I Hate the Word "Failure."

Posted on Thursday 9 August 2007 at 12:43

Well, I had to go and post some crop failures over at the official TYDOS blog. I hate that. It has not been a very good day--I've been assessing the problems and feeling very much like I've failed in many ways. (Why didn't I do such-and-such, or plant crop X at a different time? Oh, yeah, because there was no good window in the wild weather this spring.)

Oddly, the watermelons seem happy. If we can keep them well-fed, they may produce before first frost. I'm not sure if the broccoli are going to amount to a single thing--they're very stunted. The cauliflowers look good, though.

Several things are behind, resulting in far less for the customers than I'd like to be able to provide. The tomatoes are only just blooming. I spotted a few small cukes this evening, but they won't be ready this week. We do have some green beans that will go in the deliveries, though. Yay, beans!

Now, if only we could get a few other things going too. I'm dreading that first frost--two years ago, it fell on the third week of August. That had better not happen this year.

Garden Pics (About Time, Too)

Posted on Wednesday 6 June 2007 at 11:38

Due to the mysterious disappearance of my camera's rechargeable batteries for several months (I recently found them stashed in some crockery on top of the microwave), I haven't taken many garden pictures yet. No apple blossom shots this year, but that's okay--they kinda look the same every year. In about another five, I'll post pics of how the trees are doing.

Last night, I set the seedlings outside with a feeling of minor panic. I hadn't really given much thought to hardening them off--too busy putting seeds in the ground. So I tidied up around the compost bins, which didn't get used last year, and were overrun by my nemesis, quackgrass. I set an old piece of half-rotten plywood on top for shade. The plants are getting light through all sides, the east being completely open.

There are the brassicae (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage), standing up and waving happily in the light breeze as the steady drizzle of rain waters them. Now I just have to keep those useless kittens from sleeping on them.

Okay, so there's still no actual clam photo. Maybe if I go to the east coast.

Hurry Up and Slow Down?

Posted on Tuesday 15 May 2007 at 06:54

Weather today: lukewarm sun, cold wind. Frost expected.

Downside of wind: Seeds blow away when you try to plant.
Upside of wind: When you cuss because seeds are blowing away, God's the only one who hears you and says, "Ahem."

Downside of wind: Earache.
Upside of wind: Your handful of perennial weed roots flies twice as far, guaranteeing they'll actually make it out of the garden. And when you water, the spray also reaches twice as far, providing entertaining possibilities with unsuspecting children.

Planted today:

Pak choi (not bok choi, as previously reported, though I have yet to learn the difference.)
Some parsnip.
Onions.
Beets.
Chard.

In the garden shed: Watermelon, in hopes of seeing them ripen this year.

How you know someone's been working in the garden at our house: By the pocket full of dirty thistle and quackgrass roots collected in the process.

I feel rushed, but the weather's telling me not to be in such a hurry. At the same time, I don't want everything piling up two weeks from now, so I'm laying out a Nefarious Scheme. Low odds I'll stick to it, but it makes me less stressed for now.

Oy, Tomatoes

Posted on Tuesday 8 May 2007 at 10:30

I am such a schmuck.

In my part of the world, it's a few weeks too late to be starting tomato plants. Yet I went out to the garden shed tonight, and its aura of peace, calm and copious amounts of potting soil wrangled me into an alternate dimension. One where tomatoes will germinate, grow and produce on time if planted on May 8th.

Two flats later, I moved on to my Experimental Vegetable #1 for the year, a Chinese cabbage (michihli). This is not a TYDOS experiment - I am going to try not to guinea pig my customers this year, given how the Great Late Watermelon Experiment turned out last year. This is something I'm inflicting on my closest loved ones, and maybe the neighbours if the loved ones don't co-operate.

Also in my experimental stack, I have kohlrabi - okay, well, I hear they're good. They look like a mutant alien cabbage with antennae to me, and I have no idea what goes in a kohlrabi recipe. Time to go cry on Google.com's shoulder till it produces a meal plan I might be able to slip past my family.

Third, I have Bok Choi. I have high hopes for the Chinese version of Swiss chard - at least that's what it looks like to my untrained eye. This is because it says on the package that in some instances you can substitute it for celery. I really hope that's true, because I'd like a northern version of celery. One of my goals is to find locally-realistic substitutes for some of the grocery store staples I (and my customers) don't want to buy.

Here's hoping that A) Bok Choi doesn't taste like, well, much of anything, kind of like celery, and B) its stems are sturdier than Swiss chard and will stand up a bit better under cooking. We like celery in things. We don't really like to actually eat celery for itself. We do not love it for who it is, we only use it for convenience. And we are not ashamed in the slightest.

Today We Planted

Posted on Tuesday 1 May 2007 at 09:04

Today, we planted yet more strawberries. (I know, you're all about to die from not-surprise.) We also began putting in our early crops -- lettuces, spinach and radish.

The kids were a great help. My 11-year-old singlehandedly conquered last year's sunflower windbreak, a three-deep row of giant dead stalks. I was very impressed. He took a little handsaw and cut them down like small trees, then dug up the root balls. I especially enjoyed hearing about how he saved as many earthworms as he could find in the clumps of dirt.

I'm trying one of my wonky experiments this year -- one of these days, I just know I'm going to get comments or emails saying, "Egads! Don't do that, your plants will hate you for eternity!" This year's experiment is to interplant the garlic with the strawberries. The reason is because the garlic stops growing when things get too warm -- they do best in spring and fall. Since the strawberries are mulched, they should stay cooler by being under the same light straw.

Reason #2, the strawberries are runner shoots and won't be producing this year. They're not going to need so much water that the garlic will rot. And Reason #3 is to reduce the amount of untilled space in the garden, rather than having two separate perennial plots. We have far more weed troubles in the perennial spaces -- like all those baby trees we heeled in last spring.

And in Happy Dance News, Dave disced all but the wettest corner of the Acre Garden this afternoon. A huge amount of my stress is gone! I now have confidence that we'll be able to get in all the crops we need to feed both our family and our customers.

My next big excitement is going to be getting my shelterbelt willows planted. They're just starting to sprout roots. Makes me wish I'd cut even more of them, but there's always next year.

As soon as I locate those grmbrmrmr rechargeable batteries for my camera, I'll start posting pictures. I'd better find them before the apples bloom, or I'm going to be very disgruntled.