A giant global garden

I am reading a book called Second Nature by Michael Pollan. Michael talks about the continuous front lawn in the suburbs, meaning that the front lawns in the suburbs blend with each other forming a huge park-like lawn. Well, I thought of something: blogs about gardening extend our gardens in an abstract way making a gigantic garden extending the breadth of the world. I go outside and check my garden. I visit my baby radishes and rejoice at their vibrant little leaves, I check my Rose of Sharon bushes, still dormant. Then I come inside and start reading gardening blogs. I see the pictures and read the words and I rejoice at the progress being made there as well, almost as if I was there, visiting another section of my garden.
You see?

It is April 6 and the low was 25 last night. My veggies had just recovered from last week's ice/snow storm and here we are again. I've only lost one tomato, a Brandywine, killed by wind gusts of 40+ miles an hour.
Tomorrow we are expecting the same, and we are not out of the woods yet. I have seen hard freezes up to April 15.
Because the peach tree and the nectarine tree bloomed so early, the freezes killed all the blooms before they got a chance to get pollinated so we get no peaches nor nectarines this year. Oh, and the plum tree bloomed as well and lost all the blooms. That leaves the apple trees.
The garden is Hope.

Potato

Plant seed potato at least 4 inches deep. You can plant deeper but the shoot will take longer to work its way through.

Garlic

Plant garlic when the clove will be exposed to several days of temperatures under 65 degrees to encourage bulb formation.

Gardenspeak

Listening to the radio on my way to work this morning, I heard a phrase I'd never heard before:

"There are some crocuses in the lawn"

The person was talking about how in the midst of this recession, there are a few pieces of good news.
I believe that the reference here is how crocus will bloom in early Spring even with snow on the ground.

Snow = recession
crocus = good news in spite of recession.

I wonder how many other sayings of this nature there are. I can only think of a few right now:

"Growing like a weed"
"Every rose has its thorn"
"Stop and smell the roses"
"Don't be a pansy"

and my favorite quote from the movie "Toombstone":

"I'll be your Huckleberry"

By the way, I was curious as to the origins of this last phrase and this is what I found in
World Wide Words:

"What it means is easy enough. To be one’s huckleberry — usually as the phrase I’m your huckleberry — is to be just the right person for a given job, or a willing executor of some commission. Where it comes from needs a bit more explaining.

First a bit of botanical history. When European settlers arrived in the New World, they found several plants that provided small, dark-coloured sweet berries. They reminded them of the English bilberry and similar fruits and they gave them one of the dialect terms they knew for them, hurtleberry, whose origin is unknown (though some say it has something to do with hurt, from the bruised colour of the berries; a related British dialect form is whortleberry). Very early on — at the latest 1670 — this was corrupted to huckleberry.

As huckleberries are small, dark and rather insignificant, in the early part of the nineteenth century the word became a synonym for something humble or minor, or a tiny amount. An example from 1832: “He was within a huckleberry of being smothered to death”. Later on it came to mean somebody inconsequential. Mark Twain borrowed some aspects of these ideas to name his famous character, Huckleberry Finn. His idea, as he told an interviewer in 1895, was to establish that he was a boy “of lower extraction or degree” than Tom Sawyer.

Also around the 1830s, we see the same idea of something small being elaborated and bombasted in the way so typical of the period to make the comparison a huckleberry to a persimmon, the persimmon being so much larger that it immediately establishes the image of something tiny against something substantial. There’s also a huckleberry over one’s persimmon, something just a little bit beyond one’s reach or abilities; an example is in David Crockett: His Life and Adventures by John S C Abbott, of 1874: “This was a hard business on me, for I could just barely write my own name. But to do this, and write the warrants too, was at least a huckleberry over my persimmon”.

Quite how I’m your huckleberry came out of all that with the sense of the man for the job isn’t obvious. It seems that the word came to be given as a mark of affection or comradeship to one’s partner or sidekick. There is often an identification of oneself as a willing helper or assistant about it, as here in True to Himself, by Edward Stratemeyer, dated 1900: “ ‘I will pay you for whatever you do for me.’ ‘Then I’m your huckleberry. Who are you and what do you want to know?’ ”. Despite the obvious associations, it doesn’t seem to derive directly from Mark Twain’s books."

