Twisty & Rooty

Two months of gardening and finally the results are starting to show. This week our radishes have started to reach the point where at least some needed to be pulled. In fact they should have come out a week ago or more but I thought leaving them in a little longer might let them grow bigger... plumper... rounder. Unfortunately that's not what they had in mind. They decided instead to stay long and narrow. Then they decide to get all twisty and rooty looking.

But more is happening than twisty radishes. Our peas have started to finally flower. This means we'll see some peas in the next week or two. We won't have as many as some of the sunnier gardens, which by the way have had peas for a few weeks. Our's are taller, their's are making peas.

Our original planting of lettuce had almost all been eaten by some critter, but for two of our original plantings. those two are doing well despite the loss of so many of their family members to the great beast. We replaced  much of that lettuce with cheater's lettuce. Cheater's lettuce because we bought them already half grown and then we planted them in place of the fallen soldiers. I almost feel guilty wanting to pluck leaves from any of the non original heads, but I'm going to need something to eat with those twisty radishes.

Last night I once again thinned the beets. It was pretty obvious that some were doing far better than others. So I made the command decision to pull about a half dozen to a dozen wimpy beets. I took them home, cleaned up the leaves and steamed them and served them up with a little butter and salt. Meg and I loved them. Annie, not so much.

Last night also included the addition of two locations of cantaloupe, but I'm not convinced we'll have any luck with those. In August at our local farmers market you can get locally grown musk melons. Have you ever had a musk melon? It looks a lot like a cantaloupe, but it's larger and has pronounced grooves, almost like a pumpkin. Anyway, these locally grown musk melons are a personal fave of mine. I have to buy two because I know I'll eat the first one when I get back to the house. The other is for later on when I wish I had another and lo and behold there's another right there.

We added a couple more herbs to our herb garden last night. We had basil already, but decided to get a second different variety to mix it up. Then I saw some lemon thyme and that sounded good to me... so in it went. I have to report that Meg's cilantro that she planted recently is starting to grow. I actually tore off a leaf the other day and ate it, just to make sure it was the cilantro and not a weed.

Speaking of weeds... if weeds were edible we would be amazing weed farmers. We grow more weeds than we do vegetables. I guess that's the reality of it all anyway, right? I mean the world is covered in things that grow and perhaps its edible to something but most of it isn't edible for us and we call them weeds. Weeds have played a part in our history for as long as we've maintained cultivated land. According to the book of genesis, after the serpent convinced Eve and then Eve convinced Adam to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God drops this little nugget on them:

"Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground"

Oh, that crafty little serpent, tricksey he is.

A Mental Picture

It would be great to include some lovely photos of the progress our garden has seen. Unfortunately our photographer hasn't been doing her job to get us photos. Maybe I can get Meg to have a little talk with her and encourage her to get some updated shots of the space. I feel overdue on an entry into the blog and would really love to show you what the garden looks like, but instead I'm going to do my best to paint you a mental picture.

To start you off you need to envision our space, which is approximately 10'x15'. There is a light blue colored box sorta centered in our garden. It's approximately 3'x5' and 8 inches tall. In the corner of this box is a chive plant that we acquired with the space. It has grown quite tall and is dotted with purple flowers that are starting to die and fall off... possibly due to all the recent rain. The rest of the box is filled with single plantings of myriad herbs, including basil, oregano, rosemary, sage and thyme. There were some cilantro seeds planted but we haven't confirmed any growth there as of yet.

Out side the box towards the fence we have some recently planted cucumber sprouts, then some long ago planted beets which are in need of some thinning. Then there's a row of peppers looking like they need some nutrition. Our carrots come next and we have very few of these... most likely due to our overzealous weeding when the the carrots were first breaking ground. No one told us they would look so much like the grass we were pulling. Against the fence our peas are climbing and a few have even surpassed the top and will soon latch onto the bottom of Annie's crib, which we installed a few weeks ago in anticipation of these little climbers needing more vertical space to climb than that 18" fence.

Outside the fence is a row of asparagus playing volley ball with the peas. The asparagus once looked exactly like what you might purchase in the store, but have long since grown into ugly weedy looking shrubs in need of a good haircut, which is sorta the point when starting asparagus. You let it grow tall and weedy then cut it all back to the ground... or let it fall back to the earth. Next year the growth will be thicker and the following year thicker still. One needs patience while waiting to reap the rewards of growing asparagus. For about two feet beyond the asparagus is the flower bed with our bee attracting flowers just starting to pop up from the earth. In this same area I've transplanted from another garden a small raspberry shrub and a couple of strawberry plants that I found invading the walkway outside a neighboring garden. The raspberry has taken quite well, but the strawbs are struggling.

