Follow me on Twitter: @cityslipper
My Book!
I wrote a book about preserving food. The same step-by-step instruction and full-color photos you find in my blog. Buy it at Yes, You Can
Yard Birds
Adorable, handcrafted, folk art. Yard Birds add whimsical flare to any garden, yard, or entranceway. Click here to find a Yard Bird for your kitchen garden.
Links to planters at selected vendors:
Sprouts
Amazon.com is a terrific source for certified organic seeds intended for home sprouting. Dress up salads, stir-fry, sandwiches, spreads, and other dishes with homegrown sprouts of all kinds. Follow this link to order your sampler or to find home sprouting kits.
Small Kitchen Garden Store
Find the perfect gift for any kitchen gardener--or find products to help get the best from your own small kitchen garden. To save you time, we've selected products from Amazon.com that received the best customer reviews. Click here to visit our store and pick up the perfect gifts for any small kitchen garden enthusiast.
Another Bloom Day in Ithaca
June 16, 2013 | 
Author 
I’d love to see Cornell establish way more garden “hot spots” such as this one at a parking area along the Plantations roadway. As large as the Plantations is, most of it lacks complexity. When last I toured the botanical garden, it sported a well-designed layout featuring azaleas and rhododendron. Perhaps they’ve expanded it and added variety; I look forward to finding out on a future visit.
My archeological expedition through my family’s life continues and I’m spending another Garden Bloggers Bloom Day in Ithaca rather than at the Cityslipper ranch. When last I was home (about a week ago), my pea plants were blooming strong, the peonies were putting out their last flowers, and the bloom was on the sage. I have no garden at all at my dad’s house in Ithaca, so I celebrated Bloom Day this month with a visit to the legendary Cornell Plantations.
The Plantations occupies a large chunk of the Cornell University campus. It includes various horticultural features including an arboretum, a large water garden, a botanical garden and visitor center, greenhouses, walking trails, a shrub garden… I saw a lot of signs (but I can’t remember all of them). Having one of the best-regarded ag schools in the world, it’s appropriate for Cornell to have such an assortment of horticultural attractions.
My visit to Cornell Plantations was anything but academic. I was simply escaping from the emotional and logistical mess that comes with emptying out your family home of 50+ years. I stuck to easy-to-reach areas where I could park and walk without paying fees. So, I skipped the botanical garden and visitor center and spent a lot of time around the water garden. The photos in this post show flowers I saw during my walk. I hope you also enjoyed a fine day among flowers on this Bloom Day.
This one garden patch near a parking area sported a variety of colors and textures that seduced me into lingering.
Viceroy, not monarch. This beauty lingered along with me on that densely-planted garden path.
Three flower spikes to the north of the viceroy, a swallowtail butterfly also lingered. It put on a terrific show, flitting among blossoms for at least 15 minutes.
Seems I can never resist taking photos of water lilies. They were in full bloom in the water garden, and I spent at least an hour looking for frogs, turtles, and fish among them. It was a sunny, pleasantly cool day, and it was really hard to drag myself back to the house for more sorting and packing.
Posted in 
Good Gardeners Kill Peaches
Peach trees are very showy in spring. A single branch may produce dozens of blossoms. When most of them grow into fruit, you can end up with very tiny peaches.
I spent about 45 minutes today in my small kitchen garden killing peaches. This might sound crazy, but it’s an important spring task for peach-growers—and for people who grow other stone fruits as well. While I was killing peaches, it occurred to me that anyone can grow a peach tree and I have a rather extreme argument to convince you.
So, please stick around a few minutes and I’ll try to make this all make sense: You can grow peaches. And when you do, it’s a real good idea to kill a whole lot of them.
Why I was Killing Peaches
When it comes to reproduction, a typical peach tree goes crazy! In early-to-mid spring, a tree produces hundreds of blossoms. It’s an awesome display as grand as any flowering ornamental tree.
The 14-inch section of peach branch in this photo holds ten young peaches. I wish I’d cleaned this up two weeks ago, but today I removed all but two peaches from this branch. Between two peach trees, I discarded at least 200 peaches. Throwing them away is painful, but I’d rather grow large, meaty peaches instead of tiny ones with only a thin layer of flesh.
Problems arise when a majority of the blossoms succeed with pollination. By late summer, any one branch may have dozens of tiny, green peaches holding promise of a summer harvest. Left alone, most of those peaches will likely ripen into delicious, juicy fruits and that would be bad.
