spring

My Favorite Way to Plant Onions

April 3, 2010

…is not to start them from seed.

Let’s just say I’ve been at this vegetable garden thing for quite some time now. Characteristically, when I started out, I wanted to everything to be over-the-top-perfect-best-way-to-do-things-ever. And I researched and planned. Started everything from seed. Obsessed. Etc. Etc.

Which is odd.

Because reading that, you’d think I’m a perfectionist.

But I’m not.

Not even close. Suggest to Dave that I’m a perfectionist and he is likely to snort beer out his nose. I am not a perfectionist.

I can’t really explain it, except to maybe speculate that it’s because I’m competitive. As in: if I was going to garden, then dammit, I was going to have the best and be the best gardener ever. And in my neophyte gardening mind, that meant exotic varieties, all started from seed…

So what changed my mind?

What made me the quazi-lazy gardener I am today?

It was a lot of things, but if I were forced to pick just one thing. I would say it was the onions.

Yes. The onions.

Everyone has tasks in their life that they hate. Dread. Loathe. Drag their feet to complete.

For me, it was the onions. [That was before my asparagus had taken on such massive proportions.] Starting onions from seed is… INSANE. But start them from seed I did. Every damn year. Because you can only get gourmet onion varieties in seed form. Onions like Red Torpedo, Ailsa Craig and Borrettana Cipollini. Now those are compelling reasons to start onions from seed!

Or, one would think they were…

But here’s the thing. Just like you weigh the benefits of making traditional ciabatta bread versus my quick recipe, you weigh the benefits of Ailsa Craig against “Yellow Onion” sets available in my local grocery store. And, truth be told, to me it is pretty safe to say a yellow onion is a yellow onion.

Maybe it’s the soil. Or maybe I just hate planting onion seedlings to such a point that I can’t see beyond the agony and I’m rationalizing…

Very possible.

But until you, too, have transplanted itsy, bitsy, hair-like onion seedlings with ridiculously long root systems, spread out nicely on a shallow mound, ever-so-delicately handling the babes so as not to damage their fragile preciousness, then I don’t think you get to vote as to whether I’m rationalizing or not. [oh, how I wish I had pictures of this process from years ago]

It is the most abhorrent task imaginable. And in the end?

You get a yellow onion. No one but me ever knew the sublime, supposedly sweeter difference.

So, much as it pains me to admit it, I rolled over to buying onion sets from the grocery store in the following exotic varieties: Yellow Onion. White Onion. Red Onion. Thrilling, no?

I don’t know if my technique is anything ground breaking, but I buy a whole bunch and plant them only about an inch apart. That way, I get to eat my thinnings. First as green onions or scallions, then as ‘spring onions’ like you see at the farmer’s markets, and finally as my storage and freezing onions.

I like to think it’s brilliant. Or more to the point: I’m brilliant.

Tis the Season

March 15, 2010

…For Poop

Sorry for that sick photo, but you either a) get it, or b) don’t. If you don’t, then you obviously do not own a dog in a northern state that receives any appreciable snowfall.

I do.

And I am making my annual rounds on poop duty. It is a thankless job. If you miss the precious window of time where the poop is exposed from under the snow, yet still mostly frozen, all is lost. You will find yourself smearing and fighting waterlogged masses that you would far prefer not to ever have to even look at, much less try and pick up and dispose of.

So that’s what I did yesterday. That and pretty much take all my clothes off and run around in the Mid March Minnesota HEATWAVE! It was sunny, after five straight days of rain and dense fog, only to have the clouds vanish, the sun appear and the mercury soar to SIXTY! In the cities, I heard it got to 64 which was warmer than PHOENIX! Crazy talk.

I worked outside all day and felt my winter fat melt away.

I wish.

The fat. I wish the fat had melted away in one day. Wouldn’t that be awesome? I can’t be the only one who thinks things like that.

I cleaned the chicken coop out and let them outside for the first time since last December

I used the manure-laden shavings to fertilize the raspberries

And to feed the small rodent-chasing dog, known as Poopy. For not only does she like to poop in my house, but she clearly likes to eat it as well!

I spread the rest in the garden which is starting to emerge from under the snow and found these amazing living things!

Thyme and strawberry plants? Do strawberry plants typically look like this after a winter of subzero days and nights? I wouldn’t know because I just planted them last year…

And I found this mess staring at me. I know what I have to do soon and I don’t want to do it…. one of my most hated jobs of spring is cutting the old asparagus plants. In fact, it reminds me that this blog is a year old, because it was one of the first things I ever wrote about!

I raked driveway rock off the grass and nearly died from exhaustion. No photos.

I went in to the greenhouse, found the fat cat lolling in the sun (it was about 80 degrees in there)

Then noticed that my previously mentioned crispy rosemary plants had some glimmers of life (see the brighter green in the second pic)

So happy! Plus, the healthy ones are starting to bloom!

