In which I make a fool of myself

for a good cause.

The farmer who is kind enough to load his old hay on my trailer every spring lives just a mile from our house. He and his wife are the nicest sort of people, down to earth and full of country wisdom. Her voice message ends with a cheerful, “Leave a message… blessings!”

This spring when I made my trip for hay, I asked if I may pay for it, and he said, “No, no, just bring me some produce.” As I was driving past this summer I noticed that they have four times more garden than I do. We’re talking a field with like 96 pepper plants and I think they said 200 tomato plants and everything else you can imagine. So tonight when I was digging my red potatoes I thought, “You know what, I don’t think they have potatoes,” and I called them to check.

The farmer’s wife told me that her family makes her so mad because they don’t want to hill potatoes but she would love to have some fresh ones. She is in a wheelchair and can’t grow them herself. I told her I would bring them right down.

I didn’t have a vehicle because it’s in the garage for inspection and my husband is at work. It’s close enough to walk, but I decided to put my box of red potatoes in the basket of the little yellow moped that Gabriel bought this summer. I puttered down the road in the soft light, and all was mellow and lush. Just before the farmer’s lane the moped sputtered and I thought that I should have checked the gas tank, but I made it and parked it.

There was a considerable amount of racket in the yard because the farmer was doing some power washing and the little grandkids were talking to each other in their outside voices. I picked up my box of potatoes and walked up the hill around their vehicles. The dog saw me first, and then the other dog and the other dog and the other dog also saw me. To be truthful, I am not a dog lover at my core, although I’m not really afraid of them. I took a step back just from innate self-preservation, and bumped my leg against the large rocks bordering a flower bed. The dogs crowded closer, a huge black lab with a tongue the size of bread plate, a yellow nondescript mutt with a tail like a baseball bat, a shifty-eyed spotted one who stayed on the periphery and growled, and a very small terrier with a very large ego. I backed up a little further but there was nowhere to go because I was against those rocks. I completely lost my balance and sat down very gracefully in the flower bed, legs stuck out over the rocks, holding my box of potatoes aloft. Not one of them spilled. It was too bad that the farmer’s wife didn’t see me until I was down, because by then it was no longer graceful. I had four dogs crowding around my lap, and I was giggling helplessly, unable to pull myself up. Feebly waving my hand in front of my face so the black lab would stop licking me, I peddled my legs and let her know that I was okay.

Her two grandsons walked over and tried to call off the dogs while the farmer’s wife hollered at her husband who couldn’t hear a thing because the power washer was loud. The grandsons looked at the woman laughing in their flower bed and didn’t know what to do. One of them tentatively held out his hand, and I gave him the potatoes. They didn’t know I suffer from a condition that causes me to lose all control and giggle helplessly when I am in a ludicrous situation, but once the dogs were out of my lap, I struggled to my feet. I was still chortling, so the farmer’s wife knew that I wasn’t mad. She wheeled herself to a quieter spot in the yard, apologizing profusely all the way, even as the dogs continued to leap around and take stabbing licks at my face while the terrier barked. “What in the world is wrong with you?” she yelled. I have been blessed with a number of friends who have large dogs and they all seem to feel the same helplessness when their dogs don’t listen.

We ended up having a great chat under the shade tree where her family had piled the produce they picked in the garden. I felt a little despair in my heart when I saw the buckets of tomatoes, bushels of cabbages, gallons of cherry tomatoes, a half bushel of green peppers, and so on. I don’t know how she does it in a wheelchair, but she was cheerful about it and she was delighted with that box of red potatoes. The black dog eventually quit trying to lick me and sauntered to the backyard, but the yellow dog kept backing up until his tail was between my legs, whacking me hard as he wagged. It was quite ludicrous enough to send me off in another spasm of laughter, but I controlled myself. The shifty-eyed growler was gone, but the ~~terroris~~t terrier made a tight, barking arc around us every few minutes.

They told me about the neighborhood and how things used to be around here, and what farming is like now, about their family and they wanted to know about mine. Like I said, lovely people.

It was getting a little dark and I needed to moped on home. I prayed a desperate prayer that there would be enough gas in the tank, but this time the answer was no. Of all things, I had to walk back up the hill and there came the dogs! The farmer noticed right away and he was still nice. “Not a problem, happy to give it to you, anytime you need anything just ask.”

He sloshed in a few quarts, but that moped wouldn’t start. The two grandsons stood there and stared again as I vainly pumped the starter pedal, jiggled the choke button, and tried to remember if I was missing something crucial for the starting of a moped. Finally it coughed a bit and then it flooded. I pumped it some more. Nothing. The little boys drew closer in fascination. I got the feeling they were prepared to push it home for me. Finally, blessedly, it purred to life. I said good night and headed home in the twilight. Mission accomplished.

They said next year they will give me more hay and all the barnyard compost I want. I will have to brainstorm something awesome to grow so that I have it to give them in return. I wonder if they like eggplant?

I feel like this moped deserves a small Asian lady to ride it, but I am all it’s got.

Happy Gardener Attempts to Manage Peas, Occasionally Failing

And they do require managing. Peas are probably the most labor intensive thing I grow, but the vegetable we look forward to the most. “Plant as many as you want, Mom,” they say. “We’ll help you pick them.” Of course, this is a bit of a joke because I don’t let the children pick peas without supervision. The plants are too finicky and it’s hard to tell when they are ready.

You have seen this photo before, of my over-achieving pea vines, over five feet high. If I had planted them 3 weeks earlier, I feel confident that the yield would have been better. Honestly… 6 quarts in the freezer and a few quarts eaten fresh is not a stellar outcome. Next year I will shoot for planting in mid-April instead of early May. They should not be this yellow while still bearing pods. My bad.

I did three different versions of plantings in my mulched section. Row 1: we raked the old hay aside and let the ground dry a bit before tilling up that strip and planting a double row. We did not re-mulch until the peas were up. Row 2: we raked the hay aside, but did not till the row. Instead we made a shallow row with a hoe and planted a double row. Row 3: we used a string stretched from one end to the other as a guide, and simply poked holes in the soft soil to drop the peas into, leaving the old hay/mulch just as it was. The last method seemed to work the best, maybe because we had an uncharacteristically dry spring. Those peas came up more quickly and climbed up the support fence we put in between the rows. The other two methods caught up, but obviously the tilling and hoeing were not necessary.

