Salad Days

It has now rained here for the last week.  The temperature cooled and flirted with near frost levels several nights, which was enough to move my squash and cucumber starts from outside enjoying the heat of the driveway back inside under the shelter of the garage.  The weatherman said the last week was more like March than May.

The sun will finally return on Monday, and I'm expecting a substantial change in the garden.  A growth explosion will be inevitable.  This will mean adding weeding to the list of chores.  Second and more noteworthy, there will be salad greens to cut besides the arugula that populates the edge of the driveway.

The last plastic container of greens until Christmas!

This small act is significant to me because it's a baby step towards self-sufficiency and sustainability.  I don't want to sound too righteous here - I drive a lot, buy a lot of stuff, and waste a lot of everything like a number of Americans.

Because of that the garden remains my most basic encounter with life's elements and reminds me how satisfying the simple act of being outside in relationship with growing food is.

Several varieties populate various beds around the yard: European Mesclun Mix, Yankee Hardy Mix, Arugula, Reine des Glaces Lettuce, and Russian Kale. Salad greens are easy to grow.  Ideally seeds should be sown every couple weeks so there is a constant supply until the heat turns them too bitter.

There is a lot of satisfaction walking outside and cutting greens.  This extends beyond freshness and flavor.  Those plastic tubs make a lot of corporate sense in terms of efficient shipping and attractive point of purchase display.  However, there are a lot of hidden costs incurred in terms of using energy:  transportation costs incurred for my salad; there is no extra water wasted; and there is no plastic created and molded to ship and store my salad.

The only hidden cost here is the energy needed to add a few hundred steps to my FitBit.  Less plastic, fresh salad, and more exercise.  Maybe, just maybe, this is a small victory.

Found Food

I've been gardening at my current location for five years.  Since I started gardening roughly twenty years ago, I've tried any number of fruits and vegetables.  The outcome has been mixed, especially any fruit or vegetable that I start from seed.  And when I say mixed - I mean it's usually been a disaster.

My first spring here, I tried growing strawberries from seed.  I was a sucker for a small tin container with potting soil and strawberry seeds, which by the way are nearly microscopic.  I bought it!  I previously tried strawberries at the old house that were already started and only needed to be transplanted.  By the time we moved I would eat a couple dozen strawberries while I watered the other beds.  However, I often shared the berries with birds who could not resist the small rubies.  Those strawberries were packets of tangy sugar!  But I digress

If my memory serves me correctly, I seeded that small tin container outside on a windy day in March. Once seeded and watered I placed the tin container on a rack in the front, south-facing sunroom (results were similar to my last post - the great fluctuations of temperature baked the poor little things before they had a chance).

Despite the failure, their progeny remain.  In the photo between the dandelions are strawberry flowers!  These are from the seeds that were taken by the wind.  I won't mow the little patch and will have to be careful not to walk over them as I do other chores.  The flowers serve as a memory of an experiment not quite right, but the hope the tiniest seeds may germinate into finding the unexpected.

Yesterday I cut greens outside for the first time.  My yard is littered with dandelions and since I don't use pesticides I can eat the greens.  They're strong and bitter but are nicely offset by apples and/or raisins.  Before our complex food chain, I can see how excited people would have been to eat these greens, since they grow before everything else.

These are photos of my garage greens.  

While it's clear that there are dandelions growing in the gap between the driveway and the concrete for the garage, there are also smaller yellow flowers in the top photo.  Those are arugula plants flowering on their way to seed.

Much like strawberries, I've started arugula either to grow beneath the garage grow lights or in small pots to be transplanted.  A bit of wind and a few errant seeds and you have salad!  Arugula has slowly populated other parts of the lawn as well.  The dried stems in the lower photo are last winter's arugula plants.  The seed pods have broken and seeds are being spread by the wind, birds, or under foot.

I like the idea of having food everywhere on the property.  It gives me pleasure to see tufts of arugula by the mailbox or the walkway.   I'm not averse to tear a few leaves on the spot for a peppery, nutty flavored little snack!

Not having kids running around, grass seems like a waste of space - a lot of energy that nets little results.   The strawberries and greens are a small to realizing my dream of one day having a completely edible yard!  Neighbors - you've been warned.

