The Snows of April

It is easy to be disappointed. Expectations are high. Training, preparedness, and experience is limited. As we shift from winter to virus, we work to overcome the virus of the mind; its total takeover of attentiveness to other elements of life.

What I can say about a global pandemic will take hardly a paragraph. We've fictionalized it again and again in movies and television. We practiced it via fantasy football-like parlor talk. We relearned its lessons in books and documentary. We eyeballed it from afar again and again. Still, people have died and will continue to lose life. Institutions will fail. We've maintained catharsis, not internalized preparedness.

I am not an optimist; not a ray of sunshine, but there is life beyond the virus. It is not the end of the world. For those of us lucky enough to escape the most extreme complications of infection, we must carry on those things that are worth carrying forward. We must internalize the opportunity we now have to connect with what we value.

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After hacking our three year old pepper plant back to its thick, woody stem, it remained aphid-free for the month of March. With little to no leaves on all the peppers in the house, the aphids moved on to less desirable Lamiaceae -the basil and salvia.

When they can be found, emerging lady beetles are transferred to the aphid-covered plants. Water is sprinkled on the leaves for them to drink. At most I've had three lady beetles -all eventually feed on the aphids. After a couple of days eating, some have mated, but have yet to see any of their aphid-hungry young. 

A curious event takes place on any infected plant that has maintained a lady beetle or two. The aphids scatter to the pot rim, and walk its circle, endlessly.

 

Despite the aphids, the freeze from being stuck out the window at 10°, the hard hack back to the woody stem, the pepper's hormones kicked in to regrow a healthy crown of new leaves. If occasional lady beetles emerge, are found and resettled, these pepper plants may just succeed on their path to another summer outdoors. 

Momento Vivere

Forty five days beyond the solstice in this coldest of states...

 ...buds form on plants dug up this past October.

The sun's elevation is high enough to energize plants placed below the sills of windows; the salvias and pelargoniums, the capsicum and rosmarinus.

In the long winter everyone has their coping strategy, but a good dose of sunlit snow, long blue shadows, and eager plants are a reminder at five degrees below zero.

 Pelargonium, otherwise known as geranium, will go into its third outdoor season, late this May.

Three weeks back, this pepper plant was profuse with blooms. Now it is, as far as overwintering peppers that were dug from the garden can be, profuse with fruit.

 The petals stick to the fruit without wind to shake or rain to wash them toward the ground.

Last year, this jalapeno, a thick and woody stemmed specimen twice ripped from its raised bed, produced winter flowers but no February fruit. It is now getting ready to produce flowers again. Time will tell if it is as up to the task as its cousin across the room. Two summers running, this pepper has produced a fine crop of jalapenos.

A long raceme of indigo blue flowers emerge from near-black calyxes seen in the second image above.

Salvia elegans, or pineapple sage, pushed into perenniality in my New York City garden, is now pushed into houseplant duty every October. We usually get a week or so of blooms in the garden beds before a freeze forces it into a pot, then into the greenhouse, then into the studio, and finally resting in the sunny south window, where it blooms in February, once again.

House Peppers

I may have learned something about fruit production, quite unexpectedly. When bringing in yard plants for the winter, I give them a good cut back. On this particular pepper plant, clipping resulted in five flowers per node, only 90 days after digging from the garden. I'm now wondering whether we have the growing season to clip back a mature pepper plant, in the garden, to produce a bumper crop of peppers.

Pepper plants are self-pollinating, requiring the services of wind or insects to shake the pollen free. Among the plants behind the southern-facing window we have a forced air duct, providing a regular soft, if drying, breeze. There are also some fungus gnats, and whatever else came in with the plants, to mess around with any flowers. At the moment there are small peppers where some of these flowers had bloomed. Whether or not they are small and or misshapen will determine how well they have been pollinated.

I kept our grown potatoes in the basement, near the sump pump pit. I thought the higher humidity would be good for them compared to the 20% humidity provided by our forced air heat system. What came of it was a short storage life, given the basement's near constant 65℉ and growing potatoes.

The Spoils of Summer

Now that I've figured out to successfully grow bell peppers, I tend to be at a loss for what to do with them. This means I eat them raw quite a bit. August is high season for eggplant which continues until the frost. The tomato plants have the look of late September, nearly caput, and even the fruit have taken on the scabs of blight. Below my beloved speckled roman paste tomatoes. Despite heavy blight, they still produced, if a bit more unsightly.