With so many fruits pulling water and nutrients through a single branch, none of them get a whole lot of food to store; they all end up tiny. To get big peaches, you need to cull just-formed fruits so a branch holds only two, three, or four, depending on the length of the branch.
I demonstrated the whole thing in a two minute and 20 second video:
You Can Grow That
Peach Trees for any Space
For a space-challenged gardener, growing a whole tree can seem prohibitive; in a small yard, won’t a tree shade out the entire garden? Happily, that needn’t be the case. Growers have developed peach trees in a variety of sizes—through both grafting and breeding. Shop around (Google “dwarf peach tree”) and you’ll find a lot of choices. Some dwarf peach trees are so small they’ll grow happily in containers on a deck or patio.
If a tree-shaped dwarf is no more practical than a full-sized tree, consider a foray into espalier. This is a method of training a tree to grow flat—usually against a wall. The technique is simple but it requires patience because you cut away whole branches during pruning and preserve only the ones that run parallel to the wall. It may take five years of annual cutting and, perhaps, binding branches with wires to develop a tree in your garden, but an espalier will produce peaches just as fine as any other peach tree.
Growing a peach tree is ridiculously easy to do. Mine get direct sunlight from about 11 AM until five or six PM and they never fail to produce a crop. Ideally, plant your trees where they’ll get sun all day. In other posts I’ve written about planting fruit trees and maintaining them. Follow links below for specific information.
One of the trees I spent time with today is unusual. At least six years ago, it fell over. The tree’s trunk had been rotting for years but I didn’t notice until I found most of the tree resting on the lawn. The trunk remained rooted, and there was a hinge of wood connecting the roots to the tree’s crown… and I never cleaned up the mess.
Perhaps it’s an exaggeration to say my peach tree broke. Rather, it fell over, flexing a hinge of wood that remained intact. Seems as though more than two-thirds of the wood is missing along at least 32 inches of trunk, but the tree doesn’t really care.
Each year since, the tree has burst into blossom in spring, pushed out leaves as the petals dropped, and produced copious amounts of fruits. Expecting the tree to die quickly, I did little for it in the two years after it fell. However, because of its stellar performance in those years, I’ve pruned it once or twice, I cull young fruits in the spring, and I treat it against insect damage—but I haven’t fertilized it and I haven’t cut out invasive trees that have sprouted around its trunk.
Heck, the year our peach tree fell, we planted its replacement. That one produces quite well, but the broken one produces better. Apparently, my broken-down peach tree doesn’t know it has a problem. If I can harvest a decent crop each year from my severely challenged peach tree, you most certainly can be successful with one of your own. You can grow that.
Learn What Else You Can Grow
Life is better if you garden. You Can Grow That is an initiative of gardeners who spread that message through their jobs, their leisure time, their writing, and (most specifically) through their blogs. Visit the You Can Grow That website to see what others are saying to encourage gardening everywhere.
Rhubarb is Ready for Post Produce!
Rhubarb produces huge elephant-ear leaves on the ends of slender stalks. The plants naturally shade out undergrowth, so a rhubarb patch can do well with little more than occasional feeding. I try to rely on mulch to keep the soil rich, but rhubarb is happy to receive a generous helping of fertilizer in mid-spring.
Rhubarb is in season! In most of my gardening years, this would be the earliest proclamation I’d make about harvest. Last year, instead, I wrote a sad story about three failures of my rhubarb crop.
This year has been spectacularly “normal” climate-wise and the meager rhubarb roots I started last spring have come on so strong that I’m tempted to harvest heavily—a supposed no-no in a rhubarb garden’s second year.
Rhubarb Sauce for Dad
I’ve neglected my garden a tad because I’m spending a lot of time in Ithaca, making repairs in the family house and emptying it to make way for renters. My dad decided to move into a progressive care facility, and there are 52 years’ accumulation in the house with which to deal.
Rhubarb sauce may look a bit slimy, but it doesn’t feel slimy in your mouth (compared, for example, to soup thickened with okra). I like rhubarb sauce on its own, but it makes a great topping as well for cottage cheese, yogurt, and ice cream.
Dad doesn’t complain about his new accommodations, but it was clear right away some things are lacking. Most obviously, the food service at the progressive care facility is mediocre; the food isn’t terrible, but it’s not particularly interesting.
