Tag: gardening

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Thoughts About Gardening

The wish books have arrived filled with gorgeous pictures of produce. Even a bit of snow can’t stop the thoughts about gardening.

Looking Back

Considering the heat, sun and drought this last summer, my garden did very well. My freezers are full. The fall garden is producing. It was a successful gardening year.

There were problems. The heat and sun kept me inside too much so the weeds got out of control.

These also made the tubs too hot for the plants growing in them. The dirt was bath water warm! Shade is an important item to plan for next year.

Rabbit Food?
My Savoy cabbages looked great until the rabbits found them. However my Nubian buck Augustus didn’t mind rabbit nibbled cabbage snacks. My garden fence needs improvements.

Looking Forward

I grew a number of new plants last summer. Some were a success. Others were not.

Chinese eggplant is a better tub plant than traditional eggplant. Carrots need more water and more shade.

Sunflowers will not be in the garden again. Better planning for succession planting will be in the garden.

My seed list is growing as I add more plants. Most are old friends like Napa cabbage, bok choi, Zephyr squash, butternut squash, long beans, tomatoes, sweet peppers, Chinese celery, potatoes, beets. Newer ones include more kinds of snow peas, leeks and Savoy cabbage.

Planning ahead for Chinese cabbage
Napa cabbage and bok choi grow well in the tubs as long as I cover to deter cabbage worms and add shade to keep the tubs from getting too hot.

Thoughts about Gardening

It occurred to me that I write about my garden a lot over the course of the year. I spend a lot of time in it doing and trying different aspects of gardening.

Although I am a serious amateur gardener and read gardening books about other gardeners, I never considered writing about gardening. My garden is not neat, rarely orderly and my methods adapt each year.

Last year I kept a monthly planner about my garden. It told me a lot about how successful my garden turned out to be. Other people find my methods interesting.

Perhaps I will write down my thoughts about gardening in more detail this year. Maybe they will become a book after that. After the six I’m presently working on get finished.

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Digging Jerusalem Artichokes

When I mention digging Jerusalem artichokes to people, most of them think about the globe artichokes sold in the markets. This is not what I am talking about at all.

Globe Artichoke or Jerusalem Artichoke?

The globe artichoke is the flower of a thistle. These are enormous flowers, but just like the ones on roadside thistles before they open. If you slice through one of these, it will look like the market variety in miniature.

The Jerusalem artichoke is a sunflower. Wild varieties bloom in August and do have small tubers. My garden variety grows much taller, has large tubers and blooms in late August.

Artichokes and Potatoes

Another comment from people is how a Jerusalem artichoke is like a potato. Other than both being tubers, this is far from the truth.

Potatoes can be grown, dug, dried and stored in the pantry in a box. Yes, Jerusalem artichokes can be grown and dug like potatoes. If you try to dry them and store the min the pantry, they will wither away into husks.

digging Jerusalem artichokes
When the Jerusalem artichokes first get turned up, they are covered with dirt. This clump doesn’t have a lot of them in it. Most of the chokes broke off and had to be dug out. I never find them all.

Digging Jerusalem Artichokes

Since Jerusalem artichokes do not store well, they get dug as they will be used. I dig my first ones after the stalks have frozen and turned brown and brittle. These are chopped off about six inches over the ground and the stalks carted away. The stubs mark where to dig for tubers.

The best tool I’ve found is a potato fork. Pick one plant to dig. Have a bucket of water handy.

Use the fork to lift out the plant. The tubers are connected to the roots and buried in the ground. I use the fork to lift the tubers buried as much as a foot deep up.

I knock a lot of the dirt off. The bucket of water is for swishing off much of the dirt still on the tubers. Not all of the dirt will come off.

cleaning Jerusalem artichokes
Digging Jerusalem artichokes is time consuming. It doesn’t take long to gather up a pile. More time is spent checking for those still buried in the dirt. Rather than taking a lot of dirt into the house, I wash them off in the garden. This is the pile of washed chokes from this batch. Once inside the house, they are cleaned using scrubs and an old toothbrush. They are then ready to become mashed, stir fry like water chestnuts, pieces in stews, broken up in salads and more.

Yield

A single established plant yielded two plastic grocery sacks of tubers. This doesn’t count the discards chewed on by millipedes and sowbugs or too small to bother with.

