Use What You Have: Maple Seeds

(Sorry, no pics with this post, just to see how it feels.)

Now, I have mostly a lot of love for Mother Maple, she who graces our backyard and fair skin with copious amounts of dark, cool shade and provides us with feather soft autumn leaves in which to plunge our lazy bodies. But. BUT. In the springtime, I find it a bit difficult to appreciate the... blatant fecundity of Old Mama Maple. There isn't one spot on our property (I exaggerate not) that isn't blessed with the bearing of one of Mother Maple's progeny. In other words, I end up weeding a whole heckuva lot of maple seedlings from my garden.

Only now... Now I know. Now I know how to beat Mama Maple at her own game. Tonight found me hanging lazily from branches and scaling that rough, shaggy trunk of hers to gather those green little whirlybirds. And then? And then I ATE THEM. Yes I did.

I'll admit, this is one of those situations where, in caloric terms, I'm not sure the end justifies the means. It took a loooong time to split the husks off of each of those little seeds. This is very slow food we're talkin'! You get a big pile of green husks and a little itty bitty pile of food. Still, there're going to be fewer maple saplings to remove from the garden this year...

In regards to preparation:
-Break off the green outer husk (they're still edible if the hulls are brown, but I've read that they get bitter at that point)
-Snack on a couple to see if they're sweet enough or if you have to boil off the tannins
-If bitter, boil and dump the water. Repeat until bitter taste is gone.
-Otherwise, boil until tender (mine took ~15 minutes).
-Season with salt, pepper, and/or butter to your fancy.
-Ingest.

I have no experience with this, but you can also roast them or even dry the seeds and ground them into flour.

In regards to taste: I actually preferred them raw. The larger seeds seemed to be more bitter than the smaller ones. It's best to get 'em young, I guess. I boiled some, and they were good but quite bland. I salted them and smothered them in butter. All in all, for free food, it was good!

Use What You Have: Strawberry Leaves

The strawberries here are done and gone. We did actually get a few this year, but the birds and rabbits got the majority. I think I want to pot them up next year, but that's a discussion for another time. What we're talking about today is not the yummy, juicy, ruby red berries of yesterday (can you tell I miss them just a little?). What we're talking about now is the LEAVES.

Once the plants have fruited, I move right on to harvesting the leaves. Most people say that the leaves are most flavorful when the plant is in bloom, but you can (and I do) harvest them all spring and summer. They get bunched and dried and, for the most part, made into tea. It does, surprisingly enough, taste quite a bit like the berries, which means it's y-u-m-m-y. It does, of course, have added health benefits (iron, vitamin C, calcium, and other minerals). I'm finding that it really helps to boost my milk production, very important in these early months of nursing.

As with any summer tea (lemon balm and mint are among other summer favorites), I like to drink it iced. I've also been using it to make popsicles for the kids.

Rabbitnip

My poor, poor catnip.

Apparently, cats aren't the only critters who love catnip. I walked out to the garden a few days ago and noticed that my catnip, which has flourished unscathed for the past three years, was nearly gone! My immediate thought was to heap the blame on the neighborhood felines who frequently climb our privacy fence to hunt in our yard, but later that day I was standing at the backdoor and noticed a little ball of fur by the devastated catnip patch. Long ears, twitching nose, cute little cottontail... It was a rabbit! I've rarely seen them in our garden, but we always find bunny prints in the backyard snow during our winter nature walks. They've never bothered the catnip before though. It must have been a particularly lovely crop this year.

Buns love catnip. Who knew.

Hot Peppers

Last year, my pepper crop was a dismal failure. I think I got only one measly pepper from the few plants that actually germinated, so this year I decided to add a little something to my scheme and see how the plants reacted. Unfortunately, our gardening budget for this year has been maxed out. I had to think of something for less than cheap... something free.


My version of the cloche: repurposed baby food jars. Don't mind the wonky spacing. In real life, they are actually evenly spaced, but the camera was at a weird angle.

I was hoping that my improvised cloches would provide enough heat retention that I 'd get a higher germination rate and faster growth of pepper plants than I did last year with no added protection. So far, the germination has been quicker but not higher. I'm leaving the jars over top of the seedlings until they outgrow them. We'll see how it goes.

