Community Gardener

Reprise of the Rehab

2009-06-24T23:40:00.005-04:00

Almost a month. Of catch -up, of rehab. I have harvested greens and radishes. Almost all of the bok choy and several bags of peas.

The first crop of peas that I planted in March were almost a complete failure. I reseeded with cucumbers about two weeks ago. This week I added four sets of a pickling cuke I bought at the Coop. The seeds I planted were Marketmore, the cucumber my grandfather swore by. The cukes took their sweet time coming up - as did the squash and pumpkins planted several weeks back. The cool wet ( very wet!) weather really delayed their growth, although all the members of the cabbage family look happier than pigs in $%^&* The rain seems to have kept the flea beetles at bay.

The second crop of peas germinated better and have always outshone the earlier crop. Was it the timing, the variety, the seed? I suspect timing is the most important factor. Timing based on soil temperature. This fall I will decide where next year's peas will be planted and set up the pea fence and black plastic to warm the soil before winter sets in. Next March when planting peas I will be more than an impatient gardener going through the motions, I will be planning on peas by the end of May instead of mid-June.

Various friends have complained of aphids and other bugs in their gardens. I have been dismissive. How bad could they be? Really. Then I found what I swear are white flies on my tomatoes. White flies! That is a bug of greenhouses, not the great outdoors. I smashed what I could find and then noted my biggest ally was already on the job... The voracious lady bug nymph.

It goes after aphids and other soft-bodied bugs like a teenager at a burger stand.

I have planted quite a bit over the past few weeks. Tomato and pepper sets have gone in, as well as more Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and savoy cabbage. I planted another crop of beans Provider, and a row of Detroit golden beets on the 25th. On the 24th I planted a crop of lettuce next to the peas, where alas, my parsnoops failed to come up. I also planted Zinnia and sunflowers from seed to extend the season of bloom. I already have plants of both in the ground.

I continue to harvest greens, although my first crop of lettuce is getting close to being finished. The mache I planted this spring is huge and just beginning to flower - all of it is going to have to be harvested in the next day or two. The Really Red Deertongue lettuce has produced the most gorgeous heads I have ever grown. I will be sure to take a picture of it before I harvest the last one.

Mostly, I have tried to catch up with what went undone for six weeks, while I was gimping around on crutches. The almost constant rain of June has made it difficult to get work done and stay ahead of the weeds. The intense mulching I had planned to do this year has yet to happen, but I am getting after it bit by bit.

The potatoes have been hilled and are growing well, although I am going to have to find time between the raindrops to apply copper and Serenade to protect them and my tomatoes against Late Blight, which was reported in Tompkins County this week. Late blight is the disease that caused the potato famine. If it gets into the potatoes they are done. The only organic method of control is copper applied before infection. Serenade is a bacillus -based organic remedy which I have found to be a very effective fungicide and have read is useful against late blight, although it does not make that claim on its label.

Late blight is a scary creature. Its scientific name says it all: Phytopthora infestans. It sends uncounted spores far up into the air and has the ability to sweep over continents, leaving devastation and hunger in its wake. I want my potatoes to live! This continuous rain and humidity is not a good way to stop its spread.

Parsnoops

2009-06-01T20:49:00.003-04:00

Some people call them Parsnips. A new crop for me this year, planted next to another - Celeriac. I planted both on Sunday. I also planted two types of winter squash: Kabucha and Butternut "Raritan," as well as a blend of yellow, green and white patty pan squashes, 'Sugar Pie' pumpkins and okra.

The parsnips and celeriac are planted next to "Mokum" carrots, which seem to have germinated erratically, which is probably related to the big footprint in the middle of the patch - I suspect someone retrieving a softball was a bit careless.

More potatoes were found sprouted in the cupboard - I thought I ordered more! So I planted French Fingerlings and La Ratte, another fingerling, alongside the other potatoes. I have set a few potatoes aside, because this week I plan to create my "Potato Box," which will theoretically allow me to grow a huge amount of potatoes in a small space. We shall see!

We also harvested a huge bag of greens- enough for two large salads a day for Tiz and I throughout the week. It consists of spinach, three types of lettuce, radicchio and red orach- along with dill and chives. Tiz has the first of her bouquets on the windowsill.

2009-05-26T15:38:00.002-04:00

I enjoyed the Holiday weekend with a bit of gardening, quite a bit actually, if time spent is the point of reference, not amount completed. I remain painfully slowed by my crutches, but I still managed to plant sets of Snow Crown cauliflower, Goliath and Waltham broccoli and Catskills Brussels sprouts.

I also got a nice patch of garden asters in the ground from some sets given to me by Susan. The work she and Mark did a few weeks back made it possible for me to finally get my potatoes in the ground, which included: Rose Finn Apple, Red Thumb and French fingerlings as well as a full row of Romanze, a red storage potato with gold flesh and a couple spuds of Carola. All of the potatoes were less than perfect, very sprouted and a little soft. Some of the Romanze even had mold on them, but I will hope for the best.

Perhaps I will get some more potatoes in, there are some (400 or 500 Lbs. !) at the main office that were donated by Fedco. A very generous gift to the gardeners of the region. Thank you Fedco and to all the big-hearted farmers and seed houses that donate to CDCG, making it possible for us to have access to seeds we otherwise would struggle to afford. These donations are varied enough to expose us to many unusual plants as well- last year I grew round black spanish radishes, an heirloom that isn't found in local stores that really changed my perception of what a radish was supposed to look like. They stored fabulously too, keeping well in the ground far into November and remaining sound in the crisper for nearly a month after that. I will plant more of them this year and see if by piling straw over them I can have them farther into the winter.

I have tried to remain cheerful in the face of my limitations, but I can't wait to get off crutches and really get busy in my garden. I'm a month behind where I would like to be and will have many gaps in my well-planned harvest calendar - I haven't planted lettuce in nearly a month- the cukes and squashes should have been in a while back and don't even get me started on the tomatoes! Of course we did have a frost last week so being late may just have spared me some heartache.

The race does not always go to the swift!

Fractured Fairy Tales

2009-05-20T16:23:00.002-04:00

Gardening is difficult on crutches. Leeks made it into the garden on one visit. On the 17th I planted tomatoes my father had given me as well as a few I bought at Community Gardens' spring plant sale - a fundraiser I should have noted! I promise to be better about such things. The fall plant sale happens in mid-September. I will announce that before it happens.

Along those lines and fitting with my inability to feed myself - The Veggie Mobile has garnered some international attention and needs our support. From an email sent to me:

Subject: Community Gardens’ project nominated as worldwide finalist - vote now!

Capital District Community Gardens’ Veggie Mobile has been selected as one of ten finalists in a worldwide competition called “Designing for Better Health” sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Ashoka’s Changemakers.
Internet ballots will decide the three highest vote-getters by May 28th and winners will receive a $5,000 cash award and international recognition for their project. This is a tremendous opportunity for our organization, our mobile market – The Veggie Mobile, and for New York’s Capital Region!
Now we need your help. Please use this link to vote for our program and share this link with your personal networks (email, facebook, myspace, blogs, etc.). If everyone we know gets in touch with everyone they know we will win this award.
Every vote will make a difference - thanks for helping to spread the word! Please vote by May 28th.
http://www.changemakers.net/designingforbetterhealth/
More info on Capital District Community Gardens and The Veggie Mobile www.cdcg.org

The Veggie Mobile rocks! I buy great food at great prices and am charmed by the staff nearly every week. They have kept veggies in my life even when I can't grow them myself. As the corrupt politicos like to say: "Vote early and vote often."

Oh, I harvested Spinach and radishes on the 17th as well. Tizzy served them up as a lovely side salad to go with the grilled fish we had. The fish was topped with mango salsa - mango, peppers and limes off of the Veggie Mobile!

Planting

2009-04-26T11:07:00.001-04:00

On 4/11 I planted a row of spinach Winter Bloomsdale, Three types of lettuce: Mint Fresh, Really Red Deer Tongue and Buttercrunch alongside two rows of radish: Champion and White Icicle.

I also lined out 24 sets of baby Bok Choy and planted two rows of Chiogga beets. In hopes of deterring the flea beetles I scattered mesclun mix between the Bok Choy.