We had three double rows, 25 feet each, 150 feet of peas total. The reason for this is that the fencing we use for support comes in 25 or 50 foot lengths. Cutting them in half makes the rolls easier to manage and store. There is psychology involved as well. A 25 foot row is not nearly as daunting to pick as a 150 foot row.

Peas need support to grow, unless you want to bend over to pick until your back is screaming to buy Del Monte mushiness in a can rather than try to grow your own peas. It’s a valid option, but not one we choose.

As you can see in the photo below, we have a variety of fencing materials. The bottom, PVC coated wire, was some we had on hand from our farm days, probably to keep ducks where they ought to be. It is sturdy and would be fine except it is only 2 feet high. The peas didn’t have enough support and doubled over the top. The black plastic chicken wire seemed like a good idea, but even with the fence zip-tied to holes drilled in the wooden posts, it sagged under the weight. We will still use it, but it will require twice the amount of posts. All the way at the top is the priciest option, 3 foot high, PVC coated wire mesh. We have had that fence for years. It was a good choice and I wish we hadn’t wavered when we saw the price difference this spring when we needed more.

I pulled the vines yesterday and before I threw them onto the compost pile, I had a lightbulb moment. Aha! I can chop them up and let them compost right in the spot where they were growing. It worked too! The lawnmower coughed and choked a little, but in the end we prevailed. I had laid down a fresh layer of cardboard before I dumped the chopped peas back into the garden. That should smother any opportunistic weeds that were growing alongside the peas.

I want to plant some more fall broccoli/cabbages in that spot. The other pea row got replanted with more green beans and a hopeful seeding of sugar peas for fall consumption. I don’t know how well that will work, but I had old seeds that needed to be used, so I threw them in. I covered them with old hay, no bare spots. Low stakes, so we shall see.

Recently I read an article that stated this: “Whenever the soil is tilled, the subterranean community of lifeforms within it is hit with a hurricane. All the bacteria, protozoa, nematodes, and fungi that sustain and support plant growth are thrown into chaos, season after season. Weeds often help to bring them back to balance, like aid workers after a disaster. The way that creation keeps the soil healthy, building it generation after generation, is by always keeping it covered.”

That is why I am so fascinated with my no-till experiments. If you ever noticed how quickly nature covers up bare soil with plants, you will know what I mean. I do not like having an unsightly, weedy garden. With the traditional methods of tilling, it meant getting out the rototiller at regular intervals, and hoeing the rows as well. Keeping the soil covered with mulch or cover crops, while not truly “no-work”, is certainly less work. For me, the secret to enjoying gardening is to keep it to manageable proportions. I use anything that decomposes cleanly for layers of mulch: cardboard, newspaper, old pine straw, wood chips, chopped vegetable stalks, dead leaves, etc. Any slimy peelings or kitchen scraps get thrown onto a compost pile that I neglect shamelessly. I hope it eventually turns into useful compost, but until then I just keep adding to the top.

I get lots of good ideas from the experts, but I do whatever I jolly please in my own bit of earth.

That means planting flowers with the vegetables, filling in the cracks with last minute delights such as broom corn or black beans that bloom purple or spaghetti squash that may or may not take over the space entirely. I don’t play by the rules, and that is why I have so much fun. 🙂

I want to conclude with a funny story. Mennonites love iced mint tea. We call it meadow tea, garden tea, fuzzy mint, spearmint, etc. Awhile ago our elderly neighbor came over for a visit, I offered him a glass of chilled spearmint tea, explaining what it was as I handed it to him. He took a tentative sip and murmured, “Hmm, kind of piney.”

How about we raise a glass of iced mint tea to happy gardeners everywhere!

These are the July Days…

…When I have peas for breakfast, shelling them right beside the garden and thumbing them out of the pods into my hand. The dog stands beside me expectantly, catching and eating the pods as I chuck them to the ground. They are the very last hangers-on of the plants that have been yellowing, too hot for the last three weeks. They are still standing tall, freakishly tall, and trying to make peas. I have never picked peas at eye level before, and I have no idea why this happened, but it was fun for a change.

See. Yellow and tall. And in the foreground is our hope to feed the world, the humble zucchini. Also a border of potatoes, once known as the food of peasants. If you squint, you can see a row of kale trying to grow in front of its cabbage and broccoli cousins. My children sighed when I planted that kale, but they will enjoy it in Zuppa Toscana this winter.

These are the days to stroll casually past the red raspberries for a snack. They are just ripening with the intense flavors that are a result of very dry weather. Thankfully we have gotten enough rain in the last few days to plump out the berries. When we moved I bought 4 straggly Heritage Red plants at Walmart, which you know is not the best place to buy them, but I decided to give it a whirl. They shot up, multiplied beyond belief, strayed into the neighbor’s yard, and began to produce berries to make glad the heart of man.

These are the days we can have vine-ripened tomatoes, the peak of summer. I sneaked a cherry tomato from Rita’s prize plant this morning. I am afraid she rather neglects a lot of her other plantings, but her tomato is her pride and joy. She has been able to keep up with eating her tomatoes all by herself, no small feat if you are familiar with the prolific habits of cherry tomatoes. But she does share when we ask nicely.

These are the days of zucchini everything. I taught Addy to bake zucchini bread, even though she doesn’t like it herself. It is her current labor of love for the household, along with snapping beans while listening to audiobooks, “forever and a day” she says, referring to the beans. The older two girls are working at defrosting our chest freezer as I write. They will clear it out and remove the ice so that I can see what we have and organize it again before we fill it back up this summer. I like to use up most of the previous season’s produce before we add more, since our freezer isn’t very big and I don’t like eating old food that tastes like ice.