Free Labor! (or Dave, You'll Have to Suffer Through More Ugly!)

Nothing I love more than something for nothing. Did that make any sense? :)

I'd been on the fence for a long while (like, over a year... you all know I'm a Virgo, right?) about what to do with the Spiraea fronting our bungalow. They were here when we moved in, but there was always this very awkward gap between the bush right next to the steps and the rest of the hedge. When we had our fence put in, I tried to transplant two of the Spiraea's that were in the back of the house into that gap, but they promptly died on me. I don't think I got enough of the root. Those suckers were HUGE and well established. So, the gap stayed. And stayed. And stayed. And drove me nuts.

But one day, one fine and glorious day when I realized that the rest of my yard and house were in shambles because of my indecisiveness, I made a decision. *enter the heavenly chorus* I posted my Spiraea to Freecycle. If they'd dig 'em up, they could have 'em.

Before:


After:

All the twiggy looking stuff you see there is mown English ivy, the bane of my garden. And yes, I'm still frantically trying to convince The Husband that ripping off that dreadful dun-colored aluminum siding would be a good thing.

I got an amazing number of willing volunteers and actually had to hold specific bushes for people. It was pretty crazy!

Do I have any regrets? No. Well, okay, maybe one. Nearly every house in the neighborhood has these same bushes somewhere on their property, so I kinda feel like I'm outta the club or am breaking some sacred neighborhood vow of unity. But then again, every house in the neighborhood has these same bushes. The truth is, these bushes were taller than me, which made it very difficult and dangerous for me to try to trim them. The Husband sure wasn't gonna do it. Oh, and those bushes collected garbage like you wouldn't believe. Never OUR garbage of course. Just whatever was tumblin' down the street on those fine blustery days here in good ole O-H. You wouldn't BELIEVE the amount of trash I found lurking under and behind them. They really look their best when they can run wild and free too which just made our house look sloppy. Their blossom laden boughs were always gorgeous, but I'd rather have something useful there (and there will be something useful there... someday).

I have big plans for the space, but they won't get done this year. I've bigger fish to fry, as always seems to be the case with old houses and young gardens. I'm okay with that though. I finally made a decision in under two years! It's a miracle!

And did I mention that I got people to dig out my pain-in-the-rear bushes FOR FREE!?

Let It Snow (In My Garden)!

Lavender sustaining itself through last year's snow.

It is still snowing a bit here, just a few scattered flurries to top of the inches already on the ground, and that's just fine by me. For the cold climate garden, snow really does have its benefits. We'll ignore the horror of collapsed greenhouses or blacked out cold frames for now, mainly because I don't have either (heh!), and concentrate on the good points. 'Kay?

As I see it, snow has two wonderful upsides. The first of these is its insulating properties. Snow isn't just a poetic, metaphorical blanket. It really does provide protection to the soil. While I do typically mulch my beds, snow is always welcome added insurance that the roots of my trees, shrubs, and other perennials will not freeze. Without snow, all that cold seeps right into the ground. Soil can freeze to amazing depths and cause plenty of damage to both flora and fauna, but just a couple of inches of snow cover is usually enough to prevent the most significant and damaging soil freezes. A couple inches of snow can also be especially beneficial to small compost piles, acting as an added layer to aid in the continuation of the thermal process happening within.

The second benefit to snow cover is the added moisture. This can be both a blessing and a curse, depending on just how much snow you get and the annual precipitation of your area overall. In my garden, it's best if the snowfall takes place in the earlier months of winter, specifically November, December, January, and early February. This provides more time for the inches and inches of moisture provided by the powdery white stuff to incorporate itself into the soil. Yes, we still have wet, mushy springtimes, but they generally don't last quite as long as they do when our snowfall happens after early February. This earlier moisture absorption allows me to work the soil just a bit earlier. When the snow comes in March and April, as it did last year, it can be as late as June before the soil is really workable. No fun at all.