Near Victory Garden - Defeat Number 1

In early March I started a number of seeds and heated them under grow lights in my garage.  I've maintained this practice that I start in late winter for several years, and it always brings me great joy.  For the few minutes the seedlings take daily to water, I get the opportunity to admire the thin slivers of green poke through the soil remind me spring is on the way.  I am fostering life.

As the weather warms I harden these plants by placing them in the driveway during the day and returning them to the protection of my garage at night.   My plants are started in typical plastic cylinders from last year's tomato plants and other succulents I purchased at a local farm.  The driveway creates a microclimate between the heat being absorbed by the black pavement and bouncing off the garage doors.  Consequently, a 50 degree day is much, much warmer.

Earlier in the week, I left them in the driveway and went to work.  When I returned most of them wilted to death under the heat.  The few tablespoons of potting medium dried quickly and there was no chance for the delicate seedlings to survive.  What started as flats full of Swiss Chard, various kales, and Mizuna now have a few hardy remainders that will find their spots in the garden today.

This is not the first time I've done this during the course of my gardening life.  I am reminded of Einstein's definition of insanity, which is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

I don't view what happened as a waste of time or a reduction in productivity.  Rather, I was responsible for wasting life.  As gardeners we are asked to be stewards of life, whether it is the soil or the seed.  I failed in the most basic tenant in that role.  While I don't wish to melodramatic over it, I also understand that if I want to be a better steward of my garden I need to pay greater attention.

Begin Again

My garden may never look better than it does today.  No, not the reality of the overgrown tangle of dried weeds and carcasses of collard stems and brussel sprouts that litter the various beds.  It's the garden of my dreams, my vision.  I can't help a think a gardener has to be a bit of a visionary and dreamer.  Someone who can look at a rectangle of dirt and a seed the size of pin's head and imagine the alchemy.  Right now,  my 2016 garden will have all the rows perfectly weeded and mulched; the soil will receive compost on a regular basis, and I'll maintain a steady watering schedule.  That's the vision.  That's the plan.  Now begins its execution.

I have three gardens in the backyard right now, although I will be planting sunflowers out front and maybe something else if I'm so moved.  The gardens line the east and west sides of the house.

This is the front garden that is comprised of  eight beds. 

For most of the twenty years I've had a garden, I've been as true to executing my goals of weeding, mulching, and watering with the same commitment as my New Year's Resolutions (really, I'm going to eat better and exercise more in 2017!).

This is the back garden starting point as of today.

As you can see, I'm not kidding about my bad

weeding habits!

In mid-March I started greens in the garage.  They will be transplanted over the weekend.  The garlic was planted last October.  Onions from Dixondale Farm in Texas will be arriving soon, and they will find their new home in Connecticut soil.

                     The garlic is sprouting and between them I planted rows of greens.  

Tonight I prepared a single bed with a bit of compost.  I planted  Bloomsdale Spinach, French Breakfast Radish (both from Seed Savers)
and a rare seed from Baker Creek called Radish Sakurajima Giant.  The seed packet says that specimens "commonly grows to 15 pounds in it native land."  Fifteen pound radishes?  How can you not give them a try?

If the radishes grow to fifteen pounds, how big will the tomatoes get?  This will be an interesting season.



This is a small bed for radishes, including the 
Sakurajima Giant.  

Optimism

Sunday morning on the east coast finds most of us dealing with another round of severe weather.  Where I live in the Hartford area, we escaped the worst of the snow, but now a harsh wind is blowing it around, like a well-shaken snow globe.

Despite the challenging weather over the last few weeks my conversations with people are slowly shifting:  We talk about March being just two weeks away and about how daylight is increasing.  There's a third sign - pitchers and catchers begin reporting to spring training this week.

Today I'm going to start planning my garden.  Each year my goal is to be a little better whether that is in planning, executing, or buttoning it up.   Believe me, all of it can be improved.  This year I want to be better prepared at the start of the season by putting together a workable calendar and have some of those early season plants well started once the soil is ready.  I also want to have a better record of the process, which has led me back to the blog.

My usual planting method is once the soil is ready, I turn it over and start broadcasting lettuce seeds, peas, beets, kale, chard etc.  Your standard array of cool weather crops.  The last few years I tried broccoli from seed.  I'm not sure what exactly happened, whether the tender starts were picked by birds, succumbed due to weather, or, um, human neglect.  Either way, I want to have plants that are hardier and transplantable, even if it requires some covering at night once they're in the ground.