These are the days of thinking back-to-school. Before you get upset with me, remember that we finished the first week in May, which is nearly three months ago. Yesterday we ladies took the day to shop in Erie. I gave the girls each a twenty for the fun pens, scissors, rulers, notebooks, or whatever school supplies they wanted. My own list only had boring things like trash bags and folders. It turned out that we were disillusioned by the tie-dyed offerings and high prices at Target, but Marshalls was better, and Hobby Lobby had their entire perimeter stacked with clearanced spring and summer merchandise. Goodwill was a welcome change from Sally A, and we found plenty of treasures, such as a red polka-dot umbrella with metal ribs that seem like they might actually hold up, a big hula hoop, some books, Little House DVD’s, a few sweaters, and yet another Pashmina for the girls’ collection of scarves.

These are the hammock days, where the choice spot under the best shade gets used times three. The ladder is used only for the purpose of hanging the straps high on the tree. The top person gets in one hammock at a time, working his way upward. If it were me, I would find another tree, but young folks are not always known for their practicality. We have discovered that hammocks for camping are much more comfortable than sleeping bags on the ground. (One note of caution… you must be sure there are trees before presuming on this option.) There is some fine resting done in a hammock, with a book and a bottle of kefir. At our place we recommend mosquito spray or maybe a Thermocell, which is a completely new idea to us. Slightly pricey, but it works!..

These are the glorious summer days, when we savor the scents and flavors with a bit of panic in our hearts at how quickly it is passing. The light lingers long and strange in the garden before the thunderstorm, and we drink in the goodness with thankful hearts.

Saturday in the Life…

I awakened to that blissful feeling of a whole Saturday to just do whatever I felt like doing, which for a mother means Whatever Yells Loudest. I got out of bed just about the time Gabriel got home and got into bed. He was the only nurse for the entire 12 hour shift last night in the emergency department. Weary is not even the right word to describe it, but it will have to suffice.

There was a blustery blizzard going on, and I’ll admit, I was not especially pleased about it. It seemed like a good day to wear my robin egg blue sweater and drink lots of coffee.

Two days ago it was raining so hard that I kept checking the basement to see if the dehumidifier and drains were keeping up with the trickle of water coming in from excessive snowmelt. A bunch of old towels made temporary dams, but this morning we had to address the situation in the basement, now that the precipitation is solid again. I picked up the sodden towels, then we sorted through the big bags of snow clothes from last Saturday when they were skiing and put them away. Gasp. A whole week later!

There has been a stack of boxes in the basement that were never unpacked since we moved. Cringe. Eighteen months later. I found that the threat of a possible flood gave me the nudge I needed to get rid of the cardboard boxes. One was full of framed family pictures from newborn portraits to recent, and I repacked them in a plastic tote to take to the attic. The rest of the boxes contained stuff that we shouldn’t have moved. We haven’t used or missed that stuff in 18 months. Salvation Army, here we come. We had a small bonfire as well, and I feel better.

I mentioned the girls’ play corner downstairs. We curtained off about 10×10 feet for them to set up as their playhouse. Sometimes it feels like it is completely out-of-hand, spilling into the entire basement, but I think it is worth every square foot we ceded to them. They cook on an induction burner, make tea for their friends and serve it in pretty dishes. Then they wash the dishes and use an antique washboard in a bucket to wash their tea towels. Occasionally they sleep down there on the floor with its patchwork of area rugs, surrounded by hodge podge furniture we don’t want anywhere else in the house. They reign there in a miniature scale they can manage.

This morning I saw that the girls had a bunch of my pottery towels in their play corner in the basement. They were clean, but stained, and looked ugly. I told them they need to make some tablecloths and runners out of fabric pieces. When those were hemmed, they needed to be ironed, which reminded them of the tiny iron I got for them. They promptly decided to make an ironing board to match. I heard a lot of hammering and drilling, and what do you know! They have an ironing board for their linens.

Gregory and Olivia are doing a history course together this year: Ancient Civilizations and the Bible from Answers in Genesis. It’s a different approach to history than we have done in the past. Gregory likes the freestyle idea of reading supplemental books, following trails that interest him, picking a research topic for each unit, and then procrastinating until the very last minute to write the report after I have twisted his arm. Olivia does not like the freestyling at all. She prefers a history course where you memorize dates and timelines and do normal tests. Her reports are masterpieces of conscientious research that she is sure are not good enough, and they are done before the deadline. Children, children. (To be honest, this history course is stretching me too. Rather more library books to chase down than strictly necessary.)

Anyway, all week I wanted to make baklava to finish up the chapter on Greece. Today we had time to do such fiddly things. Olivia brushed butter on twenty sheets of phyllo dough and Greg chopped up the nuts and mixed the honey/spice drizzle. It was a golden brown triumph of pastry to enjoy with our tea.

Eventually the sun shone on our world in that aloof way it has in winter. I took a walk outside, slipping barefooted into my fur-lined boots, which is about as edgy as I care to be in 17 degree weather. Lady and I checked out the creek, which was flowing brimful in midweek as it drained away the snowmelt. Today it was a normal size again, with little dangly icicles left behind as the water level went down. I heard birds singing, but there are no rose hips or other edible berries left along the edges of the trail. There was a brilliant flash of a cardinal digging seeds or bugs out of the now-brown seed heads on the sumac. Other than that, the world was monochrome. I noticed that the woodpecker’s ash tree broke off right at their biggest bug mining hole, crashing across the picnic spot in the woods, and I fantasized about getting out there with the small chain saw and cleaning up. I have Plans for Paths and all manner of projects in the backyard just as soon as the snow melts and the mud dries. I cannot wait to mow lawn again!

We planted some seeds this week. Rita started a lettuce garden and I sowed grass seeds in containers, an idea I picked up from my sister. It should be lush and green by Easter. I also planted some little bulbs, crocuses I think. Last year we grew paperwhites, but honestly, we could not stand the scent. It was just too much, and I had to throw them out.

See my tropical grass on the windowsill up there? Last fall I had a piece of ginger that was very wrinkly and old. We stuck it in a pot of dirt to see what would happen. After a long time, a shoot emerged, then another and another. It is now a grass stalk about 3 feet tall by my kitchen sink. We love it, and can’t bear to check if it has made more ginger roots in the pots. Maybe once we have green outside we can sacrifice it. I have a coleus on the windowsill, saved from my outdoor planter, and it will be the mother of many babies for my window boxes and planters. Then there are the fiddle leaf fig leaves that we hope will eventually get roots. Do you notice a theme emerging here?