On the other side of the box you'll see two rows of radishes. Originally one row, we created a second row as we thinned the first row. I'm happy to say that our radishes are doing quite well and we even picked one yesterday and sliced it up and ate it. It was a bit small but delicious. I ate a second one later in the afternoon. Beyond the radishes is a hodgepodge of recently planted young lettuce and  brussell sprouts, a transplanted poor man's onion, and some seeds were planted for eggplant and butternut squash.

We've also recently added 6 tomato plants and 4 zucchini plants along the back side adjacent to the walkway. The tomatoes, like the peppers need some nutrition. But the zucchini's look quite happy in their new home.

A final note: Due to an abandoned garden we have recently acquired some more space. I started working the ground in that space yesterday. I really dig the earth... literally and figuratively.

A Crop of Characters

In a community garden its not just plants that grow. Friendships can flourish. Acquaintanceship blooms. Stories, advice & news is shared and knowledge grows out of conversations with the crop of characters you meet within the community.

In our community we know some of these characters better than others, but they all make time in the garden more interesting and they bring a wealth of knowledge of things both garden and non garden related.

Mary & Rob are more than garden neighbors they are literally neighbors in Newburyport's south end. Meg had met Mary online, then we discovered we were neighbors and now we see each other at the garden. Meg and Mary chat the minutes away while Rob toils in his garden dreaming about sailing on a beautiful day and pondering his weekly chore of mowing the lawn.

Then there's the former Newburyport city councilor who is also an avid gardener. I see him occasionally and he almost always shares some nugget of advice whether he realizes that's what he's doing or not.

We have a pair of Jane's, both friendly and clearly better gardeners than us. Their gardens are better organized and more productive than our own... makes us wonder what we are doing wrong.

Then there's Patty. She's like the mayor of our community. She keeps us all informed on the goings on around the garden by way of regular news letter. Her advice has helped us more times than I can recall. She advises us all of what we aren't allowed to grow due to certain natural problems that we are trying to avoid. This year it's no beans due to a certain beetle we're trying to be rid of.

The twin brother to the husband of another friend of ours has a garden just around the corner from our own. He and his twin look so much alike I never know if I'm talking to the husband of our friend or his brother. Of course now that I know better I'll be able to call him by name when I say hello.

Chuck, who I like to think of as the Roy Orbison of our garden, not only because he resembles a young Roy Orbison, but because like the legend who was himself a genius of his art, Chuck seems to know the answer to any question I have. His garden is full of things I've never heard of and he gladly shares his over grown plants with me. We have a raspberry shrub and something he calls a poor man's onion now growing in our garden that came directly from Chuck's garden.

Joe is another regular around the garden and I always enjoy chatting with him. He's recently added a couple of children's pin wheels to his garden to attempt to keep the critter's away from his broccoli and we intend to add a few as well as we believe our radishes and lettuce have been falling victim to some mammalian demon. Thanks for the idea Joe.

Annette is a member of the bee committee as is Meg. We see her and her husband, whose name I can't recall, not only in the garden but recently around town... in the grocery store etc. Lovely people... just nice to chat with. Always friendly.

We have some pirates in our garden... or at least they like to fly the jolly roger . They came late but their garden already looks great. Their little drawings on the wood frame that surrounds their garden depicts images of the plants that will grow in rows aligned with those images.

Deb is the Queen Bee of the bee committee and like Chuck she seems to know a lot about gardening. Not a shy woman, she seems fearless as she works around those bees. Reaching into an abandoned garden to pluck a sample leaf and eating it while offering one to me and explaining what it is, she has New England written all over her and yet we'll lose her this year to the west coast as she plans a move.

Meesh, whose name isn't short for something else, looks like she just left a 1970's commune and I mean that in the kindest and somewhat enviable way. She is nature woman embodied. I think her car was also a loaner from the commune.. it struggles to keep running but she knows how to treat it and she knows how to grow a garden. I'd like to be a fly on the wall of her life.. she is by far the most interesting yet mysterious person in the community.

Our immediate garden neighbor Eileen is a former regular of the tea house and I always see her and her husband with their children walking around town. Like us they are first timers here in the community. The garden they acquired is flush with strawberry plants as is our neighbor on our other side... who for some reason hasn't shown up since we started gardening in April. We wonder if the ants will eat all of their strawberries before they realize how many are already ripe. Perhaps we'll have to eat a few if they don't show up soon.

There are others we've yet to meet and some we know but but haven't really seen around the garden, but with the last frost behind us the real gardening is about to start happening and I look forward to our meet and greets throughout the coming weeks and months.

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Two weeks ago our garden was starting to flourish. The peas, radishes, beets & lettuce all broke ground. Last weekend we decided to thin out the beets and radishes, as they were in clusters that would have probably choked off any successful growth. Then again... what do we know, we've never gardened before, perhaps all would have been fine. Following the thinning we had several days of colder rainier weather and i'm thinking we may have lost much of the crop. (crop... sounds like it's supposed to be fields of beets & radishes right... you can laugh at me... I'm laughing at me too.)