My dad had rhubarb available most of his life. His dad grew it, and descendents from those plants made it to several places my dad lived through the years. We ate rhubarb sauce all spring when I was a kid, and Dad was always excited to serve up the first batch. Dad’s rhubarb patch has died off years ago. So, on my last trip home (to Lewisburg), I harvested my first rhubarb stalks from my new patch. I cooked them into sauce and packed it with me when I drove back to Ithaca. My dad seems pleased to have it.
Making Sauce
I explained how to make rhubarb sauce in an earlier post. If you’ve never tried it, I recommend that you buy stalks or get some from a gardening friend and cook it up for yourself before you plant any. Even people who don’t care for rhubarb sauce can be enthusiastic for strawberry-rhubarb jam or pie. I posted how to make strawberry-rhubarb pie—both written instructions and a video tutorial.
I hope you’ll try rhubarb if you haven’t. I love that on this Post Produce, I can celebrate such a fine harvest.
Now You Post
Use the linky widget at the end of this post to link to your Post Produce blog entry. Then visit other participants’ blogs to see what your fellow gardeners are eating from their own gardens. Thanks for visiting!
Garden Bloggers Bloom Day in Ithaca
For years, these grew densely among the periwinkles alongside our driveway. Now there are a few clumps of Lillies of the Valley just starting to blossom. I suspect mulching with compost for two or three years would dramatically revive these plants.
I haven’t been home much in the past four months. My dad moved out of our family home and I’ve been in Ithaca making repairs and moving stuff out. I’m hoping to have the house ready to rent in June so a property manager can start showing it. All that to explain why I don’t know exactly what’s blooming in my garden.
Still, I like to participate in Garden Bloggers Bloom day, so I captured what’s abloom in my dad’s yard. Things are a lot different from when I lived here as a kid. Rhubarb is gone from the old patch and there’s no evidence of the sandbox or the tomato garden that occupied its space after we kids outgrew it.
The borders Mom planted each spring with annuals now sport evergreen shrubs. The trilliums that grew near the garage are gone, and Dad’s previously over-pampered rose bush barely peeks out from behind an evergreen hedge. English ivy, periwinkles, and lilies of the valley still grow along the driveway, but they’re beaten down. Once a lush, green display, this space clearly needs soil additives to perk up its plants.
Well… it is what it is. After 52 years, the family no longer lives here. Soon, tenants will take over, and chances are the ornamental plantings will receive attention only from the deer that often graze in the yard. I enjoyed what is abloom here, and I hope you will, too.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t know when I was a kid that this was a periwinkle. I certainly didn’t know it was a periwinkle when I photographed it this morning. I used to harvest these flowers to make little gift vases for my mom.
My dad went on today about how the lilacs are nicer this year than they’ve been in years. Our lone lilac tree has looked sketchy to me since I was five years old—and that hasn’t changed… but the blossoms are gorgeous.
There’s a good chance these flowers will be sour cherries in early July. Dad planted the sour cherry tree long after I moved out, and he has enjoyed many harvests from it. I planted a sour cherry tree about five years ago and it’s still deciding when it’s going to produce its first harvest.
Until this morning, here’s what I knew about woodruff: May Wine is a sweetened white wine, usually low quality. Some people serve it in May and add woodruff, a traditional seasoning. Not much context. Who serves May Wine? Whose traditions? I think it’s a German thing, and I’ve enjoyed my share of May Wine over the years. This morning, for the first time ever, I learned to recognize woodruff. It’s pretty but beware. My dad tells me it grows enthusiastically and will take over a planting bed or yard if you give it the chance.
You Can Grow Maple Trees
Maple leaves have such a distinctive shape that people in North America know what you mean when you say something is shaped like a maple leaf. My oldest son, when he was about five years old, collected four maple seeds and sprouted them in a Styrofoam cup.
When my son Matthew was about five years old, he collected four maple seeds and planted them in a Styrofoam cup. The seeds produced four healthy seedlings and Matthew asked if we could plant them in the yard. Then we proceeded to try to kill them.
Maple Seedlings on Vacation
When the seedlings each had started producing leaves, we travelled to Ithaca for a three-day visit with my parents. We returned to wilted maple seedlings in dry soil. I guessed the plants were dry enough that they wouldn’t revive, but we watered them anyway.
Some varieties of maple tree produce clusters of flowers even before new leaves emerge in spring. Others leaf out and then grow flowers. Inevitably, seeds follow quickly; thousands of seeds that could reforest a yard or garden in just a few years.
