Bird and Little Bird

First Harvest.

I'm pleased to report that things are going remarkably well on the garden front. For the past few years, I've had community garden plots which are great for purposes of growing space and peeking at what other people are up to, but less good for things like remembering to water and weed in a timely fashion. Now that my garden is right in my own backyard, I can easily pull a few weeds or plant a handful of seeds whenever I'm out back with the dog, and things are looking pretty fancy.

And, the plants are now at the point where I can go out with a pair of scissors and snip off some sprigs of parsley or cilantro when I'm making dinner, or harvest a basket of baby kale for salad making.

Bliss.

At the moment, here's what is in the ground:

parsley :: cilantro :: tomoatoes :: jalapenos :: potatoes :: lettuce :: kale :: bush beans :: shell peas :: basil :: tomatillos :: sweet potatoes :: carrots :: celery :: asparagus :: beets :: mesclun mix :: sweet dumpling squash :: cucumbers :: zuchinni :: bell peppers ::

My beets, for whatever reason, are the one thing not thriving. The leaves have been yellowing and then wilting, turning sort of mushy, then dying. I've done a bit of research, but haven't been able to figure out what is going on. If you've got any ideas about what might be happening, please let me know!

And...We're Back!

So. That took a bit longer than expected. Being busy with things like chaperoning middle school trips to our nation's capitol and what not, I wasn't super on top of what was happening with the whole Typepad fiasco. But when the blog was still down this morning when I tried to post, I finally decided I should email and complain a bit. And, what do you know... It's back up!

I'd been wanting to share a bit about my new spring garden and have been meaning to get in here to do it for the last few weeks, but I think we all know that my appearances here are sporadic right now. Dawn and I have been working away on the book, on posts for Mud Puddles to Meteors, and then there is all the full-time job and parenting stuff to be on top of too. But we did manage to get a garden going in our new backyard, which I am very pleased with.

The raised beds that we built are very basic; just some 2 x 6 lumber cut to the proper length and held together with wood screws. We had a truckload of soil delivered to the yard on a weekday afternoon a couple of Thursdays back, and then spent part of the following weekend moving it into the beds.

I picked up some onion sets from a local produce market and started out by planting about two-thirds of them. I gave the rest to a neighbor, who has a garden bed just on the other side of our fence. Our house is on a very busy street in an urban neigborhood, with buses and other traffic going by in a steady stream pretty much around the clock. But you almost wouldn't know that from the state of affairs out back. Our yard has a short chain link fence on three sides, and on two of those sides there are neighbors with gardens as well. The guy to the side has a flock of chickens and is a professional bee keeper (raising queens for sale) with a couple of hives in the yard. To the back is an older Greek couple with a garden just a few feet from our own. In the evenings, we often stand in the yard and chat with the neighbors about bees, chickens, and who is growing what. We share plants, seeds, and advice. It is absolutely lovely.

 

Peas! Always the first thing to go in the ground here. I let the kids plant them this year, which I initially thought might have been an ill fated decision when the seeds didn't seem to be sprouting according to the expected timeline. But they are starting to come up now, so I guess it will work itself out. Even if they are not necessarily in the tidy little rows I might have imagined.

 

In the years that I have been living in New England, I've found that Fedco is a good seed company to go with here. They are in Maine, so the seeds tend to do well in our somewhat challenging climate and their shipping is timed well for the tragically short growing season.

Beets, lettuce, kale, carrots, and fennel have all started to sprout in the days since I first took these garden photos, so provided that all continues to run smoothly here on the blog, I'll be back to share more of that soon. Planting potatoes this afternoon!

Eighteen Pounds and Counting.

