Monday, October 27, 2008
September in the Garden
September is a poignant month. The garden is lush, the food delicious, but there are signs it is about to end. Now is a good time to collect your burlap if you are traditional, or some old blankets or sheets, against that day when a light frost is predicted over night. Throwing them over tomato, pepper or eggplant plants may preserve your crop for a few more weeks, perhaps a month.
We used to have our first frosts in November, but the past two years they have been in October. First frosts tend to occur at the full moon, when the moon's gravity pulls the covering atmosphere away from the earth.
The October 2008 full moon is only a couple of weeks away. Today's beauty is fragile.
Malabar spinach and basil are not likely to make it through a light frost. Now is the time to freeze spinach and pesto. If you calculate it right, you can pick the eggplant, tomatoes and peppers just before the first killing frost, and have a frenzy of freezing at that time.
Now is also the time to prepare for winter crops. I sowed some more lettuce seed outdoors today. My lettuce has not been flourishing in recent months, but some is trying. The arugula is wonderful, so we have good salads. Indentifying the volunteers in the garden is challenging. Is that green that looks like collards the real thing? I've been coddling some collards, kale, pak choi, and Chinese cabbage in my greenhouse window to supplement that which does not come up on its own. The Chinese cabbage in the cold frame is looking promising for January stir fries.
The poignancy of September seems special this year for two reasons. My own life is joyful and full of good harvests, but we all know what is to come. (Medieval schedules would have me now in December, but I live in the 20th century, so I'm still in September.) A contemporary, Marcia Sward, died on Sunday, making me especially aware of the temporary nature of life. In June she was happily at her daughter-in-law's graduation from medical school, but on July 4 she began her bout with what would turn out to be terminal cancer. A close friend emailed that she "never wept, complained or looked back. She concentrated on enjoying what life was left and the friends around her." Wow! Marcia was the first female
executive director of the (national) Mathematical Association of America, and I saw her only twice a year. Yet it was important to me to talk to her over the phone while she was still alive. She told me happily that her first grandchild will be born this winter. Recently she has been director of a regional Audobon Society. Forgive me if this doesn't seem appropriate in a gardening email, but to me this week, it's relevant. Marcia Sward lived a good life, as my tomatoes and peppers are doing now. Marcia Sward reminds us to cherish life while we have it, in the garden and elsewhere.
Pat
Photography by Lesley Cecchi
About a Garden
Hi! I've been raising almost all of my family's vegetables year round for decades in a small back yard plot 12 miles from Manhattan with no poisons, chemicals or power machinery. When I was also raising my family and working full time, I allowed myself only a half hour a day. My health improved remarkably. It's easy and fun!
I began this garden in the spring of 1978, having contracted Myasthenia Gravis the previous November. I didn't know what was wrong with me then (I was diagnosed later that summer), but I know that when I attempted to get some exercise by walking, I often had to lie down on neighbors' front yards to gain the strength to come home even when I had walked less than one block, which would be safer. Taking the wise advice of a 12-year old, I started gardening. As I harvested the fresh organic vegetables that summer, my health improved. Within a couple of years, my strength increased remarkably. Eventually, I began biking. Now I can bike several miles, convinced that my strength will hold out as I need it. I have commuted by bike, weather permitting, for abut 15 years. Meanwhile, my husband's stamina increased too. He routinely leaves a car to be repaired five miles away and walks home.
Now that I am feeding only two, we have about 300 square feet with vegetables. The only vegetables we buy are potatoes and onions. I've raised them, but they take up too much space in our small yard. I also raise many flowers and fruit. In 1997 I was fruit self-sufficient form late May to late October, but since then the squirrels have challenged that lovely arrangement.
When I was raising vegetables for six, I had 1000 square feet of vegetables. I gave birth to two (humans), and in the early 1980's my husband and I became licensed emergency parents for teen-agers having difficulty with their parents. We often had two extras in our home, and we all six ate from the garden. Raising vegetables takes remarkably little time in the Garden State.
About half the years I've been gardening, I did not water with a hose. I never water my lawn, and it looks fine. Of course, I use a watering can for baby plants, either seeds or seedlings that started in my greenhouse window. I've never used a hose more than three times in one year. When I do, I water deeply, aiming the water in one direction for an hour at a time.