Our Spring Cleanup was on the 17th. This is where all the gardeners get together to perform chores for the benefit of the garden as a whole, mulching paths, cleaning up the fence line, straightening up the shed, etc. I showed up late and was of little use, because I fractured my ankle earlier in the week. I plopped myself down though and spread some newspapers on an overgrown path, which Tiz brought wheelbarrows of mulch to cover.

Fortunately on the 18th some friends showed up to help me in the garden. I took up a spot on the ground of a long-abandoned plot and Marcus and Sue turned over the earth, while I cleaned out the roots of Jerusalem Artichoke and Road Lily (of which one is not an artichoke and the other has little in common with the true lilies) Actually both plants are edible, but the variety of artichoke wild in our garden has such small roots that its not worth the trouble. Neither of them make nice companions with other vegetables because they are so invasive. I separated out the daylily roots for Sue to take with her, because they do make a great ground cover and she needed them for a tough spot in her garden. Sue and Mark did great work and I will have them to thank when I plant potatoes there in a few weeks.

Then I hobbled over to my plot and planted out hundreds of onions. I made a cooperative order with friends at work from an onion grower in Texas and we received bundles of little onion plants wrapped up in rubber bands in the mail. By combining our orders, we brought the cost down to about a nickel a plant. A good rain fell on Monday and Tuesday to settle them in so I assume they are doing well. I haven't made it back to the garden since. This is a bad time for a gardener to have a busted up ankle!

I planted two red onions and three yellow. Candy and Red Candy are two large varieties that are sweet summer onions, not meant for storage. Ailsa Craig is a very large onion also, but it is supposed to store alright. This onion is named for an island. After looking it up to check the spelling I can see why. My main storage onions will be Copra and Red Zeppelin. All together I planted about 180 plants. Sue came over to help me finish up and she planted about a pound of Yellow Moon shallot sets in the same section. This whole row of the garden is devoted to onions. I still have two types, maybe three, of leeks to plant out and red Prisma shallots that I have started from seed.

I am interested to compare my success with these tiny plants compared to the much larger sets I used last year, sets planted out about a week later on the 23rd. To make room for the onions Tess and I harvested the overwintered Mache, which she made a beautiful salad with. She included pears and nuts and a mild vinaigrette. Delicious.

Yesterday and today we are having nearly 90 degree temperatures. Much too hot for April. Yesterday was the hottest since 1915.

Time and Making Timing

2009-04-06T19:37:00.004-04:00

Went to the garden on Saturday with good intentions. But it was cold and the wind was blowing and the soil was wet from rain.

In the upper right corner you can see my block of garlic. if there was a close up you would see that the late- planted Bavarian White had almost caught up to its peers.

The white blanket is remay. I use it to moderate temperatures and maintain moisture. During the summer I cover carrot plantings with it so they don't dry out before germination. In the fall it provides protection from frost and freezes.

Now, in the spring, it holds the day's warmth a little longer into the night and encourages the spinach to sprout.

I have been using this same piece of remay for two years now. I think it will last for several more.

I wish I had taken a thin strip of it and covered the peas. They are just barely above the ground. Both plantings, although made of different varieties, planted a week apart, are equally far along.

Timing is everything.

2009-03-21T17:30:00.002-04:00

First whole day of spring. Recovering from a brutal cold, I went out when the sun was well up and the frost gone from the soil. The ground that I worked last week was black and fine, warmed by a week of sun and a gentle rain.

No sign of the peas planted on Sunday, so I poked about at the beginning of the row. I turned up a pea all swollen and green just splitting open and sending out its root. I tucked it back in the ground.

In the prepared bed I planted two types of spinach, Bordeaux and Viroflay; mache Gala, a white bunching onion for scallions and a Treviso type of radicchio. After planting I covered the entire area with a doubled piece of remay.

I planted another patch of peas, this time in a double row. These are a later and taller variety called Oregon Sugar Pod. I will wait a few weeks to put up the pea trellis so that it doesn't create any more shade than necessary. I planted the double row closer than recommended, closer to one foot than two, in order to leave plenty of room in the rest of the bed. I will thin the peas and use the thinnings as pea shoots in my spring salads. As the peas begin to age I will plant cucumbers among them, so the trellis remains useful.

I weeded last year's mache and am curious to see how the spring sown plants do in comparison. Where the mache et al was planted I left the very center of the bed clear. I hope to put out very early tomatoes in that row, with a bit of plastic over them to see if I can manage a tomato crop by July 15. I need to check my records, but I think that's when I got my first tomato last year. But it was only one, the rest of the crop was two-three weeks later.

Inside I have started leeks (3 types) and shallots, bok choy, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. I also started an early tomato variety and several types of lettuce. I will plant more lettuce and tomatoes this week

2009-03-16T18:49:00.002-04:00

Yesterday we enjoyed the first blasts of spring. It was nearly 50 and sunny. The ball fields were full of anxious players and I was just as anxious to get started gardening. First I did some clean up, removing the last of the fall crops I hadn't harvested. The clean up turned into a gleaning as I managed to salvage leeks, turnips and carrots. I took them home and roasted them with herbs and some Veggie Mobile goodies I had in the fridge. After roasting they went in the blender with a bit of stock and Viola! a delicious soup. I had it for lunch today. My first harvest of the season on March 15th, substantial and delicious!

The Garlic is up. The Bavarian White, which was planted several weeks later than most, is barely above ground, the other varieties have several inches head start. Self-seeded mache is growing nicely where it was planted the fall before last.

Before I went to the garden I looked for the planting plan I drew up a month back - of course I could not find it. So I relied on my memory as to where I meant to plant peas. I planted Sugar Daddy, a dwarf edible-podded pea that is supposed to bear in 45 days. If I am lucky I will have peas in May! It is supposed to remain warm this week, so its possible, doubtful, but possible. I prepped a bed for mache and spinach, which I hope to plant tomorrow. Hope springs eternal!

The Rest of the Story

2009-03-04T14:55:00.003-05:00

With my respects to Paul Harvey. I thought you might appreciate a tour of the changing world. After so many years crying in the wilderness, it seems the powers that be are starting to hear our teeny-tiny voices of systemic and sustainable change.

Perhaps you heard the First Lady thinks local food is good tasting food, perfect for inspiring children to eat their veggies? She even took time to mention community gardens by name. It turns out the prez himself has been known to eat his veggies and the White house lawn may soon be a vegetable garden.

When chosen to head the USDA, Tom Vilsack, former governor of Iowa, was given some Bronx cheers by the sustainable agriculture folks, who called him the governor from Monsanto. But it turns out he may have a personal history that makes him very amenable to understanding the consequences of a food system based on corn syrup. In an interview for internal publication within the USDA Vilsack really spills his guts.

The praise for Vilsack has actually been coming in recent weeks from those who previously would have buried him. It seems he chose a woman of impeccable sustainable qualifications as his second in command, Kathleen Merrigan.

In a GMO update: Ag Giants are attempting to keep their hands firmly on the reins, trying to persuade the world that their genetically modified crops are essential to the future of the planet, but the scientists are no longer inclined to go along. Research is starting to indicate GMO foods may be dangerous not just for the people or animals that eat them, but for the earth itself.

I just thought you all might want to know!

2009-02-03T15:29:00.002-05:00

As you may have gathered, I am a latecomer to the computer world. (hence the bold type on the last post. I really didn't mean for that to happen) For some time now I have been trying to get this blog to accept comments. All of the obvious steps have been taken, this problem should not be a problem - and yet it is. I think I must go deep into the Html code that supports this enterprise to resolve the issue. I wish I could ask you, dear reader for your advice - but, this blog does not seem to accept comments. The fact that I have even peered into the Html code - something I don't even know what the initials stand for - should strike fear into all of our hearts. If the Internet collapses suddenly......

