Walking Onions

I really like the idea of walking onions. I like the idea of anything perennial, or that's easy to save seeds from - like berries, asparagus, garlic, or beans. Thus, I was moved to order some Egyptian Walking Onion sets. I planted the little sets in the ground around October/November, when I planted garlic. They came up looking a lot like any old onion. The above photo is of walking onions that I planted last fall; the photo was taken May 5th.

I'm not sure when to divide and replant the onions. These are onions that were new last year, and are big and thick and in a group this year. I do know that walking onions don't form bulbs. You eat them early in the Spring before they form topsets, or you can eat the topsets like pearl onions. You only need a little. They are supposed to be very potent. I haven't eaten any of mine yet because I wanted to save my topsets to increase my stock. I'll probably eat some next spring.

Here's an onion just forming a topset. The first thing that happens is a swelling at the end of an onion... stalk? leaf? with a thin white membrane covering it.

The membrane splits open to reveal baby onions inside. Pretty cool!

Another shot of topsets just opening up. All of these photos were taken May 5th so the onions are a good six weeks further along than this now. I'll see if I can't get a few more pics soon and post about their progress.

If anyone knows about when I should divide and replant my older onions, I'd like to hear from you. I figured I'd wait until the tops died down... but by the time they did it was COLD and the ground was frozen. They're hardy! Mine overwintered without any extra mulching, though I did lose a few. The lowest temps last winter were probably about -8F.

Starting Seeds

It's seed-starting season. Well, it has been for a while! I took these photos in late March.

This is the third season I've started my own plants indoors. Before this, I used to buy seedlings at the hardware store or a landscape/garden center. I don't know why I was ever intimidated by the idea of starting my own seeds, now that I've done it a couple of times.

I start by putting little seed cup things in a tray. Then I fill the cups with seed starter mix (not potting soil). I've learned I have to press the mix down in there, not leave it loose and fluffy. I used to take a spoon and fill each little cup. Now I just dump a bunch of mix on the middle of the tray and cups, and spread it out with my hands. I poke it down firmly with my fingers, dump some more, spread, poke... until all the little seed cups are full.

Some seeds (especially teeny tiny herb seeds) need to lie barely beneath the surface, or even on top of the surface. Other seeds, such as broccoli or peppers, need to be buried about 1/4". I use a high quality ball point pen to make my holes. The high quality ball point pen (this one from a hotel) is a key part of my seed starting equipment.

After I make all my holes, I drop two seeds in each hole. I get my seeds from Seed Savers Exchange and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and they have an unbelievably good germination rate. If my seeds are older, or from the hardware store, I plant three or even four per hole.

After the seeds are in, I press the starting mix over them, or press them into the surface if they're tiny seeds that need to lie on the surface. Then I take out one little six- or nine-pack of the cups and put water into the tray. I don't ever water on top of the cups; I always water from beneath.

I'll let the starting mix dry out quite a bit before watering again, but I try not to let it get so dry the seedlings wilt. The first year I tended to over-water and almost loved my seedlings to a soggy death; now I'm better at ignoring them and they like it that way.

Because I keep my sprouting seeds under clear domes, I can't put little markers in to remind me what I planted where - the markers are too tall. And there's NO WAY I can trust my memory! So I make myself a little map on a spare sheet of paper. I write down what I planted and the date. For this task I use my high-quality ball point pen. Writing down the date helps me to not panic when I think something isn't sprouting quickly enough. I can look at the date and realize it's only been three days since I planted those seeds :)

Now we just wait...

Field Corn and Rabbits

This summer I tried a Three Sisters garden and while it didn't do well due to the drought and my neglect, I did stash a few ears of field corn in a box.


Field corn is also called "dent corn" and it's grown primarily for animal feed and sometimes it's ground into cornmeal. I planted Hickory King which can also be eaten on the cob in its early stages.


On cold mornings I sometimes take an ear out of the box and carry it to the rabbit colony when I give them food and fresh water. They snuffle around the corn but don't go crazy over it. Yet, when I go back later, all that's left is the cob (if that).