Tonight I took Rita along to Walmart to help me load up bags of salt for the water softener. She is strong and useful for such errands. “Just essentials,” I said as we picked up milk and eggs. Somehow the two of us also came home with blueberries, strawberries, bananas, lettuce, cucumber, avocados, and a coconut. Isn’t it wonderful that we have access to so much bounty? I am very very grateful.

How we live these days. It was 50 degrees at the time.

These are the days…

…the August days, where we make salsa in the morning and put the extra cucumbers into the fridge for a friend because there are so many and they will blow up on the vines and end up on the compost pile. Tsk tsk, what a waste!

…the August days when our green bean plants have at last gotten ahead of voracious rabbits, and we get to taste our three-seed-trial. The first pile is Jade beans, the darkest green, and in our opinion, the toughest when cooked. They remind us of the bright beans on a Chinese buffet. The middle pile is Tenderette, but we aren’t sure why only some of the beans in the row are flat and wide and require pulling an actual string off the pod. It is a bit of a pain, but they are tender. The last is our old favorite, Strike. Although they are paler, they grow long and straight and are excellent as whole beans. They don’t seem to need as much cooking. Now we know.

…the August days where we fully intend to get a nice head start on school, only there is a funeral in Wisconsin, a day to do corn with friends, a few days with cousins, and somehow we approach the end of the month and have managed about eight school days. A soft start, but it is a start!

…the August days where we wonder about our decision to not install central air at this time, and it is very warm in the house. I buy a blower in the shop section at Walmart, then I set it on a stool in the doorway of the one bedroom (Greg’s room) that has a window unit. It blows cooler air out toward our living area and it is bearable.

…the August days when both our vehicles have to be inspected and neither one passes because they need some repairs, so Gabriel puts them on the lift, changes brakes, fixes tires, orders parts. Then we just take them back for the sticker and we’re kosher for another twelve-month.

…the August days that are already darkening earlier then we wish, and there are such multitudes of mosquitoes at dusk that we end up retreating to the house. We pick up our read-aloud tradition in the evenings and the girls beg for another chapter until my voice is hoarse.

…the August days when there are so many blooms in the garden that we can bring in fresh bouquets every day if we wish, plus share with friends. There are delicate dahlias, velvety sunflowers, brilliant cosmos, elegant gladiolas, and herbs gone prettily to seed so that they fill in any gaps in the vases. Sometimes the girls make enchanting fairies with the blooms.

I call it my pretty garden and it makes me happy.
That over-achieving Jerusalem artichoke on the left will need to be re-homed before next year.

…the August days of blackberries and elderberries and wild cherries, only we don’t know what to do with those last ones but there are so many on the trees that they bow down with the weight. But we make our berry-well syrup and freeze extras for winter. The blackberries are not as plentiful, more like a bonus for taking a walk.

…the August days where once again my husband’s work takes a stressful turn in the ICU as it fills up with critically ill patients and the nurses look at each other in dismay as they consider how they will make it through another season like we had in 2020. I feel the dismay too, because for a few months it felt like we could breathe freely and just maybe Covid has done its worst. So now we know it’s not over, and we will be required to have more stamina than we like.

…the August days when I look at the research, and the polarizing sides to all the stories, and I see that any decision has to be a decision made in faith because there are no guarantees. I have ignored my husband’s wishes and his firsthand experience long enough. I get the shots, and I am at peace about it. I am pleased to report that I have not turned magnetic or begun to glow in the dark. Yet.

…the August days when the frozen custard stand at the end of our road beckons imperiously, and really it is just about the best we’ve ever had, especially the tangerine sherbet, which isn’t even custard. We stand in line happily, because all too soon their windows will be shuttered for the season.

…the August days when I spend a whole afternoon with a crowd of tween girls at a pond equipped with a diving board and a rope swing. I swim a little, count heads a lot, and visit for hours with a mom-friend from church. It is a lovely way to be lazy.

…the August days when my new kitchen is almost finished. The main parts are installed; I marvel at how easily the drawers slide. There are knobs and handles ready for Gabriel to install as soon as he gets a day off monitoring patients or fixing random car troubles. The island is being built this week by our cabinet-maker, and our last bit of bowling-lane-turned-countertop needs to be sanded. So very close to finished!

…the August days with the insistent drone of late-summer insects announcing that these days are nearly over, but did we ever pack them full of goodness! Besides, there is still a lot of corn and cantelope ripening. It’s not over yet!

The Bossy Veggies

First up: a disclaimer. There are many, many rules about gardening that are completely unnecessary depending on your climate or soil or water situation. Potatoes can be grown in rows and hilled in the traditional manner, or grown in black trash bags, or even just thrown on the ground and covered with mulch, as I have just learned from Ruth Stout’s highly amusing tales in her book No Work Garden. (Thanks to my friend Linda for recommending it to me.) I have been planting potatoes in a diamond grid for a few years now, and mulching them heavily so they do not need to be hilled. It saves space and since I don’t find potatoes very pretty once the stalks start to die, I confine them to a space of about 15 feet x 5 feet along an edge. Then I plant flowers in front of them and don’t really look at them until they are ready to dig.

However, my anecdotes are not rules. The best fun in gardening is breaking the rules or problem solving around them. My husband plans things on graph paper before he plants them out. Every thing is symmetrical and orderly and I do love this about him. I walk around with a spade and consider the angles, then dig a hole. I move things around all the time. He doesn’t get how much fun that is, but I think he probably loves this about me.