Do Not Go Gentle

2009-01-30T15:58:00.013-05:00

It has been a cold winter, with much more snow than we have become accustomed to. But it had not been one of our coldest nights. In the morning the snow was fresh and white. My eyes, narrowing against the brightness of the day, immediately were drawn to a glistening refuge of black. As I walked down the stairs my brain struggled to assemble the darkness into meaning. It was not until I was almost upon it that its form became understandable. I saw the cold glittering eye, the hairlike feathers gathered at the base of its beak. The crow's wings were not fully extended, but rather crooked, as if it were in mid dive and the force of rushing air was too great to permit complete extension. It was only

as I squatted beside it and saw the still,

half-clutch of its feet that I knew for certain it was dead.

I looked up into the Spruce above us, trying to imagine the bird's last perch. There was no branch that looked more likely than another. Each would have given protection against the snow. I wondered if it had spent a cold solitary night, without the comforting pressure of a companion, or if only in its falling was it single. I felt very alone, there, squatted next to a dead bird in the middle of a city. Although my wife was only moments behind me and cars hissed by on the boulevard, it seemed isolation was the only realistic sentiment. Still, I didn't move, I stayed to gaze at the metallic sheen of crow feathers, and to note the dull black of its lizard feet. Its eyes seemed yet to mimic the shimmering, mirror-like quality they held in life. Looking up again at the tree and then down, at the bird with its wings half spread, its breast cradled in the snow; I realized that the last action of its life had been flight.

Twenty minutes later I pulled into the parking lot at work. One pair of bootprints preceded mine to the front door. Alongside them, clearly marked on the fresh snow of the sidewalk, was the straightline track of a red fox. I knelt down again, noting how the fox had almost exactly superimposed the print of its hind foot onto its front, leaving the impression that it too, needed only two feet to navigate the streets of the city. I looked around at our neighborhood, its grey industrial shoulders covered by a mantle of snow. A truck rushed by.

Smiling, at the frozen reminders of a fox and a bird.

2009-01-20T23:33:00.004-05:00

Damn, I just wanted to talk about crop rotations. But a friend said the other day, when I told him about the miles of fence being built on the Mexican Border, he said: "they're really doing that?"

Like, maybe it's some thing that's not really happening.

But, Yeah. We're building a fence.

It's the same thing for me with GMO's - Genetically Modified Organisms.

And so I forget. It slips my mind. But I need to bear witness, even to myself, I need to remember: The law does not require a company to tell us if their food has been created from the DNA of another plant or creature. In our law all corn is the same corn, whether made in the laboratory or in the field. Perhaps there is a place for genetic engineering - you would be surprised to know what role it already plays in your life, but not all corn is the same corn.

My grandfather was an early adapter of contour plowing. He was the first in his county to use a rubber-wheeled tractor. He said: "They all told me it would sink in the mud."

But he kept his horses. Down in a pasture by the river. He kept them long after most horses were replaced by tractors on other farms. He kept them as a precautionary measure, a hedge against technology. A horse does not run out of gas, not start in the cold. Grandpa was conservative by nature, not a fool.

I'm not a Luddite, but it is my right to know if my corn's genome has been infected with a bacteria. I want a hedge against technology, but currently the law doesn't give me the right to keep horses.

GMO crops should be listed as ingredients in the food we eat. It happens in other places.

Everyone talks about crop science and genetic engineering, But let's be honest, most GMO crops are designed for herbicide resistance. If GMO crops were so great for consumers the great agricultural technology companies would declaim their value to us, but they do not, they hide their product among golden mountains and silos of grain. If GMO's held some great advantage to the consumer then companies would promote them, but instead they hide. This advantage is not for us. It is for Monsanto.

Ronald Reagan said there would be no free lunch and I have heard, you can't get something for nothing. Because the impacts of our technological advancements are not immediately apparent, does not mean they are not significant.

Studies continue to show the higher food and health values of organic meat and produce, but did you know that GMO's are actively bad for you? Here's some research, I will try to find more.

Science gives us a hundred cures for cancer, along with a thousand causes.

Fight the power. Let the president know. Real food for Real people.

Remember most GMO crops are either corn, soy or canola, avoid them or buy organic (organic rules do not allow GMO's)

The List

2009-01-12T13:27:00.003-05:00

Leeks, Onions, garlic, shallots
Spinach, Lettuces, Perpetual Spinach, Radicchio, Sorrel, Mizuna, Beets, Arugula, Purslane
Broccoli, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Brussels Sprouts, Kale, Rapini, Rutabaga, Radish, Piracicaba, Turnip
Parsnips, Celeriac, Fennel, Carrots
Tomatoes, Potatoes
Okra
Cantaloupe, Winter Squash, Cucumber
Beans, Peas
Herbs
Flowers
Cover Crops

This is a list of my plant goals for the new year. It is roughly divided into plant families, except for the greens, which cover the waterfront. There are some additions and some subtractions from last year's garden list. I think I will pass on Chard in favor of the Perpetual Spinach. Peppers have been a bit of a disappointment in the past, because of a little bug that bores into the fruit and makes them rot from the inside out. Instead of fighting the bug, I'll try Okra, which is a beautiful plant and from a different family. I am determined to get Rutabagas to survive the depredations of the flea beetles this year and I am sick of not having Brussels Sprouts. This year's plan has a greater emphasis on storage vegetables. I am still enjoying my potatoes and garlic from the basement and wish I had even more stuff down there.

Looking at this list, with its 36 entries, gives an idea of the range of what is possible in an intensively managed plot. For many of these plants there will be multiple plantings and multiple varieties. Figuring it out can be done on the fly - which is pretty much how I usually do it - but that often leaves me cramped for time and space on some crops. This year I am trying to work it out before hand. The first place to start was this wish list. Next comes the piece of paper, where I will attempt to make a "picture" of my garden plans and how they will evolve over the year.

Defender of Food

2009-01-04T11:47:00.007-05:00

I just finished In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan's latest. I had been putting it off, since many of the articles it is based on I had already read when they were first published in the NY Times Magazine. A big improvement on The Omnivore's Dilemma, this book is much more of a rant, with back-up. It's more fun to read, with tasty nuggets of fact buried inside - kind of like some of our favorite adulterated food-like products.

Pollan is straight-up from the get-go. He says our food system is sick and its illness is reflected in our societal health. He recommends a simple solution: Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants. In 200 pages he presents a relatively plain-spoken argument of what our food mess is, how we got here and how to apply his simplistic (and common-sense,) solution.

Pollan points to two important events of the 70's, Nixon's expansion of farm subsidies, which massively increased corn and soy production, and a little noted "political dust up" that led the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs to change the recommendations they gave Americans about their diets. Rather than suggesting we "reduce consumption of meat," they instead told the public to "choose meats, poultry and fish that will reduce saturated fat intake."

Pollan does not imply that these events created the reductionist nightmare of "Nutritionism," where we talk not about food, but foodstuff's "nutritional value," but he connects them to the broader sweep of American Culture and the Western cult of Science that seems incapable of recognizing its methodology is not suited to understanding every problem.

Now who is ranting?

Anyway, back to the book. Have you ever wondered how to keep up with the changing health news? Eggs are bad - no maybe not. Meat is bad, or maybe just red meat - no its carbohydrates. Fat is bad -well only some fat - well maybe no fat is bad. Turns out all of this info is suspect, or just plain crap. It's all based on science that thinks you can know what food is by breaking it into its parts (and only those parts we have figured out how to measure) It turns out food is way more complicated, especially when its not just how food is prepared, or combined that gives it value, it also matters how it is eaten, or how it is grown. It also turns out there are some very powerful actors that find it useful to discuss food in this reductionist manner. How else can a new product be rolled out every year - or at least relabeled - to reflect the changing winds of "Healthy Eating" Pollan names some names and provides good sources, but this books strength is mostly what its subtitle suggests it is: "An Eater's Manifesto"

In its final section Pollan fleshes out his simple suggestion of eating food, explaining how to identify it, where to find it and some simple tips on how to afford it. You see, good food actually costs more than crap, both in terms of time and money, but it turns out that expense is not as straightforward as it may seem. In 1960 Americans spent 17.5% of their money on food and 5.2% on health care, today the numbers are nearly reversed; food expenses have declined to just 9.9% while health care eats up 16% of National income. Personally, I would rather spend time and money eating well with my friends, than cooling my heels alone in a Doctor's waiting room.