Finally Planted Garlic

The weather was so nice yesterday that I found myself gardening. I had to change into a tee shirt it was so warm. I planted garlic. Garlic should be planted in October or November, but I'm not really one to rush things. I'd been meaning to get it done but it was either raining or the ground was frozen or I had to work, or something else was interfering. So I planted mine on a 70*F day in January.


This is my lovely garden before I planted the garlic. I haven't yet gotten around to my fall cleanup. I need to, because the weeds that lie there now will germinate in the spring. Many of them have already dropped their seeds so my procrastination will bite me in the butt. Still, we do what we can as we find the time to do it, and I haven't found time to clean up the garden.

I use wide deep beds in my garden; I don't plant in rows. I began extending the beds on this end of the garden just a bit last year. I got the dirt dug deeply but didn't shovel dirt out of my paths and into my beds. That's why this first photo just shows a weedy flat spot and not anything remotely garden looking. So yesterday I shoveled the dirt out of the path and into the bed.


Much better! The weeds have been cleared away and the bed is now more clearly defined. I grow four types of garlic. This is not because I'm a garlic connoisseur but rather because I am clueless and didn't have the slightest notion about what kind of garlic to plant last fall. I found a sample pack of four types of garlic on sale and figured if one type died another would thrive. They all did pretty well.

I saved my three best bulbs from each of the four types. You always save your best for planting the next year, so your crop stays strong. Over the years as you save seeds and bulbs you select for the plants which do the best in your garden with your gardening methods and your stock improves.


When you open up the bulb of garlic you can see the individual cloves. You keep the bulb intact until you're ready to plant, then you separate the bulb into cloves. You plant each clove individually with the flat bit (where the roots are) down and the pointy bit up. Each clove will be a bulb next year. If it doesn't die. And you'll save your best three and eat the rest.


Here are my little cloves of garlic spaced out ready for planting. I like to lay them all on top of the ground before I plant them. That way I don't end up with some all bunched up at one end of the bed.

I also lay out the biggest cloves first and then kind of fill in the gaps with the small puny cloves. I don't know why I do that, other than it makes spacing easier and it seems to make sense not to have all your best cloves in one corner, in case you step on it or have a ground hog or other pest munch on one bit of the bed.


After putting the cloves into the ground so that the top pointy bit is an inch or two below the surface of the soil (no photos, it was pretty boring looking) I got some mulch from the ginormous pile of grass and leaf clippings beside the garden.


I mulched the bed thickly and not too carefully. The purpose of the mulch is NOT to keep the garlic from freezing, but rather to maintain a more consistent ground temperature in the Spring when the ground "heaves" due to repeated thawing and freezing. New garlic roots are fine and fragile; ground heave can cause the garlic to be torn from its delicate roots; killing the garlic or setting it back so that it produces an inferior bulb.

Three Sisters in Review

We're well into autumn and I thought I'd recap how the three sisters experiment went. The main garden took up all my free time so I just planted the three sisters garden and left it to struggle against the weeds and drought all by itself.

The corn on the left is Hickory King, a field corn, and the others are Country Gentleman (shoepeg) and Stowell's Evergreen, both sweet corn. The sweet corn varieties are very tall for sweet corn so I thought I'd see if they could support pole beans. I think in a good year they could, though the field corn is obviously taller and more sturdy.



My sweet corn didn't produce much due to the drought. The field corn did surprisingly well but got eaten by pack rats and chipmunks. I saw the rats in the corn stalks twice (yes, UP in the stalks, munching away!) and there are chipmunk holes all in the garden. They didn't mess with the sweet corn, I suppose because I harvested it while it was still green. They ate the heck out of the field corn though. I think if I grow field corn again I should pick it earlier and let it dry somewhere protected. Or get a Jack Russell Terrier and let him work his magic in the garden.

I didn't get a lot of beans but I got more than enough to save seed from. I did eat one mess of Ruth Bible beans and oh, my gosh! Those were the most flavorful beans I've ever had!! The Genuine Cornfield beans were easily the most productive.