Three of the seedlings didn’t come back, but one did. Its original leaves were dry, but more leaves sprouted from its terminal bud and we agreed to plant it in the side yard.
Young Maple Tree in Winter
The maple seedling grew enthusiastically and reached at least 12 inches before dropping its leaves in autumn. Eventually snow fell, and one day I happened by Matthew’s maple seedling only to notice it was considerably shorter than it had been. Some critter had bitten off half the plant!
If you garden in a temperate zone, you’re probably familiar with maple seeds. A seed grows at the end of a small wing that acts as a rotocopter. These rotocopters can sail in a heavy wind for miles. More often, they land within dozens of yards of the parent tree. In a lawn, on a forest floor, in a meadow, on a bed of mulch, and even in a rain gutter, the seed-heavy ends quite often land business-side down. So close to potential growing medium, an emergent root easily digs in, giving life to a new sprout.
Incidentally, this photo shows only the rotocopter seed wrapper. The seed fell last spring and a rodent bit open its carrier and ate the good stuff. In posing an appropriate photo, I found hundreds of such rotocopters, all bitten open and emptied in exactly the same way. Given the apparent delectability of maple seeds, it’s easy to see why they must be efficient at taking root once they reach the ground.
Feeling dread, I inverted an empty bucket on the tree to preserve what was left in case what was left had life left. When snow melted away in March, I removed the bucket and a few weeks later, that tenacious maple tree pushed out new leaves.
Pre-emergent Tree Killer
I hadn’t yet developed disdain for lawn, and so I followed the annual lawn care regimen of applying pre-emergent weed killer and fertilizer before the blossoms fell off the forsythia (rule of thumb for lawn enthusiasts). Never occurred to me to notice that Matthew’s little tree caught a snootful of weed killer.
Another rule of thumb for lawn enthusiasts: that poisonous stuff you broadcast on your grass kills a lot more than just broadleaf weeds. The leaves on Matthew’s abused maple tree shriveled and I was sure the plant was done. But no! The sickly leaves never recovered, but after a month the tree put out new leaves and started to look healthy once more.
I found dozens of year-old maple seedlings growing in the yard at my dad’s house and chose two very unlikely ones to include in this post. The seedling on the left grows from otherwise barren soil next to a rock that guides rainwater runoff away from the house (note the rotocopter end of a maple seed directly in front of the seedling’s stem). The seedling on the right took root between the front steps and the front walk. This is a crack filled with pebbles through which roots would have to go about tthree inches before finding soil.
Untapped Root
By mid-season Matthew’s beleaguered maple tree was tall enough to make me realize I’d made a huge mistake: The tree was too close to the house and would eventually prevent us from driving large vehicles on the lawn to the back yard. We don’t drive there often, but access is important. The maple tree had to move.
The tree on the left in this photo is Matthew’s 15 year old maple tree. It’s now as tall as a nearby tree that was already full-grown when we moved into our house 18 years ago. (The red tree to the right only looks as tall because it’s much closer to the camera.) From a modest seed to a 40 foot tall, climbable tree in just 15 years—and that with four serious attempts on its life! You can grow that.
Stunted as it was from all the abuse, Matthew’s tree had a robust root system. Even after I dug out the roots that extended horizontally from the trunk, it was a much bigger chore to go after the tap root; I failed. I eventually chopped through the tap root, which I understand can significantly weaken a plant and, in the case of a tree, make the plant less stable in high winds.
Fortunately, the tree grew vigorously in its new location just a few yards from where it had spent more than a year. Unfortunately, the tree produced epicormic sprouts—weak branches along the trunk and at the base of the tree that somehow seem out of place. A forester once explained to me such branches grow in response to stress.
But it grows! Now all of 15 years old, Matthew’s tree is nearly as tall as another in our yard that was already mature when we bought the house. We tried pretty hard to kill that maple tree. We failed. It persevered. Want a maple tree in your yard? You can grow that!
Learn about You Can Grow That and find other participating blogs at the movement’s website: You Can Grow That!
Dad’s Shovel
I grabbed this shovel from my dad’s garage when I needed to dig in his yard. Using it brought back memories and gave me respect for the value of being able to “do it yourself.”
Last week I needed a shovel to dig some holes at my dad’s house. As I had as a child, I found what I needed in the garage and went to work.
