My Garden, Part II

Yesterday I left out some of the juicy adventures I've been having in my garden. Here they are, with photos!

 First week of August. It looks a little greener than it did in June!

Today I ate my third sungold cherry tomato. It was heavenly. The basil is just about big enough to start harvesting a little bit at a time. I have a big bag of basil in my kitchen right now though that was left over from a CSA distribution. Until I turn it into pesto, no more basil for me.

To my surprise, one of the heirloom tomatoes (Green Zebra, one of my favorite varieties) withered away and died this week. I was surprised because this was one of the plants from our plant sale, and not one I propagated myself or dug up in the fields. In retrospect however, I was taking the plants that nobody wanted to buy, and this plant was probably weak from the start. In the tomato plant's place, I moved over a partly shaded White Russian Kale to fill the void and give the kale plant the space it needs. A beginning from an end.

 Poor green zebra tomato plant. I harvested the green tomatoes when I pulled up the plant, but accidentally threw them in the compost yesterday! Ho hum. Does anyone know what could have caused the wilt? The bok choy that you see to the right of the tomato plant was harvested a few days ago, and was incredibly tender and tasty!

 All is not lost. There are still tomatoes. :)

After fertilizing the plants with alfalfa meal three weeks ago, they "popped" and started doing their thing (even the ones that had been stunted from being root-bound for so long before planting). A week earlier, I had been tempted to rip out the two lemon cucumber plants that (pre-fertilizer) had been standing up straight in all their stunted, yellow-leaved legginess. Every time I looked at them I was reminded of the fact that they were too root-bound when I planted them and that I should have planted them deeper in the soil. Since giving them the extra nutrient boost, they've exploded in size. I've eaten two delightfully sweet cucumbers and look forward to many more.

 Lemon cucumber plant. The fruits grow to be softball-sized yellow cucumbers with a crunchy skin and sweet flesh. 

Ants are walking all over my okra like it's the Appalachian Trail. What are they doing? Who knows. I thought at first they were eating the flower buds, but recently I've noticed some teeny tiny pests (like a smaller, duller looking flea beetle) that are covering the buds, and the ants seem very interested in this. I read that ants are attracted to okra because of the plant's high oil content. This past weekend I sprayed the plants with a garlic solution (homemade, and who knows if it was even garlicky enough) but no one (ant or beetle) seemed to mind. Regardless, today was a Very Special Day for okra, because I harvested three pods!

 This photograph was shot looking down on the okra plant, so you can see the new leaves, buds, and ANTS. Despite their presence on the plants, only a couple of buds on the most infested plants seem like they've been harmed.

 Okra plant, standing tall. In the middle of the photograph, towards the left, you can see a flower just about to open. Okra flowers are stunning, much like another member of its botanical family: hibiscus. Okra flowers are creamy white and purple. Members of the mallow family (malvaceae) also include marshmallow, cotton, durian, and kenaf.

Today's okra harvest -- first pick of the season! I cooked these cuties up with some sweet corn, sweet onion, garlic, olive oil, and salt. It was the first ear of corn I've eaten for the season, too. Not home-grown, but still local and delicious. 

Even in a ten by ten garden plot, there's plant drama.

  

My plan for the weekend: Weed, weed, weed. Give everyone a little helping of alfalfa meal. Stake that last tomato plant I've been neglecting. (I should have done this weeks ago!) Put up another trellis on the rest of the tomato plants to contain the new growth. (I'm using a pliant tape-like material to tie the plants to the stake; it supposedly has a little give to it as the plants grow.) Figure out how to contain the husk cherries, which are starting to get bigger and will sooner or later take over half the garden if I don't give them a trellis of some sort. Eat some more sorrel leaves, which are currently my favorite snack as I stand next the garden, dreamily staring into space.

My Garden

We're now harvesting hundreds of pounds of tomatoes each week, along with buckets full of summer squash, zucchini eggplant, carrots, cucumbers, and peppers. Add that to a couple hundred pounds of cabbage, some fennel, beets, broccoli, endive, kale, chard, scallions, onions, and purslane, and we've got quite a few farm-fresh veggies on our hands.

Compared to the farm's 4+ acres of organic vegetable production, my little garden is laughable. Its 10 foot by 10 foot perfect square is jam-packed with vegetable plants -- some of them experiments -- so who knows how they'll do. But much like the Little Red Hen who planted the wheat, harvested the wheat, ground the wheat, and made the wheat into bread all by herself, I've been taking care of this garden from the very beginning, and it's all -- for better or for worse -- mine.

I ripped up the sod on the lawn, I turned under the compost (which was acquired with the generous help of my co-workers), I raked it smooth, I sowed the seeds and planted the seedlings, I staked the tomatoes (more or less), I added the fertilizer, and wouldn't you know it -- I'm harvesting the vegetables!

The farmers were so kind to let me rip up a portion of their lawn so I could have a garden of my own. The following photographs show a little bit of the method to my madness:

In the beginning, there was sod. I measured out a ten by ten square plot, staked it, and started digging up the sod with my favorite farm tool: the digging fork. I started my garden rather late; this photograph was taken over Memorial Day weekend.