Some of you may remember my high, high hopes for the tomatillo plants of gardens past.  Indeed, I have planted at least one tomatillo each of the summers that we have lived in Vermont, only to be disappointed when the husks formed on the plant in early summer and then failed to grow any larger than an average sized pea.  So, it was much to my surprise when the volunteer tomatillo plants in our community garden plot began to prouduce actual, real, fat green tomatillos. In abundance.  Apparently, tomatillos need to be planted in pairs to produce, which is exactly what we accidentally did when moving the volunteer plants from one side of the garden to the other earlier in the season.  We gathered eighteen pounds of tomatillos from just a few plants this past weekend and honestly, I don't think that we got even half of what the total harvest is likely to be.

 

So what exactly is to be done with eighteen pounds of tomatillos?  Salsa verde, of course.  Annie 2.0 happened to talk to our community garden neighbor the morning of the tomatillo haul, and he mentioned that he would be going out of town for the better part of a week.  He invited us to pick all of the peppers and cilantro that we wanted.  Annie gathered up a few pounds of poblano chiles and super spicy tiny little red peppers of some kind (a Thai chile variety, I think).  And we got to work.

 

Most of our canning jars from previous years have been gradually absorbed into our drinking glass collection; we tend to break stuff and I don't even bother buying actual drinking glasses anymore.  Even if that wasn't the case, we probably still would have needed new jars because as it turns out, eighteen pounds of tomatillos makes a lot of salsa.

 

As in, nineteen pints and two half-pints of salsa.  I suspect that it will last us a little while.  Although considering how good it is, perhaps not. 

I'm actually typing this with my left hand while eating chips and salsa with my right.

The Garden in July.

Thanks all for your great contributions to the discussion on babywearing earlier this week.  It is really fun to hear all the different voices and to hear what worked for folks (as well as what didn't).  I think next up in the series will be food/meal planning, but it will probably take me a few days to get my thoughts together on such a big topic.  In the meantime: garden!

Here in Vermont, July is really the height of good garden time.  Everything is planted (if it's not, you probably won't see a harvest before first frost) and a lot of it is far enough into the process of becoming table ready that you can visualize where the whole project is headed.  So much fun. The tomatoes are getting bigger and a few of them are even starting to get red. 

 

Annie 2.0 had been gifted a packet of sunflower seeds from a friend who won the Utah State Fair blue ribbon for her sunflowers last year.  We planted a row and I have to say, I'm pretty excited to see what these are going to look like!

 

Pumpkins!  Those vaguely spherical harbingers of fall joy!  Our pumpkin plant is currently boasting at least four good sized green pumpkins and I might well be more excited about these than anything else in the garden.  Our neighbors at the community garden have had a nasty run with squash borers and I'm increasingly paranoid about the pest deciding to make the pilgrimage over to our plot for a new place to dine.  Luckily, Annie 2.0 is excellent at spotting the grubs and totally ruthless when it comes to squishing them.  So far, so good.

 

Our tomatillo plants this year were all volunteers that popped up in unexpected spots.  We transplanted them and let them keep growing, and it seems as though we might actually be rewarded with tomatillos! I'm thinking that we should do a big green salsa making and freeze jars for winter, but I guess that we'll have to wait and see what the yield looks like.  Still, the last time we tried tomatillos the plants got huge but the husks never filled up, so this is definitely looking more promising than that.

 

A couple of weeks ago I went for a walk to the beach with Annie 2.0 and my small people.  Annie gathered a bunch of driftwood and then hiked back to the car with it tucked under her arm.  It was kind of a feat, actually.  Anyway, she turned it into a bean trellis which has thus far survived not one but two semi-epic thunderstorms that have taken out trees around the neighborhood.  Apparently, if you need a trellis, she's your gal.

 

And, the sweet potatoes.  We did a big long bed of sweet potatoes again this year and although I feel like they are behaving a bit different than they have in the past, the plants look healthy and are getting bigger.  If memory serves, these guys will stay in the ground for quite awhile longer.  I think we harvested them in September or early October last time?  Hmn. I guess I should be taking notes.

Important and Also True.

I always forget this, but it turns out to be true, time and time again: if you grow it, you won't have to buy it.   One of those tiny miracles that also happens to be quite convenient.  

Can We Talk More About This?