So, plants that have bossed me around:

Potatoes. I’ll start there, because they were a dismal failure in our hard clay soil. I tried for a few years and every time I dug them up, they were gnarly little lumps that would give cooks nightmares to peel. Not only that, I was plagued with nasty white worms the crawled just under the skin. I threw away a few of those crops and didn’t try again for years. As the soil loosened up with loving attention, I tried again, as described above, and have been getting abundant yields. The only problem now is storage. If they do get wrinkly and sprouted before they get used up, you can simply plant them in the spring when the ground warms up a little. Please don’t throw a wrinkly potato into the garbage disposal!
Carrots. Same story as above. They like very loamy soil. But if you do have that, they can almost be grown year round. Not quite, but they can be stored in the ground for much of the winter. Google it. And they taste so much better than the ones in the produce section.
Sweet potatoes. The only issue I had was that they vined all over the garden. I kept trying to pile the vines back onto themselves, and they kept crawling over the tomato cages. These did very well for me long before I grew regular potatoes. In fact, they grew so huge, I struggled to know how to cut them up. One potato was much more than I needed for a meal. It became one of the children’s favorite things to harvest, digging up these massive submarines in the fall.
Sweet corn. One basic problem is space. I planted corn in double rows, about 8 inches apart. Then I left a normal sized space (so I could walk through to pick it) before the next double row. This meant that I could almost double the amount of corn I had space for in the garden. Corn is tall and shouldn’t be planted where it will shade other plants for a large part of the day. Also wildlife loves it. When we fenced our orchard, we tilled up a large section to grow corn and melons. Occasionally a deer would hop the fence and stroll through, wreaking havoc as it went. I really do not like that.
Zucchini. Okay, this is super-easy to grow, but in my experience, it dies super-easy. Many times I have battled squash beetles and powdered mildew on the leaves. A plant can go from luscious and huge one day to a sad and dispirited pile of wilt the next. It is dramatic and sad. But the good news is, zucchini grows fast and is easy to start just by dropping seeds on a mound in the garden. Then there is a small, but not insurmountable problem of too much fruit to keep up with. One thing I learned from my neighbor is to leave one lunker of a zucchini on the plant and it will slow down the growth of the new ones, space them out a little, so to speak. If your plants do flourish, you could feed a small army. My children start looking suspiciously at casseroles and soups and even desserts when zucchini season is going strong.
Peppers. My only problem with these lovely veggies is that it always takes too long until they are ready to pick. Occasionally I have a season where they don’t set fruits until late summer. The little girls watch anxiously and harvest peppers the instant they deem them big enough to eat. I plant a lot of them, because why not?
Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower. One word: pests. I cannot stand those green worms that hatch once the white cabbage butterflies start flitting over the garden. I have fed broccoli crowns to the chickens when I couldn’t stomach how many worms were dropping out in a the salt water soak, because I know how easy it is to miss some and then they drop out in the kettle. Shivers. If I were starving, I wouldn’t quibble, but so far I am avoiding eating worms. This is the one exception I make to spraying poison on my plants. I confess that I have a spray bottle of Sevin for my cruciferous vegetables. It seems like fall crops are not plagued quite as much with pests, so I often wait until July to plant cruciferous vegetables. They can handle the chill of fall, and even survive light frosts.
Melons. They are space hogs. They have no concept of social distancing, you might say. I have tried growing them at the edge of the garden where they can go wild down over a steep bank. It wasn’t very successful. Also I struggle to know whether they are ripe enough to pick, even with the “watch the tendrils” rule. But if you do raise even a few melons off one vine, you will feel very accomplished. Consider that a large watermelon can cost $6, and your plant may have cost $1. What is there to lose? Besides your dignity, of course, if you cut your prize open and it is still disappointingly pink inside. (On the other hand, gourds have the same vining tendencies without the risk of harvesting at the wrong time. When our boys were 5 and 7, they made $40 one fall by selling decorative gourds in a wheelbarrow set beside the road.)
Peas. You knew this was coming, right? I love peas: the shelled variety, bursting sweet orbs of fresh flavor, but they are labor intensive. They can be grown on the ground in single rows. A friend of mine gets very impressive yields this way. Her rows are long and lush. Every year we discuss our crops and hers is always amazing, but I notice her wincing and rubbing her back as we speak about it. Picking peas is backbreaking work. If you have wire fences for them to grow on, it isn’t nearly as bad. Make a double row, install the fence in the middle so they share their support system. Then get ready to pick through the jungle to find the treasures. Totally worth it. I think. My mother-in-law has a neat trick. She plants her peas in double rows, but then she leaves the space of a row empty for other plants before she puts in another double row. This way the later plants can grow and fill in the garden when the peas come out in late June. My own strategy has been to pull the peas for the goats or till them back into the soil, then plant green beans or broccoli for a fall crop. Our season here is long enough to do that if the peas go in early.

That’s what pops up to the top when I think of bossy (as in, treat me right or I won’t produce) vegetables. I’m sure there are many other fascinating ones that you have grown or would like to try to grow.

(Zinnias, distracting the eye from the weeds, covering for the less comely plants, attracting the flittering butterflies, and providing endless bouquets for us all. Do plant zinnias.)

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Something to Make

We are in rainy season here in south central PA, days and days of drenching with no sunshine in sight on the forecast for 10 days. It’s incredible, a little disconcerting, and cozy as midwinter. I turned on the heat today to cut through the damp and we sip hot drinks just like midwinter. There is muddy water streaming across the roads where the creeks can’t drain the mountains fast enough, and the happiest creatures on this farmlet are the ducks. The cats hate it, because they can’t sit outside the windows, looking in covetously. They are stuck in the barn. Maybe they will finally catch on that they should be catching rats.

M garden is reduced to some watermelons, a patch of broccoli and sweet potatoes, and small tomatoes that hang onto the blighted stems and ripen slowly in the cooler weather. Recently I had a bite of a stuffed tomato appetizer at a restaurant when a friend kindly shared hers. I became mildly obsessed with replicating that flavor at home, and googled for recipes, trying for the flavor until I think I nailed it pretty close. This is a mash-up of many different recipes and my own trial and error. If you want to hang on tenaciously to summer for a bit, to its tastes and textures, you will want to try Basil Stuffed Tomatoes. You need:

8 to 10 small tomatoes
8 ounces Neufchatel cheese
3 T. pesto
2 cups Italian bread crumbs
a few sprigs of fresh basil
4 T. butter

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Cut out the core/stem area of the tomatoes and use a spoon to scoop out the seeds and wetness from the center of each.
Set them upside down to drain a bit more while you mix up the other ingredients.
Soften the cream cheese in the microwave if you’re like me and forgot to get it out 2 hours ago. Mix in the pesto. This amount is variable. I could roll in basil everyday and feel happy with the flavor, but not everybody is like that. I add enough pesto to turn the cream cheese quite green.
Melt the butter and toss it into 1 1/2 cups bread crumbs. Save 1/2 cup of crumbs out dry.
Turn the tomatoes right side up in a baking dish and spoon about 2 tsp. of dry crumbs into each one. This is to help soak up the damp in the tomato.
Spoon 1 T. of cream cheese mixture into each tomato, squooshing it down on top of the crumbs pretty solidly.
Stick a layer of basil leaves on top. In fact you can put basil in layers wherever you please during this process.
Top each tomato with buttered bread crumbs. I used a cookie scoop and pressed them down firmly, then topped them with a scoop of looser crumbs for a prettier presentation.
Bake, uncovered, 350, for 30 minutes.