In the compost pile, it's always important to control moisture. By the end of summer, my compost pile is usually getting pretty dry, so I'm eager for the snow to compensate later on. I deal with the possibility of a waterlogged pile by building all of mine with rounded tops, allowing the moisture the run down the sides. If topped off in the autumn with a "brown" layer (I prefer shredded paper), that will suck up the moisture that your pile needs. The rest of the melted snow will soak into the bottom layer of compost and the soil around it. If you don't build rounded piles, you'll need to ensure proper drainage in your setup so that the excess moisture from inches and inches of snow doesn't soak your pile.

Honestly, I can't imagine a winter without snow. Even if it wasn't beneficial to my garden, and that argument can certainly be made, there's just something magical and oh so gorgeous about it. For me, snow makes winter complete.

Seed Catalogs

Nothing excites a gardener's passions quite like seed catalogs. I think I've actually trembled a bit when pulling the first catalog of the season from the mailbox. This season, the first to arrive was Pinetree Garden Seeds, which arrived well before December. When I first started gardening, I requested every seed catalog I came across. That equates to... a hell of a lot of catalogs and a hell of a lot of waste. I quickly found that I needed to slim down my selection, not just to prevent the waste that comes from having stacks of glossy paper sitting around, but also in order to help keep my seed buying habit on budget and narrow my selection choices. Who can decide what to buy with 50 catalogs full of seeds, plants, and merchandise to choose from? Not me. The fruit and nut tree catalogs were apparently my attempt at masochism because I just don't have room for a large variety of trees. The flower catalogs were pretty to look at, but most of the flowers that I was interested in were edible, dye, or medicinal flowers that I could find in other catalogs, so they were a bit redundant.

After gardening for a couple of years and refining my garden plans, I now receive only four seed catalogs in the mail:

Pinetree Garden Seeds-- They often have choices for plants that I can't find elsewhere.

Seed Savers Exchange-- An amazing source of heirloom seeds for vegetables, herbs, and flowers. Their organization is on an incredibly important mission, and it's so vital for gardeners to support their work.

Bountiful Gardens-- Founded by John Jeavons who wrote the wonderful How to Grow More Vegetables book. Bountiful Gardens is a non-profit that helps to support Ecology Action, teaching people around the world how to feed themselves using sustainable (and often culturally important) methods. Their publications are extraordinary, and they have a pretty good selection of medicinal herbs.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds-- Again, they are a rich source of heirloom seeds with a gorgeous catalog. I've been on the fence about this one for a couple years, debating whether or not to stop getting this catalog, but it's just so dang perdy!

In addition to these catalogs, I also frequent Horizon Herbs online catalog. I don't get their paper version because I usually know exactly what I want with herbs and it's usually the variety closest to the wild herb.

I'm still looking for a great local (non-Monsanto based) seed source, so if anyone has any suggestions I'm open to them! Don't forget that trading seeds with other local gardeners is always a fulfilling and informative way to vary your seed selection.

What is your favorite source of seeds and what made you choose them?

Message Beans

Sometimes you come across something that is so... different that you just have to share it. Has anyone else seen the SMP Bloom in a Can Message Bean? I'm not really sure how I feel about this one. I certainly wouldn't spend $14 on a single bean plant or a greeting card, but it's still kinda cute. Maybe. Something about a laser carving into a seed makes me cry a little inside. Yep. I'm weird like that. At least it's organic. Not sure about the cans. It looks like the lids may be plastic?

What do all of you think?

How I SHOULD Have Prepared My Garden For Winter

Yesterday we were a little surprised to get quite the snow flurry. It was wet, packing snow too. Mondays are errand days for me, so I was out and about and thinking of all the things I still haven't done to prepare my garden for winter. Between the kids being ill, me being ill, and the rain we've had for the last week or so, I am sorely behind. Still on the to-do list:

-Rake all leaves (which only ceased falling a couple of days ago) onto garden beds
-Cover compost piles
-Find something to do with the billion and a half pebbles filling the children's sled and every single plastic pot I own
-Wash all outdoor toys and bring to basement for duration of winter
-Clean patio area
-Move large rocks from backyard to frontyard for border
-Remove hose from spigot and store
-Clean all garden tools
-Mulch blueberry bushes with pine needles

We're supposed to get more snow Sunday, but I hope that this slight bit we have now will melt before then so that I can get my behind in gear! How is everyone else doing on winter prep?

