Jenmenke

Road Warrior

Garden

Will the Real First-Tomato-of-the-Season Please Stand Up

I feel like a loser. July 23rd and my first tomato of the season.

Maybe that’s not so bad. I think I was waiting into August one year… But who really knows for sure. I’d share my “garden journal” with you, but I’m too lazy to scan it. Suffice to say, it is hardly conclusive. It contains things like:

  • First mosquito bite of the season 4/17
  • 5/03: Cold wet and windy
  • Notes from ’04: Chickens ate and pecked everything

And other profound and critical bits of information.

This year, if you remember, I got my plants again from a local grower. They were not quite as stunning as in year’s past, but were every bit as intriguing: Blackcherry, Roman Candle, Green Grape, Potato Leaf, Green Zebra (old standby), Jubiliee, Greensilver, and… if I didn’t plant a Brandywine, I will be ticked off! Did I not plant a Brandywine??!

July 26th (the day I am writing this) is hardly the time to realize I forgot to plant my favorite tomato. Let’s table that discussion for now.

I finally picked a red tomato. It was the Blackcherry, which isn’t a CHERRY tomato at all:

I guess it’s hard to tell the size of these. They fit into the palm of your hand — exactly the size of a Grade A Extra Large Egg. And very pretty.

I’m excited for these to ripen, too. They’re called Roman Candle

I’m very vexed by this one, called Green Silver:

It’s all flopped over and too heavy for itself. Stunted, floppy, lame. Plus, an unripe tomato fell off it and rotted already. Bad Juju.

In general, I’m not too happy with the tomatoes this year. For all the hot weather we’ve had, it seems to me they should be bigger and more laden with fruit.

And, I’m not surprised at all to find the beginning of blight, with all the rain we’ve gotten. Inches and inches and inches of rain. Rain splatters the leaves with the dirt and causes leaf disease. From my perspective, life is too short to go through all the steps necessary to prevent blight. Believe me, I’ve tried.

You can remove the affected stems, but — trust me — it won’t stop the spread. It might slow it, but it won’t stop it. Some varieties are more susceptible. I don’t use chemicals, so I just live with it. Embrace the blight, I say. And leave it at that.

I am looking forward to gorging myself on tomatoes. Tomatoes with basil. Tomatoes with basil and fresh mozzarella. Tomatoes with basil and fresh mozzarella and avocado. Tomatoes with basil and fresh mozzarella and avocado and olive oil. Notice the increase in fat with each sentence? Only the last one reaches the true epiphany.

Feed me that (with balsamic vinegar, of course) and I will die happy.

Garlic Harvest!

Remember my Garlic, up and growing about a month early this year? This picture was taken on 5/13, almost a month ahead of ‘normal’ — if there is such a thing in Minnesota:

It didn’t seem to matter how ahead it was, I harvested it during the same week I harvested it last year, when I thought it was “so late!” Here is the progression. Hover over picture for the date it was taken:

(you may disregard last photo. Couldn’t help myself)

Crazy how that works.

All the rain this year really threw me for a loop when trying to decide the right time to dig it up. As a result, I think I waited a bit long for the softneck variety. I was waiting and waiting for the soil to dry out. When it finally did, I said to myself, “I will dig this garlic tomorrow. Yes. Tomorrow.”

And then it rained 3″ that night. And the cycle repeated itself a few times until this past Saturday when I said to myself, “The Hell with it, I will dig this wet garlic today. Yes. Today.”

And I did.

I let it dry during the day. And then — get this — I actually remembered to bring it in overnight in case of rain. Of course it did not rain, but only because I brought it in. (I firmly believe in the truth of this last statement.)

Even though softneck garlic tends to store better and longer than hardneck, I will probably try to eat the softneck first because I let it go so long in the ground. The pointy tips on some of them seem a bit soft — a bad sign for storage. They will live in our dark lower garage — a far cry from a root cellar, but the best I can do. And it seems to work alright.

I love garlic. It is probably one of my favorite things to grow. I have lost track of the varieties I grow, but I did add a new one to my repertoire called “Music.” I planted the first bulbs last fall. It looks exactly like the other hardneck, so even though I kept it separate during planting and harvesting (to see if I can tell the difference in taste), I inadvertently shuffled them all together in the drying rack. So all my meticulous planning and labeling was pointless.

Just like it always is.

I just hope that makes someone out there feel better.

Shallots are In! …I Mean Out!

I don’t know how I’ll ever use them all, but roughly calculating along the lines of grocery store prices, I could probably sell them and pay for my daughter’s college. Or better yet, something fun for my office.

Seriously. Why are shallots so damn expensive? They are an onion, for Pete’s sake!

Anyway, it has been years since I planted shallots. I remember getting ticked off trying to peel the paper thin skins and thinking, “never planting these again.” But that was before I started cooking so much. I bet I substitute onions for shallots more than anything else when following recipes. So now — provided they last in my lame root cellar lower garage, I should have enough to last me more than a year.

