Seed bee

The heck with winter—the seed catalogues are rolling in, and it’s time for our annual seed bee!

For the past few years, I and two neighbors have been convening in midwinter to compare garden plans, swap seeds, and assign tasks to make our individual gardening seasons more efficient and economic. This year we were joined by one of my oldest friends, who moved into the area last winter and spent her first gardening season discovering the differences between zone 5 and zone 3. Finally, I’m no longer the one with the worst sun, soil, and yield!

She, however, is perhaps the most zealous gardener among us, so I predict that her garden will outperform all of ours in the not too distant future.

But that’s beside the point. This year our seed bee became a micro CSA program. That’s because I will not be doing a garden. Instead, I will contribute time, labor, and resources to other people’s gardens in order to get a share of their produce.

Why am I bailing out of vegetable gardening after fifteen years? Mainly, burnout. Not on gardening, but yardwork in general, owing to the enormous backlog of projects, and the time and physical exertion they will take to complete in our brief outdoor season. Big events recounted in previous blog posts—particularly, the pine tree logout and my mother’s demise—rendered our yard and garden out of control, if not set back two years in progress.

When I add up what must be done just to clear the yard enough to mow by May—never mind to catch up on ten cords’ worth of firewood processing, and to start or finish projects that have been desired or planned for years, and then preparing, maintaining, and harvesting a garden on top of it all, around paying work that controls the tempo, and any little recreational time we manage to snatch—I either start to cry or calculate packing my car and hitting the highway and never looking back.

Not the right attitude for making things grow and flourish!

Thankfully, my generous, enthusiastic neighbors are willing to plant a little extra and share. All I have to do is pony up some cash for materials and spend a few hours a month helping plant, weed, or harvest. Then, in my own yard, I can just toss seeds into containers and enjoy happy-colored flowers. The veggie garden will be planted with a green manure, probably buckwheat, to prevent it from becoming a weed disaster. My neighbor who has done this during bed rotation claims it attracts tons of bees.

So we’ve found a way to solve our collective challenges and become better friends while at it. What a great way to spend a winter morning!

Garden envy

What a difference a half-mile makes!

Here in microclimate land, I live in one of the more micro climates. Hence this blog title -- our yard behaves like Zone 3 even though we live, according to the map, in Zone 4. It's all because of one hill and a curve in the road.

Two of my neighbors are my gardening buddies. We get together in late winter and swap seeds, discuss crop successes and failures, and arrange who will start what for whom. Then we plant about the same time in May, each of us varying each year in what sort of early-season and pest protection gizmos we employ. We live approximately a half-mile apart, with me at one end of the road and them across the way from each other at the opposite end.

Regardless of timing and fertilizing and protection variables, by this time each season the difference in our private landscapes becomes obvious. My transplants are always smaller; I get lower rates of seed germination; and everything in general is less fecund. Originally I believed this reflected my inadequacies, but now I realize it's all about sunlight and soil.

I amend the soil; they amend the soil; though who's to say which combo is better. I fertilize; they fertilize; but who's to say which fertilizer and frequency has what effect.

The bottom line is: They have tons of sun and I don't. Even though my new garden location gets tons of sun since we cut down the pine trees, it's still not as much as they get. In fact, they have environmental problems I don't: wind in one case, overheating in another. I get a little of both but to a lesser degree, because our end of the road gets clouds more often. That extra 10-30 feet of altitude, combined with the hill, combined with directional orientation (they have open southern exposures), makes a huge difference.

The hill (aptly called Hateful Hill) trips clouds and drops moisture more than on the other end of the road. There are many days when the weather radar shows perfectly clear skies throughout the region, yet it's either cloudy or precipitating at our place. One neighbor and I both have rain gauges; after each rain, we measure different amounts, with usually more at my place. Could be a calibration difference -- neither of us has Official Weather Stations -- but the trend is consistent.

I envy my neighbors' burgeoning crops, and am glad I don't rely upon my garden to feed us. How anyone who lived here in the 1800s and had to live off the land survived, I can't imagine. Well, there was a large evacuation when the midwest opened up, with its unrestricted light and rich, dark soil . . .

Whatever. The upside is: Every year my garden produces food, no matter the sun, rain, insect, predator, pest problems. The perennials that have survived here are decades old. It's a wonder that bedazzles me every year.

But there's no mystery why I don't plant a bigger vegetable garden and can/freeze/pickle for the larder every fall!
 

Book review: Vegetable Gardening in the North

At last—a gardening book germane to my reality!

And just in time for planting season here in the Northeast USA. Author Doug Green hails from Canada, our climatic neighbor, and presents in one concise e-book everything northerners need to know about growing vegetables. I read the book in one sitting and couldn’t wait to get started. But, true to our location, the weather disagreed with the calendar, so all I could do was prepare.

Doug maintains the popular Doug Green’s Garden website, newsletter, and blog (www.douggreensgarden.com), and publishes a steady stream of articles and e-books. Like most gardening gurus, he espouses certain horticultural techniques; but unlike most gurus, he also has a “whatever works” philosophy that encourages experimentation and enjoyment. In fact, his only two rules are (1) gardening is supposed to be fun and (2) it isn’t rocket science.

The feature I most appreciate in the book is his Rules of Thumb. I’m an unscientific gardener, and extremely lazy, so I look for basics and sloppily follow them. Doug provides useful, reliable guidelines that allow individual approaches while still leading to good results. He’s also one of the few pros who share my attitude about Zone Maps, which so many take as gospel, and which for so many years led me to planting the wrong things at the wrong times and thinking that gardening really is rocket science.