Through an hour or so of digging, I put a huge load on the shovel’s handle. Repeatedly, I dug deep and pulled to pry soil and stones loose. The handle bent but it never cracked. It bent more than handles on my own shovels and garden forks when I dig in my vegetable garden… and I’ve broken at least six of those in the last ten years.
Grow your own repair crew
My father always expressed his depression era mentality through maintenance and preservation: he cleaned and oiled what needed lubrication, and he repaired what broke. He involved his kids in these chores, and we learned to remove rust, paint metal to preserve it, grease bearings, oil joints, polish leather, clean spark plugs, sharpen knives and axes, glaze windows, calk, glue stuff, repair damaged wiring, remove and replace cotter pins, mix concrete, and otherwise keep stuff operational.
When I was eleven, my parents bought a weekend farm. This was the foundation of a strategy to keep their kids from becoming hippies. Whether it worked is fodder for another post, but the farm certainly changed us all.
There aren’t a lot of shovel handles like this one in the United States. Smooth, well-worn bark covers most of the wood, though knots show where the handle’s maker removed branches from the main shaft.
At the farm we learned about sharpening and lubricating chain saws, cleaning and oiling leather, cutting black locust trees into fence posts, stringing barbed wire and electric fences, clearing brush, replacing rotted barn boards and beams, cementing washed-out foundations, and planting stream banks with willow to hold the soil in place.
And, of course, there was the shovel. (Remember? This is a post about a shovel. But first, a confession: I wrote this post a week ago and told a story about my brother and his handiwork. Before I posted the story, I mentioned it to my dad who told a very different story; a better story. So, here’s the amendmended version to reflect my dad’s revelations.)
The end of my dad’s shovel handle has a lot of character. Some bark is missing, revealing a crack in the wood, and the remaining bark is shinier here.
Dad’s Shovel
The shovel predates my memories, but I know it lived at our house and later at the farm. I have a vague notion that it had a machined wooden handle painted red, but the paint was well-worn. The handle also was well-worn, and one day under load at the farm the handle broke. (Knowing my dad, that was the second, third, or fourth handle to break on that shovel.)
Normally, we’d have bought a commercially machined shovel handle to replace the broken one—over the years we’d done as much for axe handles, sledge hammer handles, and shovel handles. But this time around, my dad went a different route: he created a new handle from raw materials in the forest.
And so, last week I held that home-crafted shovel handle in my hands. It flexed without cracking; without complaining and I mused as to the wood my dad might have used. For the legendary strength of the tree’s wood, I wanted to guess Hickory (people used to call baseball bats “hickory sticks” because hickory was the default material back in the day). The bark’s texture suggested Ash or Oak, and its color seemed okier rather than ashier. So, I guessed Oak.
My dad’s shovel handle has been in service for at least 20 years—and probably much closer to 30. As I empty out the house and garage to make way for renters (my dad moved out in January), I’m inclined to throw the shovel in my car so I can enjoy the handle in my own garden. But aside from the question of what wood my dad used, the shovel handle held a second mystery: someone carved my brother Kris’s name in the wood. The name being there had me thinking Kris had repaired the shovel and it seemed when I wrote this blog post that the shovel should go to Kris when my dad is done with it.
Not the name of a treasured sled that represents happy, simpler days of childhood; this is the name of the craftsman’s son. Dad’s shovel handles are one-of-a-kind creations and impressively durable.
The Truth about Dad’s Shovel
Last week when I mentioned the shovel to my dad, he said, “I put that handle on. Didn’t I do one for you? I did one for Eric. I thought I did one for each of you boys.” Eric confirmed that HE has a shovel with a homemade handle having HIS name carved in it. I never had such a shovel.
I’m not bitter. Actually, it’s a sweet story to know my dad repaired these tools so spectacularly for my brothers. It’ll be a pleasure to make sure Kris eventually gets this shovel to use on his own farm.
My dad identified the wood: these are Ash tool handles. If ever you have the opportunity to repair a broken shovel handle, make your own from a branch of an ash tree. And carve someone’s name in the wood; you’ll create a story to tell.
April 22, 2013 Post Produce: Almost There!
These lettuce seedlings aren’t doing well under lights. My guess: the seed starting soil I used wasn’t very good. I bought a brick of starting soil at a nursery four years ago, and seeds I started in that have thrived. These lettuce seedlings are in soil I bought in Ithaca when I was desperate to get the growing season started. The seedlings will be far happier when I set them in the garden today or Tuesday.
