First Harvest of the Season

Yay! Love the sound of those words. It's not much but I grew it all myself without pesticides and just a little bit of miracle gro. Added to last night's iceberg salad were: Some small leaves of swiss chard (Lucillus) which added a juicy /salty crunch, edible chrysanthemum (shungiku) which was pleasantly tangy, one Borage leaf which tasted ok but was a little too hairy for inexperienced palates, and some arugula. I have never tasted arugula before but I read alot about it on the foodie blogs. Trendy Italians eat it so it hast to be good , right? Arugula is probably the most disgusting salad ingredient I ever had the displeasure of tasting. I dont know why people eat it when there are so many other leafy green things you can put in a salad. It gives a stange and strong off-flavor to everything it touches and even after you swallow it it's not really gone. Oh well. Now I know.

The Goose Whisperer

A small flock of rather fat geese had made themselves quite at home under the shade of our street tree this morning; they didn't even rise from their siesta when our minivan arrived back from a morning's worth of grocery shopping. While fish sticks and melting popsicles amalgamated in the hot van, my oldest girl just had to see just how tame those birds are. It was a mutually beneficial exchange, because you have no idea how many bags of moldy bread heels I have been hoarding in the back of the breadbox for just such an occasion. I wonder how foie gras fattened on moldy bagels and stale tostitos tastes? It would be so easy....

Garden update

Today I planted the last 3 bags from Tom Wagner's potato sampler, a little late I know, but I had to find space. Also got 10 stalks of Maize Morado into the ground which were started in cells about a month ago, and I transplanted 8 varieties of lettuce, among them were several red leaf types, a red romaine, Australian yellow leaf and Forellenschluss. Also got a 6 pack of sunberries I started from seed into the ground. These past few days have been a gardener's dream weatherwise. Tomorrow I hope to turn over the rest of the corn beds and get those cucurbits into the ground.

Busy Outside

It got up to 82 degrees today! and only 4 days ago things were freezing outside. That's Michigan for ya. Today after the older 4 kids left for school, my youngest and I got busy in the garden. We planted seven kinds of beans: Dragon's tongue, purple queen, golden wax (all bush varieties), and purple podded pole, roma pole, kentucky wonder pole, and a special one called Soisson pole beans, which came from a Canadian seed trader. Soissons are a dry bean that is hard to come by (I only obtained seven seeds) and are supposed to have exceptional flavor and and are exclusive to a particular region of France. Can't wait to see how these do. My little helper kept dumping whole buckets of water onto the newly sown seeds, washing them out of their carefully laid out pattern and driving me a little cuckoo. I also planted some silver queen and burgundy okra. In the cool of the evening, I replanted some of the tomato plants. I still had some green zebras, one brandywine (yay!), one hilbilly, two fantom du laos, a kelloggs breakfast with regular leaves and a kelloggs breakfast with potato leaves, both from the same seed pack (c/o wintersown.org), so we'll see what kind of crosses we ended up with. It got dark before I could plant out the rest but since tomorrow is supposed to be clear and in the 80's, I probably won't get to them until the cool of the evening. Oh- and I also put down clear plastic on some of the beds, to heat them up in preparation for corn and cucurbits. Gardening is fun!

Cucurbits on Standby

Now that the last of the tomato plants that weren't killed last Monday are looking completely dead from the past two nights of major frost, it is time to move on to see what else I can kill. I did learn some valuable lessons from these late frosts, don't get me wrong. First, that I should always subtract 5 degrees from any AccuWeather overnight low forecast for my zip code, to get the *actual* overnight low air temperature for my backyard (or maybe I should just follow their Ann Arbor forcast). Secondly, using upside-down plastic flower pots as a frost protection does NOT work in the least, but using old plastic sheeting that new mattresses are packaged in propped up by old lilac branches and held in place by any available weighted object, I was surprised to find actually does keep eggplant seedlings from freezing solid on a May 17 Michigan frost. Thirdly, that I am now more determined than ever to find a way to rip out those stupid bushes along the south wall of the house and use that sheltered yet sunny area for tomatoes and tender veggies next year.

I have a healthy flat and a half of various cucumbers, squashes and melons nicely sprouted in their peat pots, ready for transplanting. I want to do it this week, but looking at the 15 day forecast, about every 4th day there are forcasted overnight temperatures in the low 4o's. What to do...I think I'll put down clear plastic to warm the soil for a few days, hold my breath, and then plant them out. Looking at the roots growing through the pots, I'd think that they are more ready for planting out than I am. Just a few more days, guys!