Garden Report

Potatoes are waning but they're still impinging on the herb bed. As the sun lowers and the potatoes die down, the herbs should reclaim their full sun. In the back left, really tall milkweed.

As the garlic comes out over the last few weeks, the fall brassicas have been filling in. These are brussel sprouts, the first planted, into the space previously occupied by garlic 'Xian.' I've never grown these before, but have planned it for years. Notable this season is a lack of cabbage moths -not complaining!

 

Eggplant fruit coming on now.

Green beans, from purple to roma, prolific and easy as ever.

All peppers are fruiting, some large. Only difficulty is that the plants can hardly hold their large fruit and that I shouldn't be so lazy as to try to break a pepper off the plant instead of going for the pruner. What happens? Well, I break the whole pepper plant in half.

In complete opposite of last year, all our tomatoes are suffering blight. Could have come in on our purchased compost, or maybe because we planted in last years potato and eggplant beds. Hard to avoid poor rotation in a compact garden. Next year I think these beds will be garlic and the garlic beds will be tomatoes. All that can be done now is watch the tomatoes try to outgrow the blight.

More brassica as the Porcelain garlic 'Music' has come out. As two more varieties of garlic are harvested over the weekend, even more brassica will go in. Above is kale started from seed in the greenhouse.

And we've finally started digging into the soil for new potatoes. Above: Kennebec russet, Pontiac, and Yukon Gold. Thanks to the quantity of compost and straw they came out with little soil and easy to clean.


These giant pompoms, hydrangea actually, were moved from the south side of the house last year. We planted them in a great arc around the curving lawn-driveway. They are quite garish, but they keep the plow truck and other skiddish drivers from driving over the lawn and garden in summer and winter (thanks to the long lasting dried flower sepals), and maybe they keep the deer at bay. Maybe.

I've been very busy with many things, from door and sill replacement, old deck removal, job searching and applications, studio building projects, contractors and everything I can't stand about some of them, photographing, studio painting, my class Landscape into Art which runs on the twenty third of July, a bit of socializing, gallery going, and even a music festival in a corn field last weekend. Blogging has had to take a back seat to all this (as well as taking quality photos for them), but rest assured -I was able to plant half of my milkweed over the septic drain field and beyond yesterday. Progress.

Summer Solace

One of the benefits of getting to one's vegetable garden first, before summer's work begins in earnest, is not having to think about the garden at all when you are knee deep in summer's work. It grows itself, mostly, with an intensity only paralleled by the solstice's long day.

  

One of the beauties of growing garlic is that it's harvest hardly coincides with any garden task other than weeding. By now, the first of the garlic is near completely exhumed (briefly hesitated to dredge up this word), and like any darkling, it mustn't be cast into the bright light. The first pulling is in the shade of the porch, but the full harvest is likely to be dispatched to the cellar. Here, in the midst of harvest, is Xian, a Turban strain, and one of the best for flavor and earliness. Turban's lodge, or fall over, as a way of telling unsuspecting gardeners that they need help -getting out of the ground.

At about the same time sizeable beaks are swirling above the Asiatic strains -here Asian Tempest and Japanese. These will be harvested next, not long after the Turban strains, and sometimes before.

Meanwhile the Porcelain strains have had their scapes (flowering stalk) cut, ready to be pickled or grilled or sauteed or...just don't leave them in the fridge too long before doing something with them. Behind the Porcelain are the Rocambole (shorter in the middle) and Purple Stripe. 

The French Grey shallots have also been pulled. I find that the height of the crabgrass is a useful indicator for timing the shallot harvest. Left behind are the Artichoke and Silverskin strains, those hardy bulbs that we use through next winter and deep into the following spring. 

When the the crabgrass first sprouts, it's the best time to get your peppers in, but I didn't heed the crabgrass this season. No, I put the peppers in a couple of weeks early -listening to the lambsquarters maybe. They're doing fine anyways, although I do think they are showing a little too soon.

Broccoli? Yes! And from seed no less. In spring? Yes! And no cabbage moths to boot. A quick, small-headed variety seed-started on May one and hardly two months later boom -broccoli. Go figure. I've got some of those very same starts in their deep cells holding back growth inside the greenhouse. They'll be put into the garlic beds as they clear.

