Giant Vegetable Man

Howard Trivelpiece (97), grower of giant vegetables

My family is descended from an old Pennsylvania Dutch family on my mother's side, the Drebelbis (dry-bell-BIS) family. There is big fat book that traces our roots to the 1732 arrival of John Jacob Drebelbis as a colonial settler from the German Palatine region. There is a reunion on an ancient family farm every summer. There is an old photo of my mother as a little girl at the 200th anniversary in 1932, and she appears again, with my kids an I, in the 275th anniversary photo.

Anyway, my mom has always been on the lookout for the Drebelibis name in the news. The name has been spelled many ways as people moved to other parts of the country. Many years ago, my mom spotted a man named Howard Trivelpiece in a magazine article about gardening. My mom wrote to him in California, to tell him about the Drebelibis Cousins of America reunions, should he wish to attend.

Howard has never come East for a reunion, but my mom has been exchanging letters and holiday cards with him ever since. At 97, he is still raising giant vegetables in his northern California backyard. He has a radish, a beet, and a 3.25-pound head of garlic in the Guinness Book of World Records. This past year, the Siskiyou Golden Fair gave him an award for 80 (!) years of competing at the fair, and they named a building for him: the Howard Trivelpiece Ag-Hort Building. He first entered rabbits, in 1928, as a 4-H member. In his best year at the fair, he won 67 ribbons!

His wife Velva is 94. Isn't her name cool? Velva. You don't often hear of a couple where both live into their 90s. They must eat their vegetables.

Howard raises a lot of vegetables and gives them away - except for the best of the crop, which he saves to enter in the fair. Every year, he says he has to save his best veg for what might be his last fair. He credits his success to careful soil building, using lots of rabbit manure, although he is also a Miracle-Gro fan.

I think it's fun that my mom has been writing to him all these years. I'm going to send him a card and a photo of Mom in the garden this summer. I want to know if Velva was a canner. Maybe he'll want to swap seeds!

Plan for Food Garden 2009

Fish boxes with lettuce and spinach last May.

What do you do when there is sleet pelting the windows and cars skidding down the street? Stay home! I did some garden planning for next year.

Once again, I am not sure I will be at my current address all of next summer's growing season. Depends on many things: Will DH get into grad school? Will we be able to prepare my mother's house for habitation? Will we move to another city altogether? Will the collapsing economy have us all sharing a cardboard box under a bridge? The future is murky.

I am going to plan for a combination of my yard and my mother's. I will put most things in containers here at my house, so I can take them to Mom's if I need to move. My yard has the advantage of soil built up for a few years. Mom's soil is awful and thin in the sunny places, so I will have to build beds and use containers there, too. She also has groundhogs that will need trapping.

Another option is to get a community garden plot. I am still thinking about that. But then I would be tending three gardens. Maybe I could get a plot for just a few crops, like sweet potatoes, corn, onions, and cabbage. We'll see.

Lessons learned in this past year's garden:

• I don't have the patience for the many challenges of tomatoes, so no tomatoes next year. We always know people with excess tomatoes that we can have or buy cheaply, so I will put my energy into other crops.
  
  
• Consistent watering is not my strong suit. There always comes a time in the summer when something takes me away from the garden and things get too dry. I need to automate watering, using Self-Watering Containers (SWCs) and/or driplines.
  
  
• The potatoes were a limited success. I can buy them cheaper. I will just grow sweet potatoes, which did very well with little care in 2007.
  
  
• I liked the winter-sowing of herbs and annual flowers. I will do that in milk jugs again in late winter. Lots more basil.
  

Various herb sprouts in milk jug greenhouses in May.

I plan to use several growing methods. I like my fish boxes for for lettuce and other greens, raised high off the ground to avoid pests that munch and cats that spray urine. They are easy to cover with nets. I will sow the fishboxes around St Patrick's Day, when I plant onions at Mom's house.

I planted some big containers last year, and will do it again but make them SWCs. I got some recommendations from my container-gardening list, and I think I will plant peppers, eggplant, chard, zucchini, and celery in big SWCs.

I want to try Straw Bales at my mother's house. They will be good for a year or two, and will break down into her soil. I thought I would try the vining veggies there, cucumber and squashes.