  

My garden, that is.  I know that any of you who have stuck it out as Bird and Little Bird readers for any length of time are probably aware of the cyclical nature of my musings.  Round about the end of April each year I begin obsessing with the greening of my little corner of the earth and kind of can't be quiet about it until I've driven everyone around me crazy.  But just remember, it will be only a few short months until you have to listen to me go on and on about how noisy snowpants are in the dryer at night and then you'll be just wishing for some garden talk.

Annie 2.0 and I planted quite a few of the spring and summer crops into our community garden plot this last weekend and the sunny Saturday, combined with stellar soil and good planting progress, seems to have resulted in some significant growing optimism this year.  Memories of The Great Onion Weeding of 2011 encouraged us to lay down a strip of landscape fabric on the onion bed this year.  We cut holes into the fabric to put the plants in.  I suppose that there is some risk of the onions getting exposed to excess moisture doing it this way, but I'll do pretty much anything to avoid weeding the onion bed, so consider this a risk taken.

The other change that we made to the garden plan this year was to allocate a completely autonomous garden area for Mariam's use.  She has a three by four foot mini-plot of her own, and she's been given totally free reign to do with it as she pleases.  She can plant whatever she wants, however she chooses, without adult interference of any kind.  She is thrilled, and suddenly, very invested in spending time at the garden.  This might be one of my best ideas yet.  I'm thinking we need to make up another garden seed book or three (from Volume Six of Alphabet Glue) so that she can carry them in her pockets and pull a page of seeds off and toss it into the ground whenever she feels like it.  Easier than trying to share seed packets with her, I would suspect.  

Also new this year: purple potatoes.  We generally plant Yukon Gold, and we'll do those again this year as well, but these Purple Adirondacks looked so colorful and fun, we decided that a row of these was in order too.  

Thanks for listening to my garden talk (yet again).  I do appreciate it, believe me.  I'd love to return the favor... What are you planting this year? 

Oh, and today is the final day to use the discount code from the Alphabet Glue giveaway on the Rhythm of the Home blog.  Enter "ROTH" at checkout for 15% off issues of the magazine. 

On Blooming Where You Are Planted.

I learned to garden in California.  As a college student, I often spent time in the student garden just off campus, assisting with what, in retrospect, appears to have been an experiment in just how much rainbow chard a bunch of  twenty-year-old hippies can really eat while still remaining cheerful.  The circumstances were ideal: a beautiful, fenced-in space atop a hill, a Mediterranean climate, double-dug raised beds, and a sweet little shed for storing seeds and tools. 

 

 

Then, for a couple of years around the time that Mariam was born, we lived in Davis, California.  Gardening conditions there were even better.  In fact, they were very nearly perfect and my harvest success rate on the crops that I planted in our modest community plot was high.  Very high.  I think I even managed enough onions for storage one year.

So, the challenges of Vermont gardening have been, honestly, a bit of a surprise.  Long-time readers of this little blog will probably remember the intensity and frequency of my complaints on this topic.  Last year, in particular, was tough on the garden morale.  Between Hurricane Irene and homegrown rodents of remarkable size and boldness, I lost everything.  Everything.  The flooding of the community garden was especially sad for Annie 2.0 who had spent hours upon hours working on our plot there while I was busy being a complete disaster of a pregnant person.

Our recent trip to California got me thinking about the Vermont garden conundrum.  I want to garden.  I want to grow, harvest, and feed my family from the earth around me.  But, looking at the nearly effortless growing conditions available to my Northern California people sent me home feeling slightly embittered and more than a little cautious about allowing any optimism about the growing season ahead.  Especially in light of the recent sightings of You-Know-Who.  I mean, he had actually been coming to the front door lately! 

