gardening

The Lazy Way to Cut Back Asparagus Plants

April 6, 2010

Burn ’em right in place…

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not actually endorsing this method. I’m simply stating that it is a very good way to rid yourself of a very massive amount of dead asparagus tops in short order.

No cutting.

No grunting

No hauling.

Perfect for me. You might want to read last year’s post on this garden chore. [Which I pretty much hate.] Why didn’t I think of this sooner? It’s like cutting out the middle man!

Also very dangerous and unpredictable.

But very effective. Provided I haven’t killed the plants. Guess I’ll have to wait and see on that one…

Assuming they turn out fine, I think I will add it to my annual repertoire. Just don’t tell Dave. He was quite upset with me.

Notes for next year’s burning:

Have hose hooked up and water ready.
Burn in the still air of morning. (*bonus is that neighbors and husband are also absent at this time.)
Stomp down combustible tops more thoroughly so that burning is more even and reaches the fat, soggy, hard-to-cut bottoms.
Have a wider angle lens on camera to allow for larger field of view in case grass starts on fire again.
Bring marshmallows.

My Favorite Way to Plant Potatoes

April 5, 2010

…With a bulb planter

While I like to pretend to know what I’m talking about, in this case, you must take my preachings with a grain of salt.

Or maybe even less.

As I’ve said before, I tend to cut corners on tasks that I don’t care for.

And one of those tasks is planting potatoes.

Truth be told, now that I’m writing about the third consecutive task that I don’t care for in the garden, I am starting to wonder if I really like gardening at all? Could it be possible that I’m only out there to escape questions like “Mom? Mom?… Mom?… ” To which I yell, WHAT? Only to hear: “Where is Morgan?”

How the Hell would I know where Morgan is?

Yes, the garden beckons…

I love the garden…

And when people say “But it’s so much work. Where do you find the time?”

I just laugh.

[But I still hate planting potatoes.]

So this is the epiphany I had a couple years ago.

Use a bulb planter! Seems to work great. Why dig a whole row when you only need to get the one spud down deep?

Oh, and also? Buy enough potatoes so that you don’t have to cut them up. It’s a pain. And I’ve heard that cut potatoes are more susceptible to rot. So why bother? Seed potatoes (from the grocery store) cost practically nothing. Just buy enough whole ones and pick out the smallest ones you can find.

Soooooo. Much. Easier.

Have I written about my red potatoes? The ones I planted from last year? Good grief. I can’t remember… OK, I just checked. And I didn’t. I think I’m losing it….

Anyway, remember the crazy red potatoes I joked about using for Meatless Monday Eight? No, I didn’t actually cook them, but I did plant them! In Mid-March, no less, due to our ridiculously early Spring here in Minnesota.

Never before have I been able to keep potatoes full circle–from planting to storage to planting again– so I am very excited. I’m a bit worried about how soft they were and how long the sprouts were, but I figure if they don’t produce, I will still have time to replace them.

And, once again, I will be able to proclaim that I made something out of garbage from the garden! You see, I rescued these withered beauties from the compost bucket, where Dave unceremoniously dumped them a few weeks ago.

I will keep you updated on their progress.

Provided I remember to do so…

World’s Smallest German Shorthair Pointer

July 9, 2009

Or is it the World’s Tallest Asparagus?

It’s really hard to show just how tall the asparagus really is. I suppose I should be in the shot, to show the human proportion, but then, you’d all see how gross I look. (But just so you know, it is way taller than 5’7″ me.)

Actually, I am really liking this camera. I can’t believe how good it makes me look:

All cameras should have this feature. Who needs wrinkle cream?

This, my friends, is called auto focus. And what was focused was the post behind me. I kind of like it that way. Who need skin-enhancing software — or wrinkle cream, for that matter, when there is the much cheaper out-of-focus option available?

Here is a better picture of a different post (that is falling down). The sweet dumpling squash planted on the right side of the fence is in the process of actually crawling and climbing onto the falling-down fence. It is soon to overtake the garlic, planted on the left, which needs to hurry up and mature. Otherwise, where it stands now, planted between the mutant asparagus and creeping squash, it doesn’t stand a chance.

I’m thinking that a new feature of this site could be WWYT (what were you thinking). That’s a nod to my soon-to-be-published friend Sheila, who got picked for a mention in David Pogue’s Twitter book. He liked her acronym. And so do I. But since adding a tab might take three years to figure out on wordpress, I’ll just randomly throw them in. Today’s is:

Strawberries: WWYT?