No matter how carefully you are digging Jerusalem artichokes, you never get all of them. The plant will sprout up again in the spring to yield next winter’s crop.

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First Frost

This Ozark fall has been flirting with frost for a few weeks. The frost date isn’t until the end of October. Weather doesn’t read calendars so the first frost hit with twenty-five degrees.

There was warning in the weather forecast. Balmy days seemed to laugh at it.

Feeling Foolish

One by one I stripped and pulled the pepper plants. All tomatoes of any size came off the vines. Pumpkins and squash moved in on my pantry floor.

The weather was warm. Skies were blue. The only thought keeping me going was: Can I afford to be wrong?

If our first frost didn’t come, my summer garden would still be gone. If it did arrive, my last produce would be safely in the house. Frost would ruin this produce. I couldn’t afford to be wrong.

After first frost surprise
Reptiles disappear all winter. This young northern fence lizard hasn’t gotten the message yet. It’s basking on the old blanket I’m presently using to cover the raised bed.

Watch the Wind

All weekend the wind stayed from the southeast. This means warm or relatively warm temperatures.

Tuesday morning the weather vane began to move to the east. The wind picked up. That cold front was moving in.

Afterwards

Two mornings were in the mid twenties. All leftover squash and tomato vines hung limp, frozen.

There are some cold tender plants still growing because I took out the blankets and covered them. I keep a big stash of old blankets in the barn along with old towels and sweatshirts to use in the garden and on the goats.

Chinese celery won’t take a frost. Using old towels and blankets I’ve kept the plants growing slowly up into January.

Each morning I finish milking and go out into the garden to remove the coverings. It’s nice to see the Napa cabbage, bok choi and Chinese celery looking green and fresh.

banishing first frost cold
Nubian doe High Reaches Pamela is basking in the sun just now lighting up the barn lot after a night of freezing temperatures. Her black fur gets hot. Even the brown and gray fur on various goats gets really warm.

Goats and First Frost

I arrived to start milking and found an empty barn. Nubians love warmth. The herd had moved out in front of the barn to bask in the sun. Their warm fur helps warm up cold hands.

Now the forecast calls for some warmer temperatures. The goats, fall garden and I will be glad to enjoy them.

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Finding Wildflowers

This is the busiest time of summer with putting food by for the winter and planting the fall garden as summer plants are ready to remove. Hiking the hills is not often on the schedule which leaves me finding wildflowers in different places.

finding wildflowers gave me this new bur marigold
Gardens attract lots of wild plants better known as weeds. Some are immediately pulled. Others are allowed to grow just to see what they are. This bur marigold turned out to be a pretty wildflower.

In the Garden

Wild plants want to grow and gardens are ideal spots. Gardens have open, rich soil. Water arrives often. Competition is minimal as vegetables get harvested regularly.

My garden hosts a variety of wild plants such as chickweed, dead nettle, dock, English plantain, wayside speedwell, two morning glories, evening primrose, chicory, bulbous buttercup and daisy fleabane. There are others and some occasional visitors such as pokeweed.

A friend asked me about a plant in her garden with lovely orange flowers. It reminds me of a marigold, but is one of the bur marigolds. There are several, but most have tiny rays people often call petals. I have pictures and will identify it later.

floating primrose flower
When finding wildflowers, the searcher needs to be on the lookout all the time. This floating primrose grows around the end of a lake put in near a house. Probably ducks or geese stopped on the small lake and dropped off the seeds. I spotted it by looking down after taking a picture of a pink rose mallow flower.

Other Places

Finding wildflowers is mostly a matter of watching for them. I love driving with no one following me as I can go slowly and look over the plants along the roads. Wild sunflowers are blooming now and I’m looking for new ones.

Across from my friend’s house is a large pond. Her ducks moved over to it. Around it are several clumps of pink rose mallow.

I’m sure these clumps were planted there. However rose mallow, the white ones, grow wild in several places. There are wild pink ones down toward where the witch hazel I visited in the spring, but that takes a morning to go to.

The planted pink rose mallows will do as examples of a color variant. So I traipsed across the road. The mallow wasn’t the only wildflower there.

The Yerba de Tajo was one I’d found at ShawneeMac Lakes. The yellow one was new. I very much doubt it was planted there. That adds floating primrose to my Dent County Flora.