I learned this from the "old guys" who were still selling plants when I started gardening, the heritage of several generations of gardeners and sellers. Back then they were disappointed that their youngsters were "going to college and leaving the business." I also learned from my parents, whose fathers' raised abundant gardens amid successful careers. My earliest memories were of Victory Gardens, my parents' and others'. I learned lots form reading seed catalogs and books.
For several years I've had a growing email list of those who want to learn how to garden on a small plot in a metropolitan area and to be entertained by stories from my adventures. This blog will reach out to a wider audience, and includes some recipes and photographs form my garden. I plan to post some choice past emails and add others when the spirit moves me. As time permits, I will answer questions. There is much to be leaned, and everyone who gardens experiments. We can learn much form each other!
You don't have to know much to get started. Sweet-100 tomatoes just grow! They even volunteered in my front yard, where they get little sun and I've done nothing to improve the Montclair clay soil. I said to the first, "You stupid thing. Tomatoes can't grow there." but they were right and I was wrong. So I gave them a tomato cage and the great-grandchildren of those first pioneers grace my front lawn as I write. And they taste so much better than anything you can buy...
Pat
Photography by Lesley Cecchi
Labels: Intro
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
May Open Garden
Saturday was a beautiful day, despite predictions, and about 100 people came to our Open Gardens. I thought some of the questions asked there might interest the rest of you.Why do you still have a floating cover over your carrots?
To keep the bugs off. I usually use floating cover to keep things warm in cool weather, but the small carrot plants are eaten if I don't cover them. (I took it off Sunday. It was getting tight as the carrots grew against it. If I leave it on too long, the tops are singed in the heat.)
After you cut the brocolli, is that the end of that plant?
No, small flowerettes keep coming. I harvest them continually until after Thanksgiving. I throw away the ones in the summer because they are bitter, but in September they beco
me sweet again. Homegrown brocolli is much more sweet than the brocolli you buy in the store. I heard Marion Nestle on NPR this week saying that she discovered that it takes 10-14 days from the time brocolli is harvested in CA until it appears in a NYC store."But brocolli is brocolli!"To squelch the doubts that it could be THAT different, I shared some fresh-picked brocolli with some doubters, and they agreed that my brocolli was far better than any they had tasted before.Why do you leave the flowers on the tops of the collards and
me sweet again. Homegrown brocolli is much more sweet than the brocolli you buy in the store. I heard Marion Nestle on NPR this week saying that she discovered that it takes 10-14 days from the time brocolli is harvested in CA until it appears in a NYC store."But brocolli is brocolli!"To squelch the doubts that it could be THAT different, I shared some fresh-picked brocolli with some doubters, and they agreed that my brocolli was far better than any they had tasted before.Why do you leave the flowers on the tops of the collards and
kale?I have other things to do.
Besides I think they look pretty. (Several nodded that they agreed.) I might have added that they will self-seed and save effort later.How long does compost take?Less than a year. Much less sometimes, as little as two months. Once I put leaves and grass clippings in one
of these rotating barrels that I borrowed on Memorial Day. I turned it once a day, and at the end of a month I had good compost.
Do you turn your compost piles?
No, that lost its charm quickly. Also, adding manure to the compost lost its charm after a few years. For more than a decade I have brought only leaves, grass, and wood chips from off the site. No manure or chemicals. If you get manure from a local stable, be sure to compost it to destroy the bad things before you put it in the garden.
No, that lost its charm quickly. Also, adding manure to the compost lost its charm after a few years. For more than a decade I have brought only leaves, grass, and wood chips from off the site. No manure or chemicals. If you get manure from a local stable, be sure to compost it to destroy the bad things before you put it in the garden.Do you put egg shells in the compost?
Yes, I put all kitchen waste in the compost. We are vegetarians but not vegans, so it includes egg shells.
Yes, I put all kitchen waste in the compost. We are vegetarians but not vegans, so it includes egg shells.
I've heard that you shouldn't put oak leaves in the compost. Is that true?