Next year I will do the three sisters again but instead of mounds I'm going to do raised beds like I do in my main garden. Really just wide rows with the dirt moved out of the paths and into the plant rows. I'll plant the corn four plants wide. I'll grow bean vines on the corn stalks and grow the squash down the rows between the corn stalks. I did this in one bed in my main garden last year and it's very easy to redirect the squash into the row or bed. With the mounds, the squash were going crazy everywhere and it was impossible to walk in there during the summer.

I selected the varieties of corn and beans specifically so they would do well in this configuration. I selected corn that is tall and sturdy, and pole beans that are known to do well in a corn field, with poor lighting.

I think this would be a fantastic way to grow field corn, winter squash, and dry beans. You could wait until autumn and harvest everything right after the first frost (if you could keep the little mammal critters out of the corn that long).

First Frost

We had our first frost last night. This morning, the zinnias in my garden looked like a marzipan delicacy.

The marigolds were awfully pretty, but difficult to photograph because the greens were so dark and the frost on the blossoms was so pale.

Because I knew a frost was predicted, I picked the squash from my three sisters garden. A light frost won't hurt winter squash but I didn't know how accurate the forecast was. What if we got a hard freeze?

I grew butternut, acorn, and hubbard squash. This isn't a great harvest but considering all I did was plant them and ignore them (no watering, no weeding) in a drought year it's a fair return.

One more zinnia pic because they are just so pretty.

Abundance of Peppers

We're having such an extended warm fall that my pepper plants are going gangbusters. Last year we had frost after I picked a couple of peppers off of each bush, it seems.

From the bottom right corner of the photo, you can see red sheepnose pimiento (sweet), green bell peppers (sweet), dark green ancho (very mild heat), red and green italian peppers (sweet), and purple bell (sweet).

I also grew jalapenos and habaneros which are hot and very hot, but on the day I took this photo I was dealing with sweet peppers.

I froze the red ones for use in stir fry this winter. I love red peppers in stir fry, it adds such a great splash of color. The green and purple peppers were diced and dehydrated for use in chili, spaghetti sauce, etc. I just hate paying $3 for a pepper in the middle of winter... IF I can find one that's in good shape.


I have chopped up red peppers before, and yellow peppers. On the inside they are red or yellow, just like on the outside. I grew purple peppers just for something fun and different. Imagine my surprise when I cut one open and learned that they are green inside!

Red and Yellow peppers start off green, then turn color when they ripen. These purple peppers were purple from the time they formed.


I thought this was pretty, the purple peppers all diced up and ready to spread out on the dehydrating tray. Once dried they looked pretty much like the green ones, but they were pretty like this. No telling what they'll look like in chili. Probably like dark mushrooms or something else equally inaccurate.

Bean There, Done That

This is what I did yesterday afternoon. I picked a bunch of bush beans, washed them, snapped them, and canned them. While one batch was in the canner I'd be washing and snapping the next batch. While the last batch was in the canner, I did Sudoku. I was tired.

I prefer pole beans but the deer ate my pole beans this year and when I replanted there wasn't enough time for pole beans to produce before the average first frost. So I planted bush beans. These are Blue Lake and I am pleased with them. They are prolific, taste good, and are stringless.

Peppers

I made salsa the other day with a batch of tomatoes I picked from the garden. The recipe calls for lots of sweet bell peppers, and some hot peppers. My bell peppers are producing very slowly, so my salsa has a mix of peppers. I picked a little bit of everything in order to get enough for the salsa.

Clockwise, from left: Tolli's Italian Pepper. As sweet as a bell pepper and quite prolific. The peppers get larger than this, but I'd picked recently for something else so had to settle for smaller ones.

Ancho Gigantea. This dark green pepper has a mild heat. I really like it! It's pretty prolific, too. Needs a support frame like a tomato cage.

Bell Pepper.

Habanero. An extremely hot pepper; our variety turns yellowish orange when ripe. I used 3/4 of a pepper (well seeded and white membranes removed) in my 7 pint batch of salsa. They are HOT HOT HOT.

Jalapeno. Used a lot in Tex-Mex foods. We love the flavor of these. I grew four or five plants this year and it's not going to be nearly enough.

Melon!

I've never grown melons before. This year I planted some watermelon, some green muskmelon, and some orange muskmelon.