This may sound fiddly, but it is oh, so worth it! It made me feel so happy to figure it out. If you don’t have fancy bread crumbs, you can just blend some toasted rustic bread and add extra Italian spices or you can pulverize up salad croutons like I did one day. The parmesan garlic was really good! You can use regular cream cheese, of course, or even ricotta. I tried fresh mozzarella once, but it got too rubbery. At any rate, you owe it to summer to give it one last hurrah!

As I write, my girls are playing Great British Baking Show, accents and all. They are using Silly Slime for all their bakes, trying for the “perfect icing drip” on their cakes, sitting on the floor beside the “oven” while they wait for their bakes and having all the calm drama of any of the baking challenges. “I love that bubble on the side…”

I spent an hour writing out assignments for the middle schoolers this next week, and now that I have that handle on Monday morning, I feel like maybe another cup of tea would be in order.

Have a great week! And don’t neglect your tomatoes while you have them.

Five Organic Ways to Take Dominion over Weeds

Nothing quite brings the country dweller down from their Back to Eden aspirations like a flourishing crop of weeds running wild over the land that they fondly slated for productive growth. We went away for 5 days after school was done and when we got back the jungle was encroaching. It has been raining buckets this spring, meaning we didn’t get our gardens planted until last week. The lawn went to seed for a while before we made hay, and the goats cannot possibly keep up with their pastures, even with their nonstop chewing.

We made a plan to bring the rank growth into submission. Using all the weapons in our arsenal, we have been making slow progress. It’s times like this that we are glad our property is limited to less than five acres. I will not mention the options that rhyme with keed-willer or pound-sup since they are bad, bad, and we try to be good with our weed control methods. That is not to say that we never resort to desperate measures, but I will list our favorite methods.

Salt. Nothing fancy, certainly not Epsom salts, which will actually enhance the root systems of vegetables. Just buy ordinary table salt. This works well for fence rows, in sidewalk cracks, along walkways, and to my astonishment, on asparagus beds! My in-laws taught me this trick. They suggest salting the bed once a year, then mulching heavily on top. It works like a charm! Somehow the asparagus continues to thrive while the weeds do not. In other areas, salt will produce more of a scorched earth look, so be careful where you dribble it.
Boiling water. When I do water bath canning, I pour the scalding hot water on weeds in the driveway. Nice and easy, except for the part where I haul a huge kettle full of boiling water through the house, trying to hold it at arm’s length. An easier method is to fill the tea kettle and then pour the boiling contents onto such things as pesky wild rhubarbs or evil start-up vines of poison ivy. I try to hit some of the leaves, but especially the roots right by the stem.
Garden gloves and old-fashioned bending over to pull weeds. You can walk through your grounds daily, nipping things in the bud as they come up. This is not terribly effective if you have too much garden to keep up with. I almost cannot walk past a weed when I get in this mode. It’s terribly distracting. I just wanted to cut a head of lettuce, and here I am, halfway down the onion rows, pulling red-roots.
A sharp hoe. Some people hoe a section every day. I will never forget the sight of African farmers working patiently through vast plots with short-handled hoes. It’s a good practice, very effective if you are into bodily exercise that profits much.
Cardboard with mulch on top. This gets my top vote, because of the way it builds up the soil and retains moisture in the warmer months. There are lots of options. I will dedicate the rest of the post to this idea. (Apologies. This is an edit to what accidentally got published with a title of six ways when I really only have five. I would have made up more if I could have thought of them. Maybe you can help a girl out.)

We have a grass catcher on our mower, so every time we mow, we pile the clippings around garden plants. This works, but it gets weirdly slippery.

Old hay or straw is great mulch for keeping the soil moist, but it is not so great for weed control because the seeds in the bales will abundantly compensate for every weed that is smothered. Maybe you will be fortunate and get very clean hay. It’s a risk I prefer not to take after one year when I had wheat growing all over my garden on top of the mulch.

Composted manure with straw or sawdust is a wonderful option. Sourcing this requires becoming buddies with a farmer who is willing to let valuable by-products leave the farm for other places. We tackled the problem by becoming the farmer. It required building a barn, then building fences, then buying a menagerie that obligingly ate what we fed it and turned out bushels of poo mixed with their bedding so that now we have a fairly steady supply of mulch for the gardens. Since the chickens have already scratched through the compost, there are very few seeds left to cause trouble and the plants fairly leap into the air when they receive rain water filtered through fertilizing mulch.

We also mulch with wood chips, especially around the base of the fruit trees and berries. I don’t recommend twisters, but if you have a storm that takes out a bunch of your trees, you might as well dry your tears, cut the firewood, and run the branches through a chipper. Wait a year and the pile of chips will be fine mulch. Alternately you can take up spoon carving and collect the chips. We have a number of failed kuksas and spoon blanks scattered around the blueberry bushes.

The easiest, least economic way involves carting loads of mulch home from a distributor and spreading it. If you mulch as heavily as you should, about 4 to 6 inches deep, you’re going to run into a bit of money.

However- no weeds! (Unless the chickens get out and scatter it into the lawn.)

Last week my greenhouse friend and I were fantasizing about gardening in heaven. Everything peak season, always bearing fruit, no pests, and no weeds! It’s a tantalizing thought. We just aren’t there yet, so we deal with it.