Most of my produce I’m saving is stuffed into my freezer now along with the extra roosters. Okra and one more package of chopped peppers will finish packing the freezers.

Once the fall garden is planted, maybe I can go back to hiking the hills finding wildflowers.

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Oodles of Tomatoes

I will admit I probably over planted tomatoes. Every year I vow to cut back. And every year I end up with oodles of tomatoes.

Reasons to Cut Back

Two people can only eat so many tomatoes. Even the chickens and the wildlife can get overwhelmed by oodles of tomatoes.

Tomatoes take a lot of water. Ozark summers are often dry and I don’t have a convenient hose.

Tomatoes are a popular sales item for both sellers and buyers at the Farmers Market. However, lots go home again.

Speckled Roman paste tomato
Paste tomatoes have less water in them. I like the flavor of the Speckled Roman paste tomatoes. It is an indeterminate tomato, an heirloom, and prolific. The tomatoes are not uniform, but tend to be up to 7 inches long and 1 1/2 inches in diameter. This year I’m getting lots of shorter, but stouter ones. I slice them into rounds to cook them up for sauce or placing on cream cheese pizza.

Reasons For Growing So Many Tomatoes

My garden typically has three main types of tomatoes: red, yellow and paste. These are started from seed as I like varieties not commonly available.

There are also some purchased tomatoes as these will bear sooner. And a couple of cherry tomatoes are nice for snacks. One is by the house. The other is in the garden.

Things happen to gardens. Groundhogs. Chipmunks. Wood rats. Birds. Insects. Disease. Having a few more plants than necessary is insurance against total loss.

Gold King of the North Oxheart Tomato
This is an extra tomato for me this year. These tomatoes are huge with the characteristic oxheart shape. The vines are indeterminate and prolific. I find the taste a bit bland. The tomatoes seem to bruise easily.

What To Do With Oodles of Tomatoes

All dinner menus are now planned with tomatoes included. Sliced. Salads. Enchiladas. Spaghetti.

More tomatoes end up as sauce, broth and frozen. A few years back I tried freezing plain nice tomatoes. These are great as thawing them makes the skins slide off. If I’m doing chili, I only want one or two, not a bag of sauce.

When I make tomato sauce, I read the directions to boil skinned tomatoes down for hours until they are a thick sauce. First, I’m lousy at skinning tomatoes. Second, I hate spending that much time boiling off water. (Tomatoes are 95% water, more than watermelon at 92%. See the Pumpkin Project.)

My sauce is plain tomatoes, trimmed and cut into chunks, dropped into a large pot and simmered until soft mush. Then I use a colander to separate the pulp from the liquid tomato broth.

The liquid is frozen as broth. The pulp is pureed in the blender, then frozen. When I thaw these out, I can add the appropriate herbs, spices and salt for the recipe I am making.

Even so, this is a great tomato year. My garden is happily producing oodles of tomatoes. I hope it lasts to frost and beyond stored in the pantry and freezer.

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Spring Gardening

It’s amazing how uplifting sun and temperatures above freezing can be after days of near and below zero. The goats and chickens tumble out their doors to bask in the sun. Thoughts turn to kids and spring gardening.

Waiting on Kids

My Nubian doe High Reaches Juliette was due about New Year’s. The days passed and she stayed fat and showing signs, but no kids.

When she looked like any time, the temperatures plunged. Anxiety began as wet kids stand no chance in zero degrees even with an experienced mother goat.

The cold seemed to stop all kid preparation. As this cold moves on, the wait begins anew.

Reading Gardening Books

There’s not much to do outside with cold temperatures and a dusting of snow. Reading about gardening, seed sorting and starting along with spring gardening plans pass the days.

Much of the country is having much worse weather than the Ozarks. That’s one of the reasons we moved here thirty years ago. Waist deep snow along with temperatures ten and twenty below for six months didn’t fit our preferred life style.

My current gardening book “The Country Journal Book of Vegetable Gardening” written by Nancy Bubel is set in Pennsylvania. Some of the crops, all of the timing and some of the problems don’t apply here in the Ozarks. So, why is the book helpful?

Zephyr summer squash
This is definitely on my garden list for this year. Zephyr summer squash is easy to grow, delicious to eat and somewhat tolerant of squash bugs.