Sanitizing Your Gardening Pots

As I sat in the optometrist's waiting room a week or so ago, I thumbed distractedly through the pages of an Organic Gardening magazine. I came across a very short article on container gardens and began to read through their provided checklist. Imagine my surprise when it was stressed that sanitizing your pots with bleach was a necessary way to prevent diseases from year to year. I should have taken down the issue number, but I didn't. A search on their website quickly yielded up another article recommending the same diluted bleach to clean your pots. Ugh.

Not only is bleach bad for your plants, bad for you, and bad for the environment, it's corrosive and will break down your pots over time. Now, to be fair, household bleach does not contribute to the greenhouse effect or harm the ozone layer. There are all kinds of arguments about how household bleach begins and ends as salt water, and that may be true (though watch carefully in these arguments for things like "90-95% of household bleach breaks down into salt and water." What happens to that other 5-10%?). HOWEVER, this is a chemical I don't even keep in my home for three reasons: Airius, Annie, and The Bean. Whether it begins and ends harmlessly, it is most definitely not harmless while it's sitting in that plastic bottle in your house.

While I'd like to say that it's not necessary to disinfect your pots, that just isn't true. But I'll take my container veggies and herbs without the bleach residue, thank you very much. If you're like me, consider the following disinfecting/sanitizing options sans bleach:

1. When faced with anything calling for bleach, I first try that handy dandy standby: distilled white vinegar. Use a solution of half water, half white vinegar in your sink or other container and soak pots for an hour. This is what I use for all of my pots, especially plastic, but you can use it for glazed and terra cotta pots too. This is a good all purpose solution.

2. I have disinfected my terra cotta pots in the oven set on 220 degrees Farenheit for one hour. This will kill just about everything that might affect your plants. Obviously, this method is not best for large pots or plastic. It takes up a lot of time and oven space, and it uses precious energy too. I wonder if this can be done in a solar oven? Hmmmm... Please remember that, like any other crockery, the pots will be blazing hot when they come out of the oven!

Both of the above methods are effective and, in my view, safer than the use of bleach. Does anyone else have a garden pot sanitizing/disinfecting tip they'd like to share?

Activating Compost With Yarrow

“Yarrow is always the greatest boon, wherever it grows wild in the country — at the edges of the fields or roads, where cereals or potatoes or any other crops are growing. It should on no account be weeded out... In a word, like sympathetic people in human society, who have a favourable influence by their mere presence and not by anything they say, so yarrow, in a district where it is plentiful, works beneficially by its mere presence.”
- Rudolf Steiner.

Fall is one of the easiest seasons during which to start a compost pile because of the abundance of organic material likes fallen leaves and spent plant stalks. One of the plants you'll hear about often in connection with compost is comfrey (Symphytum spp.). There's been much ado in the blogosphere and gardening/homesteading community in general about the benefits of comfrey to the garden, both as a fertilizer and as a compost activator. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten around to adding comfrey to my herb garden. There is, however, a wonderful herb that can be used in the same manner as comfrey and that I have in abundance: Yarrow (Achillea millefolium). At this time of year, her (and by "her" I mean yarrow's) beautiful heads are heavy with seed, and her time to aid in the stocking of my medicine cabinet is pretty much over. She's an herb for all seasons, though, and autumn finds her the unfailing companion of Madame TrashHeap (as The Husband affectionately refers to our compost pile).

Just like good ole comfrey, yarrow acts a wonderful compost activator to speed up the decomposition of the green and brown materials you've added to your pile. It's been said that a single yarrow leaf, finely chopped, will give you marked results in as much as a wheelbarrow full of compost materials. This activation ability is connected to yarrow's ability to concentrate both sulphur and potassium, along with other micronutrients such as copper and phosphates. This year, knowing that I'd have an abundance of stubborn sod and crabgrass to break down in my pile, I added a couple chopped leaves of yarrow along with a handful of soil between my green and brown layers. In the biodynamic community, it is recommended that the yarrow be enclosed in the bladder of a male deer because of the herb's relationship in treating that organ (in a nutshell), hung in the sun throughout the summer and buried shallowly in the soil throughout the winter, before being added to the compost in the spring.

