Open Garden report and homecoming

The Open Garden on July 10 was a glorious morning. Many new faces had found us from the STAR LEDGER article the day before. There were many questions, but three stand out 11 days later.

What is the soap for? "Irish Spring soap is there to keep away deer. I had one terrible morning last year, and I dug around for what to do. Then Fred went out and bought me an 8-pack, which I put around the garden."

"Does it work?"
"I've not had any deer since, and they are still in Brookdale Park. They've been seen in my front yard." Last week I visited a cousin who is a professor emeritus of biology and he insists that Irish Spring soap deterring deer is just a myth. However, it seems to work for me.

"What about the chemicals others put on the lawns whose grass clippings mulch your vegetable garden?"

"I live in metropolitan New York on planet Earth. Nothing is pure. However, by the time the chemicals sink into the neighbors' lawns, and the grass is cut, and whatever is left goes into my soil, only a bit of which comes up in the vegetables, I think I'm getting much purer food than anything you could buy. The mulch keeps away the weeds, keeps the moisture in the earth by preventing evaporation, and when it decays, it nourishes the garden."

"What is that plant?"
"That's an anti-woodchuck plant. It deters woodchucks."
"Does it work?"
"Maybe somewhat. I've done several things to deter woodchucks this year and have much less damage than last year."
However, I now know its sap stings human skin painfully, and causes a red rash. It is very invasive, but easy to pull in its infancy. I'm cautiously optimistic, but not as enthusiastic as I am about Irish Spring soap.

"What is its name?"
"I don't know its grown-up name. I call it the anti-woodchuck plant."
"It's euphorbia," said Alphonso, a newcomer. Whoopee! A possible grown-up name! I haven't checked it, but that gives those of you who are curious a name to investigate on the web and elsewhere.

Since I arrived home this past Sunday, I have had three woodchuck sightings in my back yard, so it isn't perfect in its efforts, but it may be worth the trouble. One of my collards plant is nibbled suspiciously, and one young zucchini has had most of its leaves eaten. What self-respecting mammal would stoop to ZUCCHINI leaves? Ugh! However, the plant had a blossom this morning, so it hasn't given up.

My first two zucchini plants died this week, earlier than usual, but they also bore fruit much earlier than usual, so I don't fret about that. I still have two younger ones still bearing, and the two I started in June that I hope will bear into the fall.

Monday morning, two days after the open garden, I left for a vacation in New England, culminating in a wonderful wedding. My five-year-old grandson and his parents stopped in here Saturday night on
their way home to Virginia. It was my first opportunity to show Nathaniel my summer garden, and his response to tomato picking was inspiring. The small tomatoes have become somewhat overwhelming, but he showed me how to enjoy it. Each evening since, I have picked a large container of small
tomatoes (about four cups), which serve as our "fruit" these days.

We're between raspberry seasons except for a few stragglers. It's time to cut out the old bushes, a daunting task. I've been spending as much "cool" time as I can cutting them back. I put two (used) lawn bags of raspberry bushes on the curb today that the collectors picked up. I don't choose to compost raspberry bushes, although I'm pretty fanatic about other organic waste.

I'm feeling lawn-clipping-deprived this week. My garden would like more mulch. But I can understand why others would not want to mow their lawns in this season; mine isn't growing very fast either. It has some brown spots, but I'm sure they will green up when the heat is less intense and the rain a bit more abundant. Weren't those thunder storms this week welcome?!

Pat

Read More......

Watering lawns, gardens, and trees

As I biked out to my Sunday morning activities today, I was saddened to see sprinklers on several lawns. There is no faster way to ruin a lawn than to water it when the sun is shining. If we should have a water shortage, the problems are compounded. The easiest way to improve your lawn is to never water it.

I have never watered my lawn in 35 years. Its roots go down deep, and when we have a drought, it stays slightly green after the watered lawns go completely brown during the watering ban. It greens up much faster than the others when the rains return. If you MUST water your lawn (because it's become dependent on your attention), do so ONLY in the evening, when the water goes into the soil and not the atmosphere.

Gardens are a different matter. I haven't used a hose on my garden for three years, but I just placed mine to use this evening on newly bought seedlings that I planted this week. They don't have the root structure yet to sustain themselves even with this much drought without my help.

When I first started gardening, one of the old guys who had been running a garden center for generations told me that you only water a garden when the tomatoes look tired in the evening. "If they droop during the day, just tell them to cheer up. Life will be better before long."
"When you do water, do it in the evening and only face-on for a full hour." Then he sold me a spout that sends a spray face-on. I have always followed his advice before, but this evening I'm catering to late-in-season-bought seedlings although my tomatoes, which have been there for weeks, look perfectly happy during the day. The newcomers don't.
If you don't have a face-on spray and must content yourself with a rotating sprinkler, let it go for three hours in the evening. I figure that gives as much water to any one place as the face-on one does in an hour.

