion bulbs are replanted in half of that row. The old onion row will then be heavily mulched with fresh chicken litter (to kill off the weeds) and turned to compost for a year as the soil is especially poor after spending a year in cultivation. (Who knew onions were so greedy... or our soil so delicate?!) The whole garden is heavily mulched in straw and ancient hay to suppress weeds whilst enriching the soil and preserving moisture. Narrow and broad leaf plantain are allowed to grow in the beds as wild helpers.

"Edible" plantings in this garden were put in for fresh eating, future production, and experimental insight. They are as follows: Six tomatoes of 3 varieties inter-planted with marigolds and a cucumber plant. A 3' x 4' planting of Country Gentleman corn into a collapsed compost bed. Three zucchini and another cucumber planted into the adjacent pile have already been destroyed by the squash bugs. Corn is not a good a protective companion. Another planting of mystery corn labeled "NC NDN" is 3 rows x 5 rows at 2 canes per hole. Four plants each of three kinds of hot peppers... some doing markedly better than others. Four basil plants, divided, are doing well while all our sunflowers and two of three dill plants have been consumed by "tree thorn hoppers." The unapppy plants were set out alone and the happy ones in combination with dissimilar things. Two volunteer potato plants seem to be very happy. Mexican hyssop, rue, lemon balm, and marjoram have been put in at the ends of rows as perennial herbs. The northernmost row contains two each of red and purple raspberries (planted with the rue), a bed awaiting asparagus transplants, and a 15' strawberry bed just went in this week.

The "Far Garden" is Mr. Fuzzy's vegetable domain. Located out in the hay field, where the soil offers different benefits than in the Lower Garden, it is roughly 100' long with up to eight single width rows. Because it must be watered by truck, this growing area is only suitable to vegetation that can thrive in drought conditions such as gourds, tobacco and some Southwestern corn varieties. This year, the garden has been experimentally divided into rows and into four "Cherokee Style" circular Three Sisters garden patches. Mr. Fuzzy will have to tell you the particulars of his intentions but I can relate that, while I have gone over to a "no-till" philosophy after fighting the tiller, himself has continued with the idea of using it out there. It certainly did a grand number on the weeds that grew up where the beans failed to germinate. (Everyone around here had bean issues this year.) Because of the summer drought, now 9 weeks without significant rainfall, there is little likelihood of a good harvest out there, although the surviving Silver Queen corn is tasseling very nicely.

Rain Report

Some days it seems as though all we've had for weather this spring is rain, rain, and more rain. Looking at my little farm diary I see that we have actually had just about the right amount of rain for the plants to be happy little growing things.

I started keeping good rainfall notes in late February, when I decided it was nearly time to begin planting. Early March saw 5 inches of rain followed by a dry week in which I got much of the lower garden prepared and planted. The month ended with another inch of rain, making for a nice, gentle, environment for newly transplanted herbs and berry canes to begin establishing themselves.

The month of April really was crazy for rain but did no harm to the gardens. (The driveway was a different story!) The first three weeks saw totals of 2.63", 2", and 2.89" again followed by a glorious and dry week for planting and cultivating. The cover crops and straw covering of the soil allowed the 'lower' garden to take all that rain without any damage. Mr. Fuzzy's 'far' garden was still fallow so the weeds kept the soil from washing away.


The rain has become more consistent over the last month, settling in at about 1.5" per week in several rains. This makes me and the lower garden happy but for all those, like Mr. Fuzzy, who waited until warm weather to "put in the garden" it's been a real pain. After plowing, harrowing, and tilling all that bare soil was clobbered by the rain. Hopefully, the rain will hold off for a week and all the late-breaking gardeners will have the opportunity to mend, amend, and plant their plots before another round of, hopefully gentle, rains.

As for me, I'll be cutting down the first cover crop and planting a second one in the same location to suppress weeds, add organic matter, and sop up the free nitrogen as those 'tillage' radishes decompose.