This one is Edisto 47 and it is YUM good.

Fresh picked melons are lots juicier than store bought. You have to get ready and slice near the sink. Have a dish cloth handy.

We ate half of this one and cut the other half into bite sized chunks and froze them on a cookie sheet, then put them in a ZipLock freezer bag for later. They are okay frozen if you eat them while they're still icy cold and not completely thawed.

Pet Squash

This is my pet squash.

At first I named it LeeAnn because she is SO into odd veggies. However, LeeAnn is a decidedly female name and the squash has decidedly scrotal qualities. That made me uneasy.

Now I just call it "LeeAnn's Squash" and whenever I see it sitting on my counter top I think of LeeAnn and smile. Life is good.

Sink of Tomatoes

Last year, the tomatoes succumbed to late blight before we got much of a harvest. This year has been very dry, so we've had other challenges, but the harvest has been quite satisfactory as far as I'm concerned.

We grew paste tomatoes this year. When I get ready to process tomatoes, I place them into one sink, and wash them and put the clean tomatoes into the other sink. From there I blanch, skin, core, and process.

My sink has happily had a lot of tomatoes go through it this summer.

Canning Squash

I haven't blogged in ages. It's canning season and my days are FILLED with washing, peeling, trimming, slicing, cooking, stirring, and canning.

Most people don't can summer squash. It's not recommended because the squash turns so soft and mushy. I can it, though, because I use it in my Grandmama's Delicious Squash Casserole (TM). I'm going to mash it for the casserole, so it doesn't matter that it's soft and mushy. In fact, that makes casserole making easier! The recipe calls for 2 cups mashed, but I just drain and mash what's in the quart jar and call it good.

To can summer squash, pick it young and trim the ends. Slice it into 1/2" slices (I sliced mine a lot thicker, but did a hot pack so it was well heated before canning).

Raw pack (1" head space) or hot pack (1/2" head space).
Add 1/2 tsp. salt (pints) or 1 tsp. salt (quarts) if desired.
Process pints for 30 minutes, or quarts for 40 minutes at 10 lbs. pressure.

Squash Casserole
2 cups cooked, drained, and mashed squash
1 Tbsp. cornstarch
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup milk
2 Tbsp. minced dried onion or 1/4 cup chopped fresh
1/4 cup (1 stick) melted margarine

Mix and put in greased 2 quart casserole.
Bake at 350F about 40 minutes until lightly browned.

***

This recipe freezes well, too. I've made a few double and triple recipes this summer and frozen them in quart ziplock freezer bags. If you do this, measure four cups of casserole "mix" per bag.

Many Legged Carrot

What can I say?
Nature has a way of always being able to surprise and amaze.

I've been crazy busy. I tried to cut my thumb off when butchering a rabbit but that's mostly better now.

I've put up marinara, pickles, some other stuff... working on barbecue sauce now.

The garden is buried under weeds. At least it used to be.

Three Sisters

Well it's high time I gave an update on my three sisters experiment. I'm embarrassed to share these photos because the plot is in such sad shape. I haven't pulled one single weed, I haven't mulched, and the soil there is pitiful. The deer got in and ate my squash and beans almost down to stems at one point before we hooked up the fence charger. So the results are abysmal, yet I'm encouraged and will definitely do this again next year unless something goes horribly wrong in the near future.


The soil in this area is clay and rock with an amazing hardpan. We dug it up with a roto-tiller on the tractor and the tiller had a hard time breaking the soil. At a certain depth it was like asphalt and the tiller just rode on top of it. I think I'll try to plant alfalfa, buckwheat, or ryegrass here in the fall as a green manure and to break through that hardpan. All three of those have deep roots to help break up compacted soil but I don't know what would be a good choice for fall planting.

I'll also amend the soil more next year. When this garden is spent, I'll clean up the chicken house and spread the manure around. I'll probably till it in, let it sit for a week or two, till it in again, and then plant my cover crop. I may end up burning up the cover crop but I'm going to give it a try anyway.

Next year I may do mounds again or I may modify it and do long raised beds/rows. Whichever I choose, I'll definitely mulch well, especially in the walkways.