You can also use yarrow as a fertilizing tea, in much the same preparation as comfrey. Fill a bucket, or whatever empty container you have on hand, with yarrow leaves and then fill again with water. Let this concoction sit for two weeks or so. I recommend that you cover it because the smell is not pleasant. Once you've let your tea brew for a couple of weeks, gather some of the liquid into a watering can and dilute it with water. I just eyeball it, but a 10:1 ratio is recommended. Yarrow fertilizing tea is good for potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and fruit trees. Each plant has their individual preference in so far as fertilization goes, so be sure to consult your favorite veggie growing guide for this information.

Stay tuned for Spring when you'll hear me touting Yarrow's medicinal abilities, her amazing attraction to beneficial insects and pollinators, and her helpfulness in repelling various pests.

Mystery Squash

When this squash vine came up in the exact spot that I'd planted our Jack-o-Lantern pumpkins last year, I assumed that it was a volutary reseeding of said pumpkin. After all, I didn't grow any other squash last year, hadn't planted any squash anywhere near that spot this year, and none of my neighbors grow squash. Then the fruit in the picture began to form, and I was a bit surprised by its skinny, elongated form. The vine succumbed to powdery mildew along with the rest of my planted squash vines, but this fruit survived. It was dark green with some striation, so then I thought that perhaps some zucchini had been tossed that way (my yard also happens to be my neighbor's personal landfill, apparently). But lo and behold! After the vine had perished, the squash began to ripen... to orange.

I'm not sure if it's a Jack-o-Lantern pumpkin that just happens to be very oddly shaped, or if it's something else entirely, but we won't be letting it go to waste. I brought it inside finally, and when it ripens further, I'll slice it up and try my grandma's fried squash recipe on it.

Organizing a Garden Expansion

Yes, that's right. The gardening season hasn't even ended, and I'm already dreaming up next year's garden. The truth is, I'll change my mind weekly from now until next January or February when my seed orders must be in. With all this indecisiveness, I could end up spending far more than I can afford on plants and seeds as they strike my fancy. That just wouldn't do! I'm on a strict gardening budget, just as I am for everything else, so I have a system to help keep myself on the straight and narrow, budget-friendly garden path.

I've split my budget into three categories: the Edible Garden, the Other Garden, and the Annual Garden Project. Just for clarity's sake, there may be crossover between the two plant sections.

For the Edible Garden, I allow myself to purchase a set of plants or seeds for each of four sections:

~Annual Food Crop-- You could further divide this category into warm season and cold season crops if you like, but my budget this year is likely to be particularly small with a new baby on the way, so I'll be adding only one new annual veggie to my garden.

~Perennial Food Crop-- This could be anything from fruit and nut trees to grapevines to berry bushes or asparagus. Whatever it is, it's likely to be much more costly than the other edible garden purchases because most of these aren't purchased as seed. You can purchase seeds for most of them, but these usually take at least a few years to start producing. In the case of trees, it could be a decade or more. Keep that in mind and budget accordingly. Also keep in mind that many of the plants in this category need several plants or varieties for proper pollination. This can hit your budget especially hard.

~Herb-- These are useful little buggers, attracting pollinators to your yard, providing protection to your veggies when used as companions, providing flavor to your homegrown meals, as well as providing medicine more often than not. This is always my weak budget area. I see herbs or herb seeds, and I. Want. To. Buy. It's very important for me to stay on track here because even a few extra seed packets or plants can really add up.

~Edible Flower-- This is where the edible garden and "other" garden sometimes crossover. Edible flowers are a must in my garden. I use most of them in a manner very similar to herbs.

The Other Garden is also split into four sections, based on the time of the year in which they bloom or provide the most interest. This allows me to maximize the food and shelter for pollinators and other garden beneficials, like birds, throughout the year. The categories are:

~Spring Bloomer-- Um, obviously, plants that bloom in spring. Again, if your budget is larger than mine, you can further break this section down into early, mid, and late spring bloomers. I just try to alternate years, buying early one year, mid the next, and late after that. These plants are so very important since they provide the earliest food sources for beneficials just coming out of hibernation. The earlier your garden is in bloom, the earlier you'll see those happy buggies humming through it and the more likely they are to stick around for your summer veggies that need their pollinating powers. Spring bloomers are also a quick fix to my SAD.