Oak leaves take a long time to compost, so Fred tries not to pick them up. If he misses -- it's hard to see what is inside a bag -- I put them in
the compost, but often have to put them in a second heap after the
stuff around them has composted. They take longer.
Someone else said, "Oak leaves are like leather." An apt comment.There's a rabbit! It was looking at the group thoughtfully. Yes, it's a very sociable rabbit. It will come within a yard or two of me when I am still, and will let me walk quite close to it without running away.Does it have a name? My four-year-old neighbor first saw it on Easter, so we call it the Easter bunny.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Spring Planting
Spring Plantings 4/15/06
Whoopee! A delightful spring shower! Just what the garden needed. I was actually telling myself that if it didn't happen, I might get out my hose, which I have never used before until mid-July. Probably half the 28 seasons that I have gardened, I have not watered with a hose at all. In none of the other seasons have I used it more than 3 times. Incidentally, if you ever do hose your garden, be sure to do a thorough job so that the roots don't think the surface is a good place to grow. Water for at least an hour straight on or 3 hours if your spray is rotating.
This is now planting weather. Use your watering can in each hole before you plant and then to water down the newly planted plant. Its roots can't get any food from the air, so it's important to fill the air pockets around the roots with good tasty soil (from a root's point of view).
Now is a good time to plant out broccoli, cabbage (which I don't do because it takes too much space per plant), celery, parsley, pak choi, and kohlrabi, among others. If you don't have them around the house, you can buy seedlings. My favorite place is Bartlett's, which is on Grove Street north of Montclair before you get to Rt. 3, on your left. Fourteen members of the same family in four generations support themselves on 3.5 acres of land. Their greenhouses go back, back, back. If you get a family member, they know lots. Their hired help at the desk may not be as helpful.
Plocks is another family-based business with a huge outlet on Broad Street just north of where it intersects the G.S. Parkway. I'm not sure whether it is in Clifton or Bloomfield. They have everything.
There is another place on Center Street Nutley, not far east of the Parkway on your left. Yesterday, the health food store on Church St. Montclair was selling parsley and tomato plants. It's perfect timing for parsley, but allegedly a month early for tomatoes. My guess is that it would be safe to put them out now (we haven't had frost after this for several years), but I'm taking the Wall of Waters off my broccoli plants and putting them over tomatoes. They are full of water, which is a nuisance, and I might as well use them.
Incidentally, my broccoli that I planted under floating cover on March 11 is doing fine, but it isn't as big as the plants protected by WoWs. The latter were bigger all along, so this isn't definitive. My peas planted March 11 are a couple of inches high, and some of the Sugar Snaps planted later are peeking through.
It's always a good time for sowing lettuce seeds, but this may be better than most. You could also sow kohlrabi, chard, pak choi outside. It's a good time to sow carrot and parsnip seeds, but I don't recommend that for beginners. Root crops need a fine, friendly soil, which Montclair's clay surely is not. I suggest digging compost into your soil for three years before attempting root crops.
I also interplant corn and bean seeds under floating cover in mid-April. The early corn will then be available in July. Somehow the raccoons eat all the corn that comes ripe in August, but aren't corn-hungry in July. Okay. For years I've humored them by planting only early corn, eating it in July, and going to a math conference in August. The traditional "three sisters" are corn, beans, and squash, which grow well together and provide the basics for a vegetarian (native American, among others) diet. I don't put out squash until mid-May because it really does want only warm weather. Or so I think. Hmmm... I haven't tried yet to defy THAT conventional wisdom.
It's a good time for double digging if you haven't had that pleasure yet. John Jeavons told me that after your soil is good, it is better not to disturb it. However, after last year's troubles (nobody around here I know had a good garden last year), I've been raking in some compost and lime on the top. If you had wood fires this winter, their ashes are great as a cheap replacement for lime to raise the PH. We're at the end of the acid rain trip of the continent, and our Eastern soil tends to get too acid. So lime, wood ashes, or calcium pills (yes! a pharmacist friend gave me calcium pills like the ones he uses to raise the PH in his garden) are advisable.