Why you ask? Because you have to be INSANE to try to grow strawberries in a home garden. It only makes you realize that you must be ingesting some pretty effing insane amounts of pesticides when you eat the spankin’ clean berries from the store. These are my strawberries. And I share them with the birds, the bugs, and Lord only knows what else. ( I cut them up, lest my family figure out that the other half of the berry they are eating was recently in the mouth of a chipmunk.)

Just Got Back from a Lovely Trip…

July 6, 2009

And my garden was a mess! Weeds everywhere, super dry. Pea plants that dogs have made a complete mess of didn’t come back while we were gone as I had hoped:

Have I talked about this before? How I seem to have the only vegetable-seeking dogs? I don’t know, maybe it’s the absence of squirrels around here. But ever since we had our first Viszla (or is it Vizsla? I can never remember), I have had this problem. If I were a more disciplined blogger, I would run around after my animals with my camera to catch them in the act and show you. But it seems I am never quite organized enough for that. You will just have to take my word for it.

When I built my garden, I put the fence around it to keep wild animals out. The reason I am so careful to close the gates behind me now, is to keep my dogs out. (Well, them and the chickens, too. But, Lola-as you may remember-killed all the chickens last year and they are not allowed to free-range anymore.) Anyway, the problem is, the fence is about 10 years old now and falling apart. Lola-the sociopath-has identified its weaknesses and now browses the garden at will. This week, it’s the peas. A few weeks before that, it was the asparagus. I have come to consider this normal behavior. No big deal. But then people come over and totally freak out about it. Can’t get over it. So I mention it here, as you may find it entertaining. Makes me wish I actually did chase them around all day. But with the remote to the shock collar instead of a camera…

So, I will probably pull most of the sugar snaps tomorrow and salvage what I can. I was also faced with collapsed arugula plants that had gone to seed. I pulled them up and will save the plants until they are dry and keep the seeds. (Which is so insanely easy. I finally figured it out after arugula was growing everywhere that I had thrown the old plants.). Besides that, I found that each of the hard-neck garlic plants had sprouted a scape. They are pretty, but I need to cut them off so the plant puts all its energy into producing a bulb instead of the seed head.

And, saving the worst for last: the CHIVE PLANTS! I might just dig those damn things up once and for all. Why, oh why, when you read about the virtues of chive plants, does no one tell you of the perils? Look closely at the picture below and see if you can spot the tiny black specks inside the faded flowers. Yes? Well, should you so much as brush up against one of those damned plants, thousands of hardy little seeds will fall to the ground all around the plant. And even if you can’t get things to grow in pots or well-tended rows, mark my words that by the first freeze, you will have hundreds of baby chive plants. (Yes, I do know that dead-heading prevents this problem, but come on!)

Go ahead, just see if you can pull one out. I seriously doubt it. They are almost as bad as that beautiful chamomile. Or didn’t I tell you about that stuff, either?

How Does Your Garden Grow?

April 26, 2009

Cool pictures of the same stalk of asparagus taken on days one through four. (And yes, that stalk is also included in the bundle we’ll be eating tonight, pictured below!) Now that we finally got some rain, I think I could go out hourly and take similar pictures of the asparagus bed. In fact in the heart of the growing season, I often pick the asparagus two times in a single day! Tonight I am picking what is ready (about 10 spears) and making risotto with it.

Most seeds are planted: radish, kale, lettuce, cilantro, arugula, spinach, swiss chard, peas, sugar snaps, onion sets, seed potatoes, parsnips, beets. I need to buy carrot and corn seed and I won’t plant bean seeds for another couple weeks.

Raspberries are weeded and growing. Another garden item of note were the 5 little clumplettes of garlic that have been on one side of a planter box for about 3 years. (I can’t even remember their genesis.) Yet they come up every year, which is more than I can say for the garlic I plant in the fall… And, since I needed the room this year, I dug them up and found perfect little individual garlic plants. I didn’t have room to plant them all seperately, so I replanted one bunch in a better place, and saved the rest for eating with our risotto tonight. Hopefully the plantings will make up for the LAME hard necks that didn’t come up so well this year. (Softnecks didn’t disappoint.)

And, I am heading out soon to pick my first Rhubarb. The question is what to do with it: rhubarb cake, pie or crisp? (That question was quickly answered by Morgan, my daughter: crisp!) I am probably jumping the gun a bit, as the stalks are still pretty short, but it seems just fine.

Such a fun time of year. I never stop being amazed by all the green colors of spring. And with this rain, hopefully the morels will soon follow. Last year was horrible for morels in Minnesota, so I’m looking for a bumper crop.