~Summer Bloomer-- Plants that are at their height of bloom or interest in the summer months. Because this is also the apex of my vegetable garden, I usually end up picking an herb or edible flower for this category.

~Autum Bloomer-- It's important to keep those beneficials well-fed all the way up until hibernation, so fall blooming plants are a must. They're also the most difficult for me to choose because the selection at this point tends to shift from a plethora of flowers to a majority of shrubs and trees. In my small garden, there are only so many shrubs I can fit.

~Winter Bloomer-- These plants are more likely to provide winter interest than blooms, but the important thing is that they fill a niche. They could provide shelter, protection, or even food for beneficials, structure to the sleeping garden, a windbreak or snowbreak, or even decoration for my Winter Solstice celebration. Just as with the autumn bloomers, the focus here usually shifts to shrubs and trees, limiting the choices for very small gardens like mine. Of course, if you have a greenhouse (I don't), this broadens your selection. This section is often the first to go if I really need to pare the budget down.

So altogether, I have the potential for adding eight new plant varieties to my garden each year. This doesn't usually happen. I often make sure my herb and edible flower choices bloom at different times, enabling me to subtract the budget for spring, summer, or autumn bloomers or add that money to another category. Some years I simply have to make choices about what I want most because, especially with the perennial edibles, one category is maxing out my budget. The point is that I know I can only get ONE variety of plant for each category. If I buy, for example, a packet of borage seeds on sale in September, my edible flowers category is maxed out already. Period. This ensures that I wait until I'm certain about what I want before buying as well as keeping my money where it belongs.

Sweet Corn Dilemmas

Ahhhh... sweet corn. It's definitely one of my favorite fresh-from-the-garden vegetables. A few minutes of boiling, a small pat of butter, and I'm in absolute heaven. Maybe it comes from being born at the height of corn season, maybe not. This is my first year growing my own sweet corn, and I've finally run into my first real problem (excluding the squirrels): bitter corn.

The kids and I had the three ears in the picture for dinner last week. Two of the ears were tasty and near perfect, but one tasted sour. It was the first ear to ripen and had large, plump, well formed kernels. The variety is Golden Bantam. Anyone have any ideas?

As I was googling every variation of "sweet corn tastes bitter", my neighbor called me over to his house. He was holding an entire stalk of corn, roots dangling and pole beans still rambling up its height. The ear of corn was very small and not near to being ripe. "There's something looking at me from inside this ear of corn!"

Oh, great.

So I gingerly peel back the layers. Nothing's moving, but there's a large, soft white mass inside. Beneath the somewhat translucent white exterior, I could see a muddy, granular, black interior. "Looks like a fungus to me. I've never seen it before though, so I'll look it up on the laptop later."

The result:

Corn smut, or Ustilago maydis

Hopefully, they'll follow the instructions I printed out for them and destroy the ears. Now I'm wondering if I'll find any galls on my corn. I hope not because I'm planning to serve some to my two best girlfriends who are coming for my birthday! I can't wait to see them...

A Good Evening

It's been a long and stressful week, culminating in a trip (an hour each way) to the pediatrician for a 5min. checkup on The Bean this morning. Much earlier than I wanted to wake up too. I was exhausted all day and had no hope of catching a nap.

I've been following the advice of the Shakers and not watering my well established veggies. They've been on their own all summer, and I was about to break down and water the tomatoes at least today because our first green little orb has shown up. Mother Nature is good, though, and we got a nice shower tonight. I don't know if it was enough to even really soak the ground, but we'll see in the morning. Craving some solitude and communion with my plants, I stepped out into the soft shower and started to look around. Lo and behold! Our first Kentucky Wonder beans have come in. I was absolutely shocked for some reason, but I got so excited that I picked the ones in sight and ran in the house hoopin' and hollerin'. That drew Annie from her play, and she joined me in the dank evening to harvest. She tucked a glittering calendula bloom behind her ear and clutched our bean collection in both hands. A proud moment for sure!