Which is why I already follow many of Pollan's practical food suggestions, such as growing a garden and eating free range organic eggs - because long ago it made sense to me that "You are what you eat eats too" Unfortunately, I can't afford organic, free range meats, so I just try to keep meat a small part of my diet and follow Thomas Jefferson's injunction that meat should be used to flavor vegetables and not the other way around. I have been telling Tiz I'm going to start hunting for a while now, although I'm sure she thinks I'm pulling her leg. But I have talked with enough forest experts to know that here in the Northeast at least, killing Bambie is an environmentally positive thing to do.

Anyway, it's a worthwhile read, even if you are a foodie like me you will surely get something out of it. This year, for example, I will finally order seeds for golden purslane and put a few more Omega-3's in my diet

The Solstice Fire

2008-12-27T12:27:00.008-05:00

Not really. I missed the solstice party in the frozen north, where every year they gather beneath icy stars and the pregnant moon to burn everything they could not compost. It has been too long since I was there with them, the white snow beneath, the black sky above and a golden fire reminding of spring returning.

This fire is from the summer past. With our new technologies we are no longer dependent on magic or storytellers to recreate seasons gone. It is easy now to evoke the lushness, buried in death and snow. Something lost with an accurate image gained.

A picture of my garden in the present tense shows little but white, with the tattered flags of a last column of leeks promising one last harvest. There is a half-row of carrots there too, to be dug during the January thaw. I am busy planning and plotting for next year, deciding on what seeds and tubers I will order to supplement those distributed by Community Gardens. Instead of the tattered present here's an image of the turgid past:

Rapini

2008-11-17T00:02:00.005-05:00

This is from 11/17, never posted, I'm not sure why, perhaps I wanted photos or to add more. I have included a photo of Bavarian White garlic so that you can get a sense of its size. All of my garlic was large, but the B White was massive. Anyways, the old post:

I planted it sometime. After the turnips and storage radishes.

This is the point of careful records.

It was fabulous. I picked it. One umbel had broken from green to sulfur yellow. The rest were tender, well-branched to 12 inches. I harvested one half of an area five foot square. It made a giant bunch - worth two of what you buy in the market. It was not as dense as what I have grown accustomed to from the market, but significantly less leafy than other local Rapini I have bought at the Coop.

The surprise came when I cooked it. I wilted, then sauteed a few Portobello mushrooms with more garlic than seemed appropriate. I added the blanched Rapini.

$#%$#$ fabulous. I like Rapini. I'm a bit of a snob. This Rapini rocked. I am happy.

There should be pictures, but I misplaced the camera.

Today I planted flower bulbs and Bavarian White garlic. The garlic was planted a month after the main planting. I am curious to compare their growth to the earlier planted garlic. I suspect they will be a bit later, but essentially equivalent in mass to those planted earlier.

1/1 As an addendum let me note how the wrapper on this head in Tiz's hand is split open. This garlic, like too much that I harvested was dug late. The split heads do not store as well and are difficult to clean up, but much more on that subject later.

Indian Summer

2008-10-24T10:23:00.002-04:00

This past week our first frost was followed quickly by several others. It has been downright cold. The garden, however is flourishing. Radicchio is heading up; the turnips, beets and radishes are fattening beneath the ground. Today the sun is bright and warm, although the tide has clearly turned.

On Sunday, my parents came to visit. In the morning before they arrived, I went to the garden to stock up. For dinner I roasted chicken on a bed of leeks. Fingerling potatoes and garlic from storage were combined with the final bunch of carrots from my first planting and roasted in another pan with a simple vinaigrette. My father loves beets, so yet another pan went into the oven. I lightly coated the beets in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. A fall green salad accompanied the feast, with romaine and buttercrunch lettuce, escarole, radicchio and baby spinach partnered with apples, walnuts and blue cheese. Mmmm. Oh yes, the salad also included the first harvest of my second carrot crop "Purple Haze," which looks fabulous sliced paper thin, with its purple skin contrasting with its bright orange interior.

In the afternoon, before dinner, I took mom and pops down to show off the garden and pull some more leeks and carrots for them to take away the next morning as gifts. I included one glistening white bulb of garlic in their bag of goodies.

Monday was bright and cool. I took the day off work and spent it running errands. In the warmth of the afternoon I returned to the garden, cleaning up the last of the dead tomato vines and other warm weather crops and planted garlic. I planted 120 cloves, nearly twice as much as last year. Spanish Roja was the variety I planted most of, nearly 50 cloves. I saved almost all of this year's Roja for seed. The balance was planted with Music, German Red and Russian Red. I will probably go back and add some Bavarian to the mix, since it did so well for me this season. "That's quite a commitment of ground to make for one crop," another gardener said as we talked while I planted. "Not just one crop," I replied pointing to where this summer' s garlic had been followed by fall cabbages.

Next year Brussels sprouts, come hell or high water!

As I was weeding around my Kale I noticed that Mache had started to sprout from the seeds fallen from this spring's flowers. A gardening cycle has come full circle. There is much more to be done before the snow is thick on the ground and much more to be eaten. But I will have more time to write about gardening as I do less of it. I will return to some of my promises from earlier posts and flesh out discussions about crop rotation, garlic and potatoes. And I will dream, because that is what gardeners do during winter.

2008-09-16T23:46:00.002-04:00

This is a lush time. I have been remiss in documenting it. Every week I bring home bags of food. My arms are bent from it . Potatoes and tomatoes ( so happy that the rains are gone!) My new crops are flourishing: greens and brassicas, carrots and beets. Every spare night I cook, freeze or dry; trying to preserve the bounty of now for winter's barren days. My leeks are filling out and the last of the potatoes have yet to mature. Constantly, I am roasting fingerling potatoes, tomatoes or carrots. Only the tomatoes make it to the freezer, but the other vegetables prepared on the weekends or evenings, are doled out across the meals of the week. Tizzy is in school and it seems I have always taken on another project, so we cook in bursts and reap the bounty when we can.

I am afraid I have harvested the last of the cucumbers. We have used them for Raita and salsa, cold salads and soup. They have been both stars of the show and supporting cast for more than a month now. It is hard to let them go, but the vines are yellowing and weak, the fruits that remain no longer seem capable of maturity. It is hard to imagine the wax- covered and flavourless things that I will endure for the next nine months. Next year, there will be earlier cucumbers - and later.

Julie, who I have come to rely on in so many ways, has taught me anew the virtue of pickles. Next year. That is always the cry of the gardener: "Next Year!" Next year there will be pickles. Sour pickles and sweet. Beans and tomatoes preserved in brine. Next year there will be more preserved than herbs and sauces. Next year I will can everything that I can!

I have taken pictures of my garlic and other storage crops. I promise that I will give a full accounting of that in this blog, but next year there will be even more.

I will be harvesting what I have planted this year far past Christmas, but still, I grow few of the traditional storage crops ( winter squash, cabbage, potatoes, onions, etc.) My late harvests come from late plantings and simple methods of season extension. Next year, I will leave space for pumpkins and squash, I will be sure to plant the giant drum cabbages for sauerkraut, I will have great quantities of rutabagas to cover in wax. Next year, I will be a better person and a better gardener. Next year, Lucy will not pull the ball away. Next year, Charlie Brown will kick the field goal He has always deserved.

Apples of The Earth

2008-08-26T22:39:00.012-04:00

It's what the French call them. Potatoes. Earth Apples. Pommes de Terre.

When it comes time for harvest, you place the potato fork between the mounded row of plants. With a downward motion the fork is gently drawn back towards the body, spilling potatoes out of the ground, like fruit from a basket. The rosy purple skins of this potato, Caribe, make the French name seem even more reasonable.

Potatoes come in many different colors, both inside and out. There are red, yellow and purple fleshed potatoes. Skins run the gamut from black to white. Shapes vary also. Remember an earlier posting, how I spoke of my potato with three names? I served these fingerlings (Rose Finn Apple) at the BOMB party, roasted with only olive oil and salt and pepper. The crowd went wild! Its hard to think of potatoes as a delicacy, but when fresh from the ground... especially with fingerlings, potatoes are taken to a new level.

