garden

Survival

/ handmadebyjo / 1 Comment

130526 (1)It’s cold, wet, did I mention cold?  Right now it’s 41 degrees, it’s raining and the wind is blowing.  I had grand plans for gardening this weekend and the only thing I’ve accomplished is going through my seeds and drawing out a garden plan.  I had to take all my pots in last night because it was so cold.

Of course I haven’t mentioned all of the indoor projects I could be doing – but it’s Memorial Day weekend, I should be in the garden.  I guess I will just keep the fire going until tomorrow morning and hope it dawns sunny, warm and dry.

 

Jacks

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130523 Jacks

 

Arisaema triphyllum (Jack-in-the-pulpit, Bog onion, Brown dragon, Indian turnip, American wake robin,[1] or Wild turnip) is a herbaceousperennial plant growing from a corm. It is a highly variable species typically growing from 30 to 65 cm in height with three parted leaves and flowers contained in a spadix that is covered by a hood. It is native to eastern North America, occurring in moist woodlands and thickets from Nova Scotia west to Minnesota, and south to southern Florida.

Okay, so that’s probably more than you need to know right now about this plant but let me tell you why this plant is special to me.  When we moved to Fort Pelham Farm in 1967 there was what remained of the front porch still attached to the house.  It was a cement topped stone slab of sorts that went the entire length of the front of the house.  There were stairs (crumbling) on each end and in the center in front of the door – all about the symmetry here.  Along the road were 4 huge sugar maple trees.  I’m assuming they had been planted around the time the house was built.  This was wonderful in the summer because it completely shaded the front of the house which faces west.  When houses were built back in the day they were oriented to the sun in such a way that in the winter passive solar helped heat the house at well as giving maximum light.  The trees were planted to keep the house cooler in the summer.  The site wasn’t chosen for where the road was but the road went by the house.  Today’s building rarely takes orientation into consideration because they are always building planned “communities” around streets and cul-de-sacs.

Back to the Jacks.  Spring, summer and fall the front of the house was always moist and very shady.  The plantings along what remained of the porch were overgrown and filled in with years of mulched leaves.  From the first spring that we were here my mother cleaned out the beds and discovered the jack in the pulpits.  She would always bend over, lift the hood of the plant and exclaim “There’s Jack!”  I don’t remember a spring she didn’t do that – and she especially like showing it to my girls when they were little.  It gave the plant just a little more magic.

Years later, long after my mother was gone, my father decided to remove what remained of that porch during one summer.  The trees had all fallen, been cut up and taken away and the sun was shining full force on the front of the house.  I dug up the corms of the jacks and moved them to the north corner of the house where the shed meets the ell.  I was surprised at what little there is to them once the leaves have died back.  I was reluctant to do it but knew if I didn’t try to move them they would be lost. Then I waited.

It’s a long wait from July until the following May.  The spot where I planted them has snow on it that is the absolute last to melt.  Sure enough they popped out of the ground like that have every other year for who knows how long.  I was so happy to see them.

They are the protected species on my property, I watch them, make sure any repairs being done or painting doesn’t disturb them.  And every spring like this one I go out, lift up their hoods and think “There’s Jack!”

Little Patch of Tilled Earth

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130519 Tilled GardenThis past weekend was a rather productive one considering it rained most of Sunday.  I made my way to the Shelburne Farm and Garden early on Saturday morning picking up a few plants, mostly for the newer perennial garden.  I completely weeded out the raspberries and the garlic patches plus planting all of my new plants by noon.  The dock growing in every bed is beginning to get to me since I have to use a shovel to get each one out.  The roots are all about a foot long now.  Dandelions everywhere, but when there are so many of them it’s rather pretty.

Cleomes were planted in the perennial bed, my all time favorite annual.  The garden center had some nice ones so I planted them in with the Echinacea .  I was disappointed with things not coming up but I think I’ve just been impatient.  Everything in the perennial beds is up as I remembered it being planted and it’s beginning to fill in.  I have been checking for the jack-in-a-pulpits on the north side of the house for a couple of weeks now and hadn’t seen them until yesterday.  They have been there the entire time we’ve been at the house so I would be disappointed if they were gone.

I bought an eggplant because I had never even seen one grown before last summer.  It’s been planted in a flower bed.  I will be putting asparagus into the north end of the vegetable garden this year, probably planting it on Wednesday.  I either had to plant it there or start an entirely new bed.  I couldn’t figure out where to put a new bed and figured committing space in the garden for the asparagus was worthwhile (it’s a 20 year commitment).  I’ll just have to till the rest of the garden with that in mind.