“A zone map is a guideline,” says Doug. “It isn’t a ‘rule’ to be carved in stone. That pretty much sums it up. These areas are more relevant to growing perennials and woody plants than they are to growing vegetables. . . . The important thing to understand is that the colder your zone (the lower your number), the shorter your growing season”—followed by information I’ve been seeking for 13 years: “For every zone colder than 4, wait a week [for planting]. For every zone warmer than 5, advance the date by a week.”

Thank you!

Doug also understands and addresses the ultimate gardening bugbear: microclimates. “Gardeners have more micro-zones than we have politicians,” he remarks, tongue in cheek, then provides tips on how to maximize microclimates to your (and the plants’) benefit.

The book emphasizes common sense and adaptability, general in the first half and specific in the second, with useful details about cultivating a broad range of vegetables. He writes it all in a friendly, shoot-from-the-hip voice that covers all bases without drowning you in data. Again, this is the right style for me, who just wants a few reliable guidelines to follow, plus a fingertip resource when I need particulars about my vegetables of choice.

Vegetable Gardening in the North includes tricks for dealing with insect and animal pests, as well as a straightforward glossary. In sum, I can throw away the library of gardening books I’ve amassed (and given up on), and just refer to this one for the rest of my northern life.

The cycle continues

Since it snowed the other day, I guess that means gardening season is over!

Starting last spring, each season has kicked in two weeks early. Summer was strange this year, perhaps because the weather was, well, summery! Sunny, hot, dry for long periods, unlike our cool and often too-wet norm. The pond got so low we could almost walk across it, and we had to ration water from the well. (Not any longer: In the past 3 weeks, we've had 14 inches of rain!)

Thanks to rain barrels, I always had enough water for the veggie garden. It performed terrifically for a change, this year giving what I've aspired to for a decade: a crop of huge, bug-free, sweet red bell peppers. Low yield but great fruits. Similar results with tomatoes, but another plague set upon them by August so I lost some at the end. As well, I planted different varieties in different locations and got correspondingly different yields and quality. Best performers grew in the lasagna garden. So far, all my vegetables have done best in that location, save for carrots, which like a deeper, more uniform bed.

I tried a new variety of cucumber and got many salads worth of big ones. Also tried a single plant of brussels sprouts, which grew straight and tall and produced abundant heads. It's still going despite a week of frost and a nor'easter.

Broccoli, always a challenge, was mixed: the Goliath variety I cultivated under bug screen indeed was gigantic, both plants and heads. The Premium Crop, in assorted planters, was smaller and didn't deliver much in the way of side shoots after the main head was cut. Oh well. Try again next year. Note that insect-barrier fabric is worth the trouble -- no green worms anywhere on the plants.

We had a great crop of strawberries and raspberries, but almost no blueberries. Why? Who the heck knows. Other dud crops were zucchini and morning glories. The first, I think, resulted from the wrong variety in the wrong soil, inadequately fed and watered; the second, I have no idea. I gave those morning glories everything they are supposed to like, yet only 7 seeds from an entire pack germinated, and of those, only 3 produced blossoms, and the vines never grew more than 4 inches high. Huh?

Just another gardening mystery. I find every season completely different; and although I learn a lot every time, I'm stumped in revolving areas year after year. Despite all the variables, I always get food and flowers. They just might not grow or produce the way they're supposed to!

Already I'm planning next year's layout. The joy of gardening is how it keeps you looking forward with new ideas and hope.

Carolyn Haley

Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us

Tis the season

Memorial Day is the target date for all gardeners in these parts to put in their vegetables. This year we were blessed with terrific weather for the week before and after, broken only by brief passages of rain to water it all in and refill the rain barrels. So, no problem meeting the deadline, despite having an injured foot.

As part of the annual planting marathon, I now rig up plant protectors; for instance, wire cages covered with lightweight insect barrier fabric over all the broccoli. An experiment with this setup last year worked, sparing half my crop from the little green worms that crawl out of the heads when you're preparing the harvest. This year I'm covering all the broccoli and hoping for a repeat performance.

Liking the barrier idea, I placed hardware cloth (metal mesh) over the green bean seeds so birds won't pick off the hulls when they rise to the surface ahead of the sprouts, and critters won't dig them up.

Then I put Wall-o-Waters around tomatoes and cucumbers. These gizmos, which are essentially solar teepees, are made by different manufacturers in different sizes and colors, all in a soft, durable plastic formed of tubes you fill with water. They protect tender seedlings from chill and wind, and can be pulled open or pinched shut as conditions warrant. In theory, they can extend the growing season by several weeks. I haven't used them long enough to prove this yet, but initial results are encouraging.

I always place a yogurt or butter tub, or similar plastic cup with the bottom cut out, around the base of all transplants. Originally I did this upon advice to discourage tomato hornworms; it seems to work against other undesirables as well, plus makes a contained area that holds water.

In response to last year's slug infestation, I purchased some Sluggo -- granules of iron phosphate that are toxic to slugs but, again theoretically, safe for pets and people. I'm not real sure about that, so I only sprinkled it in the areas under cover, so the birds won't pick it up and cats won't get it between their toes. I'm also leaving the bed unmulched, to make a dry and crusty surface for the slugs to suffer on while crossing, instead providing a moist haven for them to thrive in. This creates a lot of splash-up against the undersides of leaves, which can create disease conditions especially for tomatoes, so for them I put down fabric mulch. We'll see if that helps.

Where possible, I place some sort of frame around my plants at the beginning and end of season, to which I can attach plastic or fabric for frost protection. It can come as late as June 15 and as early as September 15, and it's so much easier to have frames already in place when you have to fling covers over everything. Someday I'll have cold frames and hoop houses, but until then I wing it with found materials, tie-wraps and clothespins, and a few reusable accessories.

Over time, even such simple protectors have proven their value in this chilly, erratic climate.

Carolyn Haley

Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)