If you haven't planted out in the past couple of weeks I suggest taking the late Mr. DeVos' advice and water only when your tomatoes look tired in the evening.

Trees are yet another matter. Montclair's arborist has told me to tell people with new trees planted in front of their house to water evenings when the weather is hot and dry. A bucket gently dripped on the base of the tree so that it goes as far into the soil as possible and doesn't just wash away might do the trick. Obviously, a hose dripping water gently would be even better.

The goal whenever you water is to get the water as far down in the soil as you can. This is done best in the evening, when it can sink in instead of evaporating, and in large quantities at one time not very often. And don't water your lawn ever!

Pat

Read More......

Woodchuck stories, good and bad

I shouldn't complain. My garden now is yielding abundant zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, basil, and raspberries. But being human, I WILL complain, but kindly tell two amusing stories first.
Yesterday afternoon I was meditating in the back of the yard facing the garden, when a woodchuck entered the yard from the yard on my right. To my amazement it stopped less than a yard directly in front of me! I could study a woodchuck as never before and yearned for a camera. With all their flaws, they surely are cute!

Then it moved about two yards to my left, and paused again. Now I felt safe that if I told it to leave, it would go to the neighbors on the left and not into my vegetable garden. "Go!" I said pointing.

It stood up on its hind legs and looked around, apparently wondering at the uppiness of some intruder.

This morning Fred and I were meditating together in a similar place. (We took TM classes some time ago, and he joins me for the morning meditation.) This time we noticed a raspberry bush moving oddly. Then we saw the hind part of a woodchuck below the bush. The upper part, including the head, was invisible, but we guessed its activity. Shortly, our suspicions were confirmed. We could see the whole side of the woodchuck on the ground, busily nibbling on raspberries. It continued happily. Since I have plenty of raspberries higher than it can reach, I wasn't bothered.

Not so with other crops. The heads of the three broccolis that were trying largely disappeared Thursday at dinner time. They were there in the afternoon and gone in the evening. Lettuce is chewed over. I put some cut anti-woodchuck plants over the attacked plants, and am hoping, but it's mighty late for broccoli at best. One of you did have a good harvest, so something odd is happening in my garden, which is typical of gardens.

Even sadder was the mangled dead bird that I found in my garden yesterday afternoon. That's the first time in 32 years of gardening, and I haven't seen any cats. Guess who I suspect.

Pat

Read More......

Harvesting garlic

I should have mentioned in last week's email about harvesting that this is the season for harvesting garlic. Those of you who took a garlic from me last spring and put some bulbs in different places have noticed that they are turning brown. That tells you it is the time to pull them.

Actually, I'm a bit tardy on this. When I pulled one this weekend, the stem was so dry it broke! This makes it challenging to hang to dry the bulb, so I'm digging the others now, which is a bit more work than pulling.

The books say you should hang the garlic from their stems in the attic to dry out the bulbs, but I have a place in the kitchen where I can hang them. When they are dry, it is easy to remove the stems and fuzziness on the bottom of the root and put them in a cupboard to use -- or separate them into bulbs and put them in different places in the garden for next year.

Pat

Read More......

Peas, Malabar, Broccoli, Collards, Basil

One of you wrote, apparently surprised, that some of his pea plants are dying. Yes, they usually start this time of year and are all gone by mid-July. Both the super-hot weather and the early tendency of everything would accelerate this. I picked as many as I could today and froze them, taking my solace in the tomatoes that are now plentiful for salads. I won't have nearly as many peas in my freezer as two years ago, but far more than last year.

The early summer demise of peas is why I like malabar spinach so much to replace them on the fences. One of you lamented that her malabar is only about an inch high. Yes, malabar spends a LONG time in infancy. Some of mine is two inches, but most has not gotten to that lofty height. When the weather stays hot, it will take off.

Yesterday and today the woodchuck (I assume) ate most of my broccoli plants' leaves. The plants hadn't begun to form heads yet, so I almost feel the woodchuck is welcome to them. However, what does it forebode? It intensifies the woodchuck-dread I feel this year. One plant has a head (more than an inch in diameter), and the woodchuck spared that one until I was inside this afternoon taking refuse with a (room) air conditioner. This evening I cut off a piece of an anti-woodchuck plant and lay it over the top of the struggling broccoli plant.

I might as well remove the other broccoli plants and hope that the garden centers can provide me more eggplant and pepper plants. Has anyone had success with broccoli this year? The only responses I've had to that question before were negative. Judy says it's been too hot, and she may well be right. That 90-degree spell in April may have done them in. They should have borne edible heads by now.