I tilled the garden on Sunday morning in between a couple of showers and swarms of black flies.  I had to get it done.  I also did a little soil test to see where the ph was and was pleased to see it was in a tolerable range.  I’d been worried that I was trying to grow plants that were just too unhappy with the soil conditions but it would appear that things are much better than I had thought.  I’ll hit it with some composted manure before I plant and continue rotating my plants every year.  Rotation works well for me because I bore so easily, each year feels like a new garden (well it is but I try to make the layout completely different).  Last year I had mostly rows going east/west, this year I will probably have more of a potager type.  The new, experimental crops will be a dwarf popcorn and some purple string beans.  For pole beans this year I will be interspersing Scarlet Runners with Kentucky Wonder I think.  I love the flowers and so do the birds, bees and hummingbird moths. Sharing my garden with these creatures is really what it’s all about for me.  Of course ask me again right after the raccoons destroy my corn.  Still unsure if I will do teepees for the pole beans or do a long trellis like I did a few years ago.  I will have to see what kind of saplings I can find in the woods.

The only things that will planted in the next week or so will be the asparagus, potatoes and onions.  Everything else will wait until the weekend of June 1st.  I’m always so over-anxious to get things into the ground I often put seeds in earth that is just too cold.  One more week won’t make that much of a difference.  I will be starting basil and nasturtiums in pots to scatter around the gardens.  I usually plant the nasturtiums in the garden but have found that they are difficult to weed around as they get going and they look great cascading over the sides of pedestal pots.

The photograph really makes my garden look rather small, in reality it is about 20′ x 50′, so it’s a pretty good size.  I haven’t put up the fence posts yet for my caution tape fence.  Chester spent a good deal of time yesterday in that fine tilled soil – he loves it.  You can imagine what he looked like after rolling around in it while it was raining.  And once again he has photobombed my pictures – he sincerely thinks he should be in every shot.

 

 

Gardens

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130515 Rhubarb

 

The first edible plant to arrive in my garden is rhubarb.  We eagerly look forward to it thinking about pies all winter long.  I have found no really effective way to preserve rhubarb that allows me to bake with it in the off season so we enjoy as much as we can while we can.

This particular rhubarb came from Bill’s grandfather’s property.  After he died and we were cleaning out the house for sale I walked the yard to see if there was anything I could transplant.  His back yard was very shaded and there was a very anemic patch of rhubarb in the back corner of the garage.  I dug it up and brought it to Rowe.  I planted it in front of a huge rock – it faces west.  The plants are shaded until noon during the growing season and I’ve found that really works well, it keeps it from bolting early in the season.  Last year I made a rhubarb pie in September and it was awesome.  I always thought if you didn’t get it in the spring that was it.

Being able to go out and pick something edible this time of year is a blessing.  Gives you hope for the rest of the season even if you haven’t planted anything yet.  I have garlic that looks amazing this year but I know I didn’t plant enough.  I will be tilling the garden this weekend barring any bad weather. I will set it up in anticipation of the ground warming to a temperature where I can plant most of my vegetables.  We had three nights below freezing this past week so I make it a rule to never plant before Memorial Day.

I’ve had a vegetable garden for about 8 years now in varying sizes and layouts.  I’m getting a grip on what grows and what will not and have had gardens through summers dry and hot, cool and rainy.  I think everyone should have a garden where they can grow something of their own to eat.  Our healthy choices are being taken away from us at a breathless pace.  I don’t believe if you go into a grocery store right now that you can have any clue where your food comes from or what goes into it.  You are being lied to on a daily basis about what’s organic or natural.  I figure if it says that on a package than it’s probably not.  Start using your farmers gardens.  They are springing up everywhere this time of year.  There may not be a lot of variety but soon there will be.  You’ll know that your veggies and herbs haven’t spent days in a truck coming to you from parts unknown.

The other thing I would add is if you plan on ever growing any of your food now is the time to start.  Gardens are slow motion works in progress, they can take years.  What works one year may not the next but those experiences are what help you to be a better gardener.  So many people I talk to think they can just put one in one year and it’ll be fine so they wait until they think they “really” need it.  Don’t wait, do it now, even if it’s just pots of tomatoes and basil.

Pear Blossoms

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IMG_20130511_104220I wait eagerly for this each year.  The pear tree blossoming in the back forty.  It is always so beautiful, this year more so because I finally got down there to prune it.  Bill and I drove the tractor down next to the tree and took turns lifting each other in the bucket at different angles to cut off the suckers.  This tree has never been pruned and was rather overrun.  I used the lopping shears and he used his smallest chain saw.  It was more than a little scary being 15+ feet off of the ground and moving into a tree.  I think Bill’s ride was probably a little scarier since I don’t drive the tractor that often.  My ride was fairly smooth backwards and forwards, up and down.  Bill’s on the other hand . . . let’s just say next time he’ll probably opt for a ladder.  At Old Sturbridge Village they always said to prune your fruit trees so a cat tossed into it wouldn’t hit any branches.  Fruit trees like a lot of air.  With any luck we will have more than the one pear we got last year.  The spring has been more “normal” this year with a more gradual warmup so the blossoms didn’t come out too early.  As long as we get some pollinators out there we should be okay.