I'm encouraged because I can see how this could work really well. The corn is finally starting to grow (what didn't wither and die) and the beans are beginning to reach out and some of them are twining around the corn plants. The squash are blooming and spreading out like crazy things.

Some things I did right: I selected tall growing corn varieties with strong root structures. I am trying Hickory King (a dent corn that can be eaten as roasted ears when young), Country Gentleman (shoepeg), and Stowell's Evergreen. Shorter stalks and weaker root structures can't handle the weight of beans growing on them very well.

I also selected beans that grow well in cornfields and can thrive in the partial shade of that environment. I'm trying Genuine Cornfield, Ruth Bible, and Turkey Craw. Other bean types need full sun and won't produce well in a cornfield.

I planted six corn seeds per mound and then later on when the corn was about 4-6" tall I planted a bean for each corn plant. Some of my corn hills only had one or two plants to germinate and make it to 6" tall :( I planted one squash per hill. I think with amended soil and mulch, these numbers will be about right for my mounds which are four feet apart.

Making a Garlic Braid

I grew garlic for the first time this year. I grew four different types and now I can't find the markers saying what I planted where. From what I read, hardneck garlics form scapes but softnecks do not. One of my garlic types did not produce scapes and the neck is indeed pliable. I decided to braid this garlic after curing the plants and setting aside the three best heads for planting in the fall.


Braiding garlic is pretty much like braiding anything else, except you add in garlic plants as you go. I begin by placing a garlic plant in the center, bulb away from me. Then I place a plant to the right and cross its stem over the first plant. Then I take a third plant and put it on the left. I'll cross its stem into the center of the other two, and my braid is begun.


Just like braiding anything else, the right hand bit (the rightmost stem) now crosses to the center.


I add in a garlic plant by placing the new plant's stem alongside a stem that is already a part of the braid, and that is being crossed over into the center.


I continue adding in plants as I go, first on one side and then on the other. I add a plant from each side, then do a couple of "cross over to the center"s without adding in a new garlic plant. This results in a loose braid that is not as pretty as a tight braid, but will allow for better air circulation. I'm concerned about the garlic going bad if it isn't well ventilated, because I live in a very humid area.


After all the garlic has been braided in, I continue braiding the stems. I tie these off with a bit of bailing twine but you can also just tie the stems in a simple knot.

To use the garlic, just get some scissors and snip off the bulb that you want. Easy peasy.

This is the first time I've done garlic like this, but I experimented with some onions last year and they kept all winter long. I hung them in a terrible location, too - the south facing window above the sink in my kitchen. I hung this garlic braid on a nail in my pantry. I think it should keep pretty well in there with no sunlight and fairly regular temperatures.

Potato Patch Tour, Continued

This is a squash bug. Why he's hanging out in the potatoes I have no idea. I planted my squash late and they are just starting to sprout. I'll have to keep a vigilant eye on them.


The icky slug. I had these real bad at one point. I mustered up my courage and actually picked them off and dumped them into my soapy water bucket. It was hard getting the nerve but once I actually touched them it wasn't any worse than cracking an egg. Slimy, but so what? I'm not rushing to repeat the experience though.


A good guy! I avoid spraying if at all possible because I'm hoping some good guys will get established in the garden like this ladybug. Last year the only good guy I had was a garden spider. This year I have ladybugs and I saw one mantid.


I never really thought about it, but until I grew potatoes for the first time last year I didn't know they flowered. This is a sad example of a potato blossom but it's what I had. Potatoes aren't grown from seed, though. Although the potato plant flowers, to my knowledge the seeds are not used. Potatoes are grown from other potatoes (called seed potatoes, but they're really just plain old small potatoes). The potatoes or potato pieces are buried about 4 inches deep. The eyes sprout and become the green plants you see in the potato patch. After the plants turn yellow and fall over, you dig the potatoes out of the dirt with a pitchfork or garden fork.

Potato Patch Tour

My potato bed is about 3 or 4 feet wide by about 30 feet long. Let's take a walk through it, shall we? It has more bugs and activity right now than any other part of my garden. Most of it is bad bug activity but as the plants are doing well and the potatoes themselves are underground, I hand pick the pests and don't spray. Oh, I did spray Neem Oil once.


