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Garden Dreaming In Spite of Spring Snow
Some people plant according to the moon, some plant in raised beds, some in rows. Some people garden with a plan, others garden by the season.
Frank and I garden by the seat of our pants.
This will be our fourth year garden. We’re still trying to find some kind of groove, some kind of system. We have our little planting guides and calendars, and we try to keep close — but weather, schedules, spring colds, seed availability — all work against it. We still have that “throw it in the soil and see what happens” approach.
But for the past three years, we’ve been improving our soil. Loads and loads of sand mixed with our red clay for the carrot, radish and beet beds. Loads of horse manure for the hot beds, loads of rotten leaves for the main beds.
We’ve also perfected (and expanded) the fence. The first year we made adjustments for deer, last year we battled a rabbit. This year, the challenge so far, before much has even sprouted, is keeping the chickens out.
We’ve also gotten a little more experienced with tomato stakes and cages, and this year I was happy to find some heirloom “bush” varieties after last year’s tomato vine takeover. (Determinate varieties grow bushy, then work on producing fruit. Indeterminate varieties — the vine just keeps growing, and growing, and growing.)
This year, we start the season with enough hose to reach from the spigot to the far end of the garden, and enough jars to put up six months’ worth of tomato creations & green beans. Apparently, you can never have enough jars.
We learned to label our seed trays, because even though you think you can recognize a plant, when you have nine different varieties of tomato, you really need to be specific. We’ve learned to give seed trays 16 hours of light and only 8 hours of dark, and we’ve learned to fend of dampening by watering the just planted trays one time with Chamomile tea.
It seems each year, our expectations get even higher. It could be that we’ve become addicted to gardening.
We feel confident enough to try some new things this year; eggplant, more annual herbs, broccoli. We have high hopes. Even more tomatoes, more beans, more peppers than last year — and last year, I felt buried in them.
But this year, we hope to establish our outdoor canning area, where jars can be cold packed and hot bathed in a washtub over an open fire, and much of the mess of cleaning the harvest can be kept outside, closer to the compost pile, and where the chickens can help themselves to unintentional spills.
This year, I face vegetable processing season with my beloved Squeezo, vintage, all metal, that I got for a heck of a deal on ebay. Oh the hours I would have saved if I had only purchased one sooner. With a Squeezo (aka Victorio Strainer) you can juice tomatoes whole, make applesauce from whole boiled apples. No seeding, no peeling. And, if you get a good one, you can hook the cordless drill up to it and don’t have to crank by hand. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.
The more we garden, the more we know. The more we know, the more we grow. The more we grow, the more we have to share and eat! At some point, I’m sure we’ll over do it. I thought we’d reached that point last fall, but it’s hard to remember that feeling in the spring. When Frank first told me he was expanding the garden plot again, I thought he was crazy. But that’s before I came across those eggplant and acorn squash seeds.
This year, we planted early crops early (perhaps too early) because we’ve seen how peas hate heat. We’ve planned for two rounds of short season crops instead of just one. We understand the potential of a winter garden now that we’ve seen how forgotten potatoes and carrots fare over winter.
Perhaps this spring snow was what we needed to hold us back until the time is right, to keep us from sowing too far, too fast. Perhaps the spring snow is what we needed to kill the larvae, bugs and other soil dwelling critters who were turned up when we played in the garden during those warm days weeks ago. I hope so.
I do have this strong feeling though, that when this snow melts, and this chill passes, it will have been winter’s last hoorah. Spring will then arrive in full force, quickly feeling more like summer. It’s just a week, just a few days away.
Surely, just a few days away.
Don’t Tread on Wet, Tilled Soil
Even as early as February, back-yard gardens across the country are being worked. Beds are cleared, disked, tilled. Hot beds are seeded. Fences are mended, turned up rocks are removed, and the garden is set to go.
And then spring rains come.
Just about the time those seeds you planted too early start sprouting, you can’t step foot in the garden. That fertile soil that we just tilled at 8-12 inches deep is now a layer of mud of the same thickness. One step inside the fence, and you’re likely to loose your rubber boots. (Kiss those garden clogs goodbye.)
So, while it rains, we stand at the eastern windows and peek out at the garden, waiting. Waiting for the rain to stop, waiting for Spring to get here, waiting for a harvest that’s weeks or months away.
