Involuntary Plantslaughter

This February I attempted to grow sweet potato slips from some sweet potatoes we gleaned last Summer. Five potatoes were cut in half and donated to the cause of regeneration.

I dutifully kept them in 1" of water until roots sprouted and watched with excitement when, after three months in said water, one of them grew leaves!!

I beamed with pride at my little sweet potato -- no one believed it would ever sprout, and it was beautiful. Sure, the other 9 never made it, but the one that did was thriving.

My husband planted it last week.

Trying to be helpful, I weeded this week.

"Why is there that one huge weed in this otherwise clean bed?"

*snap*

Miracle of the Pepper Plants

This is my 12 week old pepper.

12 weeks.

As in, 3 months. 

It's supposed to be HUGE.

But due to over babying, over watering, an aphid plague of Biblical proportions, not repotting them from the seed starter soon enough, and my general black thumbhood, they're stunted, sad, and I want to cry every time I look at them.

I refuse to abandon this little project, however, and I faithfully set them out in the sun every day to harden off. Yesterday I deemed them worthy to remain out all night for their first sleepover.

Parting with them was bittersweet. They weren't tucked in under their grow light in the kitchen. I couldn't check on them to pick off the aphids. I slept a little uneasily, wondering how they were faring on the cold dark front step.

This morning when I looked out the window to see if they'd survived their first night in the elements...

"MY BABIES ARE ALL GROWN UP!!! How on EARTH did they spring up like that OVER NIGHT?? Did they just need fresh air?! Did my little boost of fish emulsion cause this Edenic transformation?! It's a miracle!!"

"Actually, darling, Aunt Elena gave us her extra pepper starts yesterday and I set them out next to yours."


And there was much laughing. Maybe we'll get some peppers out the garden this year after all!

Seedling Success! But... Help!! Now What?

I've never been this successful in my life! For the first time ever, I have seedlings that are developing their first true set of leaves!

Look at that baby artichoke plant!

Peppers!

These little tomato plants just popped up a few days ago. And they haven't flopped over yet!

But I desperately need help. I'm encountering something I've never dealt with before...

There are ROOTS sticking out of the bottoms.

I've seriously never seen this before. In over a decade of attempts, I've never made it to the point where roots would be hanging out.

I don't even know what to do! Are these still immature enough that I can leave them? Or do I have to transplant these babies?

And I haven't thinned them yet, either. There are two seedlings in each little compartment. Do I have to kill one?

Help me Obi Wan, you're my only hope!

I'm a Hypocrite -- But You Knew That

Last week I declared that I was done with heirloom tomatoes. No more for me. Better Boy, Early Girl, and any and all improved hybrids were the only varieties for my garden this year.

So I'm having a hard time justifying my recent purchases...

1 - [ToBWR] Tomato - Brandywine (Red)

1 - [ToBf] Tomato - Beefsteak

1 - [TM920/L] Cosmonaut Volkov Tomato

1 - [TM908/S] Costoluto Genovese Tomato

1 - [TM921/S] Grande Marzano Tomato

1 - [TM939/L] Pineapple Tomato

1 - [ToOlG] Tomato - Old German

Sigh. I'm weak, what can I say?

Which varieties of tomato are your favorites?

My Sad History with Hybrid vs. Heirloom Tomatoes

For years I've been trying to grow tomatoes. Goodness, the very first blog post I ever did was about my desire to plant them.

Year 1: Planted 8 hybrid tomato plants, but largely forgot them. They died of neglect, bearing a lot of fruit that went unharvested.

Year 2: Planted 0 hybrid tomatoes and 12 heirlooms. I took relatively good care of them. They all died of disease, bearing almost nothing.

Year 3: Planted 0 hybrids, 14 heirlooms. They all died of disease, making a valiant effort to produce some fruit before they bit the dust.

Year 4: Planted 0 hybrids and 20 heirlooms. I babied them! Death, disease, and dashed dreams.

{Image Credit}

I will readily grant that my gardening skills leave much to be desired. If the apocalypse happened and I had to produce all of my own food or die, I'd die.

But looking back at the records, I think I've set myself up for failure by trying to do heirlooms. Yes, purple tomatoes are fun, knobby yellow tomatoes are thrills to give away, pink striped fruits would look so lovely in my salad, and it's charming to know that I'm planting varieties that my forefathers ate. But it's hard to argue with years of dead plants.

This year, by golly, I'm going back to hybrids. I never saved seeds, anyway, because there was no fruit to save seeds from! Out with the Purple Cherokee in with the Better Boys!

Have you had any success with heirloom variety tomatoes? If so, what are your secrets?

Organic Pest Control: Joke's On Me

Determined not to have my entire garden decimated by the mysterious pest, I mixed up a lethally spicy concoction of jalapeños, habañero peppers, raw garlic and water. Supposedly if you spray the spicy slurry on the leaves, the bugs, birds, and beasts will leave your precious produce in peace.