We gave lots more collards to Toni's Kitchen today. The woodchuck has nibbled at the chinese cabbage too, but not to devastate it. I think the same is true for lettuce, but I've been pretty greedy there too. The arugula is in, which will do for salads, but it's not like lettuce.

I heard an NPR feature on a basil disease that is plaguing NY. We should pick that and enjoy the flavoring and pesto now, and freeze as much of the latter as is available. The narrator said she picked hers in August last year instead of November to make pesto for winter. I can't imagine making a winter supply at one time. I've already begun, and will continue throughout the season, basil willing.

The early zucchini is wonderful. Win some, lose some.

Pat

Read More......

Harvests: when, how, and preservation

I've spent an amazing amount of time harvesting and preserving in the past 24 hours, and I thought my practices might be of interest to others. Beans, peas, and raspberries need to be harvest "now" when they are ready.

I froze my 12th serving of Roma bush beans of 2010 this morning. They are growing as they never have before -- like the weeds! But such nice weeds. I remove strings if there (not many), and par boil them for 3 minutes. This is supposed to preserve vitamins better. Then they don't need much cooking when you serve them in winter. When I pull them out of the boiling water in their strainer container, I run it under cold water and let it cool for a few minutes. Then I run it under cold water again. After the third time, they are ready to put in ziplock bags in my kitchen refrigerator's freezer.

It won't be too late to plant bush beans for a couple of months. I planted these after the April 24 Open Garden because I wanted to show visitors my cold frame and its contents then. I started harvesting the beans last week, an incredibly quick growing season.

It's pretty obvious when to harvest beans, and they wait a couple of days, but peas are more challenging. I try to harvest sugar snaps when they are bulging, but not withered or dry. It means checking them over at least once a day these days. As I harvest, I pull down on the strings to remove some of them. Removing the rest of the strings before par-boiling is a much bigger job than for beans. Then I precede as for beans.

Raspberries need to be harvested when they have turned dark and come off the plant easily, but not TOO dark. They last only two days in the refrigerator, so picking raspberries takes lots of my summer time -- pleasantly! One should always nibble as one goes, of course.

I've never frozen raspberries before, but this morning I put some rolling separately in a container in the kitchen frig freezer, as my 8th grade friend told me last month she does. I'll then put them in a ziplock bag and see how many I actually use this winter. They roll out of the bag separately, Ann says.

I also made my first batch of pesto this morning and froze it. Last evening when I harvested the basil, I was startled to see that the basil around my pea-tomato circular fence was dead and dying. This morning I was even more startled to see it had risen from the dead. I guess basil doesn't like heat. The basil not far from the neighbor's fence was wonderful to harvest last evening. I gather now that basil likes some shade. I'm not sure how much.

However, tomato plants have popped up on my compost heap and under my apple tree. I think I'll let them live and see how well they thrive. I know from the front yard that tomatoes don't need nearly as much sun as advertised. If the newcomers bear...

A garden is full of surprises.

Pat

Read More......

Zucchini, collards, and NJ wind power

Both sex therapies on my zucchini flowers were successful! I will harvest at least two zucchini in the next few days. Until two years ago I harvested my first zucchini on June 26, and last year I was surprised that it was June 21. This year I expect to have zucchini dinner on June 13.

Oddly enough, none of my broccolis are showing any signs of heading. Usually I harvest broccoli weeks before zucchini. Life is endlessly surprising.

We had our first full meal yesterday with snap peas as the vegetable. We're each eating a small tomato every day this week, which is early but pleasant. We have enormous quantities of collards, Chinese cabbage, and lettuce, so we're eating well. Other good news is that I still do have sugar snap vines.

I forward below first a message from Gray Russell, Montclair's Environmental Outreach Coordinator in response to my query about local wind power.

Pat

Montclair's Water Bureau employs two wind turbines which are small, helix-type generators. That means their blades look more like an egg-beater than a wind mill. They are really experimental, but serve as a good model for further wind technologies. Although these are small turbines, Montclair is one of the only towns in NJ with any wind power at all.

Of course, we have the beautiful 7.5-megawatt (MW) Jersey-Atlantic Wind Farm in Atlantic City - visible from the Atlantic City Expressway (more than 30 million visitors see it every year) - which is the first coastal wind farm in the United States. It consists of five (5) 397-foot-tall wind turbines, each generating 1.5 MW of electricity. The project produces approximately 19 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, which is enough emission-free energy to power over 2,000 homes. The electricity is used by both the Atlantic County Utilities Authority (ACUA) Wastewater Treatment Plant, and delivered to the regional electric grid.

And the NJ BPU is studying plans for the nation's first off-shore wind farms, off the coast of NJ, which could host as many as 300 wind turbines and supply 3,000 megawatts - far more than a nuclear power plant - while helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent in the next decade.

Gray

Read More......