When the rain breaks, we walk around the outside of the fence, peeking at tiny sprouts breaking through, marking each puddle within the boundaries as low spots in the garden.
Even after the rain stops, the waiting continues. The ground is saturated and sticky, and until it dries, anything that comes in contact with it will compact it hard as a rock, or carry it out of the garden, across the yard, into the tool shed, into the house.
Things are growing out there; in the garden, in the rain. Things I want to see, watch, nurture and talk to. (Things I want to eat.) But a garden, more than most projects, teaches patience. You cannot make the rain stop, the ground dry, the seed germinate and grow.
And so, on this rainy day, we stand at the eastern windows and wait.
This is THE YEAR to Grow a Garden – Free eBook
This free eBook from Off the Grid News tells by 2011 Could be the Single Most Important Year in American History to Plant a Family Garden.
Reading Between Two Lanes: Pardon the Plants
Here’s a preview of my most recent installment of Reading Between Two Lanes coming to The Hur Herald:
Pardon the Plants
Since we started sprouting our own plants for our garden and don’t have a greenhouse, our home goes through a period in late winter / early spring when it is overcome by plant trays. Any flat surface near a window is likely to be covered in flat black trays of soil. Counters, shelves, tables – even the spare bed is blanketed with a heavy plastic tablecloth before being covered end to end in plastic trays of dirt.
Every morning, the trays need to be misted and watered, rotated around the light sources, and coddled. When the process first begins, this is a fairly easy process. But once we get close to 20 trays in four different locations, it becomes a rather time-consuming concept.
By the end of March, the days get warm enough to set the trays outside for some real sunlight and some exposure to outdoor elements. This extends the time consumed by these early sprouts and seeds. In addition to watering and coddling, each tray gets moved outside into the warmth in late morning, and moved back inside in early evening – one by one. In this phase, the trays consume space inside the porch door as well, moved that far inside the house, in assembly line fashion, at the end of each day.
Seed sprouts, even in such controlled conditions, are not guaranteed to survive. Dampening is a common problem, where the sprouts look healthy and fine one day, and fall over dying the next. Dampening is even more of a problem if you recycle seed trays and soil, as we do. But I learned this year that watering newly-planted seeds with strong, tepid Chamomile tea will help prevent it from happening.
In addition, without air movement to strengthen the new little stems, the sprouts can grow weak, and fall over. A fan blowing on them, and the daily rotation to face the light source a different way helps keep the stems sturdy and strong. Low levels of light will cause them to stretch high and lanky, desperate for light, which also makes them top heavy and tall also making them prone to fall over.
Some weak sprouts don’t survive the introduction to outside elements. Too much sun exposure right off the bat can shock them; too much chill can shock them as well. The little seedlings are delicate, fragile new shoots of life, and they have to be eased into the world.
On average, we manage about an 85% success rate with our seeds. It’s my fault really. After having trays all over the house and under foot for several weeks, I’m anxious to push the seedlings outside. I’ve wiped out entire trays with this one mistake. We cannot rush the growth of new life any more than we can rush the coming of spring.
Let’s hope I have the patience this year to let both happen in their own sweet time.
Harvest Season on the Farm
If I have ever given the impression that we are polished farmers or gardeners, I must apologize. This is no where near the case.
This is our second year having our own garden, first year for chickens, first year learning to freeze the harvest, first year using the pressure canner. It’s the first year we’ve really put some effort into producing our own food, and the first year we’ve really managed to follow through on our spring intentions clear to fall.
THE GARDEN
Although much of our garden did not do well, we have still come out ahead. From our $100 investment in the spring, and the gifts of our neighbors and friends throughout the season, we have two nearly-full freezers and a still filling pantry.
We purchased seed for lettuce, carrots, corn, beans, cucumbers, pumpkins, parsley, thyme, oregano. We purchased plants for tomatoes, peppers, cabbage. We were given additional corn seed, and were given the starts for the sweet potatoes. We purchased a bag of seed potatoes, but then split that with Frank’s mother.
We were given basil, sage, chives, and cotton as plants.
Of all this – the corn failed and the beans brought a very weak harvest. But I still froze 9 quarts of beans, and we were given corn from three different neighbors. I have five quarts of corn frozen, and also used it (and some green beans) in five quarts of vegetable soup.