One Way to “Git ‘er Done”

“Oh, you horrid dog,” I exclaimed when she grabbed every weed in midair as I tossed it toward a compost pile. I looked at the yard, strewn with twiggy lavender branches and gigantic dandelions. Now we would have to rake it yet. “UGH! Gregory, go put Lady on the deck!” I ordered in exasperation.

“What did she even do?” he wanted to know. He’s always a softie when the dog is in trouble. I pointed wordlessly at the mess and he said, “You sure can’t take much, can you?”

That, from the child who was born by emergency C-section after his mother (me) had experienced 2 hours of exhausting and fruitless pushing and a transport to the nearest hospital because he (Gregory) was star-gazing in utero. I did not point out to him that his birth nearly killed me, but I thought it.

We were working on mulching the perennial beds. I had prepared these borders for mulch weeks ago, freeing them of weeds and waiting for an opportune time such as a day when my husband has off work with nothing better to do. Today I looked at the recurring carpet of fine weeds coming up, then I looked at the weather forecast, which is rainy, cloudy, rainy, rainy, rainy, for about as far ahead as can be seen. It was pay now or pay later, and I dislike carpets of weeds, so we (Gregory and I) hitched up the trailer and went for three scoops of mulch.

All my life we pronounced it “mulsh” like it was from some special pronunciation group. Then one day I heard yet another person say “mulch” with a “ch” at the end, and I got out the trusty dictionary. What do you know? They were right and I was wrong. I have been correcting my habit ever since, but my children think it sounds so affected and wrong. I said it as often as I could today, just to make Gregory splutter and to pay him back for laughing at me when I couldn’t back the trailer as well as I should have. “Mulch, mulch, mulch,” I said under my breath, just loudly enough for him to hear.

Before we mulched, I told Gregory to cut off the tulip leaves just because it looks so much cleaner. I know you aren’t supposed to do that, but I do it every year and so far they have always forgiven me and bloomed again. Daffodils aren’t quite so gracious, so we just doubled their leaves down and mulched on top. I transplanted some volunteer pink petunias and brought purple coneflower volunteers up from the edge of the garden.

Would you like to know what we did about that carpet of teeny weeds coming up? We have been saving up our empty cereal boxes for months for the purpose of putting them under the mulch. Gregory and I decided that it lends a sort of nobility to eating cereal at breakfast, what with the repurposing and all. We made sure the words were on the bottom so that if the mulch happens to shift, you can’t see how many Marshmallow Mateys we have eaten.

Every year I have trouble with plants dying out in my perennial border. A friend suggested that it may be because it is right along the picket fence by the road where the snow plows throw in the salt. It makes sense to me. I just keep experimenting with different things to see what can tolerate those conditions. So far purple coneflower has done well, but all the black-eyed susans croaked. The daylilies are okay and the yarrow is spreading out of all reason. My favorite peonies are flourishing, but the peppermint tea at the end is not happy at all. Not to worry, it’s what I love about gardening… so much scope for imagination! Gabe thinks it is weird how I like to move plants around. Why not plant it where you want it and then leave it there for always? I don’t know why not; it’s just not how I roll when I garden. It is so much fun to dig up a clump of roots, divide it, and rearrange the environment.

After a few hours of steady off-loading with a scoop shovel, I was pretty hungry. Olivia brought me a baked sweet potato with a sprinkling of cinnamon on it. I ate it without taking off my gardening gloves, peppering it with some tiny bits of mulch. Gregory felt the tug of all the cereal boxes and disappeared for the space of a bowl of Chex.

At seven o’clock the predicted rain started to sprinkle down on us. We had one-fourth of our load on the trailer yet. I speeded up and the jokes stopped. Gregory pushed the last mulch into a pile and put away the shovels while I drove the Suburban down the hill to park the trailer beside the barn. Right then I decided I couldn’t face turning, backing, turning, backing, nearly jack-knifing, etc. As he came to help me unhook the trailer, I told him we are just going to let it sit until tomorrow, and I plodded up to the house in the drizzle.

“Are you seriously that beat?” he asked. This, from the boy who took bathroom breaks and snack breaks and cardboard-shield-making breaks while I plodded doggedly along.

“I am just about dead,” I admitted. But guess what? It is raining steadily and I am feeling pretty good. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the ibuprofen has taken hold.

And for one parting shot: This is Mother’s Day, in the evening, when I suddenly remembered that we had not taken our annual photo because we left for a choir program at 6 AM. A Hallmark photo it is not, but it reminds me that a mother’s best defense against the erosions of time and reason is maintaining a sense of humor. Seriously.

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Glorious May

What could be better than sitting in a clean house while a rain-shower patters down outside? Try adding a piece of chocolate with salted caramel bits, a bird singing outside the window, a son planning supper around his freshly caught fish which he filleted himself, and an hour to write. Bliss.

You may wonder why my house is all clean on a random Thursday. Let me tell you, I nearly killed myself with mopping and clearing away of chaos this forenoon. This, because the insurance adjusters were scheduled to come take a look around. The last time we had a property assessment, I was unprepared and embarrassed to the core as they walked through every room, taking pictures and ignoring the mess with cheerful grace. Every time they opened a door, there was a child doing school in an odd place, or playing something incredibly messy on an unmade bed. Gabe told me that from his years of experience with replacing windows, this is nothing. Well, it feels dreadful to me, so I was going to be prepared today. We got lunch cleared away and the children’s faces washed before they showed up.

Turns out we don’t have wood heat, so they didn’t even have to step inside. I felt a little cheated. Why can’t someone take pictures of my house when it is like this?

This next scene is right outside the window. My long-cherished dream of throwing pots of clay in that little barn is about to come to pass. We had a grand clearing out and reassigned the stuff in there to other storage places. Plans are for a corner for carving for the man and the place where the lower windows are will be the pottery section. Can’t you see us in there, companionably creative? Only problem is, I still can’t concentrate with people around and I certainly can’t hold a conversation while trying for just the right wall thinness on a clay bowl. About the time I start to talk, my precious piece suddenly feels gravity in a new way and settles gently downward. I have never had so much fun being terrible at something.

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Check out the green fuzz on the ridge, which we have been waiting for for a long time. Suddenly it is popping, almost too fast. It takes the breath away. This morning the lawn looked like this, but in about 2 days we will have abundant dandelion chain supplies again.