This is a flea beetle and the bane of my existence. In my garden it attacks mostly the potatoes and creates lace from the leaves. It also attacks seedlings. I don't have chard (yet) this year because these little buggers eat it before it can get established.

Usually if a plant can get well established the flea beetle does more cosmetic damage than anything else. If it gets your new seedlings, though, it can eat them to the ground in no time. Neem Oil is an organic control.



This is wormwood. I have my potato bed broken into thirds, with wormwood planted in the two breaks. Wormwood is supposed to repel flea beetles. I had flea beetles before I could set out the wormwood, though, so the flea beetles are laughing at me. They have a huge head start. I remain hopeful.


The infamous Colorado Potato Beetle. I hate it that he's a bad guy, because he's so beautiful. These two went into a plastic ice cream "bucket" with about an inch of water and a drop of Dawn dishwashing liquid in it. Without the soap, the beetles can climb out of the water and get away. Use the soap!


Colorado Potato Beetles lay their bright yellow eggs in clusters on the underside of the leaves.


The Colorado Potato Beetle larva is a plump juicy little guy. He goes into the bucket too, or if I don't have my soapy water handy he gets squished between two leaves and his guts get left as a warning to others.

There's lots more going on in the potato patch, but this is enough for now.

Three Sisters

Supposedly the Native Americans grew corn, beans, and squash together and called them the "Three Sisters". Corn is a hungry plant, and benefits from the nitrogen fixing capabilities of the beans. The pole beans grow up the stalks of corn and use them for support. The vining squash acts as a living mulch and helps shade the soil, conserving moisture while deterring weed growth. Raccoons detest the prickly leaves of the squash and avoid the corn patch which has squash growing amongst the corn.

Supposedly.

We'll see.


We tilled up a patch of ground about 30x30. Normally I would try for raised beds rather than tilling but time was running out and I wanted to do the traditional mounds rather than beds. The area we tilled is clay and rocks so we threw some peat out there and tilled it in. We put a blob of composted manure about every four feet, to mark where our mounds will be and to enrich the soil a bit. My husband was in charge of east-west alignment and he did a fine job.


I was in charge of north-south alignment and, well, let's move on to the next photo, shall we?


We mounded up the dirt with a hoe, then held the hoe horizontally and used the handle to flatten the top of the mounds. This pretty much sums up the prep work we did for our Three Sisters garden. I'll talk about the planting in another entry, and we can check in on the garden from time to time as the growing season progresses.

Garlic Scapes

This is a photo of garlic and if you look closely at the center of the photo you will see a curly bit of stem with a still-encased flower bulb. That is called a garlic scape.

If you look at the bottom left portion you will see another scape.

Only hardnecked garlic makes scapes; softneck garlic does not. When the garlic forms scapes, you should cut them off so that the plant continues to put its energy into forming a nice large bulb beneath the soil rather than trying to produce a large healthy flower.

Scapes can be stir-fried, steamed or sauteed in butter, or they can be used to make pesto which I am assured is delicious on toast. We plan to make home made bread and dip it into the pesto. I can't wait.

Strawberries

We picked strawberries from the garden yesterday evening. This is the second year we have had a strawberry bed. Last year we got about 3 or 4 strawberries, because the plants were getting established. This year, a bountiful harvest!

For dinner we had whole wheat pancakes - made with freshly ground wheat - and fresh picked strawberries. It was delish!

Asparagus Ferns

I planted asparagus last year. I knew about asparagus spears, because I bought them at the grocery store. I had read about asparagus ferns, but didn't know if they were separate from the spears or if the spears turned into ferns, or what. I am now a little bit smarter in the ways of asparagus than I used to be. As asparagus grows, the tip opens up just a bit, as shown in the photo above.


In no time at all, each one of those little buds or clumps or whatever they are shoots out on a long stalk. This happens seemingly overnight. Don't blink, you'll miss it.

Then the long stems begin to get all leafy. The ferns will get fluffier and bushier than this, but this is where my ferns were at when I took these pics. They also get tiny little flowers on them.

