Here in the hilly section of Vermont, there are a lot of jokes (and complaints) about the weather. They're all true, by the way. It's the most weather-dominant place I've ever lived, which doesn't help with gardening!
Nevertheless, despite my own complaints, I like the weather here. It's dramatic and primal -- an Event, almost every day. And very rich with color. I've taken to determining seasons by color, since the calendar doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. Right now, rolling into November, we've entered Stick Season.
Stick Season is primarily brown and gray. With all the leaves down (except coppery beech and rusty oak), the landscape is a mass of brown and gray vertical lines overlaying brown and gray undulations. The skies are myriad shades of gray, usually roiling, reflected back by gunmetal gray waters. This monotony is punctuated by the aptly named evergreens, and given contrast by beige and mustard grasses, plus the surprising gold of larches and even more surprising shafts of golden sunbeams slanting through holes in the gray clouds.
In all, starkly beautiful. Soon to be blanketed with white. But it's nice to see the bones of the land for a little while, and to glimpse homes and other features normally masked by dense foliage. We get Stick Season in reverse during April, when the white blanket retreats and reveals the world naked before greens reemerge to clothe it.
So Stick Season is brown and gray. Winter is white, blue, and lavender. Not-Winter is green with fiesta-colored accents. Foliage Season is just the party colors. Some folks add Mud Season to this roster, but I lump that under Stick Season. The spring and fall are always wet and yucky underfoot, and in our immediate area we don't get the dissolving, rutted roads that suck vehicles in up to their floor pans (for which Mud Season is named), so I'll stick with my nomenclature.
The only problem is, Winter is 5 months long, Not-Winter is 4, Stick Season is 3, and Foliage Season less than 1. According to the calendar, each season is supposed to be 3 months long. Hah!
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
Friday, November 5, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
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
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
Thursday, September 23, 2010
"Nature abhors a vacuum"
This expression is attributed to Aristotle, so we know how long people have been observing zealous plant growth.
I experienced it intensely the other day, while clearing out scrub around fresh pine stumps. Back in April we had four 100-foot giants removed so they wouldn't guillotine the house when they came down in a high wind. Two of them were splitting, all were intertwined, and they stood about 15 feet from the house and were leaning in that direction.
The stumps remain in an area approx. 15x15 square composed of gritty sand that's been saturated with pine needles and fully shadowed for five decades. Scarcely anything ever grew below them -- until the ground was suddenly naked and in full sun.
Then, in four months, the most concentrated, diverse patch of wildflowers, vines, trees, and shrubs I've ever seen erupted. They occupied every square inch of the exposed wasteland, including dirt pockets collected in the stumps' bark. I recognized about two dozen by name and another dozen or two by sight; yet another dozen or more I'd never seen before, which is interesting because I study wildflowers and have laid eyes on most of what grows in the area.
Even more interesting, there were no baby pines. But there were baby ash and maple, sumac and poplar, even something that looked like apple; goldenrod and pigweed, johnny-jump-ups and Virginia creeper, wood aster, hawkweed, a metastasizing mint, a tangled mat of bedstraw, two particularly evil grasses as well as generic lawn grass, brambles, mullein, wild morning glories, assorted clovers and sorrels, violets, burdock, a clump of Siberian iris left over from a previous owner's garden, plus two sunflowers -- presumably contributed by birds.
I should have taken the time to look up each species in my field guide, but I became obsessed with finishing the clear-out by sundown. The resulting pile is so big I need the tractor bucket to remove it from the yard. I'm impressed equally by the volume and the diversity of this growth, as well as how fast and thoroughly it came. Makes garden weeds look wimpy!
We won't be getting the stumps dug out before winter, so I can count on having to repeat the exercise next year. After all, I just re-created the vacuum that Nature can't help herself from filling!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
I experienced it intensely the other day, while clearing out scrub around fresh pine stumps. Back in April we had four 100-foot giants removed so they wouldn't guillotine the house when they came down in a high wind. Two of them were splitting, all were intertwined, and they stood about 15 feet from the house and were leaning in that direction.
The stumps remain in an area approx. 15x15 square composed of gritty sand that's been saturated with pine needles and fully shadowed for five decades. Scarcely anything ever grew below them -- until the ground was suddenly naked and in full sun.
Then, in four months, the most concentrated, diverse patch of wildflowers, vines, trees, and shrubs I've ever seen erupted. They occupied every square inch of the exposed wasteland, including dirt pockets collected in the stumps' bark. I recognized about two dozen by name and another dozen or two by sight; yet another dozen or more I'd never seen before, which is interesting because I study wildflowers and have laid eyes on most of what grows in the area.
Even more interesting, there were no baby pines. But there were baby ash and maple, sumac and poplar, even something that looked like apple; goldenrod and pigweed, johnny-jump-ups and Virginia creeper, wood aster, hawkweed, a metastasizing mint, a tangled mat of bedstraw, two particularly evil grasses as well as generic lawn grass, brambles, mullein, wild morning glories, assorted clovers and sorrels, violets, burdock, a clump of Siberian iris left over from a previous owner's garden, plus two sunflowers -- presumably contributed by birds.