If you need to know how far apart to place plants, consult John Jeavon's book HOW TO RAISE MORE VEGETABLES THAN YOU EVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE ON LESS LAND THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE. I just scatter seeds and later thin to an appropriate spacing.
Happy digging, planting and sowing!
Pat
Whoopee! A delightful spring shower! Just what the garden needed. I was actually telling myself that if it didn't happen, I might get out my hose, which I have never used before until mid-July. Probably half the 28 seasons that I have gardened, I have not watered with a hose at all. In none of the other seasons have I used it more than 3 times. Incidentally, if you ever do hose your garden, be sure to do a thorough job so that the roots don't think the surface is a good place to grow. Water for at least an hour straight on or 3 hours if your spray is rotating.
This is now planting weather. Use your watering can in each hole before you plant and then to water down the newly planted plant. Its roots can't get any food from the air, so it's important to fill the air pockets around the roots with good tasty soil (from a root's point of view).
Now is a good time to plant out broccoli, cabbage (which I don't do because it takes too much space per plant), celery, parsley, pak choi, and kohlrabi, among others. If you don't have them around the house, you can buy seedlings. My favorite place is Bartlett's, which is on Grove Street north of Montclair before you get to Rt. 3, on your left. Fourteen members of the same family in four generations support themselves on 3.5 acres of land. Their greenhouses go back, back, back. If you get a family member, they know lots. Their hired help at the desk may not be as helpful.
Plocks is another family-based business with a huge outlet on Broad Street just north of where it intersects the G.S. Parkway. I'm not sure whether it is in Clifton or Bloomfield. They have everything.
There is another place on Center Street Nutley, not far east of the Parkway on your left. Yesterday, the health food store on Church St. Montclair was selling parsley and tomato plants. It's perfect timing for parsley, but allegedly a month early for tomatoes. My guess is that it would be safe to put them out now (we haven't had frost after this for several years), but I'm taking the Wall of Waters off my broccoli plants and putting them over tomatoes. They are full of water, which is a nuisance, and I might as well use them.
Incidentally, my broccoli that I planted under floating cover on March 11 is doing fine, but it isn't as big as the plants protected by WoWs. The latter were bigger all along, so this isn't definitive. My peas planted March 11 are a couple of inches high, and some of the Sugar Snaps planted later are peeking through.
It's always a good time for sowing lettuce seeds, but this may be better than most. You could also sow kohlrabi, chard, pak choi outside. It's a good time to sow carrot and parsnip seeds, but I don't recommend that for beginners. Root crops need a fine, friendly soil, which Montclair's clay surely is not. I suggest digging compost into your soil for three years before attempting root crops.
I also interplant corn and bean seeds under floating cover in mid-April. The early corn will then be available in July. Somehow the raccoons eat all the corn that comes ripe in August, but aren't corn-hungry in July. Okay. For years I've humored them by planting only early corn, eating it in July, and going to a math conference in August. The traditional "three sisters" are corn, beans, and squash, which grow well together and provide the basics for a vegetarian (native American, among others) diet. I don't put out squash until mid-May because it really does want only warm weather. Or so I think. Hmmm... I haven't tried yet to defy THAT conventional wisdom.
It's a good time for double digging if you haven't had that pleasure yet. John Jeavons told me that after your soil is good, it is better not to disturb it. However, after last year's troubles (nobody around here I know had a good garden last year), I've been raking in some compost and lime on the top. If you had wood fires this winter, their ashes are great as a cheap replacement for lime to raise the PH. We're at the end of the acid rain trip of the continent, and our Eastern soil tends to get too acid. So lime, wood ashes, or calcium pills (yes! a pharmacist friend gave me calcium pills like the ones he uses to raise the PH in his garden) are advisable.
If you need to know how far apart to place plants, consult John Jeavon's book HOW TO RAISE MORE VEGETABLES THAN YOU EVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE ON LESS LAND THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE. I just scatter seeds and later thin to an appropriate spacing.
Happy digging, planting and sowing!
Pat
Labels: Spring Planting
Sunday, April 9, 2006
Composting Primer
Composting Primer 4/9/06
Composting and organic mulching are the keys to gardening without poisons and chemicals.