Besides clogging the nozzle of my spray bottle, it seems to be working quite well. I positively doused everything but the lettuce, because, after all, I wouldn't want the trick to backfire (so to speak).

A few days later, Enter, Stage Left: this tantalizing recipe.

"I have pea shoots!" I yelled to my laptop. "I have walnuts, and Parmesan. I even have mint!"

Excitement got the better of me.

You can see where this is headed, of course.

"Delicate," they said. "A burst of intense pea flavor," they said.

I think the salad was good. I'll let you know when my tongue is extinguished.

Garden War 2012: Pests Are Winning

Garden pests: 2. Me: 0.

Will you look at that??

It's supposed to look like this:

That's a bed in another part of the yard.

Aren't they pretty?

They need to be thinned, but I have a really hard time plucking out perfectly healthy plants, since I have a really hard time getting anything to survive seedlinghood anyway!

'Cause seriously:

It's tragic. The garden pests wiped out my biggest radish and spinach bed!

I've yet to catch them in the act, so I don't know if it's slugs or ants. If it's slugs (which are famous for attacking this particular bed), I would hand-pick them out if they'd ever show their slimy faces! I've heard about beer traps, but who wants to let the slugs party at our expense? All you can eat and drink?

What if I'm giving 'em a bad rap and it's really ants? I know better than to try to beat those guys; they're united and indefatigable. 

I'm not quite ready to whip out the heavy pesticides, but organic (i.e. do nothing) just ain't workin'.

The Bleeding Hearts next to my radishes are kind pretty apropos. 

How do you keep the pests at bay?

Weigh In On Your Garden Plans

Last Saturday we finally planted our vegetable garden!

Six weeks late, but the peas are in. So are the radishes, onions, lettuce, spinach, carrots, potatoes and beets.

By the way, in the future I'll be buying beet seed in bulk, 'cause that stuff is a total ripoff. Each seed only produces a single beet, and the $1.89 package I got contained only 16 seeds!

Anyway, in a few weeks we'll be able to plant the herbs, beans, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant (for more baba ghanoush!). I don't think we have enough room for corn, melons, squash, nor cucumbers, sadly.

Last year we had an awesome discussion about this, and inspired by your comments I planted a bunch of new things! What's going in your garden this year? Or what should I include in mine?

Fool Proof Guide to Killing Seedlings

64 little tomato seedlings are now buried in their peat moss graves. The popsicle stick label markers, made in a burst of creativity, are now grim headstones... cruel reminders of happier times.

I asked a master gardener yesterday what I was doing wrong, since this happens every time.

"How often should I water them?"

"About twice a week. How often did you water them?"

Guiltily: "Twice a day."

"Go to confession, woman. That's first class herbicide."

Edible Sprouting Around the Kitchen

My tomatoes are sprouting!

ML stands for "Mortgage Lifter." I'm trying to grow some new varieties of tomato this year: Cherokee Purple, Black Krim, and Brandywine.

This sprouted lentil salad is quickly becoming my favorite. A few cups of sprouted lentils, green (or red) onion, feta (tomato basil feta is really good here), black olives, garlic powder, salt, pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Last week I put some green beans in it, too, but I can only imagine the possibilities this Summer with a garden full of fresh produce.

Today I had some on the side of minestrone soup with a hunk of buttered sourdough bread. I shouldn't eat this well during Lent!

Here is some sprouting wheat.

I'll probably grind some into sprouted flour.

But most of it is going to be made into tabbouleh!

I have to dehydrate it first.

And then stick it into the blender to make bulgur.

I've never made bulgur before, so this is an experiment.

If it doesn't go well, I've always got my sprouted lentil salad.

A Story of Life, Love, and Loss... Or Maybe Just Starting Seeds

It was a fatal day in high school when the pernicious seed was planted in my tender mind: gardening would be a perfect hobby.

Sunlight. Fresh air. Relaxation. Warm earth. Good exercise. Abundant fruit.

I should have doused the idea with RoundUp the moment it germinated. But alas... it took root and my garden fantasies have proven a much more fertile ground than my backyard ever since.

It all started with 96 styrofoam cups, strategically arranged in my mother's cake pans. I plunked some virgin dirt and a few seeds in each cup, poked holes in the bottoms, set them in her cake pans with some water, and put them in the warmest brightest spot in our house I could think of: the top shelves of my closet.

Yes, dear friends, I was a closet gardener.

But my secret didn't last long. When my sister wanted to bake and couldn't find the square cake pans, I was forced to sacrifice some of my precious incubating trays for a dish of cornbread. My seedlings never forgave me. One by one the bright spring green shoots flopped over, limp as a tantruming toddler, and they never rose again.