This was the first time I have ever grown potatoes. The first time for onions too, and garlic. All of which surprised me with their ease and their forgiving nature. They really produced without getting much attention. I am determined to do better with all of them next year, to give each more space and more affection.

I hung more than 20lbs of garlic beneath my porch at the end of July to cure, but that is another story, with its own regrets, successes and failures.

So far, I have harvested 30 lbs. of Caribe, with half a row left in the ground. My estimates for the fingerlings are not so clear. Their yield seems to be somewhat proportionate, in that for every piece I planted, I seemed to harvest about four potatoes. For Caribe that will work out to about a tenfold increase from the four pounds I planted. Each fingerling is so much smaller though, that I find it hard to believe 40 lbs will come from the two rows of Rose Finn I planted. I will get a better sense at my next harvest. So far I have dug only part of a row and not weighed any of it. I planted my Keuka Gold potatoes later, and I didn't cut up the seed as much. I wonder how their yield will compare? I won't know for awhile, they were planted in early June, several weeks after the others and are still green and lush.

Bless this food to our service

2008-07-16T23:08:00.003-04:00

The whole point of this blog is to keep a careful accounting, which I have failed miserably at. But the reason for the accounting...the reason is... to make an economic argument for something that runs deeper than balance sheets.

As the Veggie Man said to me today, "when my family asks, I try to stay away from the big picture. I don't want them to think I am a conspiracy theorist. I tell them the reason we spend so much effort in the garden is because the food tastes better."

But there is more there.

He and I both recognize that food, energy and the environment are different parts of the same thing. And that thing is a challenge that cannot be ignored. The time has come to pay the piper. The 20th century was a glorious advance, oblivious of limits. This century we must forge ahead with scarcity as our teacher.

What we have built uses cheap oil and an undervalued environment as the sand dunes of its foundation. What we must build does not deny the miracle of the 20th century's design, but goes back to the root. Ecosystems are finite. An economy that imagines infinite expansion because our imaginations are limitless, does not credit enough the system that makes our economy possible. What is the value of a soaking rain versus a torrential downpour? What value the small wetland that absorbs the flood?How rich each blade of grass that holds a small clump of soil and keeps it from the sea? The New Testament speaks of an accounting that marks the fall of every sparrow and each hair upon every head. We must marry our wisdom and our technology to that humility.

Along the lines of this discussion I recommend a book: "The End of Food" by Paul Roberts. There are many points where I disagree with the author, although I sense he may have tamed his argument to reach a broader audience. Nonetheless, it is a broad and compelling argument. The international food system that world economies are based on is in a tenuous position. Looking only at water consumption, or oil use, or the limits of plant and animal chemistry, is enough to prove his point. When political cowardice and basic human incalcatrence ( forgive my spelling, the word I mean implies hardening, an unwillingness to move or change position) are added to his argument, Robert's picture is quite sobering. But here, in a land of deep soil and soaking rains, we need to recognize this crisis as a time of opportunity. We still have relatively compact urban centers surrounded by good farmland. It is time to redevelop our regional agricultural system and begin again to feed ourselves. It's time to turn abandoned land and ignored populations back to the important job of feeding our communities.

2008-07-16T14:43:00.003-04:00

I will dispense with the apologies and get right to the listing of my failures! My lack of posting reflects a lack of time spent in the garden. I have not kept accurate records of my harvests, but will try to recreate them in a general sense, by consulting what frail notes I have and the few unposted drafts left in this blog's memory banks.
Roughly speaking I have managed a weekly harvest of greens averaging 4-5 pounds. My friends and neighbors have been thankful since Tiz and I can only eat a couple of pounds a week. My six broccoli plants offered 6 small-to-medium-sized heads over the last half of June. In every case, the side shoots that have followed produced more than I got from the original picking.
Our crazy weather did more than encourage the weeds, it seemed to force the brassicas in an odd way - the 5 Violet Queen cauliflowers went immediately from small head to flower and so were a complete loss. The broccoli would have been a disappointment too, if I had not gotten such production from the side shoots.
My first tomato was harvested on the 11th and shared with friends in a salad we brought to the beach at North South Lake. If I do say so myself, the salad was delicious. It featured Oak leaf, Red Sails and Speckles lettuce; escarole and red orach; fresh young carrots, red onion; herbs and a generous amount of broccoli.
Every year I promise myself I will plant more broccoli and more carrots. Fresh from the garden they become completely different vegetables. I hardly ever cook the broccoli, it is so succulent raw. When cooked it gets just 3 or 4 minutes of steaming and a small amount of butter, nothing more. And the carrots, well they are like eating candy, nothing compared to carrots from the store.
A few weeks back I gave my buddy Terri one of our big heads of Romaine (2-2.5 pounds apiece!) and a collection of herbs greens flowers etc. She also got one of the heads of broccoli. Terri is a vegetarian and a bit of a foodie, so its not like she has no knowledge of veggies, but she was shocked by the broccoli. "I don't even cook it," she said. "It's so good." Terri likes the flowers too, when I dropped off her most recent pile of food on Sunday, she still had flowers on the mantle from two weeks before. She got rid of the old bouquet and replaced it with the new bunch of dianthus and snapdragons.
Every week I have brought home big bouquets, usually one or more gets shared with friends. Last week the first sunflower bouquet went home. They are Tizzy's favorite, except perhaps for her Zinnias. Both will now be common until the end of summer.
A week ago I roasted a big batch of beets on the grill, with garlic scapes, fresh tarragon, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper. I brought them to work for a birthday party, where they were served with local goat cheese on a bed of oak leaf lettuce, surrounded by flowers and individual leaves of Speckles lettuce. People raved. Personally, I thought it was a waste of good goat cheese. I got much more pleasure from the beet greens I had steamed up and served with cider vinegar - both when they were hot and when served cold alongside an omelet.
I just don't love beets. I try, but I fail. The golden beets are better, but their greens are not near as good. What to do? Well I just planted another batch of beets and I plan to pull them up as soon as they begin to make the tiniest of beets. They will be grown strictly for their greens, which I like even more than Swiss Chard, which is saying something!
June was the end of my month from hell. I got back into the garden over the fourth of July weekend and began beating the garden back into shape. The peas were finally finished and their section of the garden was cleared. On 7/13, in that section, I planted beets, radicchio(Carmen), fennel(Firenze), carrots (Royal Chantenay), and Iceburg and Buttercrunch lettuce. I also planted basil and cilantro. I picked my first Kentucky Wonder bean and it was awesome, so tender and delicious. I also planted the last of my Provider bean seeds left from last year. That was one good bean and it sure produced a lot, but I don't recall the flavour being near as good as that of Kentucky Wonder.
There is so much I have left out, the staking of the cucumbers and melons, my first garlic harvests, chatter in the garden - did I ever report on the nematodes? Still I need to move along, if only so I can get on to another post where I will have a chance to rave about the world food economy - neither my tomatoes or my hot peppers, not my cilantro nor tomatillos, are polluted with salmonella - how certain are you that your food isn't?

2008-06-16T16:01:00.001-04:00

It's been weeks since my last posting. the real world has interfered with the virtual. Interfered with my real-world gardening as well. I only have been able to get about 2-3 hours in my garden each week. Nonetheless, I cleared more land and planted the last of my potatos (I have pictures). My tomatoes are mostly in, as are melons and cucumbers. I have harvested about 5 pounds of mixed greens in the past two weeks - a guess derived from actually weighing a full bag of spinach on a commercial scale. I have also harvested the first quart of sugar snap peas. they were delicious and worth, by themselves, the space alloted to them. Knowing that many more quarts of peas will follow is a bonus. The tomatoes are mostly planted and my staking system is set up.
Each week brings its own bouquet. Sweet William has remained the star player, although I think other dianthus will start to bloom next week, along with volunteer sunflowers and gloriosa daisy. Spinach has responded poorly to the heat, most of it has bolted or is in the process. Interestingly, my mosty productive patch, the second planting, has managed to hold up the best. I think because I kept it hard cut and well watered during the hottest days.
Everything seems to be leaping up in response to the stifling heat and occasional thundershower. As always, weeds seem to be growing the most. It has made me think I might do a little more mulching this year than in the past.
Back to work.