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I used to spend hours with the older children outside, looking for signs of spring, weaving flower chains and playing in the fresh grass. One day when Addy was grizzling and bored, I realized that I don’t do that very much with her. So I took her little paw in mine and we meandered around the pond, discussing things that interest her life. I braided her a coronet of gold and she had a heart change.

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The children are all but done with school books for this term. There are a few random tests yet, but other than that, we’re done. One of the cousins told them about DIY tutorials on Youtube for making tiny doll furnishings or clothing. From there they have moved to all sorts of projects, resulting in sketchy looking lip balms made with raspberry juice and coconut oil or odd hot air balloons where the tissue paper tends to flame up suddenly on liftoff. My personal favorite was when Rita said, “Did you know that you can fix nail holes in the wall by putting toothpaste into them?” I told them to take a break from creativity, so we are back on the more familiar ground of a pet snake in the terrarium and some pillbugs in a plastic container. “May we google, ‘What do pillbugs eat?’.”

This next photo represents a triumphant moment for us all, but especially for Gabriel. He had been hankering for a motorcycle ride all spring, saying if he didn’t have this assignment to finish, he would just break out and go riding. The thing about unrelenting assignments to study is that Jack feels like a dull boy, ready to bust out and do something different! One day I was gone for a while, and when I got home he was at the neighbor’s house, borrowing his bike.

“Did you finish your course while I was gone?” I asked at first opportunity, not believing it could be possible. He just grinned and nodded. He had the last two assignments to work on when I left that morning, but in a spurt of determined perseverance, he had actually submitted them both in one day! I didn’t begrudge him a long ride through the countryside in the least! (For the concerned folks out there, the child did not ride with him. Prop only for a spin in the lawn. 🙂 )

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It occurred to me that some of you may be interested in my container gardening tips. I can’t grow houseplants worth squat, but I do seem to have success with my containers on the deck. I will use last year’s pictures for this DIY session. 🙂

Find a friendly greenhouse proprietor who knows their stuff. You need to consider the light where your container will be. Is it full sun or partial shade? Ask your new friend what grows well in your conditions. You do not want to mix a shade plant with a full sun needer, or you will be conflicted all summer as to who gets what they need. (If at all possible, do not buy your plants at the big name stores. They ship them from who-knows-where, so the plants are stressed and sad from the start. You local greenhouse people deserve your business. Have you ever thought about how hard they work?)
Look for a grass or spike plant to give you a visual high point. These plants usually are very tolerant of almost any condition. Last year I found these neat “Prince Tut” grasses, which look like a scepter with a sunburst at the end. I haven’t seen them anywhere yet this year, but I did find curly pink grasses. That’s the fun… mixing it up.
Your next requirement is for a showy leaf. Some good ones are sweet potato vines which come in endless varieties ranging from bright lime green to purple. Those trail beautifully. More upright plants with dramatic foliage are dusty miller or coleus.
The third category in a mixed planter is the blooming plant. We enjoy things that attract hummingbirds, so anything with a trumpet-like flower makes us happy. Million bells, those tiny petunias that never have to be deadheaded, are great for show and easy to please. I don’t hold back much on color combinations, but I do try not to put orange and pink together, etc. Really, there are no rules. If you love your flowers, they will love you back.
My fourth category is something with big blooms. You see Gerbera daisies in these photos, but I am officially done with mixing them in planters with other flowers. They don’t like sharing my space, for some reason. Also, my greenhouse friend told me they hate fertilizer, and literally everything else loves it. So they are out this year. Geraniums work, especially the vining ones that aren’t stuck on one upright shape. I have fallen in love with large begonias as well. They are a little picky about water. Not too much, or they rot.
The next step is funny. Line your planters with adult diapers. This trick comes to you courtesy of my friend who is caring for her elderly mother. She was given some Depends that would have wrapped twice around her mother, so she changed up their use, figuring they would hold moisture in her planters during the hot July days. It works like a charm. Also, your big planters can be filled with empty milk jugs or soda bottles at the bottom. You really only need dirt in the top 12 inches and it makes them much easier to move.
Use good potting soil. Trust me, it is worth 5 or 10 dollars extra to buy a good brand versus cheap, generic stuff. I like Miracle Gro potting soil with fertilizer in the mix.
Arrange your plants until you like the configuration in the pot. I like mine full and energetic, but they do tend to take up whatever space they have. Just don’t be stingy. You can always repot something if it takes too much space.
Plant them. Pull the roots apart gently at the bottoms. They are almost always root bound in the greenhouse pots. Set your planters in a sheltered area for a few days so they can get used to the big outdoors.
Remember that the plants are used to a lot of fertilizer. It’s what greenhouses do to get that luxurious growth that makes you want to buy the whole place. If you never feed your plants, you will see them taper off and look sickly for a while. I have one word for you. Miracle Gro. Seriously. At least once a week. If you feed them oftener, make the solution weaker. Pinch back the aggressive plants, and have fun!

These (below) are my planters last year, at the end of July. See how sickly/nonexistent those Gerberas are in there? I stuck some houseplants in last year, as well. Sometimes I include perennials from my flower beds. Hosta is a good one, as are coral bells. I also do herb planters. They do not have the eye catching appeal of florals, but it is really fun to step outside the door and pinch off some basil. Bonus points for anyone who spots the flourishing plantain weed in one of these arrangements.

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Is it worth the money? I heard that. For us it is. For about a hundred dollars, it turns our outside space into a haven. We may live right beside the road with traffic noise, but we have months of enjoyment out of this investment. I know a man who says he will wait for heaven to have flowers, but I don’t want to wait that long. God gave them to us here. If you source carefully, or wait until the greenhouses are getting rid of inventory, or propagate your own plants, you can grow astounding variety right at your house.

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Well, that concludes my writing hour. I ate a piece of excellently prepared catfish while I sat here, and now I must leave you to go find a greenhouse.

So here we are. May is glorious any way you look at it. And it is triumphant this spring, flush with accomplishment, ready for the next good thing. We feel mellow, delighted with the endless possibilities, despite the normal adult things that weigh down on us. The weariness is passing, the catch-up time is here.