Of the 96 seeds started, exactly one survived. I babied it in my windowsill so long it actually grew a little cherry-sized pepper. When it threatened to die, I ate the pepper and buried the plant in the compost alongside my dreams. Gardening was a bitter disappointment.

And then I married a farmer.

Suddenly, gardening sprang back up from the depths of the smoldering compost heap to the upper echelon my interests. I was a natural born gardener! I was made for this! It's in my bones!

Old fantasies die hard.

Despite the mixed success/failure of our gardens the past few years, that little seed of interest sown back in high school continues to bloom each year, and once again I find myself on this cold February afternoon...

... starting seeds.

Downsized Dreams

It's cold, raining, and threatening to snow. I'm outside with loppers, frozen hands, smarting cheeks and a runny nose doing manual labor.

Rewind a week.

I was inside, snuggly warm, sipping hot tea, gushing over the hundreds of fruit tree varieties in a new, crisp, brightly colored mail-order garden catalog.

"Five apple trees, 4 pears, 2 peaches, 2 nectarines, 2 plums, 2 apricots..." I merrily hummed the order as I highlighted each appetizing selection. "Hm.. I need kiwis, honeyberries, sea berries, cranberries, elderberries, gooseberries, quince... a variety of nut trees... a few dozen each of raspberry, blackberry and bluberry bushes..."

It didn't take long before I'd highlighted myself into an $890 corner (before taxes, shipping and handling).

Burn.

I furiously schemed how I could raise the money for my fantasy farm in time to place an order, at least for next year. It took a little finagling of the budget, but I know I can do it.

Fast forward to the frozen scene.

What am I doing? Helping my husband prune a tree. A semi-dwarf fruit tree. One. Uno. A single tree. And it's hard work. And it's cold. Did I mention my frozen fingers?

"You mean I'd have to do this on 32 trees? Every year?"

Who wants honeyberries anyway?

Do You Plant Fall Crops?

At 45°, this morning was definitely sweater weather.

Sweater weather around here means it's high time (or perhaps a little past time) to plant fall crops.

Kale, lettuce, peas, overwintered onions, cabbage, garlic, cilantro, and cabbage are the plants picked precisely for this purpose.

I don't know about you, but the boundless enthusiasm for gardening that comes each Spring after the long cold dreary winter is utterly lacking for me this time of year. As I try to scheme up more uses for zucchini, clear a little more shelf space for canned tomatoes, and free up some freezer space for the bumper crop of green beans, the thought of hoeing, weeding, mulching, planting, and watering another round of crops isn't quite as appealing.

And yet, a fresh salad would be pretty great about now.

Image from Covered Bridge Produce
 
Do you ever plant late season crops or have an overwintered garden? Do you use cold frames, hoop houses, greenhouses, row covers, or mulching to extend the seasons?

Today's Tomato Tally

7 hours (counting neither my sister-in-law's tomato picking time, nor cleanup, which was substantial)

7 pints of whole canned tomatoes
11 pints of lacto-fermented salsa
14 pints of tomato sauce
1 completely tomato juice covered t-shirt

That's 4 gallons of tomatoes, in case you didn't do the math.

Goodnight.

Gone to Pot

I had a glorious conversation with my mother earlier this week, though that's not saying much, because conversations with her are always glorious. Of our many topics of conversation, however, was the prospect of growing trees in pots.

Lemon, lime, orange, and kumquat trees, to be precise.

One of our dear family friends does it quite successfully on her back porch. She brings them in during the Winter, I think, but her portable orchard produces citrus abundantly.

Can you imagine!?

To the root cellar, summer kitchen, white picket fence garden, dairy barn, and pig wallow, you can now add "screened in back porch" to my list of "requirements" for the dream house.

It is, after all, a dream house.

A Farmer's Wife's Rite of Passage

 I don't like dirt.

I mean, I appreciate it. I know it's important. I know I wouldn't be alive without it. But I don't like it under my fingernails. At all. Ew.

So I can't explain what happened yesterday.

My pepper plants are floundering. They're almost the same size they were when I transplanted them two months ago. Suspecting a lack of water, I did the unthinkable.

I plunged two fingers right into the dirt. I felt around. I didn't even consider there might be creepy bugs down there. Fat slimy slugs didn't occur to me. I didn't notice the I'll-never-be-clean-again feeling of soil under my fingernails. I didn't run to the bathroom to scrub my hands.

My peppers were indeed dry.

And I can't help but feel, as a farmer's wife, I've finally arrived.

Sweet Sorrow

The asparagus season is slowly winding down.

I could cry.

I eat asparagus with great gusto. Actually I eat it with my fingers, 'cause I can't wield my fork quickly enough to get that goodness in me (did I really just admit that?). I can never get my fill of it, and the fact that the season is so short makes it that much more desirable.