Successful shallot/onion/garlic storage is all about how you “cure” the bulbs. This is how NOT to do it:

how not to cure your shallots

By the way, if you’ve been following along (and I only just remembered this now), I forgot to plant these last fall and was worried they wouldn’t grow. Obviously, I was wrong. They are just fine. And given the price of the shallot sets you buy to plant, it might be worth not risking a Fall planting here in Minnesota, since harsh winters with little snow cover will kill Fall planted garlic and shallots.

For the record, I have tried planting garlic in the spring, after just that type of cataclysmic winter and it did not work. So the same can not be said for garlic. At least not for me, anyway.

Here is the progression. Hover over the photo to see the date:

To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure when to harvest. And given the frenetic nature of the past two months, I wasn’t inclined to research it, either. I decided to treat them like onions and garlic and wait until the stems were mostly flopping over and 50% or more brownish. It might have been a little long… Oh I don’t know…

What I DO know is that patch looked horrible and needed to be weeded. And low and behold the ground was also dry. In fact, I was just about to turn the sprinkler on for the first time all summer when I realized I didn’t want the shallots to get wet, so I dug them all up and set them out nicely to dry.

About six hours later, the big hailstorm started (video of the end of the storm is above in green “how not to cure shallots”). I took this picture when it was safe to go outside. I think this guy had melted by about 40% or so.

It wasn’t until the end of the storm that I realized that the shallots were not only in the rain, but under the overhang of the roof getting completely pummeled. At least they were now clean:

I’d like to say that was the last time they were rained on, but I would be lying. They were rained on, in approximately the same spot, two more times. I have no idea how that will affect their storage, but I will keep you posted.

This was the beautiful site after the big storm that destroyed farm fields, roofs, shattered windows and cleaned my shallots:

And that’s really what it looked like. The white balance on my camera was perfect. It was beautiful.

Our driveway, however, was not:

It’s Never Too Late To Start A Garden

Take it from one who knows.

Due to a serious lack of character, I never got around to planting my squash, melons and pumpkins in their dedicated patch. You may remember part of the reason why from the pictures I posted when writing about Strawberries back on June 4th. For your convenience, here is what the patch looked like on planting day:

Before

So, it goes without saying that it got stuck on the back burner for a while. As soon as Charlie was out of school and bored (his sister was not yet out), we went to town weeding:

During

It looked marvy.

After

Well, maybe not marvy, but then we got all that old fabric off of there (the best we could, read below) and took apart my old cold frame and then it looked marvy:

But then the rains started.

It rained all June. Buckets and buckets.

That square patch turned into a slimy, gooey, clay-ish, nightmare. While I waited for it to dry out a bit, I started the seeds in pots to get a “head start”.

I was also battling with Dave, who insisted I put down more landscape fabric to keep down the weeds. He had bought some, which — I admit — was really nice and thoughtful of him. (Have I told you that he has started being nice and thoughtful lately and it is really starting to worry me?)

But here’s the thing:

I am not convinced at all that landscape fabric keeps the weeds down in my pumpkin patch. I’ve had that patch for about 10 years now and I always have weeds. Here are my observations of fabric/plastic mulch:

  • It flaps around in the wind and rips. Because nothing is placed on top of the fabric and it takes a long time for the plants to grow big, wind (we have a lot of wind) catches the seams and rips it. Weeds take over where there are rips. So I have tried burying the seams with soil. Weeds grow there, too.
  • It disintegrates over time. I have tried both cheap and expensive fabrics and plastics. Given that they are exposed to the sunlight, they all fall apart after a while. The plastic rips to shreds and the fabric becomes a disconcerting mass of fibers that can’t be extracted from the soil underneath it. It’s like it’s part of the soil. It freaks me out.
  • I wonder about the contents of the fabrics and plastics and what they might be transferring to the soil, plants and ultimately, our food. Now, I know that sounds a little insane and over the top, but there are days that black surface gets hot enough to fry an egg on. We’ve all heard about BPA’s and the bad stuff in our food plastics. I can only imagine what is in the stuff that isn’t food grade? And how much of it is melting into the “organic” soil of my garden?

I tell all this to Dave, who just shakes his head in dismay. (I truly drive him crazy.) I will roll over to Dave if he pushes it, but we run out of time on that particular day and the topic is shelved for the following weekend. –Which passes in a blur of a pool day on Saturday with a friend and Charlie’s birthday the next.

So, as luck would have it, I finally planted the anemic and sad, waterlogged plants last Monday while I was alone and abandoned; Dave had taken the kids and some friends to the brand new outdoor Twins Stadium — with Champions Club tickets, no less (fodder for another post). For those of you keeping track, that was June 28th. In an area with only about 150 growing days in the best of times. And when you plant pumpkins and melons later than other plants, because they only tolerate warm soil (subtract 30 days), that usually puts me at a planting date of June 1 for those plants.