Green beans? Not so fast. I seed-started these in the greenhouse on May one and planted them out a two or three weeks later. Nice flowers, no beans yet.

Cucumbers before June 21? Why, yes. I purchased a cell pack of four Spacemaster cukes from Shady Acres and planted them in pots raised well off the ground.

They won't ever reach the ground, that's why they're called spacemaster. They do put on an impressive display of cucumbers and have produced a handful of medium sized eaters before the solstice. I've seeded my own, too, to replace these after they give up.

Tomatoes, well that's asking a lot, isn't it? But among our six strains (of three varieties -plum, grape, and, uh, heirloom beefsteak?) these grape tomatoes, called Red Pearl, are way good producers.

 

In fact the deer are warming up for BBQ season by snacking on our Speckled Roman plum tomatoes. I grew these at the Beach Farm, and deer aside, expect them to do really well here.

Dill, cilantro, basil, and at the very bottom, cutting lettuce. In the background -common milkweed that has grown in this spot for eons, or at least since this house was built, so maybe the late nineties. Infringing on their bed are the potatoes. They are so big they require their own post. Look for that.

Vegetable Early June

The vegetable garden, June 4. Peas growing in the same bed with broccoli and recently planted romaine lettuce. I had so many lettuce starts that I plunked them into nearly every bed. The next bed is green beans and a spot for upcoming chard seedlings. Third row has eggplant, peppers, and a basil patch. The following two rows are Red Pearl grape tomatoes (same as last year and magnificent), five Speckled Roman paste tomato plants, and four heirloom types that includes Striped German and Brandywine and two others I cannot recall. Our starts were from Shady Acres Herb Farm or started in our own greenhouse.

The curving garlic bed is new this year (well, tilled last November). The garlic is doing well although a little tightly planted. Doing really well is the Chesnok Red -a Purple Stripe variety. This one is said to do very well but I couldn't have said that in the past.

Here are our potatoes -five varieties including russets, golds and reds. They grow several inches each day. I am about to add compost to "hill up" inside the framed bed. More garlic to the right, and French Shallots as well. To the left is our herb bed that includes basil, dill, cilantro, parsley, thyme, oregano, arugula and cutting lettuce. I'm anticipating a productive garden and feel better about its organization over last year. When the garlic is harvested around late June, early July, I will add our late summer-early fall crops of broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and kale. In the background are cucumbers in pots, a remnant bed of dead nettle and common milkweed, and the curving hedge of hydrangea that we transplanted from the south side of the house last year.

When People Ask Where The Good Food Is

...I usually tell them its right outside.

Four heirloom tomato plants have produced more than most any I had ever planted at the beach farm.

I've been looking forward to the German Stripe, the latest to size up and ripen.

Japanese eggplant, 'Kyoto,' have been exceptionally prolific.

I put my green bean seeds in a little late, but still, they are producing now. 

Although my broccoli starts were a failure. Too late, as always.

But I was saved by this guy (sorry to say that I lost his name with a piece of paper) and Anderson Acres. You see the sign, to the left, that says start your fall garden. Yes! Getting starts together at the right time in summer is challenging given busy summer schedules and difficult weather. Hardly any garden business has starts available at this time of year, probably because there isn't much market for it. I'm so glad to have found them at the Minneapolis Farmers' Market in stall 311.

I bought a handful of these lettuce starts, broccoli, cilantro, parsley, and basil.

The fall lettuce.

Betsy's dill, the pickler that she is.

Our local hardware gave away (really, for free) many vegetable starts in July, most well past their prime. I focused on those sturdy sorts that do well in cooler weather -chard and kale. Small and weak when planted, they are now doing fantastic. We eat them every day.

A four pack of heirloom peppers from Shady Acres (whose stall Anderson Acres occupied at the farmers' market) has become quite a bounty of peppers. I've never had such luck. One plant has eight large peppers!

And they're beginning to turn red.

Of course, there are still tomatoes ripening.

These "cherry," or is it "grape," have been fantastic. The name I believe is 'Juliet' -a little sweet, little tart, and meaty -that is the key for me. I do not like watery small tomatoes that pop when you bite into them or crack after heavy rains. These I pick and eat right there in the garden.

With more to come.

The woods has not produced its usual bounty this year, except for the morels early on. Maybe we've missed them, having been so busy with work on the house and field. Of course, we'll keep looking.