2008-06-02T21:34:00.003-04:00

Someday I will figure this technology out fully. Like putting captions under photos, or leaving room for comments. Yesterday I planted more beans: Black Valentine - what can I say? The name appealed. And yet another flight of carrots (Purple Haze - not just a good name, the best of the purple carrots I tried last year) Tonight I worked on my communal responsibilities. I used a weed whacker to keep control of some paths and the area around the garden shed.Or at least I gave it the old college try. Unfortunately, I ran out of both fuel and string. Technology foiled me there also.

The photos posted earlier showed the flowers already in bloom in the garden : Dianthus barbatus, Anchusa "Loddon Royalist" and Geranium ibericum. I failed to note in the last post that my harvest included a bouquet of Dianthus. Commonly known as Sweet William they are visible in the photo of the table. They are good cut flowers, being of the same family as the carnation. The picture of the harvest is self explanatory, but the lines in the dirt between the pepper plants are where I planted spinach. Oh Yes, yesterday I extended the underplanting beneath the peppers to include oak leaf lettuce.

The pictures of our meal might seem silly, but all of that food (except those eggs - local and free range of course) were courtesy of CDCG. Either it was a product of the garden or bought from The Veggie Mobile. The mushroom/asparagus omelet was flavored with thyme and scallions from the garden and of course the salad was fresh from our plot. I wonder if it is fair to include the value of flowers as an output of the garden? I think I could find a dozen studies that show flowers have a positive effect on a person's health. Just as with my grandfather's melons, it never pays to be too parsimonious about the things that feed you.

A Thousand Words

2008-06-01T14:04:00.003-04:00

Harvest

2008-05-31T14:04:00.004-04:00

Writing about gardening takes me away from the garden, which I have too little time in as it is. Fortunately, it's raining now and I don't have any other chores that are too pressing. This morning was a big harvest. I have been remiss in noting previous harvests and still have not purchased a scale, so we will have to rely on estimates for my grand total. Unrecorded was the grocery bag full of Mache harvested at the beginning of the month and my first harvest of lettuce and spinach last week. This morning, I filled up two bags with three kinds of lettuce, (mostly Red Sails) spinach, orach and herbs. I'll give one bag to my friend Terri, 'cause I know she has a guest from out of town. I will keep the other bag for Tiz and me.

Over Memorial Day weekend I went to the Troy Farmers Market and the Menands Market in search of flowers for the cutting garden and pepper plants (particularly Poblanos) I didn't find Poblanos until my last stop at the Coop on the way home. The garden was busy when Tiz and I planted the flowers on Sunday. I think we spent twice as much time talking as we did planting. She cut her first bouquet, which consisted of chive blossoms and the flowers from my cover crop of crimson clover! Good deal for a cover crop, it fixes nitrogen in the soil, you can eat it - I added some flowers to the salad, but to be honest, they tasted a bit hay-like - and its beautiful. This fall I will be better prepared and make sure the area to be planted in tomatoes for the following spring will be seeded entirely to clover, so that I have a big patch to leave in bloom and still have time to turn it over before planting. I have started too many tomatoes to fit into this year's patch so I'm at a loss.

Here is a list of planting that occurred today and over the holiday weekend. Today I planted spinach (Whale) in the spaces between the peppers I planted last weekend. I also planted two types of melon, Prescott Fond Blanc and Eden's Gem. Planting melons is completely wasteful in such a small space, but I will grow them up a trellis. For me they are a tribute to my grandfather, who made them his specialty and sold them at market. Growing melons well in the north is difficult and the space I have allotted to them means I will only harvest a handful of them for all my efforts. Although I promised to keep an accounting of what food came from the garden, I'm not about to turn mercenary about the whole thing, it takes all kinds of nourishment to feed the soul.

Anyways, back to planting. So far, of my many tomato varieties, I have planted: Amish Paste, Health Kick, Cherokee Purple (2), Kellogg's Breakfast, First Lady, Orange Banana and a tomatillo. The peppers planted were: Jalapeno, Hidalgo, Anaheim, Poblano and Early Red, a quick-turning sweet bell pepper. I also planted a six pack of some white cauliflower I picked up along the way, they were planted near the broccoli and romaine lettuce that were put in a few weeks back. I inter planted radicchio Fiero in with the cauliflower.

My free time is gone now and I must run. I will post more pictures taken today later.

The Best Laid Plans

2008-05-15T07:49:00.002-04:00

It was a perfect night for planting, the soil was warm; the sky threatened rain. I had my carrots, my beans, my lettuce and cukes. The ground was mostly turned. All I had to do was put the seeds in the ground. But where?

One of the reasons for this blog is to keep a record. Most every piece of ground in my garden had two crops grown on it last year, much of it supported three. For example a portion of the third row had: lettuce, followed by green beans, followed by radishes. To be a good organic gardener it is essential to rotate crops, so that plants of the same family don't follow after the other, creating a buildup of pests or disease associated with that plant family in the soil. Unfortunately, two major plant families, the brassicas and the nightshades account for a majority of the favorite garden crops, throw in the squashes and it seems impossible to find a place to grow anything without running into problems. The nightshades are supposed to have 2-4 years between planting. The negotiations required to keep peppers, tomatoes and potatoes off the same ground in a plot my size are more than difficult, they are impossible.

Last night I planted Kentucky Wonder Bush Beans and French Breakfast Radishes. The radishes were planted in a row between the Red Baron Onions, I'm hoping the onions will keep the flea beetles at bay. In the spots where earlier I planted radishes and kohlrabi, I gave up the losing battle against the flea beetles. I turned the soil over and planted again. There I planted Burpee's Golden Beets and one of my favorite lettuces from last year, Speckles. Speckles is a succulent butterhead-type heirloom, with soft green leaves covered in tiny maroon spots. I think it is best harvested at the size of a softball when its coloring is most distinctive and its texture is just right.

Off to work. I will continue the crop rotation discussion later, revealing my primitive and ineffective method.

Rose Finn Apple

2008-05-06T07:22:00.002-04:00

My fingerling potato is so classy it has three names. I didn't quite get it right last time so I thought I would make a correction. Not knowing about potatoes I perused the web for good info on planting. I found the advice here and then ignored it. Not ignored really, but failed to follow correctly. Instead of properly preparing the seed potatoes when they arrived, I just put them in the basement and forgot about them.

When it came time to cut the potatoes into their one-inch pieces (each containing at least one eye) It was easy to see where the eyes were, because they had already sprouted. I followed the directions and put the cut pieces into a paper bag, but shaking the bag, as instructed, is clearly out of the question. The sprouts are an inch or two long and I'm afraid I will break them. I have made do with a gentle tumble and a small prayer that I am not breaking off tender shoots and cutting short the promising life of tasty taters. I'm going to plant them a little sooner than recommended as well, because I will be away this weekend and I'm afraid of what they will look like by Monday.

Fortunately The Keuka Gold are egg- sized and don't need to be cut up.

Last night I went to the garden after work. I weeded and mulched the raspberries and planted sets of broccoli and romaine lettuce. I planted them together, because I noticed last year that the cole crops (brassicas) did best when they were interplanted with other vegetables, it seemed to reduce the feeding of the flea beetles. There was a dramatic growth difference between a row of broccoli planted alone and the one right next to it planted in combination with lettuce. I think the difference in leaf color confused the flea beetles enough to put them off their feed.

Rain and Potatoes

2008-05-05T07:53:00.003-04:00

The drought broke with a week of cool and wet that has lingered, pulling our first true April weather into May. This week starts a warming trend. The garden has loved rain and relief from the heat and will be ready now, I think, to take advantage of the coming week's warmth.

Weather and obligations have kept me from doing much in the garden. Tizzy and I went down last night and I planted carrot seeds (Little Fingers and Scarlet Nantes,) while she planted out some herb sets (chamomile and parsley)

Since my last post I have also put out sets of Cauliflower (Violet Queen) and Leek (American Flag) I have been lax in recording planting dates in the house, so I can't say when my sets were started. In the past two weeks I started a French baby leek from seed and Swiss chard seeds in recycled containers, the leek probably two weeks ago and the chard last week.