You have to leave some asparagus to "fern out" because the tubers down in the ground need the energy provided by the ferns' photosynthesis to stay healthy and grow. Asparagus is an oddity in the garden because you get to harvest the plant first, then feed it and nurture it. How well you care for it this year will be reflected in next year's harvest.

Feed Bags in the Garden

Our feed bags pile up fairly quickly. We buy dog food, chicken feed, and rabbit feed in 50 lb. sacks. I thought they might make a good weed suppressor in the garden. I have put a bunch of bags down one path in the garden, between two of the raised beds (my raised beds are more like long mounds - they don't have sides of wood, brick, etc.).

So far they are doing a good job at keeping the weeds out. A few peek out from the edges but they're easy to pull. Sometimes they're kind of slimy under there, yuck! We've had a very dry spring, and maybe in a normal year I'll find that the bags are a bad idea due to slugs but so far, so good.

Downside: I'm wearing holes in them kind of quickly adn they are ugly. But hey, they're free and I'm cutting down on my throw-away trash.

Thin != Tender

I always thought the thin tiny asparagus at the grocery store would be the most tender. I avoided the fat "woody" asparagus. Boy, was I a goof!

It turns out that asparagus spears come up out of the ground at a certain thickness and that thickness doesn't really change over time. They get taller, and fern out, but they don't get thicker. At least, not noticeably.

The big fat spear of "purple passion" asparagus shown above is nice and tender. The thing to look at is the bud. As long as it's closed up tight, the asparagus will be delightful. As soon as the bud shows signs of opening up, you should harvest the spear about 15 minutes ago. Asparagus spears grow very quickly, so daily harvesting is a good idea.

Newspaper Pots

Some plants, like the peppers above, require a long time to grow to maturity, bloom, set fruit, and ripen. In most areas, those plants are not grown from seed sown directly into the garden, but from already established young plants called seedlings. This gives them a jump start and allows them to produce before the fall frosts hit.

If you grow your own seedlings, you'll need some kind of container to hold them until they get big and strong and the night temperatures are warm enough for the young plants to survive. Behold the newspaper pot.


To make your own stylish newspaper pot, you will need some old newspapers (new will do), some masking tape, and a drinking glass or other cylinder about 3" to 4" in diameter. A soda can is a good diameter but I find it's too short. It may suit you fine though.

Tear the big newspaper sheets down the center so you have two sheets with only one page on each side. Fold one of these resulting single-page sheets in half vertically so the crease runs from top to bottom and the left and right edges are together.


Roll the folded newspaper sheet loosely around the cylinder and tape the seam. Loosely, because the little beasties are really hard to get off the cylinder if you roll them tightly. I like to put the fold of the newspaper on the cylinder and let the ragged edge hang off the end. It makes for a neater finished product.

Find a place on your cylinder that you can use as a mark for lining up the top of your pot. While this step isn't necessary it's nice because it makes all your resulting pots a uniform height, which is important to anal people like me.

Fold the "hanging off" edges to the center of the cylinder and hold in place with a piece of tape.


Voila!

You can fit about 6 by 3 newspaper pots in a seed starting tray. They're nice because they allow you to put water directly into the tray, which waters your seedlings from the bottom up.

When you get ready to transplant, you can set the pot directly into the ground where it will disintegrate. Newspaper ink is soy based so will not harm your plants. Tear the top off of the pot or dig your hole deep enough to set the pot completely below ground level. If you leave the top of the pot exposed to the air, it will wick moisture away from the roots of the plant and into the air, drying out the roots of your plant.

I like to also tear the bottom out of my pot so the roots can grow downward more easily. I frequently just tear the pot completely off and toss it into the compost bin.

Lovage

This is lovage, a perennial herb that tastes very much like celery. I started some seeds in the greenhouse and transplanted it into the garden last year and it was kind of spindly and thin. It struggled. This year it looks like it's going to do quite well.

This photo was taken last week after an extended period of highs in the upper 60s and lower 70s (fahrenheit) and lows in the 40s. We've had snow for the last 4 or 5 days, and for the most part my lovage is wilted on the ground, with a few new leaves bravely sprouting. I'm confident that when the temperatures warm up the lovage will flourish.