Nope. I’m almost 30 days past that. And pumpkins and squash take at least 100 days to reach maturity. I’m cutting it close. Oh well.

It looks pretty weird to have this gigantor area of dirt that isn’t all black and crumbly and beautiful. I guess that just shows what my dirt looks like after being covered up with landscape fabric for years, Dave!

Actually, it’s because we have clay soil and this area hasn’t been amended like the regular garden has. I don’t have enough compost to put over the entire patch, plus, it really was mostly covered by fabric for years. I usually only amend the individual planting holes. Which is what I did this year:

And, hopefully after being in some real dirt, instead of a rain-soggy pot, these sad yellow plants will perk up and take off.

It’s Never too late, I tell you. You’ll see.

When Will I Ever Learn?

I keep notes, I write this stupid blog. And still, I make the same mistakes over and over.

What, pray tell, was I thinking in March when I created this mess?

Actually, I know what I was thinking when I planted shelling peas two rows wide followed by sugar snap peas weeks later, three rows wide. I was thinking: “Shell peas are planted earlier than snap peas. Therefore, it shouldn’t be a problem telling them apart because the shelling peas will mature a lot faster. This will be great!”

Pea Fail.

I planted the shelling peas a full three weeks earlier than the sugar snap peas.

The sugar snap peas are ready now.

The shelling peas are ready now.

I can’t tell the damn difference!

See? Here is a side-by-side comparison:

Yes, yes, the pizza crust is somewhat easier to identify. The shelling pea compared to the sugar snap pea though? Not so much.

So we’ve got a big bowl of them on the counter. I offer them to guests and say, “Just bite into them. If the shell isn’t juicy and sweet, here, spit it into this bowl.”

But keep the peas!

And now, some useful gardening information:

How not to plant sugar snap peas.

Gardening books will tell you various things about planting peas. I don’t consult books very often anymore unless I have a real problem, but I am quite positive that I read this in a gardening book: it is a good idea to plant peas in wide rows (meaning instead of a single row of individual pea seeds, you plant 3 or 4 rows of pea seeds closely) since the vines will help hold each other up. I have done this religiously every year. Because:

1) it makes sense, and

2) it allows me to plant more peas in a smaller space.

It is 2010, I am writing this post so that I remember NEVER to follow that advice AGAIN!

Here is the mess planted that way:

Half are falling down (thanks to Lola, the pea-loving dog. She’s like a migrant dog, working her way from crop to crop as they ripen):

Now, I finally know better, because this year, in addition to planting them that way, because I had leftover sugar snap pea seeds, I stuck them in a single row along the back fence behind the garlic. You could say that was a bad idea too, since the tall vines now shade the garlic more than I’d like (let’s just forget that part for a minute), but I prefer to think of it as a surprise success.

Because, these peas, planted in a single row, are a dream to pick. Easy. Fast. Healthy. Not falling over. And in the end, I bet I’ll harvest more from them, too, since I can actually find them.

Lola can find them too. She camps outside the fence and pulls them through the fence holes. But at least that way, she can’t pull the whole vine down, which is another bonus.

All I have to do now, is to remember this for next year…ha!

Always Deadhead Your Peonies

Or Deadhead Your  Kids.

Just pick one and commit.

Kids are out of school. At our house that means that I attempt to include them in the household chores. Now, I could go on and on about the various angles I have taken over the years on this subject. But I can tell you this:

None of them are fool proof.

Not punishment, not reward. Not the very real threat of death.

The last couple years I have settled on a list. I write down about 4 or 5 things that need doing, that won’t require an hour of my time explaining, troubleshooting and overseeing. Let me tell you, that doesn’t leave much. They each get their own list which results in about 30 minutes of insane bickering. That is when an audio book and headphones comes in handy.

Anyway, I haven’t quite settled into the routine yet. I’m suffering a powerful lack of motivation. No motivation, even, to crack the whip with the kids. However I did manage, a couple days ago, to get them to go out back behind the barn to cut off the dead peonies. I armed them each with a set of pruners and a rubber tub. It took them less time than I thought it would have, and they dumped the trimmings into the compost pile. Of course, they were supposed to put the buckets away and I found one blown into the weeds and the other on top of my baby bush bean plants, but all in all, I was pretty happy.

That was two days ago.

Today, I went out back to deal with chickens and saw this.

Aside from the Weber, which has no business being there (same goes for the OxiClean bucket), the view made me gasp. My peonies! What happened?!

I asked the kids to “dead head” the peonies. Clip the dead flowers off. Make sure they weren’t drooping over the wall…

What in tarnation?

[Aside: my distinct Western Twang is on account of the book I am reading. I’m a “Method reader” — taking on the language and characteristics of my protagonists. Therefore today, I am Sarah Agnes Prine of Sarah’s Quilt. If you are new to this site, don’t worry, I’m almost done with the book. Then I’ll go back to my Minnesota accent.]

It was a bad year for peonies through and through.

It was a really bad year for my peonies.