The tomatoes and cucumbers have been the greatest successes so far, and I have nearly 30 jars of different pickles canned; bread and butter, cinnamon pickles, honey pickles. The tomatoes and flourishing green peppers have so far produced 24 jars of salsa, 16 quarts of roasted pepper tomato soup. Sick of making pickles, I even found a cucumber jelly recipe, and made four small jars of that when I made the season’s first batch of hot pepper jelly – so far, four pints of that.
I have six quarts of carrots frozen, and others cleaned and soaking in water to be pressure canned tomorrow.
I have rosemary, oregano, sage and lavender hanging to dry. I have parsley, thyme, chives and lemon balm preserved in the freezer.
And I nearly forgot to mention the early harvest of leaf lettuce, garlic and onions.
All this from a second-attempt garden that, my most measures, did not do all that well.
The herb bed has been a total success, but the vegetable garden… Well — that could use improvement for sure.
In a year when the value of the dollar has dropped so drastically, our garden, by far, has been our best investment. (Keep in mind, we didn’t pay for our fencing. We scrounged old fence from around the farm and expanded on the fence we had from last year.)
Even the canning supplies and freezer bags were less than a single trip to the grocery store. We’ve been collecting jars for two years, and began buying lids and rings (although we’ve been saving rings too) in March and April, before seasonal demands cause their prices to increase. Freezer bags came from the Dollar Store, which had quarts and gallons, but alas the pint bags I had to get elsewhere.
In the spring, I read articles that noted raising a garden was just as expensive as purchasing those groceries at a store. In our experience, this has just not been the case.
THE CHICKENS
Our chickens have also been a good investment. We purchased four for $20 in late May, spent $20 on grit, mash and oyster shells (We were given a chicken tractor), and since then have spent $12 on more mash since then. I have no idea how many eggs we’ve been through. At least 20 dozen. I know I’ve made $30 from donations from my city-dwelling relatives. (It’s illegal, of course, to sell eggs in West Virginia without an egg permit.)
I suppose you can do the math… The arrived, say, the beginning of June. And, not counting the first two adjustment weeks, the four hens pretty much lay on a schedule that works out to be: four eggs a day, four eggs a day, three eggs, two eggs, then no eggs. So, that’s thirteen eggs, a baker’s dozen, every five days. On average. Some days, they’re off a little, and this winter, they won’t lay as much in summer, but it really is nice knowing that we’ll always have eggs.
Right now, I have eighteen hard-boiled eggs, a dozen pickled eggs of two different flavors, and 12 dozen fresh eggs in my refrigerator. I have sixteen scrambled eggs frozen in the freezer (two eggs per bag, for baking or for breakfast.)
Within the next week or so, I’m going to get four more hens. The man who sold us Daisy Dewdrop, our beagle, is now selling Cocoa Maran hens for $3 each. So, for another $12 I’ll be doubling my flock. The new hens will lay dark chocolate brown shelled eggs.
For the winter, the new hens will live in a hay-bale coop, slowly being integrated with the original four. By spring, when the haybale coop is destructed, they’ll have hopefully set their new pecking order without too much bloodshed and injury.
Next spring, I do intend to get my egg permit. With that, I can sell eggs to the two local mom-and-pop stores in my region, and at the local Farmer’s Market.
THE FEELING
I graduated from high school, three different colleges, won association awards, created a magazine.
But the feeling of accomplishment you get when you stand in front of a freezer packed with food you planted, food you tended, food you fed and watered and harvested… Food you washed and prepared and cooked and created and canned.
It’s more…
The feeling of accomplishment is deeper.
When you graduate, or meet a milestone, or win an award — it seems that there is always the implied worry of “What next?” Those are accmplishments that serve as mile-markers to see where you go from there.
But with the harvested garden, you are not faced with worries of the future, but instead a sense of security. You have the rewards of your labor before you, waiting to be enjoyed.
You success is your sustenance for the upcoming months, using methods and manners of a culture and tradition that in many, many places, was almost lost.
Still, with the shelves and freezer filling, I do think about the future. Deer meat, facing the pressure canner for the first time, and what other foods can I produce myself?
Even with my bounty, I impose the “What next” into my life.
When the garden is solid and white beneath snow…
When deer season is past and the freezers and shelves will hold no more…
When we shut ourselves in to endure the chill of winter….
What shall I do next?
I’m going to learn to bake my own bread.
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