When I taste the leaves I cannot tell the difference between lovage and celery leaves. I've read that you use it "just like celery" but last year the stems were thin and woody. I couldn't imagine those stems in my cooking and they certainly had no place in my salads. It hasn't yet grown enough to see if the stems will be larger and more tender this year.

At any rate, I intend to harvest and dry the leaves, as I would oregano or basil. That should make for some nice seasonings for winter soups and stews.

Stairway to (Squash) Heaven

I grew one vine of butternut squashes this year, and got these handsome squashes plus one more that is hiding out in one of my kitchen cabinets. I don't have a root cellar and my small but sincere pantry is kind of overwhelmed right now so I'm storing the squashes on the stairs. I hope they don't mind the warm temps. I think they look kind of nifty there.

Tomato Disaster

The photo of the tomato hornworm with brillian green foliage was taken August 23. Today's photo was taken August 30th. I think I have a terminal case of late blight. If anyone suspects differently, I'm open to comments!

I"d noticed some spots on the bottom leaves of my tomato plants but the plants were SO green and SO flowering and SO fruit laden that I didn't worry about it too much.

Then all of a sudden I have huge dead slimy places and horrid white moldy stuff. I'm SO upset. :(

I cut off some of the diseased portions of the plants today but it's slow going and from what I read there is probably no hope once the blight develops. We've had lots of rain this summer - I watered the garden exactly once, in one bed only, when I had some seedlings in that bed. The rest of the summer it's been very wet.

So, in addition to learning about squash bugs, mexican bean beetles, and japanese beetles, I've learned something else about gardening here. Next year I will space my tomatoes farther apart. I will trim the branches from the bottom foot or so of the plant, and I will sucker them to keep lots of air circulation going on.

I am SO bummed out. So it goes.

Tomato Hornworm

I found a tomato hornworm in my garden the other day. I'd never have noticed him if not for the braconid wasp larva on him. The white really stood out against all the green of the tomatoes. I have looked for others but not found any. I know they're probably there, but so far they're doing a good job of blending in with their background. I need to check the ground for waste pellets.

My hornworm isn't feeling too well. I got the following information from the University of Massachussets' website.

A parasitic Braconid wasp is an important and fairly common natural enemy of the hornworms. The wasps lay their eggs inside the body of the caterpillars. After feeding within the caterpillar body, the larvae of the wasps eat out through the skin and spin the cocoons on the caterpillar surface. The adult wasps later cut out circular lids and escape from the cocoons to attack other hornworms. If one is hand-picking hornworms, those with cocoons of parasitic wasps on their back should not be killed.

Same photo, just cropped and not reduced. I need to try to find this hornworm again, to see if the wasps have cut their way out of their coccoons. So interesting!

Japanese Beetles

This year was my first year gardening in West Virginia. I had plans to let nature take its course and learn from observing the pests coming in, and the beneficials, so I could make good solid plans for next year. I was absolutey inundated with Japanese Beetles on my pole beans. They are beautiful, but sooo destructive. I hand picked daily, sometimes twice a day, and I couldn't keep up. I used an old ice-cream gallon bucket with a couple of inches of water in it and a few drops of dish detergent. The soap breaks the surface tension of the water so they can't get out. I learned through experience that if you don't put soap in the water, those little critters can climb onto the surface of the water and take off flying. Amazing!

My bucket of good clean fun.

I finally broke down and sprayed with Neem. The poor beans were getting so decimated that the leaves were discoloring and they were getting lots of other pests - most notably, Mexican Bean Beetles. I figured if I hoped to learn anything more aboout beans, I had to keep them alive. Not sure if it helped or not. The beetles are fewer now but maybe the end of their munching season is growing near, who knows?

Despite the pests I have gotten a good harvest from my pole beans. A 3' x 30' bed (planted in a double-row) has yielded a couple of meals, 13 quarts, and half a dozen pints of green beans, and they're still producing.

Next year I plan to plant lots of larkspur and four o'clocks. Both of these plants