My enthusiasm for the garden was in constant flux as I dug up the sod. For all the sweat and effort I was putting into the digging, what I was really getting out of it (in the short-term, at least) was a perfect square of not-so-great dirt...

The digging fork, at rest.

 

I bought a package of  organic Clemson Sprineless okra seeds at a natural foods market in town. Here they are, germinating away, in the greenhouse. This photograph was taken in early June. 

The newly planted garden: more dirt than green. Here's a list of what's in it:

- 6 okra plants (sowed from seed in the greenhouse)

- 2 tomato plants left over from the seedling sales (sungold cherry tomato and green zebra)

- 2 volunteer tomato plants that I dug up from section 1. Last year's cherry tomatoes went crazy with the re-seeding, and these guys would have been pulled up to make room for this year's leeks and brassicas. I had no idea what kind of cherries they'd produce, but that was part of the fun.

- 3 volunteer husk cherry plants, which also re-seeded from last year. I dug them up like the cherries.

- 2 tomato plants I rooted from "suckers" pruned off of tomato plants in the greenhouse. I still have no idea what variety of tomatoes they'll grow, but they seem very healthy!

- 1 sorrel. yum.

- 2 lemon cucumber plants

- 1 zucchini

- 1 lacinato kale
- 3 pepper plants (1 mystery variety that lost its tag during the plant sale, 1 "lipstick" pepper plant, and 1 "King Arthur Bell" that I bought at Volante Farm)

Since this photograpg was taken I've added:

- 1 bok choy

- 3 Russian kale plants

- 3 lettuce starts

- 5 basil plants

- 12 red onion starts, which I found in the compost spreader we borrowed from a nearby farm. They're doing great. 

- 1 stunted sunflower, which has bloomed and is now looking a little sad.

I think this is a picture of one of the greenhouse "suckers" when it started producing fruit. These tomatoes are now huge but still green. Still not sure what kind of tomato plant it is. If only I could remember which plant I pruned it off of!

 

Lacinato kale. Scrumptious! 

Stay tuned for another post about what my garden looks like now-a-days. I'd love to say that I'm trying to build the suspense, but in truth I haven't yet uploaded the photos to my computer and I'm too excited to share the news about this little garden-that-could to wait. So far I've harvested one zucchini,  two lemon cucumbers, some kale, the bok choy, and a few leaves (here and there) of sorrel. Today, I ate my first two sungold cherry tomatoes! I definitely couldn't live off of this garden, but hey, it's a start.

Farming is tiring (but oh so satisfying)

The title says it all. This week was hard.

With this week's wave of hot and humid summer weather came a long list of farm chores to keep the new plant growth in check. It suddenly felt like the fields were alive and we had to race against the clock so that everything that needed to go in the ground was in ground, everything that needed to be weeded was weeded, and everything that needed to be trellised was trellised. I keep a journal of everything we do on the farm from day to day, and since this week was particularly interesting (and exhausting), I'm going to share what we did, Monday through Saturday. Here we go!

It started off with a relatively cool Monday, which is the day we planted all the non-tomato nightshades and curcubits in the field. We spent the day planting beds of peppers, eggplant, squash, and cucumbers. We covered the beds with floating row cover and then moved soil bags to hold down the edges of the remay (white fabric that lets light in, keeps heat in, but keeps bugs out). It was so wonderful to look out onto section four at the end of the day and see that every single bed had something growing in it! Four beds of onions, one bed of chard, two beds of peppers, two of eggplant, two of squash, and two of zuccini.

Then came Tuesday. Oh Tuesday, the day of moving soil bags and wooden pallets and wooden stakes. Today was the day we staked the peas. One after the other, row after row, bed by bed. I was told that the soil this year was particularly soft, and that the stakes were easier to drive into the ground. I guess that just means that if this had been last year, I probably wouldn't like peas. But when we went back out into the fields the next day, the pea section looked lovely. Because of the old wood and the trellising, it has an almost "secret garden" kind of feel. I can now visualize what it will be like to walk through the pathways at the height of summer, picking sweet sugar snaps with large pea plants towering over me. It will be beautiful.

On Wednesday I started off making signs for the plant sale we had this Friday, which was pretty successful. After that, we planted all the cherry tomatoes, plum tomatoes, tomatillos, and husk cherries in section two, and then two beds of cutting flowers (sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos, celosia...) in section one. After that...tomato pruning and seeding in the greenhouse.

Thursday was hot and humid. It was even hotter than Wednesday, which was hotter than Tuesday and much hotter than breezy, overcast Monday. On Thursday we made a total transformation of the herb garden from a mess of weeds and fungus and overgrown perennials to a neat garden with 6 distinct small beds. The perennials of the garden are sage, thyme, oregano, lemon balm, and mint. We planted curly parsley, Italian parsley, two types of basil, more oregano, more thyme, more sage, and some cutting celery. Dill and cilantro were direct-seeded.