This month’s Post Produce isn’t about produce I’m eating from my garden. Rather, it’s about produce I WILL eat! We’re having a most “normal” spring in central Pennsylvania, meaning spring crops are just barely underway.
My peach trees are in bloom, but the apples look barely awake. Pear blossoms are about to burst. Rhubarb is far enough along that were I desperate enough I could harvest some, but I think I’ll hold out a week or two and let the stalks grow to full-length. Raspberry plants I set out last fall are putting out growth despite having been severely pruned by wild animals during the winter. Blueberry plants are also showing signs of life. Oh, and oregano, thyme, sage, lavender, and tarragon have all sprouted new leaves. If the weather is good when I wake up today, I’ll photograph the perennials for a follow-up blog post. Until then, I’m talking vegetables.
I posted about Walla-Walla onions on April 5th, and promised I was about to start a second tray of seeds. Here’s the second tray, and the seedlings look great—though there’s plenty of algae growing on the soil. Algae doesn’t usually cause problems but it may indicate the seedlings have gotten too much water.
When I Plant Vegetables
Despite the lift my perennials provide, annual vegetables hold much more of my attention in early spring. Two weeks ago, I planted 28 foot-rows of pea seeds directly in the garden. Many of those seeds have sprouted, but there are gaps I’ll fill by pressing fresh seeds into the soil. Also, I expect to plant another 14 foot-rows of peas TODAY!
I wish I already had lettuce, spinach, and mustard seeds in the garden, but I’ve been distracted (see the box, Missing Spring if you want to know why.)
Missing Spring
Perhaps you’ve already heard this story: My dad moved out of our family home of 51 years and I’ve been spending about 2 out of every 3 days in Ithaca, NY making repairs and improvements, emptying the house, and otherwise preparing it for rental. Despite that, I’m trying to establish my vegetable garden as I do every spring.
I’ve started several sets of seeds indoors and my wife has taken on the burden of keeping them alive while I’m out of town. When seeds fail, I’m not here to react quickly, so there may be unfamiliar gaps in this year’s selections. Worse: cool weather crops could already be out in the garden, but most of them aren’t. On two of my last two trips home, I ended up sick and accomplished very little.
Had this been spring of 2012, I’d be uncomfortably behind. Thankfully, the slower onset of warm weather this year has kept me in the game and I anticipate getting my cool weather crops planted by midweek… assuming I don’t fall ill. Spending so much time in Ithaca makes me feel as though I’m missing spring.
Seeds I planted indoors under lights have had enough time to prove themselves. Many have failed, but far more are growing strong. Tomorrow I’ll start seeds to replace the failures, and a few more I wanted to start two weeks ago before I ran out of time. Photos show where things stand.
Now You Post!
I get very excited as my seedlings emerge; there will be fresh vegetables in less than a month! What about you? Are you already harvesting pounds and pounds of delicious produce, or are you merely anticipating? Post about your homegrown produce and use the Linky Widget at the end of this post to link to yours.
I planted 46 tomato seeds two weeks ago. Here’s what sprouted: Glory of Mechelon—3 of 3. Moonglow—5 of 5. Chili-pepper-shaped paste tomato—9 of 15 (from 2-year-old seeds). Indigo Rose—5 of 5. Mortgage Lifter—7 of 7. Dutchman—6 of 8 (But they’re tiny! The short ones in the photo are Dutchman at about one-quarter the height of the other varieties.) White Queen—2 of 3. I’ll start 23 more seeds later today to fill in for ones that didn’t sprout. Also: my earliest-planted tomatoes—Stupice—look about to die. They’re in the same inferior soil that holds my lettuce seedlings, so I’m thinking to start eight more though it’s kind of late for them to demonstrate cold-hardiness. (Stupice are a short-season variety and I was hoping to get an early harvest.)
My pepper starts have been finicky as they always are. These seem to have been over-watered in my absence which has never helped in past years. Still, some are strugging along: Orange King Bell—6 of 8. Purple Jalapeno—1 of 5. Sweet Italian—5 of 5. Poblano—0 of 5. I intended to start two trays of peppers in the first place, but it looks as though I’ll add two more. As the soil in this first tray dries, the poblanos might just wake up and I’ll end up with too many seedlings.
Use the Linky here and add a link to your Post Produce post. Share what you’re eating or what you plan to eat from your own garden:
Muskrat Love
These delicate flowers grew near a stream and were the earliest blossoms I saw this spring (after crocuses).