I have the necessary tools to get started.  A few years ago I bought grow lights and used them to start zucchini and tomato plants.  I had a modicum of success, and I kept the project in the dining room.  It was a great source of interest to guests.  This year it will be moved to the garage.  The florescent lights constant glow from a garage window gives me hope that my neighbors think I'm up to no good. How disappointed they'd be to learn that it's just kale, broccoli, and cauliflower seeds getting started.

While the wind whips I'll page through seed catalogs and sip something warm.  High Mowing Seeds, Johnny's and Baker Creek will be this year's seed sources, and I'll start my selection.  I've had good luck with all three, both in seed performance and service.   Plus on every page the weather is gentle and the garden perfect.

Out Of Hibernation

Since all the snow melted about two weeks ago, I've made periodic pilgrimages to the garlic garden beds in the front yard.   Looking for any signs of germination, I observed that I didn't put enough mulch in the beds.  Several of the cloves had been pushed entirely out of the soil from frost.

This is the first spring in several years I didn't conduct some type of experiment to try and get fresh food to the table as early as possible.  My only prep work was to buy seeds and a bag of potting soil.

There were two reasons little had been done to force an early harvest.  One was somewhere along the line, I lost track of time.  This winter and early spring, which was polar vortex cold, gave me a case of amnesia that spring would never arrive.  At some point in March I felt an overwhelming sense of futility to start anything under grow lights, which I did last year.  Despite all the record lows, frost, and stubborn snow, spring did occur the first week of April.

The second factor was that I needed to move the seed starting operation from the dining room to the basement - and it seems I am very lazy.  The move wasn't because of the mess I created from overwatering and having the steady florescent light beam in the dining room constantly, but because our beloved old cat, who was unable to climb, had passed away.  A young more curious and nimble cat, who seems to be able to climb a wall, is now on the prowl.  I contemplated moving the seed starting operation into the basement, but I was frozen from action, much like most of everything else outside the house.

Consequently, I feel as though I am a little behind schedule.  This is the absurd thinking that all the world is a race.  While gardeners and farmers extol the ability to force early harvests, especially tomatoes, I am content to let everything arrive this year when it does.  And really, what choice do I have?  I didn't do the work ahead of time.

While I may feel behind schedule, I'm right on time.

Yesterday was one of the most pleasurable days I've had since the vacation Teresa and I had in Maine in late August.  Like a kid whose been given permission to play in the dirt, I put on my work gloves and turned the compost pile of leaves that I had taken from the surrounding neighborhoods a year and a half ago.  The large paper bags and their contents had largely broken down into a beautiful black crumbly soil.  The sweet smell of wet compost that exuded from the pile smelled as appetizing as the aroma of chocolate cake baking.

I pulled the plastic cover of my unsuccessful fall hoop house pack to find that peas, spinach, radishes, kale, and onions appeared to be sprouting.

Turning over one bed that measures 3'x10' and working in several wheelbarrows full of compost, I kneeled down and planted about 75 onion sets from Dixondale Farms.

Another wheelbarrow full of compost when to help the garlic that had sprouted but was in clear need of additional soil shelter.

Finally, I added potting soil to nine pots - astro arugula (High Mowing), dill, parsley, and High Mowing Seeds Mild Mix.  The goal in mind here is to have small weekly plantings of greens so that they are ready weekly, instead of my usual habit of emptying a seed packet into a bed and have more lettuce than even the rabbits can handle.

A decent watering with Neptune's Harvest Organic will get everything off to a good start.

A few Advil, a cold glass of water, and a lot of gratitude as I relaxed into Sunday evening - as though I am once again waking.

Publishing Note

This entry does not fall into the theme of the blog, but I wanted to pass this along.

Two of my inspirations are Anna & Mark at www.Waldeneffect.org and authors of The Weekend Homesteader among other sustainability and homesteading books.  I often visit their blog often.  Anna has written a young adult novel, which is available at Amazon.

Here's some of the description:
Forsythia is more familiar with subways than with milk cows, but she always dreamed of visiting the intentional community where she was conceived. Now the farm will be sold sight unseen if she doesn't find a way to bring the community back to life.

I've had some experience with book promotion, since I'm on the sales side of publishing and offered a few suggestions.

Please visit Anna's other blog:  http://www.wetknee.com/news/ to see the article.