The patches of what looks like white in the field are bluets.  We always put off mowing the field until these have gone by, the patches get bigger every year.  They are like clouds in the grass.

It’s a drizzly, rainy day today but everything is looking wonderfully green and lush.  Something about it just soothes the soul after such a long, cold winter.

Pay it Forward

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All along the Mohawk Trail through the town of Charlemont someone planted daffodils years ago.  It’s probably a 10 mile stretch of the road on the north side where there are clumps of various types of these flowers.  I look forward to seeing them every year and am always sad to see them go.

Daffodils also grow in what seems to be random places.  You drive by what may once have been someone’s home, now gone and there are daffodils blossoming on what may have once been their front yard. I find the resiliency of these flowers amazing.  Not only do they come back year after year they multiply.  A few turn into hundreds.

This is one of the things I’ve learned about gardening over the years – it’s slow.  Whenever you are planting perennials, shrubs or trees you always have to think years down the road.  Don’t plant things too close together or you will end up digging them up.  Take into consideration the spread of some plants before you plant them.  I have echinacea that takes up a good part of a garden now, that was the intent.  It has other things growing with it but I love that sea of pink in the summer.

Bill thinks the idea of planting new maple trees in the front yard of the house as pointless because we won’t live to enjoy the shade.  I say plant them now so my grandchildren will have beautiful trees shading the front of the house in the summer like they did when I was a child.

Perennial gardens are gifts to future generations in my opinion.  Some of the gardens I have in Rowe were planted by my mother, most of the plants cames from her friends and aquaintances.  She planted them for herself and to beautify the property but as a gardener you know that she probably knew that the garden would go on long after she was gone.  I love being able to go through my flower gardens and know where the peony came from or the dark purple iris.  They came from people I loved dearly that are no longer with us.   I love my gardens because I remember a day spent with Bill or my sister sweating with a shovel or moving stones.  Year after year I will walk down the stone path and see how my flowers are filling in.  A few years from now I won’t have to worry about the weeds because the perennials will have taken over.  A few years after that I will be dividing things up and giving them away – to people I care about.  It’s all about paying it forward.

Counting Seedlings

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130424 Seedlings

 

Our yard has 6 very large maple trees in it, all varieties.  Each spring I do battle with the seedlings that emerge from the ground.  I have a large perennial garden in that yard that is an oasis for these little saplings.  It doesn’t matter how much I rake the seeds out these are always popping up in the spring.  Right now they are the bane of my existence.

I have a bit of an OCD with counting and a few years ago I turned pulling these up into a counting thing.  Every morning when I take the dogs out I go into that garden and pull up no fewer than 25 of theses little trees.  They are only about 4″ tall and are surprisingly difficult to pull out of the ground.  Honestly it’ll probably take a couple of weeks to get them all out of the garden at that rate.  The consequences of not pulling them up now manifest themselves fully by fall when I have to go out with my shears and cut them to the ground because they’ve grown up in the center of my phlox unnoticed.

Counting my way through this garden every morning also gives me the opportunity to visit the plants that are coming up now (and the weeds).  I visit and revisit certain spots to see who made it through the winter or where they’ve moved from last season.  It’s a getting to know you thing every spring.  I guess if it wasn’t for pulling those saplings I could potentially visit an unfamiliar garden come June.

Gas Plant

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Gas Plant

 

When I walked the dogs this morning in Enfield there were so many different birds singing away in our back yard I was amazed.  There were cardinals, robins, nuthatches and even a yellow bellied sapsucker.  I love spring.  I was looking for a photograph of one of my gardens in Enfield and failed to find one but happened upon this photo of my gas plant which is popping out of the ground right now.

I have moved this plant three times despite all of the nay sayers and books saying how difficult they are to transplant.  The first time I acquired it the move was made under the cloak of darkness (well, maybe moonlight).  We lived on a dead end road at the time, there were only three houses on my side of the street – on the other side was an abandoned garden center.  We were friends with the owners niece and I spent many hours photographing my girls in that area.  It was beautiful, just a bit overgrown.  Each spring I would walk down and look at the gas plant as it came up and visit it while it blossomed.  The  Gas Plant’s (Dictamnus albus ‘Purpureus’)  flowers give off a flammable gas, which is the source of its common name. It has a wonderful heavy, sweet fragrance.  I have never tried lighting it on fire.