Universal Gardening Ideas

Some things fit gardening no matter where the garden is. The author prefers setting out rows. I have marked out beds. But planting seeds is the same.

Pennsylvania gardens are set out later than mine. But spring gardening planning entails the same details for succession planting, mulching, cultivating, seed starting and more.

Much of this and other gardening books won’t apply to the Ozarks. Enough of it does to make reading them worthwhile.

Besides, its relaxing to read about spring gardening while waiting for the season to begin. Now is when the planned garden is beautiful and productive. Before reality sets in.

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Rain Inducement

Ozark rains have taken on a new form. Several months will have lots of clouds, rain several days a week. No rain inducement is needed, only overwatering protection for the garden.

Then clouds roll by dropping small showers, enough for seedlings only, for a couple of months. Larger plants need watering even with mulch.

Watering My Garden

The only well near my garden is a hand dug one. It has a hand pump on it and is reliable for watering the animals, but not for watering the garden.

Four rain barrels are full in the garden. One is full of tadpoles. Other tadpoles get moved into this one. This year it takes two full barrels to water my garden once.

tomato plants need a gallon of water a day once they start producing
The mulch helps hold moisture in the ground and keeps the tomato plant roots cool. The mulch also makes it harder to judge how much water is needed, attracts worms which attract moles and raccoons.

My Solution

The creek runs all year. We set up a pump near the creek and pump water up to the garden to fill the barrels.

Once the plants get big enough, the pump sill water them too. But discharge hoses tend to dig up seedlings.

Rain Inducement

Today the pump got set up. The hoses are laid out. The creek bed is dug out for a nice pool under the intake for the pump.

operating the water pump sometimes works as a rain inducement
The pump draws water from a creek. this makes it necessary to dig out a hole to make sure the intake is low enough to stay submerged. The screen over the intake is to keep small creatures like that fish from being pulled into the pump.

And today the clouds are rolling in teasing me with indications of rain. This is after spending two hours yesterday lugging watering cans around to water the seedlings and transplants.

Will I Gripe?

If the clouds decide to drop an inch of rain on my garden, I will definitely not complain. The pump may be set up and ready, but it will still be there in a few days, after the rain has gone by and gotten used up by the plants. Gardening season is just getting going and water will be needed a couple of times a week for several months.

And spending hours watering is the only other rain inducement I have left for now.

Note: The pump worked. A shower came by dropping a half inch.

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Leftover Seedlings

Much of my garden is planted. The seedlings I raised are settled in. And now I look at the leftover seedlings looking so good, begging for a chance.

Brave Tomato Seedlings

There are the tomato seedlings. I presently have a dozen purchased plants and two dozen growing in designated spaces. That totals three dozen plants for two people, two older people who don’t eat that much.

And there are the leftover seedlings. Over a dozen of them sit in their little cups doing their best to make me feel guilty. Surely there is room for us they seem to say.

Leftover tomato seedlings
All of my tomato seedlings are indeterminent types so much of the long stem can be buried. These will develop adventicious roots to create sturdier plants and provide additional water and nutients. They just need a chance and a spot in a garden.

Determined Peppers

My garden has a double line of bell peppers along with eight more in two containers. Luckily that is all the bell pepper seedlings I had, all forty-four of them.

However I also have my long sweet peppers. These are confined to containers, four to a container. That adds another thirty-two plants.

My leftover seedlings look so good. I’m considering buying a couple more containers to plant a few more.

leftover pepper seedling
These pepper seedlings are getting too big. Their roots are starting to get pot bound. This will stunt the plants. I’m searching for places to put some of them. Maybe someone will want to take them home and plant them.

And All the Rest

How many parsley and Chinese celery plants do I need? How much room is there left in my garden? Then there are the pot marigolds or calendulas.

There are numerous seeds to put in as well. Already the okra, lima beans, several squashes and sunflowers have germinated. Maybe I can tuck a few leftover seedlings between their rows.

Size Matters

As I look around my garden wondering where I can tuck in yet another seedling, I have to remind myself about these small plants. They do not stay small.

That little tomato seedling a foot tall will become a six-foot tall mass of vine. Those little squash seedlings putting out their first leaves will have vines forty feet long plus. Inch tall basil plants will turn into three foot bushes.

Those leftover seedlings plus my planned vegetables will turn my garden into its usual jungle. But that great tasting produce makes it worthwhile.