What stupid looks like

No Bolivian Rainbow peppers this year, likewise for the Danubiana eggplant we are 0 for 3 ---both varieties are in the seed trials...Sory Dave!

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This Casper eggplant was getting ready to flower...see the bud? I planted its seed in February.

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9 out of 10 tomatoes in this bed bit the dust, except for this lone Green Giant, which was oddly unscathed.

A glimmer of hope: Instead of pulling these up right away, I think I'll leave this White Beauty and Green Zebra in the ground... maybe they will regenerate from that last sucker branch near the ground that is without damage. Maybe they might even set fruit???

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And this Sweet Cream pepper, another of Dave's trial varieties appeared to have almost no damage. Surprisingly, the peppers fared much better than the tom's and eggplants.

Well, let's try to turn this into something positive for the future. The obvious new rule of thumb: "Cover the plants whenever the forcast overnight low is 40 degrees or less, no matter what." Aside from that, hopefully the seed saved from the plants that didn't die will inherit the hardiness of the parent, and I will be on my way to developing my own frost-resistant tomato strains. There. I feel better already.

Mostly Frozen

The weather forcast last night was for 37 degrees, with a "frost advisory" in low-laying areas. I did not think too much of it, because in my own past gardening experience, a forcast like that had never been a major problem. However, this new house must be in a microclimate because this morning all the peppers, eggplants and most of the tomato plants I planted out last week were not just frosted, but frozen solid! I couldn't believe it. The garden hose even had ice in it! It looks like a complete loss. I am devastated, because those plants are unusual heirloom varieties I nurtured from seed since mid-March, and I don't have extra seedlings for most of them. I'm afraid to go back outside to look at the damage....
I'm kicking myself because I have enough plastic sheeting downstairs to have made nice cozy tents over all those beds...why didn't I? I've got no one to blame but myself.
The extra plants still sitting in flats on the porch are fine though.
I'm so glad I did not plant out the squash, melons and beans yet.

Filling the Raised Beds

The view from my bedroom window provides a nice overview of the garden. It took Pakman and Weatherboy along with Junior Gardener 2 whole days to move the 8 yards of topsoil/compost from the driveway to the garden. Whew I get tired just thinking about them. Those boxes are only 2x6 framing, now I'm thinking I should have spent the extra money for 2x8's. But overall I'm very pleased with how the project is turning out. The yard slopes fairly significantly to the rear and to the left, so those beds, especially the rear ones, are actually level, but are all at different altitudes, so from this angle (and almost every angle) they look all cattywompus. That white pole is for a volleyball net (remember this was nothing but lawn about 8 days ago), the massively cemented base for it fell smack dab on the centerline of this garden rectangle, purely by coincidence. I was going to leave the pole there and make it as a bean trellis,



then I thought it needed a flag with a picture of a tomato and a corn cob on it, but I ultimately decided to take it out and plant marigolds there. The long dirt row to the right without sideboards is going to be planted with Tom Wagner's potato sampler this year~much more on that later. The 10'x15' unmulched area at the rear will be for corn, mostly. It's very dense clay and in need of lots of amendments. And no I didn't loosen the native soil in each box before having the topsoil dumped in. I'm sure the plants, for the most part, will do just fine.

Pray for an Epidemic

Apparently, the school board here has ordered the entire district closed Monday and Tuesday due to swine flu. However, according to the pre-recorded phone call this morning, my eldest will be thrilled to know that A.P. exams will continue on schedule, and students will be admitted "provided they are not showing any flu symptoms", whatever that means. Looks like the weather will cooperate for a lovely unexpected vacation for everyone else. My 10th-grader did for a fleeting moment feel genuine sorrow for the kid who got the flu who prompted this drastic district-wide measure, but don't worry, she quickly got over it.

On the garden front, this week I arranged and leveled all 21 raised beds, dug in170 linear ft. of plastic edging, laid landscape fabric, and spoke words of encouragement and adulation as Pakman and Junior Gardener went back and forth moving 5 yards of cypress mulch from driveway to garden. And tomorrow morning 8 yards of topsoil/compost is being delivered! That means I can have plants in the ground by tomorrow night! I am feeling a little light-headed....

My eldest has taken our only functioning digital camera with him to Anaheim on Tuesday, which is why I have no spectacular mulch photos to post. He is due back tonight, so get ready.