Mulching is easy. Just take grass clippings, leaves, or wood chips and put them around your plants. Grass clippings are friendliest to most vegetables, and my neighbors' landscapers are glad to give them to me because otherwise they have to pay for their disposal. An organic mulch will decay and add nutrients to the soil. Meanwhile, it keeps the weeds out and the moisture in. My mulch is a major reason I so rarely water my garden. Ruth Stout advocates using ONLY mulch for your garden's fertilizer. I don't feel I have enough space to completely abstain from compost, but I do love her book GARDENING WITHOUT WORK -- FOR THE BUSY, THE AGING, AND THE INDOLENT. I normally keep my vegetable garden mulched with others' grass clippings, which I pile no more than 4" high when they are fresh.
Composting is more subtle, but it's comforting to remember, "Compost happens." It's hard to go wrong. Leave organic matter alone for long enough, and it composts. There are caveats, of course.
Plastics take centuries, but you wouldn't think of putting them into your compost heap anyway. Styrofoam takes 80 years, the books say. I haven't checked it. Some people do worm composting in their kitchen, and that works well in Montclair, even in apartments. I haven't done that because outdoors is easier and always available to me. In the winter I cover the unsightly stuff with leaves, which I keep nearby.
My compost heap is primarily leaves, kitchen waste, and garden left-overs, both welcome (used plants) and unwelcome (weeds). The ideal compost heap integrates carbon and nitrogen as well as possible. I try to alternate at about 4" thick layers, but I never measure and don't worry if they are thinner or thicker.
Carbon-rich matter is dead, like autumn leaves. Fred brings me 100 bags of leaves each fall that others wastefully leave on their curbs. Silly Americans! Leaves alone take a long time to compost. My daughter in MA used to compost leaves from a condo property with eleven homes in a wire container and found that by the following July she could use use the partially decayed leaves as mulch under the shrubs. So the container was again available the following fall when she wanted to use it again. I call the carbon-rich matter "brown."
Nitrogen-rich matter composts fast and can stink if there isn't enough brown in with it. I use stuff from the kitchen and garden, and sometimes grass clippings that are too far gone to use as a mulch when Fred (or some other donor) brings them to me.
Alternating green and brown is the trick. It typically yields compost in this climate after a few summer months. Once I borrowed a barrel on its side strung up for easy turning (you may have see them, at least in advertisements) and filled it about equally with leaves and grass clipping on Memorial Day. Each day I turned the barrel once, and I had beautiful compost in 3 weeks.
I use the three-pile method of composting. I pile a heap as the material accumulates to 4-5 feet. Meanwhile, I'm taking from a second pile, and the third pile is sitting still, "cooking," as the jargon goes. When the second pile is gone and/or the first is too high for comfort, I change piles. I begin taking from the one that has cooked, leave the high pile to cook, and pile new stuff on the empty spot from which I have just taken finished compost. Commercial compost containers are available and look prettier.
You can use manure for the nitrogen-rich contribution ("green"). I did for a few years, but then it lost its charm. It helps compost heaps go fast, but it should NOT be used in your garden until it is composted.
Composting kills pathogens (in manure, etc.) and weed seeds. It gets quite hot. Some people have long thermometers to stick into the heap and see how hot it gets, but that never entertained me. Someone brought one to an Open Garden, asked permission to stick it into my "cooking" heap, and was pleased with the results. The thermometer rose as it should.
The ideal place for compost heaps is under trees, which is the least ideal place for gardening. The trees keep it cooler in the summer and minimizes evaporation. Some people water their compost heaps to keep them moist, but I've never done that and my compost heaps compost. Compost happens.
Some people buy "compost starters," but if you put some weeds and used plants in your heap, the bacteria on the roots serve as starters. That works fine for me.
Commercial compost is available, but home-compost is much cheaper. It also recycles, as we should all be doing. It saves your municipality lots of tax money in waste they are not picking up. Dick and Jean Roy put out only one garbage pail of garbage a year (two a year when they were raising their three children), and composting is crucial for that.
Happy composting!
Pat
Photography by Lesley Cecchi
Labels: Composting Primer
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