Things got even more satisfying when I noticed this bulge amongst our Golden Bantam sweet corn. I was really beginning to doubt that we'd have any corn between the various storms that toppled our stalks early on and the odd spacing (thank you, squirrels!). Here's hoping I can get to this when it's nice and ripe before the city critters move in on it. I may need to do some hand pollination on this crop, but if we get just a few ears of sweet corn this year, it'll all be worth it. So many people don't grow corn because of the space it takes and its notoriety for not pollinating, but I just can't imagine a year without corn.


It wasn't all good news though. This picture shows the remains of a sunflower head in the yard. Someone's been getting to them other than me. Really, I don't mind all that much. Part of the reason I'm growing sunflowers is because they provide such good, rich food for the wildlife, and I'm all about sharing my bounty. But man this was a massacre! I'm not sure what did it or why because it doesn't seem that much was eaten. Maybe the culprit realized that the seeds weren't quite ripe. I don't really know, but hopefully we won't find this waste again. I'll leave you with a wider picture of the garden, showing the buckwheat cover crop in Bed 1 and the Three Sisters bed. You can also see some of the sunflower border that runs along one part of the fence. That's my neighbor's house in the background, not mine.

Sweet Success

Awhile back, the good folks at Little Homestead in the City asked their readers what their Achilles heel was, what thing just wouldn't grow for them as hard as they tried. I responded that my growing nemesis is poppies. Breadseed poppies, oriental poppies, California poppies... They would not grow, try as I might.

Until now. Oh how blissful to see the bright golden face of this flower on my morning trek around the garden. Even though they were planted only as a last ditch effort to cover my infamous patch of dirt that was supposed to be loaded with the ornate heads of breadseed poppies at this point in the season, perhaps I've finally properly aligned myself with the Spirit of Poppy.

Armed with some new tricks from an online gardening pal of mine, I shall try the breadseeds and orientals again next year...

Discovering my Microclimate

I've been amazed lately as I zoomed through the town making birthday party preparations. Everything is in bloom. The daylilies, the coreopsis, the russian sage... St. John's Wort by midsummer? Not in my garden. While I did plant a plethora of things late this year, procrastination is not the issue here. The issue is the microclimate(s) of my garden.

Basically, a microclimate is a distinctly different climate within one larger general climate. You know, like the climate beneath one grand oak tree within the larger climate of an entire park. Even on a small property like mine, there can be several microclimates, and the garden as a whole can be a microclimate to the larger climate of your block or neighborhood.

My yard on the whole tends to be much cooler than even my next door neighbor's. Why? Because I've got Mama Maple in the back (I really need to get some pictures up of her), Sister Maple out front, a white mulberry in the back corner of the yard, and a 6ft privacy fence surrounding my backyard. Plus, in my neighborhood, the houses are only about 6ft apart. Building upon building creates pockets of shade all over the place. Within this microclimate are several others: right next to Mama Maple, the area of dappled shade beneath her outer canopy, the site of our former compost pile, the clay patch next to the fence, the gravelly space abutting the concrete walkway, the sandy soil along the left side of the house, and many many more. Hell, even the space beneath the dryer vent is a microclimate of its own!

The disadvantages of my space are probably pretty obvious. I have a very difficult time with things like rosemary, which love dry heat. All of my plants tend toward the smaller side, and they definitely mature a little behind their general climate counterparts as my jaunt around town so aptly reminded me. The corn next to the concrete walkway, where the dappled shade of Mama Maple and the substrate gravel make things less hospitable, is markedly behind the corn just a few feet away towards the center of the backyard row. Growing veggies can be frustrating in this plot, fo' sho!

There are advantages as well though. If you discount the freakish amount of lightening strikes we tend to get in our yard, our plants are much more sheltered from wind and other adverse weather. This, in addition to the god awful amount of leaves we get in the fall, makes winter sheltering of perennials a little less work. Rain stays where it falls for the most part, and it evaporates a little more slowly too, even if you take away the protective canopy of intensive plantings. We have an abundance of birds because of our mature trees, and I can grow lettuce when most gardeners' greens are bolting. I don't swelter nearly as much as my friends next door do when they're tending to their crops. Ohhhhh, yeah. Now I'm making you jealous, aren't I? ;)

This year has been great for getting the microclimates sorted out since I'd planted a good variety of perennials last year. There's still plenty to figure out though, and I haven't even begun to tackle the front yard. That's one thing about gardening, whether you're doing it for food like I am or simply for some beautiful ornamentals, there's always more to learn and discover.