I promised to talk of potatoes. Last summer I went to an event sponsored by NOFA-NY where organic vegetable variety trials were evaluated. There were taste tests involved, I sampled nearly 50 potatoes, 30 tomatoes and 20 different open pollinated melons. The potato I liked the best was Caribe, with bright purple skin and equally bright white flesh. To round out my order from Fedco this spring I ordered Keuka Gold, a selection from Cornell meant to rival Yukon Gold's appeal, but to be a better producer. YK is renowned among growers as having a terrible yield. Farmers there spoke well of Keuka, though several were vehement in their dislike of YK, saying its taste and texture were sub-par. They all bowed to Martha Stewart, though and the power of the market place, YK is the potato with the strongest brand recognition. They grow what sells. I also ordered some fingerlings (Rose Finn) This marks my beginnings as a potato farmer, which I promise to continue to discuss, because I have already made some errors and the tubers are not even in the ground yet. Later though, I have to go earn my daily bread.

2008-04-23T22:41:00.003-04:00

Went to the garden today after work. It was well hot. I brought my 5-gallon bucket along, filled with water. I understand that climate change is not expressed in one hot day or another, but this is the second April in a row with excessive heat and little rain. I noted in my journal last year the thunderstorms of early May. The weather predicted them for tonight. It has been two weeks now in the 70's and 80's with no rain, two weeks going on three. I'm not saying... I'm just saying.

I was raised here in Upstate with the understanding that the last frost date was May 15th and that planting the "hot" crops should wait till Memorial Day. Thunderstorms are supposed to wait till August. I saw tomatoes from Georgia at a big box store over the weekend and I was tempted to plant one. It might be nice to have tomatoes by the Fourth as some recompense for the destruction of the entire ecosystem.

Now that I am sufficiently farmer-like, with my bitching about the weather, let's get to the crops and the planting. I visited the garden Sunday evening (to water) and to (optimistically) plant more cool weather crops. I planted Beets, (Wodan) onions, (Long white bunching, which noted on the packet that I could plant in fall to over winter{ guess I forgot that!}) and Long-Standing cilantro. The cilantro, like the onion, was from last year's seed. The cilantro I planted last year in late summer didn't bolt even when the snow came. I hope it will perform as well in the hot weather, since cilantro usually passes all too quickly to coriander for me.

I have no hope for my crop of kohlrabi, because Sunday marked the arrival of the flea beetle. The arugula, which had finally settled in from transplanting, was completely subsumed in them and close to death. The radishes are pockmarked and tonight I noticed the mache was covered with a fine black dust - hundreds of tiny flea beetles. I tried to take a picture, but my camera was not up to the task. It's time to pick the mache anyway, the heat has made it begin to go to seed and I want to make my first harvest.

I planted my onion sets (Red Baron) tonight from the Fedco order, but that's for another post, because I want to talk about my potatoes. When I was leaving another gardener turned on the spigot and water poured out! I rushed to the shed and pulled out a hose. The water is on! My seedlings got more than survival rations for the first time in weeks. Now, if it would only rain.

2008-04-16T18:58:00.002-04:00

Went down to the garden today after work. It was glorious, these first days of spring with the honest sweat on my forehead and the rich smell of dirt. I have hopped down twice since my last post, stealing a half hour or so each time. AJ and I exchanged greetings - he's a new gardener, but I know him from long ago, another place and time. He was concerned about whether he would be too late getting in his peas. The plot he inherited was quite a mess. It had been abandoned last year by a gardener who had health problems. AJ was thinking that just preparing it for planting would keep him occupied for quite some time. He despaired a bit of getting a harvest until late in the season. I told him that's what radishes were for.

I assured him that it was a gardener's nature to feel behind - I had sworn that I would get my peas in earlier - but that he should be encouraged to know that one of the best windows of planting was between August 1 and September 15. Last year we brought the salad and roasted vegetables to Thanksgiving dinner, fresh from the garden and the result of late summer planting.

That brings me to the photo I closed my last post with. It was planted at the end of September, it will be my first harvest. It's mache, or corn salad, a green common in Europe, but less well known here. I met a farmer from Columbia County last year, who grew it in her winter hoophouse. She said she sold it to the chefs in NYC for $30 a lb.

The garden has given me some pleasant surprises already. Arugula and mizuna that I kept under row covers all winter long have emerged alive in the spring and ready to go. Onions that I planted for a fall crop of scallions never quite got it together for fall, but seem to have overwintered fine in the open garden. I am hoping for nice scallions by the middle of May. And today I noticed a small radicchio plant that somehow made it through, I will pamper it and see if its inclination will be to go to seed or make a head. I don't know if it is from a seed that did not germinate last fall or some piece of plant that survived the snows.

Since my last post I planted another flight of spinach (variety unknown) the radish 'Champion,' escarole 'Broad-leafed Batavian' and kohlrabi 'Purple Vienna.' All of them were planted in blocks, rather than rows, on 4/14. It will be interesting to compare production of Spinach under the two circumstances, my first Spinach crop was planted in three tightly spaced rows. I think that first crop of spinach is just coming up, the lettuce certainly is. The peas, well, with the peas I was a bit impatient. I dug about in one of the rows until I found a pea seed. I had to find out how they were doing. It had sent out its first long root, the one that settles down before the shoot reaches up to the light. When it reaches 60 or 70 on Friday afternoon, my peas will be out soaking up the rays!

Working

2008-04-09T21:29:00.004-04:00

Let's do it. The point of this thing, I've worked in the garden twice now. With my digital camera there can even be pictures. This first one was taken during a visit in March.

It's the nature of gardening to feel behind and already I feel like a couple weeks are lost. I wanted to have my peas in for weeks - at least I got them planted today, as well as setting out some arugula started from seed a month ago (3/3 it has only been lingering and really was ready to plant two weeks back). I hope it gets some size to it before the flea beetles are out. Flea beetles in this garden are not nuisances, they are menaces, last year they outright killed some cabbage sets and turned two summer plantings of rutabagas to dust. I will have plenty of chances to talk about pests in the future, so let me turn to more pleasant things.

On Monday (3/7) I planted a triple row of spinach (Melody) next to my garlic, as well as a split row of lettuce - half Buttercrunch and half Red Sails. The Red Sails is lovely, but no comparison to Buttercrunch in flavor. I hope to get two or three spring spinach plantings; lettuce will be almost continuous from now until November's last harvest. I will probably trial about ten different lettuce varieties. I have two other red varieties already started inside, one leaf and one romaine. Because I figure such a short window of opportunity for the arugula I planted it alongside and between my 10' double row of Sugar Daddy Peas. I know nothing of Sugar Daddy, except I assume its a sugar snap type, not a shelling pea. Maybe I will go onto Vegetable Varieties, one of my favorite websites, to check it out.

So far between cleanup and planting I have spent about an hour and a half in the garden. On Monday I pruned my raspberries, cutting the canes down to about 18." This means I will lose my summer crop, but they should make up for it in the fall, when the fruit is less bothered by bugs anyway. Hopefully it will keep them a little more out of my way during the growing season as well, since they will be starting off a little smaller. I am lucky with the berries, because they came with the plot and are grandfathered in. CDCG doesn't allow people to plant raspberries anymore because they have a tendency to take over. There are several plots here at Ridgefield, which is an old garden, that are completely covered with raspberries. Indeed, last springtime I was forced to defend my own borders with a sharp spade to keep out the encroaching runners of neighbor's berries. Fortunately, it didn't take much effort to keep them at bay after they were thrown from the ramparts the first time.

There are a few things besides garlic and raspberries left in the garden from last year. Here's a picture of one:

WHERE

2008-04-01T17:52:00.002-04:00

In Upstate New York, where the Mohawk and Hudson River converge there are a cluster of cities. Small by today's standards, they combine to make a metropolitan area of about three quarters of a million people. But they are old, Albany will soon be celebrating its 400th birthday and Troy, well Troy is the place where Henry Hudson turned around. Schenectady is the third of the triumvirate, the city that light made. A range of other cities fill the spaces in between: Waterford, Cohoes, Watervliet, Green Island, Rensselaer, each shaped by the industry that made them strong and the ethnic groups that defined them; each made rich by the power of water and what it carried.