In a completely separate occurrence our lettuce has all disappeared.   Was it something we did? Was it a little critter? Was it all the rain? We're going to try again on the lettuce.

The good news is that our peas our doing great and our asparagus has actually started growing. We have about 4 thin spears ranging from 1" to 8" tall. Our asparagus will grow into 3-6 foot tall ugly weedy looking things that we'll ultimately let die into the same spot so that they will provide us with a more significant crop next year. We'll most likely do the same thing next year and then the following year we should start getting asparagus for eating.

Moving Mountains

When first moving mountains one will approach with gusto and determination to tackle the mountain with great strength and power. But mountains have their own pace at which they will allow you to move them. You can throw yourself into the task with all the strength you can muster and that mountain will not move any faster than it wants to. You on the other hand will tire long before the mountain gives in and accepts the new location you want it to be.

Granted, the mountain that taught me this lesson was nothing more than the remnant wood chips that once sat in a pile adjacent to the parking lot of our garden. But even that small spread of wood chips which had come to settle quite content, lay undaunted to all my sweat and might.

Tired from digging in with my strength, I stumbled to my water, removed my heavy shirt, took a few breaths and changed my approach. It was no longer my intention to move this mountain but to gently coax it to move just a little closer to our garden so that it might have a better view of all that the little valley below had to offer. Gentle relaxed sweeps of alternating rakes over an hour seemed to work much better than my original plan of knocking this task out in 10-15 minutes with brute strength. And I'm the wiser man as recompense.

the bee yard.

“I hadn't been out to the hives before, so to start off she gave me a lesson in what she called 'bee yard etiquette'. She reminded me that the world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don't be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don't be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don't swat. Don't even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee's temper. Act like you know what you're doing, even if you don't.

 Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.” 

{Sue Monk - The Secret Life of Bees}

One of the lovely things at New Eden Garden (among all the other lovely things) is the feeling of community. In this delightful community of earth and vegetables and dirt and worms we are a team. With many committees that need tending just like our plots, I have joined the Bee Committee. I've always been fascinated with bees, you know, being a queen bee myself. The bees have arrived and been "installed" along with the queen. While I wasn't able to be present for the actual install on Saturday, a few days passed and Monday evening,  the hives needed to be checked to see if the Queen had been released. She arrived as most queens do in her own little box, I have come to learn that at the open end of the box is sweetness, candy for all intents and purposes for her future subjects hopefully, to nibble on while getting used to her pheromones and vise versa. Basically they eat this candy wall until it no longer exists and the Queen is released from her box. Hopefully as I type this, this act has happened and she is busy being entertained by her subjects while requesting tea and cake and enjoying a mani/pedi. Oh the life of a Queen.

Well we couldn't see the Queen on Monday, too many bees about that box. We hope it's a good thing but one can never tell. We don't want anarchy. Sugar syrup - made by Annette, was placed in each box to feed the bees. Our fearless leader Deb donned in her bee armor - soon to be the latest fashion craze - opened those boxes without breaking a sweat. I was impressed. New frames of bees wax were installed so our bees can start doing what bees do. Amazing the jobs each bee has - male drones only role is to mate with the queen, worker bees (all female, no surprise there) tend to the queen, build the comb in which honey is stored and eggs laid by the queen, tend  young drones and defend the colony. Exhausting. The foragers scout out the pollen and nectar. Talk about busy bees.

This bee journey is so fascinating and I am so excited to be a part of it. There is much to learn. Our next visit to check on the Queen we will use smoke to keep this gang calm and sedated. Let's hope the Queen has arrived and is accepted by all. 

I wonder is she's wearing a fabulous hat?

Rainy Day Dreams

On a rainy day like today, if I can't work in the garden I can always transfer the garden related ideas I have onto paper (or into a CAD file). The above is a rain water collector that I've been thinking about.

In our garden we don't have the luxury of a convenient roof to collect water from. The idea of this rain water collector is that it can collect rain via the half barrel on top and the water gets passed into the two lower barrels. It's a reasonably sleek design that holds up to approx 130 gallons of water.

I'm not sure if I'll ever get to actually build one of these.. but in my mind it's a reasonably low budget, fairly simple to build rain water system.

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Slept on this design and discovered three flaws overnight in my dreams:

1. The relatively open top design is a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Need to look into that.
2. The structure may be attractive to kids wanting something to climb on. I should add stabilizing features or plan on permanently fixing in place via cement.
3. The pipes between barrels currently force this design to require building  around the barrels while assembling them (or after) and once assembled couldn't easily be disassembled. Pipes out the back side of the middle barrel down to the lower barrel would be a better design. 

See the updated design here: http://itsonlydirt.blogspot.com/p/cad-files.html