And then yesterday, something very unexpected happened.  After watching The Groundhog cruise around the yard off and on all morning, I was feeling very conflicted.  As I watched him use our patio chairs to scratch his back, I thought about my options.  Attempt to trap him?  That didn't go well last year.  Build a fence and make the backyard garden difficult to work in and even more difficult to enjoy? Plant only rodent-proof annuals?  Give up? A few hours later, the decision was made for me.  In a bizarre twist of fate, the groundhog, The Groundhog, was hit by a car on the street in front of our house.  I'll admit to feeling  relieved, although also a bit guilty, or regretful or something like that. 

 

But, I also learned a lesson of sorts.  Which is this: the cycle of life in the natural world (especially when it interacts with the human one) is unpredictable.  Challenges to our attempts to cultivate plants and animals for our human purposes are frustrating, but they are also a reality.  Being a grower (of anything, really), requires patience, thoughtfulness, faith and hard work.  I may not be growing broccoli year round in the Northern California sandy loam, I may be pulling rocks the size of small boulders out of my garden every time I want to pop in a kale plant, and, I may be destined to watch torrential summer rain storms flatten my lettuce like vegetable pancakes.  But, I resolve to make the best of it all anyway.

I kind of feel like I owe The Groundhog that much.  Rest in Peace fat little garden nemesis. 

The Week That Was.

This week:

- I registered for fall classes as a library science student.  I know that I should get some of the boring bits out of the way first, but instead I signed up for a bunch of classes on children's literature.  Couldn't help it.

- With Dan's help, I believe that I have finally outwitted the backyard squirrels and freed my bird feeder from their tyranny.  

- Annie 2.0 and I finally got access to our community garden plot for the season.  It is pretty big (about 25 feet by 35 feet) and better yet, it is no longer underwater.  So yay for that!

- Mariam and I began thinking in earnest about pumpkin planting time.  We love pumpkin planting time.

- I had my first meeting with a student's family where I had to fess up that I won't be back in the fall.  They were genuinely disappointed and I felt genuinely guilty.  Or sad.  Or something.

- We quickly realized that squirrel-besting has resulted in a new problem: grackles.  They're worse than stellar's jays (and not nearly as pretty).  

- I read the entire New Yorker cover to cover the same day that I got it, and then had to kick myself all week long for not saving it for violin lessons, waiting room times and the like.  I never learn.

- I wanted to tell you all that I'm sorry I haven't been out to see you as often as I usually do during the week.  The end of the school year is proving to be a super busy time, and I find myself not making it to the computer at all some days.  I promise a return to more regular posting, if not more interesting posting, as soon as things calm down just a bit. Deal?

The Case of the Backyard Broccoli Bandit.

Someone is eating my broccoli.  And whoever it is lacks even the common decency to wait for it to grow a bit.  Instead, it gets planted one day, and is pulled out of the ground and left to die by the next.  So, I guess it isn't really accurate to say that my broccoli plants are being eaten.  They are just being beheaded, apparently for no good reason.  So here is the question: what sort of small, mischevious creature is to blame for the midnight brassica raids?

I originally suspected birds.  But then Dan installed the bird netting cover that you can see in the picture above, and the next day we found yet another little plant, cut off at the stem and laying on top of the netting.  It had been pulled right through.  So maybe not birds.  I think the next step is probably a more serious floating row cover- one without any visible holes in it. Otherwise we might have to execute a Nate the Great style late night investigation to find the broccoli bandit.  

Speaking of Nate the Great, did you hear?  Alphabet Glue Volume Two is going to be about all things kid detective.  Lots about our favorite miniature sleuths and the stories they star in, not to mention many pages of related projects and activities and some good bookmaking to go along with it all.  I'm still aiming for a launch date around the first day of summer, if not a little bit sooner.  

Spring Green.

Originally, I had some thought of showing you photos of my newly planted spring garden and the sweet little seedlings and small plants just getting settled there.  It is that time of year, afterall.  But, like everything else in Vermont, my backyard has basically turned into marshland and is off limits until it has a chance to dry out a bit.  It might be awhile.  

In the meantime, things like this Spanish Spearmint plant and my pea seeds are waiting patiently to go into the ground.  Presumably, the ravenous birds in my backyard are waiting patiently to eat them.