In the afternoon, everything on the farm that we had been doing for the last month or so really came together for me. In order to cultivate the beds with a tractor, I pulled off the remay from beds in section 5,  3, and 2, and wow! Vegetables! Everything that we had covered after transplanting was healthy and growing, and especially after the tractor went through and got the bulk of the weeds out, the beds looked amazing! To our farm manager, the lettuce heads weren't large enough to harvest, and there is still an elevated level of stress with regard to what will be ready for the CSA. But to my untrained eye and inexperience as a farmer, I was floored to see such greenery that had truly been covered by the remay since we had transplanted the seedlings. It looked like....like... a farm!

On Friday, we harvested spinach and radishes, then washed and boxed them for the farmer's market the following day. After a variety of small tasks in the greenhouses (switching the drip, watering) and in the fields (fixing the remay in section #1, using a scuffle hoe in section #2), I staffed the plant sale for a couple hours. Before I quit for the day, I weeded the perennial border near the barn so that we have room to plant some annuals next week.

Saturday, 6:45 am. We load the truck for the farmer's market and head off. I drive the truck with the plants. After we unload, myself and another farm worker drive back to the farm and load up with more plants. At the farmer's market, I talk to customers, keep the plants stocked, and ring people up. There were three of us all together, so two could sell plants and one could sell the spinach and radishes. At 1:00, we packed up, drove back to the farm, and unloaded.

And then on the seventh day, we rested. :)

Except for part of the day, I didn't. After a nice relaxing morning-- I took a jog and then went to a yoga class in town -- I measured out a ten by ten plot of land near where I'm staying on the farm. It's been wonderful to learn so much about growing vegetables while working on someone else's farm, but I've been itching to grow my own too. Not that I can't eat what's grown in the fields, but there's something special about just tending to a handful of your own plants to feed yourself during the growing season. Some peppers, tomatoes, kale...and okra! So I outlined the plot and started to rip up the sod with a digging fork. (But when I got tired, I stopped. It's Sunday for goodness sake!) I also sowed some okra seeds in a 6-pack in the greenhouse. I bought a package of "clemson spineless" okra seeds at the natural foods store in town. If this heat and humidity is any indication of what is to come for the rest of the summer, I think the okra will do just fine.

My intent is that this small garden plot will give me a little relief and relaxation during the course of the growing season. Because when you're working on the farm and you need to transplant hundreds of seedlings in an afternoon, you can't tenderly place each one into the ground before moving onto the next. And when you're getting paid by the hour, you can't leisurely remove weeds, observing the tiny hairs on the stinging nettle and admiring the diversity of weeds that so quickly took up space where you just so happen to want to plant tomatoes. It's not that I don't enjoy the farming, but the approach to vegetable growing in a garden (versus a farm) is very different, and I'm beginning to miss some aspects of gardening's smallness. In my garden plot, at the end of the day, I will have all the time in the world to admire my plants.

I look forward to it.

Roy Boutard Day

This past Sunday, May 1st, was the grand opening of the Berkshire Botanic Garden for the 2011 season. Given that it was a beautifully sunny day, that I love botanical gardens, and that the event was free, I zig-zagged my way from South Egremont to West Stockbridge to see what all the fuss was about.

The fuss, it appears, was not only about the elegant and delightful gardens that are patiently awaiting their gardeners' vision for the Spring, but also about Roy Boutard, who led the Botanic Garden as its Director for an impressive thirty years. Roy Boutard shaped the lanscape and culture of the Botanic Garden from 1954 to 1984. After his death this past year, the Garden resolved to name each Spring Opening Day in his honor, such that his vision and incredible commitment to the Garden could live on and be remembered.

I never met Roy Boutard, but after the tour I took through the gardens with horticulturist David Burdick, I felt as if I understood just how significant a person he was to the garden, and how his infectious enthusiasm for plants lives on today through his colleagues. According to Burdick, Boutard lived by the philosophy that you can never have enough plants  - you can never have enough varieties, enough plantings, or enough new material to introduce to the gardens. Burdick took us around the grounds and pointed out areas that changed under Boutard's direction, as well as specific plantings that were significant to Boutard's career and vision. For example, a dense stand of conifers that Boutard planted when they were "kittens," as he had called them, had matured into "cats" and had been relocated throughout the grounds. In fact, everywhere you looked you could see a beautiful mature conifer from Boutard's original planting when they were mere saplings.

If anything, Burdick's talk about Roy Boutard's career with the Berkshire Botanic Garden inspired me to think about what's possible if you commit not only to the idea of a garden (or to any goal that one can pursue passionately), but to following its whims and meanderings to "completion." Just like with the farm work I'm doing now -- or any task anyone ever does, for that matter -- one step at a time will get you there. Realizing that an entire bed needs to be ripped up, fertilized, turned under, raked, planted, irrigated, covered...etc. can be utterly exhausting. But there is beauty in taking a deep breath and jumping whole-heartedly into each task. Once it's done (for the moment at least), it will feel glorious.

The colors, textures, and smells of the Berkshire Botanic Garden were inspiring in and of themselves:

Daffodil hill

 

  Hellabora in bloom

Brilliant forsythia

 Tulips - quaint New England style

Magnolia blossom

Our tour through the garden