USDA Hardiness Map

When I started growing plants 6 years ago, I saw the USDA Hardiness Zones map as gospel. Now, I see it for what it is; just another tool to help me along.
There was (or there will be) a press announcement soon, heralding the NEW USDA Hardiness Zones map.
Apparently, with global warming and what not, we need a new one. Not that I needed a press conference to tell me that.
I mean, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), I liven in hardiness zone 6a. This means that the lowest temperature possible where I live, falls between -10 degrees Fahrenheit and -5 degrees Fahrenheit.
The thing is, I can't remember the last time temperatures got that low.
So I went searching for temperature logs. I quickly found out that those are for sale and I did not want to pay.
I can however, find tables that record the average temperatures for my area and according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (www.crh.noaa.gov) the average low temperature in January for my area is in the low 20's F.
the Accuweather website (www.accuweather.com) gave me a free sample of record low temperatures for February and they say that the last time the temperature dipped to -7 degrees F. in my area was back in 1996.
And I am not the only one complaining about the map. The people at Arbor Day (www.arborday.org/) contend that my area is now zone 7.
The folks over at Garden.org say that the map is only accurate for the Eastern US:

"...and in the rest of the country (west of the 100th meridian, which runs roughly through the middle of North and South Dakota and down through Texas west of Laredo), the USDA map fails. "

This, they say, it's due to the mountains and Pacific ocean climates. They give as an example, Oregon and Arizona, both of which have Zone 8 parts but have vastly different climates.

It does help to have an agreed-upon point of reference but take it only as a starting point. I think is more important to get to know your local climate really well and take note of changes. Around here, we've had Armadillos for about a decade now. We did not have them in the 1980's, at least not in the numbers we have them now, and I read somewhere that time is running out for our great Cottonwood trees because Fall temperatures have risen.

Happy Gardening.

Snow Falling On Onions

Sure, not near as poetic as Snow Falling On Cedars but I don't grow cedars. At least not yet.

That's one of my baby onions poking through the snow.

Here's what my garden looked like this afternoon:



Here are more images of SPRING from my yard:




My poor baby pear tree will drop all of its foliage:


I don't know if it was the excitement of all the snow or what but my puppy Lexie decided to snack on one of the potato bags. I don't know how she untied the chicken wire. Smart girl...



And now, let's look at how my chiltepin plant is doing. She has spent some time outside and has done well, even in a very windy day. She is nice and safe inside until it warms up again.

Last but not least is my potato experiment. I saw on a video that potatoes don't transplant well. I had a few pieces of my seed potatoes left after I planted the potatoe bags and I did not want to waste them so I put them in peat pots. When I checked on them yesterday this is what I saw:


According to Weather.com, we have a few more nights of sub-freezing lows. My peppers are all outgrowing their peat pots and they need to be put on their self-watering containers soon.
Here's to Spring!

My tablescape

Gina, over at My Skinny Garden blog has a post about tablescapes. I did not know there was a term for your dinner table setup, or maybe it only applies to table setups for special occasions. Anyway, here is a description of my tablescape. (i know, a picture would have been better but my camera is not available at the moment).

• This week's bills.
• Daycare art from my two boys (3 and 5)
• Some magazines.
• Our checkbook. It never leaves the table as we seem to pay bills all the time.
• Wet Wipes. For my 3 year old (he eats like a Viking barbarian)
• Tissues
• Napkin holder. Empty at least twice a week.
• Somewhere under all that, a scented candle for ambiance. I know it's there because I can smell it.

Maybe later this season, I can replace some of this stuff with a floral arrangement from my yard.

Short soapbox speech

Clover is not a weed. I repeat, Clover IS NOT a weed.
Clover is a nitrogen fixer. It grabs nitrogen from the air and the bacteria in its roots processes it, thus making it a self-fertilizing plant.
Clover does not need to be watered as often as grass because it grows deeper roots.
So far, clover takes care of: Water Conservation and the Reduction In The Use Of Artificial Fertilizers Which Minimizes The Pollution of Rivers And Streams Due To Run Off.
As a child, I played in parks with Clover/grass lawns and I remember them as the softest, coolest lawns.

Second, I am reading a book called Ultra-Metabolism, and if I believe the things in this book, then I have to declare:
Dandelions ARE NOT weeds either!
Who do I have to call/write incessantly to change the Dandelion's reputation?

In summary, Clover is good and Dandelions are great.