Return of the Dread Community Organizers

This weekend was an especially good one as the temps have gotten into the mid-50's (F) and the sky is a brilliant, cloudless, blue. Mr. Fuzzy and I spent most of today proactively fighting next season's weeds. He on the riding mower and I with mulch in the garden. The two sections off the hay field we had cleared of hawthorn trees are now well covered with "early colonizer plant communities."

Please allow me to translate that for you: brambles, invasive roses, and more hawthorn trees. One area looks as though we had it seeded in the thorny beasts! Mr. Fuzzy reports that much of the mowing has been done and that he is becoming quite skilled at getting the little mower/tractor un-hung from the many hidden holes the moles have left us.

Who needs weight machines when you can just lift your 750 pound tractor ten times a day?

Yesterday was almost equally lovely but with enough chilling wind to make it feel OK to find inside garden tasks. My big inside task yesterday was to attend the annual Seed Swap hosted by Miracle Farm at the Floyd Country Store. I am informed by our English friend B. that this must be a "peculiarity of the American race" as it "would never happen over this way." I think the Scots might go for it if pitched just right...

The setup is this: people who have leftover seed, extra seed saved from their own plants, or old stock seeds from retail shops bring their offerings and set them out on tables, hopefully with enough labeling to be helpful. The organizers provide tables, pencils, and little paper packets to hold your selections. Lots of people come and take as many seeds as they need for themselves and a good time is had by all. Folks are remarkably honest about only taking what they need.

I took our last remaining pumpkin from the 2009 harvest and a few dozen pumpkin seeds to give away. I wanted folks to understand that these were Good Keepers. The pumpkin has not left our kitchen counter since October 2009 and is still quite sound. I came back with a pocket full of packets of lettuces and herbs. Not a bad trade. Many folks managed to collect all the seeds on their list, helping them grow more vegetables than they could have afforded if they had to buy their seeds.

Seed Starting Time

The lower garden may be under renovation and the outside temps are still cold enough to freeze everything piled on the next new compost row until it starts cooking but that doesn't mean we are unable to grow food in January. We have a greenhouse, after all!

My Pepper Experiment failed again this year. The heat lamp I hung in the greenhouse to keep them going pulled on its' thermostatic plug and never came on while we were away over Thanksgiving. Now the peppers and tomatoes are compost and I have space in there that wants filling.

Today I assembled some old salad boxes and cold cut trays and turned them into mini flats for cold crops. There are seeds for broccoli plants, lettuces, bok choi cabbages, spinach, and beets nestled in deluxe seed starting medium made from our own compost and the lifeless (but ultra friable) peat mix they sell for the purpose. Once the seeds have germinated I'll move the flats into the greenhouse. Once they're large enough to handle I'll transplant them into my growing bins where they have the benefit of bottom watering every time it rains.

And the now-well-behaved heat lamp will keep them from freezing and, so, able to grow.

New Gardening Techniques

The gardens of Stratheden Farm are lush, filled with flowers, and producing exactly the right amount of food at the right time and in the perfect combination. There are no weeds. The deer fence is festooned with hops, grapes, roses, and hardy kiwi vines. There is a smallish fluffy yellow cat napping under the rhubarb bush until an edible plant predator appears. Maybe it'll actually happen today, she hopes. If not she'll chase butterflies a little later.

Yes, dear reader, Mrs. Fuzzy's garden is perfect. It's also completely fictional inside my head and the pile of seed catalogs sitting on the table beside me. Ah, yes, a gardener's most blissful time of year. I did not understand it until just now. The perfect season: Catalog Time.

As part of my Total Garden Rehab project I am sworn from ordering any seed that is not a cover crop or to be grown for selling or gifting as starts. That's one thing I do know how to do: grow gorgeous baby vegetables. Still, I can dream my impossible dream of growing tepary beans next to pole beans without getting mosaic virus everywhere. Some day I will figure a fix for that problem. (Teparies tend to be carriers.)

The thing I am allowing myself to do with all these "perfect-garden" resources is plan. I have re-read Elliott Coleman's Four Season Harvest and last night completed the useful parts of Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza. (It's mostly in the first 20 pages.) To a great degree they are talking about the same thing: compost in place, minimal tillage, and wide bed methods. Mr. Coleman's farm has many of the same conditions as Stratheden with the exception that his soil is coastal and therefore too sandy whereas ours is clay mixed with rock. His soil's Ph. was even lower than ours!

What I am formulating is to use a fairly traditional approach in the lower garden where I can use the new tiller Mr. Fuzzy gave me for Christmas to work amendments into the soil. My gut tells me that plants prefer not to be cut off from the soil and a barrier of paper over the ground would do this for several years.

In the walled garden I'll be implementing something much closer to Mrs. Lanza's method because the roots of our apple and peach trees preclude much use of digging tools. I'll use the roosters to denude the soil of the weeds that grow so prolifically there then start to lay out a whole new design for a pretty cutting garden. Once the paths are marked I'll lay down the compost layers to rebuild the depleted soil and plant a cover crop. Next autumn I hope to move out the over sized bushes and add more suitable perennials.

This "sheet composting" method will, I think, also work well in awkward areas that need tarting up like around the greenhouse or the blueberry patch. The trick will be making it look nice while excluding the chickens. Perhaps movable picket fencing is in my crafting future?

Writing

You know, dear friends, I write these things in my sleep then wonder where they've gone to the next morning because I was SURE I'd posted something for you before bed. Oops! I now subscribe to myself using Google Reader just to see if I've really posted.


Autumn is, indeed, upon us. We have had a couple frosts... enough to kill the tender summer plants... and the autumn rains are upon us. This is a good time to be adding ripped newspaper to the compost pile because the rain mashes it down a bit and makes it less likely to blow away later. I don't add it very thickly this time of year because it will become impenetrable and stop the composting process. Come summer, when our black soldier flies are working overtime I'll add heaps of paper as it helps keep the piles dry. BSF composting leads to a LOT of liquid!

Since I'm embarking on a Total Garden Overhaul over the next two years I'll be using all the "non-compostable" sections and Chiristmas catalogs to block weed growth in the paths between beds.

Dear T. I thought of something else to tell you about soaking your oats. It's best to let that happen at room temperature as they will ever so slightly ferment which makes the B vitamins, especially B-12, more available. Also, don't be afraid to soak in more milk or water than you think necessary, the oats will swell and give off its mucilage to fill the allotted liquid. More mucilage = more creaminess.

Autumn Greenhouse

Well, yesterday was another good day for gardening. A little rain in the morning followed by a warm and bright afternoon. I dug up eight pepper plants and two tomatoes and my friend Judy helped me lug them into the greenhouse where I potted them up for overwintering. This is a technique I read about on a wonderful foodie blog called Hunter Angler Gardener Cook. You can go straight to the pepper post here.

Still no killing frost. We're expecting one tomorrow or Saturday. Guess that means I need to get the door back on the greenhouse.

Aubergine is Such a Lovely Word

Aubergines ("eggplants" in American English) are one of those vegetables that are a bit tricky to grow around here. You have to start them indoors like tomatoes but the flea beetles seem to kill them before they're six inches tall. So, for the second year running I went out and bought a couple four-packs at our local garden center. As before, it was the end of the seedling season there, the plants looked neglected and were missing their labels or had two different ones inserted. Par for the course once the little things get discounted.

So, I took them home, interplanted them with dill and my baby asparagus plants and promptly forgot them. The flea beetles have pricked holes in every leaf... really quite beautiful in their perfect distribution... but the plants have flowered and set fruit! Here is a photograph from today's picking. Most will be dried for winter. Looks like I got some sort of standard aubergine and a ping tung long. Sweet!

Digging Season

I love digging season! The Growing Season doesn't show off my best gardening skills but they do shine in Digging Season. With the advent of this cooler weather of early autumn (thanks, Earl!) I'm tackling those pre-winter chores that are just too strenuous for the sticky days of summer. My one real summer gardening skill is building compost piles.

The first of these jobs was to feed and mulch the fruit trees my friend L. and I planted this spring. After a summer of radio and news stories about the environment, gardening, and what we've done for our soil... especially this recent one about the benefits of organic agriculture... I decided the idea of feeding my trees with little granules of mystery chemistry was off the books. Instead, I raided my summer compost pile and dumped three buckets of rough compost around each tree.


This should, I hope, feed the trees and start to kill (by light suppression) the grass around them. I used 6" tall hoops of wire garden mesh (formerly imprisoning our dwarf apples) to contain the compost on that very windy slope. Around the cage I used splits of lovely rotting rye straw to keep the grass down and make it easier for Mr. Fuzzy to mow neatly forevermore.

: D

More About My Bugs

Dear Reader,

I do hope you're not squeamish about bugs because the more I read about Black Soldier Flies the more excited I get about their benefits. And since I'm determined to write to you nearly every day about something you're going to receive the harvest of tidbits I've gleaned.

BSF have been studied as an option for dealing with the massive amounts of manure from large pork and poultry operations. It seems the folks who run these places have learned that those giant manure piles are poisoning the watershed. (Poster child number one is the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, which reaches to within 60 miles or so of Stratheden Farm.) BSL would appear to be an optimal solution to the problem as it stands.

What they do is move all that poop into big concrete bins, add the larvae in huge numbers, then collect the pupae & pre-pupae to start the next bin. In a matter of weeks the bugs eat their way through the poop, reducing it by about half, drop the nitrogen and phosphate levels about as much, and produce a compost product that is essentially free of pathogens.

Cool, eh? Even better is that there is an economic angle to this... the compost weighs less by volume so it's cheaper to send out of the region where it's needed and the pupae can be used both as a food source for birds and fish or sold into the consumer market. Both make a tidy profit for a very low labor input.

I wonder when the Frontier Ville and Farm Ville games will offer soldier flies too....

Soldiers Welcome Here

No, it's not another post about reenacting. It's what I found in my compost pile today. Soldier fly larvae.... hundreds of them!

Once I got over the ick factor I decided they'd done one heck of a good job at converting household garbage.... including meat, avocado pits, whole hardened squashes, tons of mango pits, coffee, and a LOT of newspaper... into gorgeous black compost. Interestingly, they did not eat the ripe seeds of the squashes. There were little clumps of seedlings all through the top layer.

So, how did we get soldier flies? Undoubtedly it's because I built the pile in a spot where water tends to stand, let a downspout drain into it for a while, and made it really acidic with the waste products of our favorite coffee shop. The bugs seem very happy.

Soldier flies have other benefits to the farm too. The larvae can be harvested and fed to the chickens as a high protein treat. Supposedly they go wild for them but in a head-to-head test this afternoon 4 out of 4 chickens chose whole corn, pumpkin seeds, and peanuts over squirming larvae when presented together. Oh well. I'm actually more excited about the OTHER benefit they seem to have brought to us.... soldier flies get rid of house flies! Apparently to the tune of 90% or more. No wonder we've not seen a house fly in ages!

Girl Power

Those were the days....

First, a little thank you to everyone who has commented, e-mailed, called, or stopped me on the street to give me their condolences on the loss of my father. I'm grateful for your kindness.

Life on the farm has been blissfully dull but blessedly busy. Mr. Fuzzy spent three very intense days erecting an electrified fence around the far garden. The deer have completely bounced back after a good hunting season and a starvation winter... which is to say, they ate all of our first plantings of peas, beans, and sunflowers plus most of the first planting of corn.

This fence couldn't happen earlier because the field needed to be hayed before Mr. Fuzzy could haul the locust logs across the field, debark them, and whatnot. It was a poor hay harvest so every blade left undisturbed was an important blade! Now we have a very pretty fence that has kept the deer out.

The new fence means that I, Mrs. Fuzzy, have been out weeding and planting nearly every day since Saturday. Another planting of corn, peas, sunflowers, and several kinds of beans was done plus a planting of carrots, summer lettuce, started leeks, and flowers for our predator bug friends. There is a whole lot more to do in order to fill up this goodly patch of ground but the Creator saw fit to answer my request for rain within an hour of my making it today (thanks a bunch!) The plants got 1/4 inch of good, penetrating, rain. Rocky and Rufus and I got a cold, cold, shower.

In the evenings I've been working on the never-ending "get the studio usable" project and another of my quick demolition-restoration projects. Namely, pulling up the disgusting bathroom carpet and figuring out what to do about the mildew I found underneath. Although the now-exposed OSB is ugly it's a world better than the ancient, wrinkled, stained, mildewed, and peed-upon carpet. Note to all: do not install carpet in a bathroom and do not house a stressed cat on such a carpet! How ever could we not smell THAT? Anyway, these problems seem to have been successfully addressed and it's time to Kilz the floor.

What's up with the Greenhouse?

Spinach, lettuce, cabbage, arugula (rockett) and radishes are all sprouted and growing in my shallow soil on the floor. Our year old asparagus seedlings have sent up the tiniest purple spears. Once the plants are well up I'll need to transfer them from their window boxes into roomier accommodations. The cabbages will eventually be transplanted out, probably some of the lettuces too, while the rest will provide some early salads. Outside we have some collards and rainbow chard coming on that overwintered despite my neglect.

The remodel is complete for now and it's time to get going on the next round of seedlings. A new "portable greenhouse" shelving unit inside the larger structure will provide (hopefully) the extra warmth needed to start our summer vegetables. The jury is still out on the survival of my habanero plants. My suspicion is that they'll be compost due to some very cold nights before I put the heat in three months ago. Eh! Next fall I'll do better by my peppers.

I'm debating on a plan to shade the structure this year so that we can grow things in there that need heat but not quite 110 degrees. Things like tomatoes, melons, and passion fruit. The debate is between planting a pair of hardy kiwi vines or a trio of climbing roses at the gable end to eventually shade the east and south glazing. See the problem? One produces lots of delicious fruit but I'd have to give most of it away or dry it because only I eat kiwis. The other would be gorgeous viewed from our deck, low maintenance, and romantic but purely aesthetic. I wonder if I could plant just one rose with the vines? It's not like I need a huge harvest, after all! Long term the structure will be replaced so that throws a wrench in the works too, so to speak.

Speaking of plantings at the base of this thing my attempt to slow the intrusion of water from the east side seems to be taking. Just enough water comes in to water the plants inside but there is no more flooding! The daylillys I planted in a berm along that wall survived the cold and snow and are starting to poke their first leaves through the soil. We also have daffodils and tulips coming up. It's going to be beautiful!

Greenhouse O Greenhouse

Remember this lovely greenhouse picture from last spring? The one where I said I'd emptied, cleaned and disinfected the interior before putting on a fresh coat of paint? Well, it doesn't look that nice right now.

I finally confronted my fear of power tools and decided to remodel things to make the space more useful to a barely-five-foot-tall (after I've been to the chiro) amateur gardener. All that unusable space under the benches just collected trash and I couldn't reach the far corners at the end without climbing onto the bench. So... I remodeled.

Warmish greenhouse or icy, windy yard?
Rocky knows which is better!

This bench has worked really well so I just drilled holes in it for water and potting soil to fall through. It also works well for securing a jig saw and holding fuzzy "helpers."

The big bench is history, trimmed to a shadow of it's former self but still wide enough to hold a milk jug or Buster sprawled in the corner. I drew his chalk outline (with space for growth) to be certain. Nothing in the greenhouse was square, and I'd never used a jig saw before, so I went with a wave pattern based on an old CD I found on the floor.

I see no reason a greenhouse can't be girlie.
(Jig Saw work completed.)

The medium size bench was OK but too deep for me to make use of the floor underneath so I'll be affixing expanded steel bases into the holes. There's a small area at the end, which you can't see, for setting tools and things on a solid surface. With the holes I'll be able to see what's below and maybe use the floor to over-winter plants like peppers and chiles. The dead looking things are habaneros. Might have gotten too cold in there before I found the heater but we'll see. The idea is to keep them alive, but dormant, until they can go back into the garden.

And here is the door end. I put the soil on the floor to help with the water problem, drilled some holes in the floor too, and put as many tools as I could above my head. The lantern is LED so it gives bright light without any risk.

The ultimate plan is to have soil on the floor and a thyme walkway down the center. I'll be able to directly grow lettuce and other things AND have space for potting up, setting teacups, and growing starts.

Thanks for Putting Up with Us!

If you look over at the sidebar you'll see I've updated the tally on what we've "put up" off the farm so far in this, our first, year. Next year I hope to have more in the "dried" category but that nasty little moisture problem needs to be dealt with first. Thankfully, I've now got a handle on my every-time-the-barometer-moves-my energy-hibernates problem so I'll be better prepared for quickly dealing with the bounty NEXT year!!!! At least one stone has been cleared from that path!

Or, I guess, later this year if those beautiful tomatoes ever color up! We've not had enough sun in the last month to make the tomatoes turn red in any numbers. Well..... ANY number until yesterday. I can always make my Grammie Starbird's vegetable relish and lots of fried green tomatoes if I get impatient. What I really want is to make jars and jars of tomato sauce because we eat a lot of it in the winter.

So far we have a year's worth of jams, jellies, sauces, and pickles.... not too bad for a first try!

My legs hurt, and, frankly, so do my hands. Must mean yesterday was another long day in the garden for me. We've had more rain than sun of late so we gotta make dirt while the sun shines.

I finally finished the fourth bed in the raised garden. What takes so long is separating the soil from the sod we dug up. At first I was saving the sod to help an erosional area (done!) and now I'm using the grass parts in the compost pile. Lots of good mycillium in there and plenty of worms. We also figured out what to do with some existing (ugly) raised beds against the west-facing retaining wall. The heavy clay soil in them turned pretty easily so I just worked in a whole lot of vermiculite and some compost. I hope the melons I planted will be happy. We'll have greens out of those boxes too, at least until the melons take over!

Mr Fuzzy spent most of the last two days working in some compost and planting his garden. We've got corn, beans, melons, cucumbers, and tomatoes to go down there. Today we expect to get that bit finished.

He was having some troubles getting the plow to turn over correctly so he called our Yankee Neighbors for advice... Mr. Fuzzy realized that he'd always used at least a three-row plow and thought maybe there was some trick to a single moldboard plow. Turns out the trick is a spring that's missing from our tractor. Looks like our next rainy day will see us to the New Holland dealership in Meadows of Dan. There are three eateries in the village so we'll make an afternoon of it.

So, our plow problem diagnosed, the younger Yankee neighbor, we'll dub him "Taciturn Yankee," went ahead and showed us how he does it... with four or more passes with the cultivator. You learn something every day around here. That day we learned the best plow is not a plow. In less than an hour Taciturn Yankee made us four raised beds each about 25 feet long and neat as a pin. I would normally have taken over about three dozen cookies as a thank-you but The Bronx Babe (that would be Mr. Yankee Senior's wife) is a cook to beat all cooks and her son will be well supplied with tasty morsels.

Any suggestions on a good "thank you" gift? He's a really nice guy to have thought to bring the cultivator and to have just done this without our asking.

Summer is Here

Friday night we saw our first firefly and the roses burst into bloom yesterday morning. That means Summer has begun on Stratheden Farm! Our seasons seem to lag about 3 weeks behind our friends on the other side of the Ridge, two weeks behind the town of Floyd, and one week behind our neighbors up on the road, so it seems reasonable to be nearly a month late for the official start of summer. (May Day)

This week I got the first plants into the ground. Potatoes and pumpkins. Don't get on me about being late on the spuds. The neighbors lost all their head start in the recent frost. Plant death everywhere!

The Kenebeck potatoes went into bushel baskets lined with black trash bags. I read that you're not supposed to plant potatoes in the same place year to year and the companion planting guides all say not to put them next to much of anything... bit of a dielemma there. Then I read that potatos also want super acidic soil... so the multiple "problems" are all solved in one neat manuever. Oh, and there's no digging in the rain this way. Just dump and grab at harvest time!

Since we're building a raised bed garden in stages I'll use the potato soil to begin a strawberry patch this autumn. They like it acidic too! We have a few strawberry plants in the walled garden but certainly not enough to preserve so I'd like to establish a big bed of them in the vegetable garden.



The pumpkins are a variety we purchased from Native Seeds / SEARCH who collected them from Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. Yes, we are renegade gardeners from the get-go. I started thinking this decision through AFTER we had four beautiful seedlings in the greenhouse. These pumpkins are not going to want ultra rich, moist soil for best flavor and keeping qualities. What the heck would they be growing in up on that mesa? Much tapping of head.... sand banks! I ran this by Mr. Fuzzy and he thought it worth a try as it certainly would be true of an old Hopi garden. Happy for us, we have an ugly little sand pit in the dwarf apple orchard. The siting is even decent with lots of afternoon sun.

So, two wheelbarrow loads of pure, stain-your-clothes, black compost and a few minutes with a shovel later we hade a hopefully decent bed prepared. At planting, I added some MoleMax (to deter burrowing beasties) and some mychorezial fungi to the hole. The planting was finished with four bamboo stakes and a length of string: the standard method of keeping the deer out around here. I may add some tepary beans to the same planting as they are another desert variety.

I promise some pictures soon. I just uncovered my camera last night... it got buried in one of our unpacking frenzies and the battery is as dead as my neighbor's garden.

Attack of the Baby Plants

So, let's see.... about a fortnight ago I was telling you all that I'd had a total failure in the greenhouse despite using super-duper, extra-good-karma, local, organic potting soil and reusing the plastic starting pots Mrs. Stratton had left for us. I even remembered to wash and bleach and rinse and thoroughly dry the darned things! A whole afternoon wasted just on that operation!

On April 24th I went in and dumped every last potlet into the biggest plastic trug I've ever seen. (Think half whiskey barrel only made out of blue plastic.) I rinsed out the little pans and started over with that old standby, the 3 ounce Dixie cup and some Jiffy Mix for seeds. After listening to watering advice on The Beechgrove Potting Shed I decided to do what the nice Head Gardener (of Edinburgh Botanic Gardens) said and water from the bottom.

yeah.... you know what I'm about to tell you....

Now I'm over run with seedlings and I'm thinking of investing in styrofoam cup manufacturing. That was a tip from one of our farmer neighbors. Pot up into styro cups. Expecting a 50% germination rate, at best, I sowed seeds kinda thickly to make up for my poor seed starting skills. As I'm unable to pinch off those cute little seedlings I now have in the wee greenhouse:

1 hubbard squash
9 eggplants (Ping Tung)
11 summer squash (Yellow Scallop & Tender Gray Zukes)
15 pumpkins (Mayo Blusher, Acoma & Seminole)
23 basil babies
28 muskmelons (Kansas & Golden Jenny)
29 sweet onions
54 iceburg lettuces
55 cucumbers (Edmondson & Arkansas Little Leaf)
76 tomatoes (Long keeper, Amish Paste & al-Kuffa)

untold numbers of leeks

There are also a whole bunch of native tobacco plants popping up and the chiles started breaking through with abandon the other day. Our sweet peppers aren't so excited, nor the other eggplants, but maybe they're waiting for more warmth as it's been rather cool these last few days.

Our Ping Tung eggplants and the Hubbard squash (UK translations: aubergine and edible gourd) were part of February's Winter Sowing experiment. They've done OK but I'm not seeing that they are any further along than had I planted them two weeks ago. Might be the potting soil... The ping tungs are still just two seedling leaves despite being up at least three weeks. Madame Hubbard sat the same way for weeks and weeks until I plucked her from her starter pot and put her into new soil in the greenhouse. Now she has four leaves and looks pretty happy.

One wonderful surprise was the al-Kuffa tomato bought from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. They popped up three days before the other varieties! According to the catalog these were sent to them from a customer in Iraq who hoped that the variety could be saved. Apparently we're distributing "improved" seeds over there at such a furious pace that the local varieties have been essentially abandoned in just a few years. This is supposed to be an early bush tomato that likes cooler weather. I'll let you know how they do!

Seeing with new eyes

Its hard to guess what their brain can decode with no experience but the kittens are opening their eyes. Bluebeard (left) opened his a couple of days ago and the rest are following suite today. Except for Bluebeard, their eyes are just partly open.






The farm continues to green up. The back pasture was fertilized today, a bit late. Wildflowers of all sorts are erupting, albeit mostly small to tiny ones. Some trees, however, still show no inclination to leave out.

The weatherman was right about today - 81F and humidity at one point as low as 19%. There have been a few clouds in the sky to give it depth and scope but otherwise the sun has ruled the day. The next four days are all expected to be as warm so more of April's seeds should be sprouting forth.



The fruit trees have held their blooms tenaciously and kept the landscape bright. Huzzah.

Seedlings... or maybe not

Hi Guys! Remember my post a couple months back about Winter Sowing? Well, it mostly worked.

I learned that I can't start pole beans this way and the Hubbard death rate was pretty high too but the leeks, poppies, and lawn daisies have done really well. My eggplants are coming up now too so we'll see how they do over the next couple weeks.

The poppies and daisies went into the ground yesterday, mainly in my new border to fill in where the daffodils will die back. It'll be poppies and peonies this summer. How beautiful will that be if it takes? Extra daisies went into some bare spots by the big oak tree out front. I know our British friends won't agree, but you can never have too many daisies in your lawn.

Seed starting in the greenhouse, on the other hand, has been a total flop. I'm starting over and really glad I didn't put every seed in the soil. Instead of the rather vague planting instructions on the packets I've gone to the oldest gardening books I can find for plain directions. You know the ones I mean... ones written before everyone presumes you're buying well-started plants at Walmart. I'm finding the USDA Bulletin 409 (part 2) from 1977 to be rich in detail and The Rockwell's Complete Guide to Successful Gardening of 1965 excellent for telling me where I've totally blown it. I must write Mrs. Stratton and thank her for leaving the latter.

Elliot Coleman, Sunset, and even the venerable James Crockett (whose Victory Garden I watched faithfully as a kid) have all failed me. Oh the anguish! Why do none of the modern books tell you what will go wrong, and why, so that you can avoid such disasters as mine? I've had exactly 6 seeds come up and all have croaked within the day.

Thus, as you might guess, I'm getting ready to start seeds again. The peas are only just emerging so I have plenty of time left, right? This time I'm making pages and pages of notes on what to do for the vegetables. Wildflowers are wildflowers so I'm going to just sow them thickly into recycled soup cans and put them out of sight where they won't get really hot. Whenever I get a bunch of seedlings I'll pot them up to grow on until they're big enough to transplant.

Wish me luck!