I should have taken the time to look up each species in my field guide, but I became obsessed with finishing the clear-out by sundown. The resulting pile is so big I need the tractor bucket to remove it from the yard. I'm impressed equally by the volume and the diversity of this growth, as well as how fast and thoroughly it came. Makes garden weeds look wimpy!
We won't be getting the stumps dug out before winter, so I can count on having to repeat the exercise next year. After all, I just re-created the vacuum that Nature can't help herself from filling!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Monday, August 23, 2010
Perfection
Yeah, we all know . . . nothing in life is perfect.
Well, I beg to differ. Late last week we had an Absolutely Perfect Day.
The sky was a cloudless, brilliant blue. The air was ideally comfortable for bare arms and legs and feet, with a light breeze air-conditioning your skin in the event you moved around enough to perspire. No matter what you did, you were comfortable.
And everywhere you looked, the scenery was beautiful. Lawns and trees still vivid summertime green, with color tinges creeping in to signal the pending change of season. But it's not here yet -- wildflowers and garden beds were still in full bloom, with vegetables and fruits adding bright dots of color between the foliage.
Birds and butterflies still darted about in their own color show before packing up for migration. Crickets and cicadas added music to the air.
It was a perfect day for doing anything outdoors, from hiking and boating to sitting on the porch with a book. If you couldn't get outside, it was a perfect day to look out the window, and open all the windows wide, and curtains, too, to let all the air and color and light flow through.
In our complicated and inconsistent world, it's good to know that Mother Nature can proffer up a perfect day now and then. And a joy to be alive when it happens.
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)
Well, I beg to differ. Late last week we had an Absolutely Perfect Day.
The sky was a cloudless, brilliant blue. The air was ideally comfortable for bare arms and legs and feet, with a light breeze air-conditioning your skin in the event you moved around enough to perspire. No matter what you did, you were comfortable.
And everywhere you looked, the scenery was beautiful. Lawns and trees still vivid summertime green, with color tinges creeping in to signal the pending change of season. But it's not here yet -- wildflowers and garden beds were still in full bloom, with vegetables and fruits adding bright dots of color between the foliage.
Birds and butterflies still darted about in their own color show before packing up for migration. Crickets and cicadas added music to the air.
It was a perfect day for doing anything outdoors, from hiking and boating to sitting on the porch with a book. If you couldn't get outside, it was a perfect day to look out the window, and open all the windows wide, and curtains, too, to let all the air and color and light flow through.
In our complicated and inconsistent world, it's good to know that Mother Nature can proffer up a perfect day now and then. And a joy to be alive when it happens.
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)
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
The green wave
Here it comes!
Peak summer, and the garden runneth over. This time every year I regret planting more than one of a given vegetable on a given day back in spring. Now I have too many snow peas, too many broccoli heads; in a few weeks will have too many beans; and by the end of summer will have too many tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash. (I've never had enough red peppers, never mind too many!) At least with lettuce I've managed to stagger the crop.
As well, raspberry and blueberry bushes that came with the house are rolling into ripeness simultaneously. Hubby made it worse by starting a strawberry patch. We can't eat them all before they spoil and have run out of room in our freezer. How lovely to have enough to give away!
Meanwhile, the grass grows faster than we can cut it, the weeds regrow as fast as we can pluck them out, and certain perennials spread faster than they can be divided and transplanted. It happens that paying work peaks this time of year, so available time for picking and processing shrinks while everything expands.
Cruel irony that the best season is the shortest and most packed with demands and excitement. No wonder we always shake our heads in the fall and wonder where summer went!
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)
Peak summer, and the garden runneth over. This time every year I regret planting more than one of a given vegetable on a given day back in spring. Now I have too many snow peas, too many broccoli heads; in a few weeks will have too many beans; and by the end of summer will have too many tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash. (I've never had enough red peppers, never mind too many!) At least with lettuce I've managed to stagger the crop.
As well, raspberry and blueberry bushes that came with the house are rolling into ripeness simultaneously. Hubby made it worse by starting a strawberry patch. We can't eat them all before they spoil and have run out of room in our freezer. How lovely to have enough to give away!
Meanwhile, the grass grows faster than we can cut it, the weeds regrow as fast as we can pluck them out, and certain perennials spread faster than they can be divided and transplanted. It happens that paying work peaks this time of year, so available time for picking and processing shrinks while everything expands.
Cruel irony that the best season is the shortest and most packed with demands and excitement. No wonder we always shake our heads in the fall and wonder where summer went!
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)
Monday, June 21, 2010
The best week
This is it! The week we spend all year waiting for. The week embracing the summer solstice. The longest days of the year -- 15 and a half hours of official daylight, an hour more than that if you count time of light in the sky, when you can still see outside -- and the most glorious weather, the most exuberant blooming of flowers, the peak of birds and critters making babies -- the best time of the northerly year.
It passes so quickly . . . so this week demands that we look and listen and feel and appreciate and know joy. Then remember it all during the darker and colder majority of the year, until it comes around again.
So comforting to know that it will come around again!
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)
It passes so quickly . . . so this week demands that we look and listen and feel and appreciate and know joy. Then remember it all during the darker and colder majority of the year, until it comes around again.
So comforting to know that it will come around again!
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)
Friday, June 4, 2010
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)
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)
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