For a hundred years they have been on the downside, except for Schenectady, which was made mighty by electricity, its downfall was more precipitous and recent. In each, stately homes were abandoned for new ones in the suburbs. Rich farmland was covered with split level ranches and absurd 12-room show homes with multiple rooflines. Neighborhoods in Albany's center can have poverty rates 10 times those of Delmar, a suburb just several miles away. A vigorous wave of urban homesteading in the early 80's stabilized some of Albany's neighborhoods, but that seems a long time ago. In other cities, Troy, Schenectady, Cohoes, the revival was more recent and seems to be continuing.

My garden is in the City of Albany, in a pleasant neighborhood of tree-lined streets. Many of the buildings nearby have been cut up into apartments for students, although this is probably the healthiest part of town, in terms of home ownership.

In terms of gardening, we are well within Zone 5. Frosts end sooner here and begin later then they would if we were outside of town, but because the garden is located next to the large open area of a park, the first frost struck my garden a little sooner than it did at some of the smaller gardens immediately surrounded by buildings.

Our CG is pretty big, about a half acre in size I would guess. There must be 30 or 40 garden plots, farmed by couples, families and friends. It is difficult to know all of my fellow gardeners. I did not attend our spring clean up last year, which is a great way to become acquainted, because I had to work. My lovely wife represented us instead. This year I will make it.

Another constant of the gardening year, where fellow gardeners mingle, is at sign-ups. Each returning gardener is required to reregister their plot and pay their yearly fee. I did that last week. To my surprise the fee was $15, not the $20 I mentioned in my first post. What a deal! An added bonus is the free seeds, with a great selection of vegetables and flowers to choose from. I made an order from FEDCO for some seed potatoes and onions a few weeks back, because they are something you can't count on from CDCG. I got great seed garlic from the organization last fall, which I am excited about. This will be the first time I have grown either potatoes or garlic.

Returning gardeners can keep their plots, or they have first choice at new plots that have opened up elsewhere. Sometimes people want to get a sunnier plot, or even move out of the garden to another one closer to their home. Some gardens are quite popular and difficult to get into. Gardeners' may have to wait several years to get the perfect location.

Next comes new gardener sign-ups, untimely covered, under the posting of WHEN

What

2008-03-26T19:54:00.002-04:00

Community Gardening seems pretty self-explanatory to me. Land held in common for the common need. In reality, the concept is a bit more nuanced. CGs have different looks and functions depending on where they are found around the world. Our American version, like most things American, seems born of a conscious idealism blended with a pragmatism of the moment. Because moments change and gardens are an ephemeral art, this current resurgence of Community Gardening is not so much the culmination of a continuous historical line as the latest strand, one more thread in a loose web of fits and starts that includes: The Potato Patch Farms of the 1890's, the Thrift Gardens of the Depression, and perhaps the best known of the public gardening efforts, the Victory Garden.

But the Victory Gardens, like their antecedents, were passing; they quickly turned from providing 40% of the nation's produce back into lawns, or were ground beneath the wheels of an expanding postwar economy and population. Wheels figured large in everything that followed. The last century was the Age of Cars. I'm sure that more than anything else, Victory Gardens turned to asphalt.

It was cars that pushed expansion out from the city center, leaving urban buildings and neighborhoods abandoned in their wake. The new mobility and its aftermath shaped the physicality of the present stage of CG, which takes its philosophical underpinnings from the social movements of the 60's and 70's. These gardens have tended to be smaller and more urban than what came before. They are described through a language of inclusion and identity. Their environmental contribution is extolled. Their virtue is a return to lost community, a social understanding that is nativist in its most aboriginal sense. This is the commons so long ago lost. While Flit (Now with more DDT!!) was used to chase pests from the Victory Garden, most CGs of today are run organically. It is this growing interest and acceptance of the logic of organics and the recognition of the importance of local foods and farmers that has propelled CG from its crunchy roots into the forefront of public discussion.

Thirty five years ago The Omnivore's Dilemma would just have been a Hippy screed, mentioned in the same breath as The Secret Life of Plants. It would have been talked about over reefers and beer, not considered worthy of NY Times best seller lists, or of being debated in Congress with the Farm Bill. But it seems that when it came to food, those crunchy granola-eating freaks were spot on. (Actually not far off in that plants-being-able-to-talk thing either. A Google search on plant communications leads to boringly scientific articles distressingly free of groovy interludes with eastern mystics. Present-day researchers never seem to hook plants up to lie detectors, either.)

Now that the agriculture industry thinks there is more to be gained by studying organics than by poo-pooing it, the research is beginning to pile up. Organic foods are healthier and organic soils are more productive. Plants grown organically are more resistant to pests and disease.

The agribusiness establishment has continued to ignore the obvious fact that organic growing is better for the environment; their reasoned response being that it doesn't matter, because the world's population can only be supported by "conventional" agriculture. A twenty-year study out of Cornell finally puts the nail in that coffin. It seems we can have our cake and eat it without quadrupling cancer rates among children and turning aquatic creatures into hermaphrodites.

The CG group I belong to, Capital District Community Gardens, is one of the oldest from this new age of CG, with 47 gardens scattered across three counties. I have only seen a handful of the gardens, but even among them there is great variation. Each CG, like all gardens, is an expression of place, which is what I will talk about in my next post: "Where." Are you sensing a theme?

WHY

2008-02-16T10:52:00.000-05:00

So I started to garden. Or a garden. It was not my first, but my first with vegetables, really with vegetables, since I was young and farming with my grandfather. This was a shared garden, a community garden: as much a product of place as was my grandfather's. Instead of heifers staring brown-eyed through the fence wire and a breeze of fresh mown hay from the top of Cherry Tree Hill, there were shouts from the park beyond the fence, the stray cats that liked to shit in fresh turned earth and the occasional foul ball in the beans.

That was last year. I attended a sign-up and an indoctrination. I payed my $20 and was given the basic rules of Community Gardening:

Thou shall garden organically, without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides
Thou shall not harm another's garden, nor shall you accidentally make yours a little bigger or theirs a little smaller
Thou shall not steal from another's garden, nor should you barrow
Coveting another's garden is natural. Get over it. They have corn, but you have cantaloupes
Thou shall not use sprinklers. They are a font of wickedness, spreading foliar diseases and wasting community water
Your plot is a temple. Keep it clean
Share and share alike. That means the mowing as much as the finished compost
Vegetables should not make you angry

I was lucky, Allison, the Garden Coordinator, shined on me and gave me the former plot of a pair of dedicated gardeners. They had moved on to another city, leaving behind their crumbly, black, well-drained soil. My plot has good sun, on some of the highest ground in the garden. I was shocked at how lovely it was, when I first worked it in April and the Horsemint was in bloom. I turned over the rich earth and made four four-foot by twenty-foot raised beds, with narrow paths between. This is my main plot, but there is more, across the common pathway leading to the tool shed that fronts my plot, I have a narrow parcel that mirrors the larger one and abuts the park. It is roughly 10x20, another 200 square feet. This plot is my face to the world and is used primarily for flowers, not a small thing. I may have shared more flowers than anything else from my garden and though my lovely wife praised and enjoyed our vegetables, it was the bouquets of sunflowers and Zinnias, snapdragons and strawflower that brought her the greatest happiness.

Out of those 400 square feet I pulled a tremendous bounty, enough vegetables to be the mainstay of our diets from mid May until the end of November. During a January thaw I went to the garden and pulled 10 or 15 pounds of carrots from the ground. I know when I go there in a few weeks, there will be the succulent leaves of Mache to pick for an early salad.

There was much more gained then food. The halting conversations with the red-haired Russian lady, our talks little more than a collection of smiles and small gifts from each other's garden. She was the first to engage me and she set the tone, with a spray of fragrant dill seedlings, when the soil had barely warmed.

This is meant to be a blog though, not a novel. Let me get to the point. I was amazed at how much food came from my 400 square feet. I am determined to make a diary of this community garden year, to explain my motives, to keep an accounting, to show the quality and quantity of meals that can be pulled from the heart of a city.

2008-02-16T10:31:00.000-05:00