Finally we have spring-like weather in central Pennsylvania but I’m not home to enjoy it. When I consider how plants looked a week ago, I imagine two bright yellow patches of forsythia in full-bloom, daffodils popping along the front of the house and the right border of our front yard, and hyacinths peeking out from among tulip leaves that haven’t quite gotten their own buds above ground.
Maybe, just maybe, my fruit trees have started to blossom. That needs to have happened soon (if it hasn’t) for this to be a “normal” spring.
Apparently, there weren’t a lot of flowers in bloom two weeks ago. The one bee that got an early start from its hive must have searched for hours to find the small patch of flowers I was photographing. I enjoyed the company.
Finding Flowers
Just before I left home to spend what will have been two weeks in Ithaca, I’d spent part of a gorgeous spring day walking along a stream where I spotted delicate blossoms hugging the ground. I dallied with my camera and then noticed something far less likely on the stream bank: there stood a muskrat chewing on vegetation.
Usually when I spot a muskrat, it’s scurrying away, diving into water, or darting into a hole. This one ignored me and continued to munch… and then I spotted a second one.
Muskrat Love in the Afternoon
Drifting with the current, the second muskrat came into view from upstream, floated past the first muskrat, and swam to shore about ten feet later. It had obviously spotted the first muskrat and it waddled quickly back along the bank.
This was a classic boy-meets-girl moment where girl (muskrat #1) ran into the stream and boy followed her. They drifted together with the current, all the time muskrat #2 pursuing muskrat #1. Eventually they drifted out of sight but by then I had no doubt: I’d witnessed muskrat love. I can say with authority it’s nothing like the song.
I looked toward the stream, and there she was: a gorgeous muskrat chomping on the foliage!
As I clicked shot-after-shot of the fearless muskrat, a second one floated past with the current, swam to shore, and ambled onto the bank. The first muskrat reacted by setting itself adrift. In this photo, the second muskrat approaches overland as the first one takes to the water.
Seems these muskrats are courting. Actually, by the time they drifted out of sight, the courtship was over. Various websites suggest there will be baby muskrats about two weeks from now (gestation is one month).
A Day (Planting Peas) in my Small Kitchen Garden
Seeming no more than weed leaves and dried twigs, my oregano plants have barely started to bounce back from a surprisingly long winter.
Oh, what a day! I’d planned to spend Saturday planting and otherwise working in my garden. Instead, I spent the day chasing about: gathering stuff I’d need to get the garden in shape. But Sunday was better!
Assessing the garden
I started in the herb garden, looking over the perennials there and removing last season’s deadwood from the tarragon plants. A few tarragon sprouts were already poking through the soil and there are fresh green leaves on the oregano and thyme. Most dramatic was the rhubarb which is emerging like some kind of alien mushroom from giant spores stuck to the soil.
In the herb garden I noticed how dry the soil was, and I checked several planting beds where I made the same discovery. It was a dry winter and perennials were parched as they came out of dormancy.
I’m used to seeing crinkly rhubarb leaves poke out of the mulch in early spring. This year the crinkly leaves are breaking out of balls nestled on the mulch—looking a bit like brains busting out of tiny alien heads.
Soaking perennials
My goal was to plant peas so I knew I’d be in the yard for many hours. This was a perfect opportunity to help out the parched perennials. I set the hose on garden patch after garden patch and let it soak the soil as I worked on other projects. There were blueberry plants, raspberries, and herbs, and a remarkable number of ornamentals—roses, hydrangeas, coreopsis, heucheras, primroses, lilies, and azaleas—that I’d planted in the fall. It would be very sad to kick off the growing season by watching them shrivel and die.
Planting peas
Again: I wanted to plant peas. I always plant three 14 foot double rows of Wando peas, but on Saturday I had broken with tradition and invested in Early Frosty and Bolero—two varieties producers claim are prolific.
Inside the rodent fence are two parallel pea trellises running down the middles of double rows of peas. Considering all the steps and related tasks, planting two rows on Sunday felt an enormous accomplishment. Look hard above the far fence for a dark spot (like the dot of an “i” above the central fence post); that’s a robin that eyed me as I worked in the garden. The robin stars in the next photo (below).
Planting peas involves loosening soil and digging a trench, removing weeds, setting seeds, filling the trench to bury the seeds, and applying water to soak the seeds. Before watering I erect trellises that the pea vines will climb. The trellises were broken.