La Framboise

Finally...

When I was growing up, it was our Summer Solstice tradition to go berry picking. We never had to go far for the raspberries because there was a hedgerow of them right in our backyard. My mother never had a vegetable garden, but raspberries were a must-have. It was a legacy in our family. My great-grandmother had raspberries on her farm, and she passed them onto my aunt who had a farm when I was a little girl. A few snips later, and my aunt had passed them onto my mom. One of my greatest regrets is that I don't have a daughter of my mother's raspberries growing in my garden. Luckily, though, my cousin rescued some raspberries from my mother's house and is growing them in her garden. As soon as the two of us can get together, I'll become part of the legacy too.

For now, my Latham Reds will have to do. Is it just me, or does this raspberry love me too? Beautifully heart-shaped...

The "Creative" Gardener

Okay, maybe unprepared, unschooled, and cheap would be better descriptors for this post, but hey...

What the heck is so creative about the picture here? Well, no one told me not to plant Scarlet Runner Beans as one of the components of my Three Sisters garden (actually, a Two Sisters garden because I knew the pumpkins/squash just wouldn't have enough room to sprawl in this small bed... another mistake that will soon be remedied). They are shooting up much faster than the sweet corn I planted (Golden Bantam) and have nothing to cling to. The situation has been exacerbated by our adorable *coughcough* squirrel population who deprived us of several corn plants by getting beneath the green plastic "chicken wire" I'd used to keep the crows out. I had actually saved several very long, straight limbs from the redbud tree that was felled last summer by a lightning storm to use as a bean teepee, but when I changed my garden plans (a weekly occurence) and decided to go the Three Sisters route, I turned the teepee into mulch. What's a girl to do!?

Use the umbrella that goes to the kids' sand and water table of course! :D They never use the umbrella anyway because it's on the side of the yard that's too shady for me to garden in... hehe

A Gift of Toads

Even though I'm still feeling quite under the weather, I really needed some time out in my garden to weed and tidy things up. Maple saplings wait for no one, I tell ya! That's one prolific Maple Mama we have...

Anyway, I'm sprawled across one mulched path trying to get all the little bits of green that are threatening to outgrow my carrots when I hear a raucous yelling from next door. What the...? It's our little neighbor girl, A, calling me name. (Did I just channel my pirate personality from a past life? ;) She comes bearing gifts! I've already given it away in the title, unless you're really extra dense, but the gift was indeed three of the tiniest, most smoochable toads I have ever seen! I really, really wanted to kiss them, even if I didn't get one of these out of the deal, but they were so little and so very, very hoppy. These little fellas were about the size of my pinky fingernail. SO cute. A's mom, J, managed to get two of them onto Madame TrashHeap (aka, the compost pile) and one into my jungle of lemon balm. Hopefully these little guys will stick around 'cause we were really being eaten by the mosquitoes today!

Wait! Where in the Darkness did my neighbor get baby toads? Apparently, she had walked with her kids to the library, and on the way back, they were stunned to see the sidewalk and road literally hoppin' with these little guys. We've surmised that they must have come from a clutch of eggs laid in a mud puddle somewhere. Knowing that they were gonna get smushed by the oncoming traffic, J scooped up about 10 of them into one of the bags that they'd been carrying library books in. She let 7 go in her garden and presented the remaining three to their new home with us. Woohoo!

I truly wish I had a picture of these irresistably cute little buggers, but they were much too bouncy to capture on film. Instead, I'll leave you with a picture of (whom I hope is still) their competition: Mr. Toad, whom I uncovered last year while ripping up the English ivy (Hedera helix) behemoth that covered what is now my perennial/herb bed. I really hope he stuck around after I demolished his home, but I haven't seen him since... :(