Note cat hair above and to the left of bloom and what looks like a human jennie hair directly behind bloom.

Never mind.

I’m sure we’ll get walloped with more snow and sub-zero temps, but this one day was pure heaven.

Spring?

March 4, 2010

Yes: when the mud starts flowing, it’s Spring.

It’s about time for a gardening post, don’cha think? Even though I’m getting my annual end-of-the-winter cold and feel pretty crappy, I was still chomping at the bit to go up to the barn and clean out the greenhouse yesterday. For crying out loud, the thermomulator said 40 degrees!

I didn’t get to it until early evening, right after I walked The Sociopath and before I started dinner. Given that my greenhouse is single-paned glass, I finally gave up heating it in the winter. Oh, I tried everything: bubble wrap insulation, Refletex (or whatever that silver bubble stuff is called), shrink wrapped film, plastic, passive heat (water filled 40 gallon drums painted black). You know I gave it my obsessive all.

And I also gave it most of my money.

Even with all my tricks, it still cost a lot to heat it, so I gave up.

Now, my program is to keep whatever I am trying to overwinter in the greenhouse until the sub-zero temps hit. Then I move everything into the garage, where it sits until the sub-zero temps are over — without light or water, at about 33-45 degrees.

I always screw it up.

This year, I failed to get the plants out of the greenhouse when the temps dipped into the -20 range. Amazingly, I only lost two plants, albeit two of my favorites — the two 5-foot tall upright rosemary plants. Boo. There is still a chance that they will come back, but as of yesterday, they were looking pretty crispy.

I’m sure I will continue to battle low temps as we wade our way through March. Why, just this morning it was only 7 degrees! I do have a small heater in there, but the energy miser is resistant to turning it up much above freezing.

[The energy miser is me. Just ask anyone who comes to my house during daylight hours during the winter.]

Anyway, I swept the greenhouse out, being that it is pretty much a giant home for the fat cats all winter long. They while the days away in the sun with my giant garden toad,

making a mess, whittling away the legs of the benches.

…Eventually these redwood posts will simply collapse. But that is probably better than scratching the other stuff in the barn, right?

It was fun to drag all the plants back into the sunshine and water them. Just look at the rosemary plants — all ready to bloom!

It amazes me that they make it through the dark winter in the barn. No light, no water. Even the transplants from last fall look pretty good. Nice and green.

Soon I’ll be filling the spaces with little pots of seedlings.

So that I can forget to water them and throw them away.

Nice to know that there is someone out there more disorganized than you, isn’t it?

Spring Garden Clean-Up: The Battle Begins

April 11, 2009

Since this is my first official garden entry, I would like to make one thing clear: I am no feel-good gardener. I am a realist. I admit having evolved to my present mind-set, but I have evolved out of the need to survive, just like any other species.

My gardening endeavors are a battle against the odds: Against nature. Against varmits. Against weeds. Against the dogs. Against my chickens. Against wild turkeys. Against insects. You get the point. But let me illustrate it quickly with one short story.

No day in the garden is complete without Buzz, eagerly waiting for a rock to be throw, that he may fetch it. — No day in the garden is complete without Buzz, eagerly waiting for a rock to be thrown, that he may fetch it.

When I first started my garden, back in the days of my naiveté, one of the first things I planted was asparagus – that vegetable of promise and patience. I did everything right. I read every book. I couldn’t wait. And when that first spear peeked out of the lovingly tended dirt, I was so excited! Then, within three days of the first spear’s emergence, there was a beetle crawling on it. Of course I had no idea what type of beetle it was at the time, but I quickly learned: it was a bona fide Asparagus Beetle! What you have no way of knowing is why that seemed impossible to me at the time. We live on 45 acres of land that had not been inhabited for over 20 years when we built our home here 15 years ago. We live at least 1/2 mile from any other home. We are surrounded by marsh, woods and farm land (no, none of it growing anything even close to asparagus). And yet, somehow, an asparagus beetle had found it’s way to my newborn patch of asparagus. This was foreshadowing, of my future gardening drama, at its finest.

And today, I continue the fight, with eyes wide open. Yesterday marked our first truly beautiful Minnesota day (which I define as one with winds less than 50mph), and I took the first step of the dreaded gardening season: cleaning the asparagus patch. The only difference that marks this year from any other, is that I somehow managed to do it before the emergence of the first spear, allowing me to walk around without crushing the priceless stalks of early spring. No, I am not stupid enough to believe that I am turning over a new leaf. I was just lucky.

And despite my yearning for that first meal of freshly grown asparagus, I know that within 2 weeks of daily meals, I will be giving it away by the rounded armload to anyone who happens to drive down our long and dusty driveway. That, my friend, is one of the harsh realities of gardening. There is no such thing as moderation.

Burn Baby Burn. (No room in compost for dead tops)