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Raising Seedlings

The easy way of raising seedlings is to buy transplants others have grown. One drawback to doing this is being limited to those varieties offered for sale.

Buying seeds and raising seedlings is a lot of work and takes planning. One advantage is browsing through seed catalogs and selecting varieties that sound interesting.

Take Peppers

I grew up despising green peppers. They were bitter and tasted terrible. I thought all peppers tasted like that.

A friend introduced me to the world of sweet peppers. Then I found bell peppers came in at least eight colors. When I grew them, each had its own flavor.

My friend grew Macedonian sweet peppers. I loved them too.

Most of these are not available as transplants. This year I started seeds for four Macedonian peppers and three colors of bells.

Raising Seedlings My Way

I don’t have the set ups with shelves and lights. They look nice, but I couldn’t justify the expense for something I would use only a few weeks a year.

I’ve finally settled on using Styrofoam cups with holes punched in the bottom and cat litter trays. Yes, that is correct. I use cat litter boxes.

The cups come in various sizes although I favor the eight ounce. I dump potting soil in each, label each and add two seeds.

The litter boxes are an easy to move size, waterproof and hold 19 cups. Since I move the trays out on the porch in the morning for light and back in at night, these are important qualities.

raising seedlings in pots
Labeling the pots is crucial. One pepper plant looks like all the other pepper plants. This particular tray has Balkan Blue and Balkan Yellow seedlings in it. (No, you won’t find these in a seed catalog.) When repotting those second seedlings, I label the needed new pots, fill them with potting soil and start lifting out one seedling. An ice tea spoon works really well for this. These slide down into a hole in the new pot and get watered in. Care must be taken to not crush the stems or tear off the leaves, but the spoon helps with this. Once the seedlings are established, watering is easy as water is poured into the tray and absorbed by the pots.

Germinating Seeds

Tomatoes and peppers need warmth. I have a shelf over the wood rack where I pile the boxes of cups. Old window glass is over the trays both to hold moisture inside and keep the trays from squashing each other.

Warm air bathes the boxes. Most seeds germinate in five to seven days. Any box with seedlings is moved out to where it gets light.

This year I started a number of seeds that like cooler temperatures. These set out on a table I usually use for painting until they germinated.

Last Steps

Since two seeds went into each cup, most cups will have two nice seedlings in them. They can’t both stay in the same cup.

Unless something is wrong with one of the seedlings, I set up another cup and move one seedling as soon as the first true leaves appear. This does require more cups and litter boxes. And time and space to move them in and out of the house.

Ultimately these seedlings will move into the garden. And raising seedlings is over for this year.

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New Year Planning

Beginning a new year in January is an arbitrary thing. Still, coming in the middle of winter makes new year planning easier as fewer distractions are happening.

Resolutions are self-defeating for me. I miss a few days and give up on what may be a very good idea. I prefer setting goals with a looser timetable.

Garden Planning

My new year planning begins with the garden. Usually the garden is mulched and waiting by the end of December. I’m looking forward to next spring.

Garden planning has changed a lot in the last few years. I love growing potatoes, but can’t now. The springs are too cold and summer comes too suddenly leaving my potato plants frozen, then cooked.

Still, seeds will be ordered in January. Seedlings will get started in March. I do need more room for the winter squash and don’t know where to find it yet.

Livestock Planning

February is time to order baby chicks. Last year I raised Columbian Wyandottes. Which breed will I order this year? Chick catalogs are fun to browse through.

New year planning for goat kids is in October
Nubian does are getting fat. There are five bred for March kids and all look like they will have twins. Their new year planning now is centered on eating enough food to keep both them and their kids healthy and warm. My planning is in having the barn ready and kid friendly by the beginning of March.

Goat kids will arrive in March. Even though I don’t keep any new kids now, they are still special. In a few years there will be no kids to enjoy, so I will make the most of these before they are sold.

One aspect of my new year planning stays much like last year. I will go hiking and taking plant pictures. This has been a good year. I’ve added over 30 new plants to the Dent County Flora.

As usual, there are many I found, but didn’t get back for those last pictures. And the stash of unidentified plants remains long.

In many ways, the new year will look a lot like the old year. In one respect it will be very different. A health scare has made my new year planning special as I want to make the most of it.