Over and out.

When I grow up...

...I want to be a Gardener.

How do you define a garden?

The answer to this question is important to me because depending on what it is, then it defines me, or at least part of me.

These days I hesitate to tell people that one of my favorite things to do is gardening. I am afraid that people get this idea that I tend beautifully designed English gardens with flowers and bushes placed in strategic locations to maximize the colors and scents.
Nothing could farther from the truth.
My garden is definitely blue collar and the most important issue to me these days is sunlight, specifically where it falls the longest in my yard.
So I tell people I grow plants instead. I figure that is the most accurate description of my activities.
It could be that I am just insecure. I do the same thing with my drawings. I don't tell people I am an artist either. I draw, with pencil and ink. That's all.
I am not a writer. I blog.
Or I suppose I could say that I am a gardener, just not a good one; but then that opens a whole new discussion on what "good" means. When I eat my first delicious salad made from stuff I grew myself, I may come to a different definition of "good" than when I am talking about how pretty my garden looks.
And really, Landscaping and Gardening can be mutually exclusive. I mean, a landscaper doesn't have to grow a thing. He can simply get the plants from someone who grew them.
Does it really matter?
Why do I worry about stuff like this I will never know.
Maybe it is because we have a cold front running through the area and all my plant growing is at a standstill and all I can do is talk about growing plants instead of actually tending to my plants.

All my Irish Eyes sunflowers have real leaves now and I have radishes and lettuce in my square foot gardening beds now. It hit 31 degrees around 5 am this morning and when I left the house the thermometer was reporting 33 degrees. I'll see this afternoon what effect the weather last night had on my seedlings.
I brought in my 5 tomato plants that are in containers. So far, my tomato plan is working as expected.

Catch the gardening wave!

He asked, "What are you doing these days?"
I answered: "I am growing vegetables and flowers"
He said, "I buy my vegetables at the grocery store and my flowers at the flower shop"
I thought, "He doesn't get it"

I read more and more about how people are tuning in to gardening these days. It's like we sense something.
Is it the ailing economy? We've been through bad economic times before, but I don't remember reading that gardening as an activity took off then.
Is it the end of the world in 2012? Are we sensing that soon we will have to survive without the modern infrastructure of roads and supermarkets?
Are we all just getting older? I read tons of blogs by young people who garden.

What is it?

Speaking as a relatively new gardener, I can say this: It is not to save money. If you are new to gardening, you won't really save money on produce. Not at first. At first, you get taken by all the beautiful and glossy gardening catalogs and you buy. You buy everything that may make you into a better gardener. This in spite of all the wonderful web sites and blogs out there telling you how to grow plants on the cheap:

http://www.cheapvegetablegardener.com/
http://www.homegrownevolution.com/
http://www.genteelrecessionista.com/
http://www.littlehouseinthesuburbs.com/
http://www.pathtofreedom.com/
and many, many more.

Also, for a good, entertaining story about how quickly and surreptitiously your costs can get out of control, read the book by William Alexander, The 64 dollar tomato .
Eventually, once you get your gardening legs, you will begin to incorporate the money saving techniques you've read and heard about, but at first, you will pay.

So if saving money is not it, then what? Well, for one, taste.
It is no secret that farmers today grow food that can be shipped thousands of miles away and last a long time in storage. Tomatoes and strawberries get picked green, long before they develop their deliciousness. Tomatoes, at least, are bred to withstand a beating during shipment and taste is not the number one factor during their cultivation. You are more likely to grow delicious produce in your yard, especially if you grow heirlooms.

Nutrition. It is now known that the vegetables and fruits grown by giant farm monstrosities like Monsanto and others, contain much less nutrition than produce from the past. Agribusiness is just that, a business and their concern is making money, not nutritious food. The reasons as to why food is less nutritious today are related to their growing methods. The produce from your yard will be more nutritious, especially if you practice natural, organic gardening.

Health. By growing your own food, you know what's in it. No more salmonella or pesticides in your food, as long as you use organic methods. Period.

Exercise and the joy of doing SOMETHING. Get off the couch and turn the t.v. off. Go fight aphids. Go make compost (I am told is addictive). Then go and show off the beautiful stuff you've grown.

Nothing in this post is original. I am simply saying that after 6 years of growing plants, I can attest to the truth of what it's been said about gardening.

Grow and Tell!