Repairing trellises
I’ve used the same pea trellises for 14 years. These are extremely simple: each is a 13.5 foot length of 48” steel fencing attached to three pressure-treated wooden stakes about five feet tall. There’s a stake at each end, and one in the middle. Despite the preservatives in the stakes, the stakes rot out through repeated use. Last year, after handling the peas, the trellises carried the weight of three enormous winter squashes and some of the stakes broke.
I pulled staples, cut new stakes, and hammered new staples to hold the weather-worn fencing on the new stakes.
Yep, a robin in spring after a dry winter has a lot of love for agriculture. This one stared me down as I finished up planting and watering two rows of peas.
And rabbits?
Sure, and I can’t have young vegetable sprouts in my garden without erecting a fence to keep out rodents. The fence is as old as the pea trellises. It is a collection of wooden frames with chicken wire stapled to them. The frames stand end-to-end around the garden and are low enough that I can step over them to come and go.
I’ve replaced much of the chicken wire over the years, but have also nursed some of the frames through severe issues. Some chicken wire is so far gone that you can’t find shiny metal beneath the rust; there is only rust.
So, as I loosened soil, dug trenches, removed weeds, set seeds, and filled the trenches while periodically moving the hose from one thirsty perennial to another, I also pulled staples to free rusted chicken wire from fence panels, rolled out new chicken wire, used my handy staple gun to attach the wire to the frames, and cut the chicken wire from the roll. Someplace along the way I noticed the robins.
What robins have to do with it
Birds are among my favorite gardening distractions. Catbirds may be the most persistent pleasure: almost every year a pair nests near my garden and the two of them follow me around as I work among my vegetable plants. But robins seem the most agriculturally aware of my feathered visitors.
Across the yard from my pea planting, the hose was soaking young blueberry plants that looked thirsty after our dry winter. This robin happily gathered mud to complete its adobe-like construction in a nearby tree. I love that critters have learned about agriculture enough to take advantage—though there are some critters I’d rather not see in my garden.
Agriculturally aware? When I turn soil, robins invariably watch from a safe distance and swoop in the moment I move away. They know that gardening means food: they find worms I’ve moved to the surface, and they eat well. But food is only part of the story.
In spring, robins get all hot-and-bothered and build nests. Mud is a key component of their nest-building. After the dry winter, mud has been in short supply, but here was this gardening dude making mud all over his yard!
Whenever I turned, whenever I looked up, whenever I moved the hose, at least one robin was there… and if they were anywhere near a freshly-watered perennial, they had muddy beaks.
The day’s tally:
- umpteen water-soaked perennials
- two repaired pea trellises
- two double rows of peas planted
- three fence frames repaired with five more in the queue (but erected and protecting the pending seedlings)
- three dozen gardening-themed photos
- a whole bunch of happy robins
Walla Walla Onions!
I seeded a milk jug planter with a third of the seeds from this package. They’ll have only about 7 weeks to grow indoors before I set them in the garden where they’ll require nearly four months to reach maturity.
In late February I attended a seminar about becoming a better speaker. At a party afterward there were door prizes that included all kinds of seed packages from Sustainable Seed Company. I scored a half dozen packs including one for Walla Walla Onions, a sweet variety whose name I remember from my mom’s garden 40 years ago.
Nearly three weeks ago, I set up my seed-starting shelf to keep my lettuce seedlings healthy until I can set them outside. At the same time, I made a seed-starting tray by cutting the side off of a plastic gallon milk jug. I filled the tray with soil, soaked the soil with water, and scattered Walla Walla onion seeds on the surface.
Bury the seeds in soil? Nope! I bury most seeds I plant, but onion seeds are easier than that. I’ve kept the soil moist, and the tray has been under intense light. You can see from the photos that I have quite a few healthy onion plants.
In about a month, I’ll set these plants in my garden. Having provided a fine head start, and with a long growing season, I expect to harvest many delicious, sweet Walla Wallas. In fact, I’m going to seed a second tray this week and double the bounty.
Walla Walla or Sweet Spanish onion; you can grow that!
After three weeks under lights, my onion babies look healthy; some are starting to bulge at the bases of their stems. Transferring them to the garden later on will be a lot like planting onion sets. I wish I’d started more three weeks ago, but I’ll get to that this weekend. I use about one small onion per day in cooking, and I’d love to go a year without buying any mature onions at the farmers’ market.
Learn about You Can Grow That and find other participating blogs at the movement’s website: You Can Grow That!
...in a reader: 
...via eMail:
