Oh Bountiful Harvest

This is my largest harvest ever! I know it doesn't seem like much, but hey it's only my second summer as a vegetable gardener. The reddish-purple tomato is my first ever 'Purple Calabash;' we're each going to have a taste at dinner tonight. I've been harvesting the 'San Marzano's' for a while now, but never enough to make a meals worth. I definitely need 3 plants next year instead of 2, or should I get 4?

One of our family favorites is a roasted tomatoes recipe that I have been anxious to try with this variety. Up until now, I've only made it with canned because I haven't had enough ripened at one time! Credit for the recipe belongs to Bringing Tuscany Home by Frances Mayes.

3 28-oz cans of whole peeled tomoatoes, drained and cut in half lengthwise

1/4 cup olive oil

3 T each minced rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil

5 garlic cloves chopped

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 200.

Arrange the tomatoes cut side up in a baking dish. Drizzle the oil and scatter herbs and garlic over them. Salt and pepper to taste. Bake for 2 hours.

We have had these mixed into a store bought pasta sauce, in a pasta salad and as a bruschetta. They're delicious everytime! If I ever get to try it with the 'San Marzano's' I'll let you know how it tastes.

Anticipation...

A week with my two-year old niece and nephew, mostly at my house and partly at theirs, didn't leave much time for gardening OR blogging. As soon as I arrived home today, I greeted Simon and the dogs and we all headed out to the gardens. The most change was in the kitchen garden, quickly filling with soon to be ripened food.

'San Marzano' roma tomatoes

'Purple Calabash' tomato

Yellow peppers

Onions

Yellow squash

Tomato Trellis and Floating Row Covers

I had read I should avoid the standard tomato cages so I decided to create something in the fashion of a trellis I saw on The Victory Garden. Using some stakes I already had, I bought some cobalt blue outdoor paint for color and, using twine for the sides, installed the trellis. Two mistakes were immediately apparent, the stakes are too short and I placed the front and rear ones too far apart! The 2nd part is easy enough to fix, but the taller stakes will have to wait until next year. So far they're doing an okay job of holding up the 'San Marzano' roma tomatoes (the other tomatoes aren't big enough yet to need the trellis.) The white flowers mixed in are cilantro that self-seeded from last year; they small yellow flowers front, right are 'Lemon Gem' marigolds.

Once my 'Sugar Baby' watermelon, 'Earlisweet' muskmelon and 'Gold Rush' yellow squash seeds began to turn into plants, Simon and I dug out the floating row cover recommended by Sally Jean Cunningham in Great Garden Companions and Edward Smith in The Vegetable Gardener's Bible. Of course, I forgot that Smith had detailed directions on how to install your row covers; the picture above is NOT what he recommended. Instead, I tried to find something for support in my local box store, struck out and in the interest of time, cut the pieces what I hoped would be extra large. I used landscape fabric pins (these resemble pins my mother used with her hot rollers when I was a child--I wonder if she still has those? The pins that is, not the curlers) and rocks to hold it down. After my weekend away I returned to see the plants bulging up under the row cover. Here's what I saw when I peeked!

No flowers yet! So I let them breathe for a moment, then bunched up the row cover so that it would "grow" along with the plants. Hopefully, I didn't let a bunch of thug insects in at the same time!

Next year, I think I'll actually follow his advice to use wire to raise the pieces and wrap two thin slats of wood in the sides to hold it down. Much more attractive then my little shrouds! I'll keep checking for flowers and, as soon as they appear, take off the covers so pollination can occur!

This is my "control subject." An acorn squash that I decided to leave uncovered (read was too hot and lazy to cover.) So far it hasn't been invaded yet either. I bought this already growing from a big box and planted it the same weekend as my seeds. Notice that their size is almost the same!

You may have noticed in some of these pictures, my next big project to tackle in the kitchen garden. The grass.

I thought it would be nice,and just fine, to have grass paths until I was able to install brick ones. Unfortunately, that just made me naive twice! There is no brick in my immediate future and the grass grows quickly. My husband kindly trims it, but that just spits grass pieces into the beds which quickly grow into weeds; and it's only a matter of time before he hits a plant. It's also messy! Now, I can stand a little bit of messy in the garden (I have a bed to prove it), but this is ridiculous. You can barely tell where the beds begin and end in the above picture. So I've decided I will remove the grass and cover the paths with pine needles. I love walking on pine needles and they're the same color as bricks so if I only get bricks a little at a time, I could install them in sections and the difference wouldn't be glaring.

Yummy Peas!

Vegetables are my favorite food group, but I hate peas; pea pods are okay in a heavy Chinese food sauce, but that's it!

They're a favorite of Mike and Simon's, however, so I took the plunge. Easter weekend I planted "Sugar Snap" peas and wonder of wonders they grew! Their flowers were beautiful and reward enough, but May 31st we had our first pods. I had family over and we each had half of a pod at dinner. Everyone was polite, but I spoke what everyone was thinking, "ooh, bitter!" After that I snacked on them whenever I was in the garden and quickly realized that the smaller pods were sweeter. The recent heat has kept me inside and pretty much killed the plants. The above harvest, too fat to eat as pods, is probably the last for the season and was delicious raw.

Did I mention I hate peas? It's hard to tell if the homegrown variety truly can't compare with those sold in the stores or if I'm just so enamored of the fact that I grew these. It's probably a little of both. One other lesson I learned, I didn't plant nearly enough seeds. I only had six plants and it would have taken probably 4 times that to ever get a meal, even if one of the people hates peas!

Insects Galore!

I was weeding my way around the kitchen garden beds when I arrived at my asparagus. One of the plants had lost almost all of its beautiful, ferny leaves and another was on its way with many of them brown and broken. Looking closer I saw fat little gray larvae with black heads on several of the plants. I knew they were bad, probably asparagus beetle larva, and rushed to my computer to confirm and learn how to destroy. This site told me everything I needed to know and showed pictures of the eggs. When I went back outside with my glass of soapy water, I found them on the plants as well. I was carefully inspecting my asparagus, continuing my way through its beds, when I found three black and orange stink bugs. Back inside where I learned from this site that they needed to go as well because they sucked the juice from tender, young plants. Unfortunately, by the time I finished, they had moved on, but I did find six of them mating in pairs on my soon-to-be lavender flowers. Let's just say their moment was ruined.

After all of that excitement, I saw several strange bee-like creatures: hairy, with very long proboscis ,flying around, occassionally landing on the ground for a second or two wriggling their bottoms and then taking off again. They didn't seem to mind me, and frequently landed pretty close. This time, my book, Audobon's Insect Guide, had the answer. It's a Large Bee Fly. I found some pictures on this site although none look exactly like mine. Apparently, they are important pollinators and lay their eggs, which become parasitic larva, in the entry to the homes of solitary bees. When my new camera arrives, that's right new camera I will no longer inflict bad smartphone images on you, I'll try to get some shots. Hopefully, they'll stick around.

Chicks and Seeds

We have babies! The bluebird babies in the bluebird house are very noisy and their parents are very busy flying back and forth to feed them. I don't begrudge a single worm they take from the garden for their hungry hatchlings. Next to the porch, on the gutter, we have four finch babies. These chicks are very quiet, and very cute! We have a great view of them; looking around inquistively as they wait for their parents, mouths wide open as they hope its their turn to eat. If you look to the left in the picture you can see a little head looking back at me through the screen. Their parents aren't as busy as the bluebird ones and that's partly our fault. If we're on the porch and move when they're on their way in they do a quick about face and head to the safety of a tree.

This was a big planting weekend in the kitchen garden. I put in the tomatoes and lots of seeds. Lettuce, carrots, spinach, corn, pole beans, borage, basil and dill. Some I'm afraid I've put in too late for the hot weather we've been experiencing (lettuce, spinach); some too early if we experience one more frost (corn, tomatoes.)

The asparagus is doing great! Some of it is almost as tall as the fence already (4 ft tall!) Pretty impressive for a 3 week old! I planted them in a trench as I was told, but was confused about when to backfill. Most of what I read said you do it over the developing fern, but I didn't exactly have ferns at first, I had asparagus spears that were shooting straight up and then developing thin little leaves. Was that what I should be backfilling? Finally, I confirmed that yes, that was it. Hopefully, that's right.

Friday night, Simon and I spent some time watching the snake; seeing him swim is really cool! As you can see, I got a new picture. He was very entertaining, much more so than the fish. They were friendly at first, but then our part Labrador dog who thinks the pond is his playground, scared them into a seemingly permanant hiding. If they don't start coming out soon, we may decide to keep the snake no matter how big he gets!

Saturday, we woke up to find frog eggs in the pond! Thank God! While I've been very supportive of their efforts to find love, they're so noisy about it. We tried to have the patio door open the night they finally found it, but we couldn't hear the TV over their song.

Mike and I finally moved that boxwood! He dug out the yucca that was on the corner of our front bed and just didn't fit with the plantings of boxwood and holly shrubs. Digging out the boxwood wasn't too bad. I think Paul James' trick worked for getting the roots adjusted to rootball size, but getting under the shrub was still hard. Lifting it was the worst though; it took both of us to lift it into the wheelbarrow. Hopefully, it will be happy in its new home. It sure looks great there! No picture I'm afraid...the camera died.

The Results of a Week Off...

They said it was going to rain today, but when I woke up this morning it was quiet outside. I had just decided to get up and head out when the rain began. There was a lull earlier this morning so I put on my gardening clothes and the minute I stepped out of my bathroom, the rain began again. Some things just aren't meant to be...

Asparagus Anyone?
I should have plenty to share in three years! Ready or not, the kitchen garden now has 3 asparagus beds! Yes, we do really like asparagus, but I ordered way too many plants and then started to worry that the soil wasn't rich enough or that the deer would eat half the plants and then I wouldn't have enough. I did some research and you can move asparagus plants, as long as you don't try to harvest from them right away, so I decided to go ahead and plant in as much of the Kitchen Garden space I felt I could spare for a year or two. This way, if my fears come true, I can fill in the one bed I had hoped to have with some of the plants from the extra beds. Hopefully, I'll just have extra plants to share with friends next year!

A colleague of mine once described some bamboo creeping into her yard from her neighbor's as penile. It seems an appropriate description of the newly planted asparagus too.

The Pond
Okay, so I redid the waterfall yet again, but this time through necessity! The first picture is before, the 2nd after. We had major problems with the pond this winter. Even though it wasn't that cold temperature wise, the pond froze over with thick ice, all three of our koi died, some of the concrete cracked, ice slugs blocked up the tubing and twice, the tubing broke due to freezing. My Dad, in Stafford, has had a pond for probably twenty years and never had problems like this; it has to be our proximity to the river! Next year we'll have to get a heater.

After the fish died, we didn't rush to fix the waterfall for the 2nd time so we just did it last weekend. We raised it several inches so that we could also fill the pond higher, I adjusted one side where the concrete had cracked so that it too was higher and, using some leftover fieldstone, finally built up the back so that the filter was completely covered, but by moving a rock or two we still had easy access. I like the way the back looks so much that I can't help but wonder how great it would be if the front looked the same way...

It turns out Shoeless Joe was right, if you build it they will come. You know last year we were inundated with frog and toad tadpoles, but what I never got around to blogging was our bullfrog tadpoles! These take two years to come to maturity and luckily they survived the winter! We've also seen some kind of mollusk, have a variety of water bugs and are also currently home to a young water snake! We think it's a Blotched Water Snake, you can see my picture here, he's hiding in the iris leaves, and a picture where you can actually see what one looks like from the Herp Journal on the Internet. He will have to be moved before he gets large enough to eat our bullfrog tadpoles or brand new koi. We're not sure how we'll do that, but we figured we'd start him out in the creek below our house and then take him to the river if he finds his way back.

The Woods
A few weekends ago, I used the brushcutter to thin out the smaller stuff in the woods on one side of the back of the house. This week, my Dad cut down some of the smaller trees that I couldn't get with a brushcutter. Now more light can come in and the beautiful hollies and dogwoods can come into their own. I also have space to plant some native trees, shrubs and plants.

Compost
My son was assigned the hateful duty of removing the pachysandra from the driveway bed last summer. Unfortunately, once the compost bin was full much of what he pulled up was dumped outside, partly on the path. It is now, like most of the stuff in the bin, mostly ready to use, but still had some pockets of pachysandra here and there. I bought some stiff, mesh netting, stapled it to some stakes and created a compost sieve. Once I was done, the mesh wasn't wide enough to span the wheelbarrow or garden gate so I needed another piece. Then the gap between the two pieces was a problem and meant that un-sifted compost was falling through. One morning I spent about an hour weaving a piece of wire to sew the two pieces of mesh together. It now works like a charm and the compost is beautiful!

The trickiest part to using it now is to watch for skinks and earthworms scooped up with the compost. I have to shake the compost so that the usable stuff falls into the wheelbarrow and that requires an action similar to using a cheese grater. Not a pleasant way to go, but by going slowly and watching carefully, I think I'm saving everyone. There's still more to get, but so far the finished compost has been added to the cutting and vegetable gardens.

The Kitchen Garden

The one thing I missed from our old house more than anything was my herb garden, only this time I had the room to not only expand my herbs, but grow vegetables too! I knew I didn't want a traditional row garden and I definitely wanted herbs, vegetables and flowers grown together. Not only would it be pretty with everything combined, but it would also let me practice companion gardening. Once the spot was picked it was so close to the house that once again its colonial style dictated part of the design. Of course, for me all of that combined meant research, research and research.

Eventually, I put my design to paper; a 36' by 16' rectangle on the "inside" with four 4' by 16' beds on either side of the "gates" (fencing to come.) The interior beds are mirror images with one exception. On either side of the main walkway the beds are 8' at the back, 6' wide on the sides; the two beds together form a sort of hexagon in the walkway. Behind each of them is a rectangular bed and at the back another long rectangle. The only fracture in the mirror comes at the far end from the house, where the long rectangle is broken in two, leaving room for a future trellis and bench. The bench you see now is strictly a placeholder.

The inside is mainly devoted to vegetables and their companion plants. The outside beds closest to the backyard holds edible herbs and the ones facing the front are old-fashioned herbs of the kind Brother Cadfael himself would have grown.

Creating all of this was, well, horrible! I learned a technique from The Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward C. Smith for "easily" making right angles--"The Magic Triangle." Apparently it was first developed by the ancient Egyptians about 4,000 years ago and the formula is: if one leg of a triangle is 3 units, the 2nd is 4 units, and the hypotenuse is 5 units you have a right angle. Got it? Okay now repeat it approximately 40 times and keep your sanity! I began sometime in April and finished the end of May. It was a little late in the growing season for planting vegetables, but after all of that I still had to try. Things are growing slowly and as you know I've had some challenges from the deer. The crows too. I came home one day after planting seeds over the weekend to find the straw removed from the beds! Oh well, we're plugging along!