But the great thing about gardening is that there's always some new delicacy around the corner...

Pure sugar.

These juicy delights just might help to ease the parting blow.

The Land of Magic and Wonder

My father-in-law's farm, I am convinced, is the land of magic and wonder.

A few weeks ago, my sister-in-law and I planted a whole bunch of seeds in the garden patch out there. Being a lazy greenhorn gardener, I planted them too deeply, planted too many seeds, and then promptly neglected them for the next fortnight.

Right now there are seven rows of the most beautiful little plant sprouts I've ever seen!

In my backyard, however, I scrupulously planted the same seeds at the exact specified depth, with precision spacing, and meticulously kept all weeds at bay. I made sure they were in a good sunny spot and in rich loamy soil.

Not a single sprout has surfaced.

How is your garden doing?

Slime Into Spring

It's officially time to plant our garden. The scheming and fantasizing phase (about 8 months of the year) has come to an end and the days of actually moving dirt are about to commence.

I have 47 vegetables and 12 herbs in mind for our plant paradise, mostly of the vine variety and all of which have to fit in a space of about 10 x 10 (the upper size limit of the space I'm willing to maintain).

I was super big into square foot gardening last year and still am, in theory. I had no weeds at all last year, but virtually no tomatoes, either. That could have something to do with slug plague of Biblical proportion, or the fact that I forgot to water the garden for... um... a few weeks. Well, I didn't forget -- I just didn't want to turn on the hose because it was surrounded by Immature Radioactive Samurai Slugs.

(Sorry. I grew up on Tiny Toons.)

This year, armed with a carton of salt, I'm going to give it another go.

So here's my question. Besides the non-negotiables (tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and radishes... can't get enough of those radishes), what should I pare my garden fantasies down to?

If you say eggplant, I will delete your comment. Just kidding. Maybe.

An Ugly But Real Look into Organic Farming

Part 1 of 2.

I spent the whole day at a Pesticide conference, today. In a room of almost one thousand men, I counted four women. What the heck was I doing there? My father-in-law has to go once a year to these events to keep his license to buy pesticides, and I asked if I could come along. I wanted an inside scoop on these companies, and was hoping to come away with a greater knowledge of their products and applications (and, yes... perhaps a little ammunition).

While I wasn't able to dig up much dirt on the pesticide companies or big agribusiness growers, my eyes were opened wide to the reality in the fields of "organic farming."

Tale after tale (at the lunch tables in casual conversation with real "organic farmers") of guys skirting regulations, finding loopholes, mocking protocols, and freely admitting that there's a way around a lot of rules. The "organic" apples you pay an extra $3 a pound for may have a lot more exposure to toxic chemicals than you think.

A few more eye openers:

1. One thing that I didn't realize, but probably should have:  "organic" does not mean "no chemical" or "no spray." In fact, "organic" fruits and vegetables are allowed more spraying than "conventional," because the permitted chemicals are not strong enough actually to kill pests and prevent diseases. To compensate for the abysmal effectiveness, additional sprayings of the weaker chemicals are permitted.

2. The same chemical companies that make the organic sprays are making the "conventional" pesticides. I don't know why I assumed they were two separate entities, but it seems to me the equivalent of Coke making Pepsi, or sugar manufacturers making diabetic supplies. How can one company pour research and investments into two diametrically opposed ventures? Is it a conflict of interests?

3. A lot of the organic farmers are in it simply for the money (although the farmers themselves really aren't making as much money as the fruit and vegetable packing companies are), and do not espouse the same principles as the consumers who pay through the teeth for their product. What this means is, they're not really interested in making sure that your food is free of chemical toxins, your streams are free of pollutants, that their practices are sustainable and build up the soil rather than depleting it. So if they can get away with using a few more pesticides, using contaminated equipment, skirting regulations and getting an edge, they're going to do it.

I'm not saying they're bad guys; it's tough to make a living in farming!!

But I am saying that based upon what I saw today, I would say that it's not worth it to pay extra money and trust implicitly in the government's ability to regulate, legislate, and monitor the "organic" label, because abuses are widescale.

So what is a person to do?

1. If you can grow it yourself, then do. This is the only way, truly, to know what's going into your food. If you're not the gardening type, go in with a few friends and offer to pay for seeds and help preserve the harvest (canning, pickling, lacto-fermenting, freezing, etc.).

2. Build up a rapport with a local farmer or hobby farmer at the farmer's market: ask questions. People selling at a farmer's market are a lot more likely to share your ideas on these sorts of things than the mass-scale farmers who sell to grocers. Plus, you're supporting the local guy.

Hm... I guess it's time for me to go peruse those seed catalogs again.

To be continued tomorrow.