The owner of the property where the gas plant lived died and his widow sold it to someone that subdivided it into building lots.  They cut down the trees that were hundreds of years old to make way for as many crackerbox ranches that could fit in what little acreage there was.  One night, after the bulldozers were starting to do their work I put my spade in my wheelbarrow and walked down to the bed where that gas plant was living and dug it up.  Mind you this was no small plant, it was work and I really was trying to do this unnoticed.  After struggling to get it into the wheelbarrow I filled in around it with some of the soil that was around the plant, I figured with more soil it might not be too shocked.  I wheeled it back to my yard and the next morning I planted it in a special spot in the garden.

We were renting the house my garden was in at the time.  The loss of the wooded areas that surrounded that house made us look for a house to buy that was in a neighborhood that was old and established.  I never wanted to feel that kind of loss again.  We moved a couple of years later in the spring and I once again dug up my gas plant and put it into the garden where it is now.  It’s been there for 15 years and apparently the haphazardly way I transplanted it the second time didn’t really phase it.

For the past couple of years I’ve thought about transplanting it to Rowe.  I’ve been scouting out spots to put it.  Sheltered but sunny.  I may have finally found the spot for it to go in my newest garden.  The info says it’s slow to establish.  I may divide it and leave half in Enfield and bring the other to Rowe, sort of having a backup plan.  I’d hate to lose it, we’ve been through so much together.

Thrive Where You’re Planted

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During the Blizzard of ’78 my sister was in the hospital for some emergency surgery.  Her later to be mother-in-law sent her a pot of daffodils – there were a dozen in the pot as I recall.  Once they had died back they were planted in a border garden around the patio.  Over the years they have naturalized to the point of hundreds.  They are all over New England at this point.  Everywhere I have had a garden they are now too numerous to count.  They have been given away to friends and family in  MA, VT, NH and CT.  They are now in full bloom in Enfield, around the front of the house, along the driveway, in the perennial garden in the back yard.  They are scattered all down the bank going into the back forty in Rowe.  These amuse me most of all.  For years my mother’s mulch pile was over that bank.  There was a stone wall there many years ago and it was completely grown in with trees.  She would dig up things that she no longer wanted or bulbs were perhaps pulled along with the weeds – over the bank they would all go.

I have planted many plants in a perennial garden only to watch them migrate to where they really want to be.  They will self seed in a sunnier or wetter spot and the original will die back.  It’s no use trying to get them to grow where you want them to, they just grow where they are happy.  That’s how I feel at times about being caught between Enfield and Rowe, suburban and rural, noisy and quiet.  I just want to be where it’s sunny and quiet.  Then I think about those daffodils. They speak volumes about thriving where you are.  It doesn’t mattered the soil type, the sunlight, the moisture – they all seem to like where they are and continue to multiply year after year.  In my head I know that’s how it should be – thrive where you are – but some days (especially sunny spring ones) I just want to be in a quiet spot.  Maybe transplanting daffodils.

Happy Earth Day – go dig in the dirt!

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Earth Day Coming Up

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Earth Day has evolved for me over the years.  I used to spend my time cleaning out my flower beds.  I’ve planted trees, shrubs, and flowers on this day.  This year I seem to be on a mission to augment as much of my food supply as I can with things that I’ve grown.  This Earth Day week will be spent in prep for the vegetable and fruit growing season.  Seeds will be started and although it seems late to some I can’t plant ANYTHING until Memorial Day in Rowe.  There is still snow on the ground and the entire back forty was completely frosted this morning.

I want everyone to know the feeling you have when you eat or serve a meal with food that you have grown.  You know everything about this food.  You may have nurtured it from seeds or have seen it eating grass on a sunny hill.  You have watered and fed and cooed over these plants and animals.  You have planned and brought these home grown ingredients together into something that is fabulously delicious in its own time.

Years ago (really not that many) people ate what was in season.  You didn’t eat tomatoes in January unless they were the “hot house” variety that completely lacked in both taste and nutrition.  Vegetables were not flown in from Argentina or California during the winter. The cycle of meals had everything to do with what was ripe at the time or food that you had put up and was in your cellar or freezer.  Growing up I remember my aunt and cousins staying with us when the garden was really beginning to produce.  For lunch each day there would be sandwiches made with the freshest of tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce.  A platter just laid out with the bounty of summer, a taste that can not be replicated in any way other than to pick the produce, slice it up and eat it within minutes. I understand what it’s like to share the food that I have grown with the people I love.  Hard work goes into it but it’s worth it when you see the look on someones face that is eating a particular plant for the first time or an old familiar one that tastes completely different because it is so fresh.

This year I think everyone should at least put a tomato plant in a pot of soil on their patio or steps or yard.  Throw in a few basil seeds for good measure.  This is sooo inexpensive to do and you will be paid back ten fold in something that you can not buy, the true taste of summer.

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