What to plant in the ground when I might move? I was thinking lots of peas the mature early, and then beans if it looks like we will be here through the summer. Several rounds of basil can go in at my house and Mom's. Onions and other roots go in at her house, if I can get a decent raised bed prepared. I liked the carrots and beets this year. I am very tempted to buy "seed tape" for carrots and beets, which I spent a lot of time thinning.

I enjoyed growing my first onions this summer.

The herbs can go into portable clay pots again. Basil and parsley will come from seeds, but I think I will get another thyme, some sage, and some rosemary from starts at Glick's greenhouse.

I experimented with basil in pots and in the ground. Both worked,
but I need more of it. What looked like a lot of pesto in July,
is almost gone in December.

I want to grow larger amounts of fewer veggies, sticking more closely to what I know we will eat. I already have some seeds, from seed-saving, and from catalog orders this fall:

Corn, Ornamental Indian
Cabbage, Copenhagen (heirloom)
Pea, Mississippi Silver field pea
Pea, Tall Telephone - needs trellis
Pea, Black-eyed (saved)
Lentil, French Green
Basil, sweet Italian (saved)
Bean, Commodore Bush Bean (red)
Bean, Taylor Dwarf Horticultural Bush bean (saved)
Bean, Pole bean, Romano (Italian Flat)
Lettuce, Romaine, Parris Island Cos
Spinach, Bloomsdale Long Standing
Cucumber, Lemon Apple
Squash, Burgess Buttercup
Squash, Waltham Butternut

There is a Seed Round Robin coming in the mail from one of my lists, eventually. It might have things I am still missing. Otherwise, I will put in another catalog order. I still need:

chard
kale
sunflowers for seeds
pickling cukes
pie pumpkins
carrots
beets
thyme

Some things, I like as starts from Glick's where I can buy just one plant for less than 50-cents, for my small yard or container. Things I will get from starts at Glick's:

onions sets
sweet potato sets
one zucchini
one eggplant
celery

My cabbage and broccoli starts this past year were savaged in flats that were given to me when they were half-dead. I got a lot of veg from those free flats. I know that they originally came from the Kutztown Produce Auction. I am going to check that out in the spring. If I can get starts very cheaply, it will be a more efficient use of my time than nursing and thinning seeds. And, I can share extras with neighbors.

So, that's my plan, so far. I wish I could grow some fruit, but everything takes time to get established, so I will probably keep buying at markets and visiting u-pick places until we are settled someplace more permanently.

Independence Challenge - Week 16

Not much to report this week. We attempted a few days at the beach, interrupted by work. We are now hip-deep in back-to-school preparation. Lots more work to go back to public school, compared to homeschooled. Paperwork. Dress-code clothing, shoes, lunch containers, backpacks, etc. Wow - summer is so over.

Planted: Nothing new. Ordered seed garlic. Put the fall Master Gardener Plant Sale on my calendar - starts at noon on Sept 12. I should be able to find some nice perennial herbs.



Harvested: Brandywine tomatoes are now more productive and better-looking than the first few. Some nice peppers, and many more on the way. Gourds from the volunteer squash plant. Fresh herbs and celery for cooking. The black-eyed pea pods are starting to dry on the vines, and I have been picking the ones that seem done. The last zucchini.


Preserved: The white onions are dried now, so I trimmed them and put them into a fruit basket. We will use them first, since they store less well than yellow onions. Froze a quart of green beans; DD15 eats frozen beans like candy.

Cooked: Ham-n-bean soup isn't new, but I made this last batch from storage and the garden. A meaty ham bone and chicken stock from the freezer, beans from storage, and lots from our garden: carrots, onions, celery, parsley, sage, thyme. Garlic was store-bought, but I am planting some at Mom's this fall.

Made sauce from the tomatoes. Usually, I just collect a lot of tomatoes, and then throw more than half away as they rot, waiting for sauce-making. This year, I didn't have time to can, but at least I put them in a pot and made some sauce one night. It will be just fine, uncanned, from the fridge next week.

Stored: Visited the famous Weaver's Way food co-op in Germantown (a Philadelphia neighborhood) this weekend, while taking my daughter to a youth event. I wish I lived up the block from it! I bought a few pounds each of: bulgur, black beans, yellow split peas, garbanzos, red lentils, and French indigo lentils.

Managed: Lots of household reorganizing. We are making changes to how the kitchen is organized, to reflect changing patterns of cooking and storing. Looking at ways to use the house spaces better this winter.

Reduced, Reused, Recycled: We sent a formal letter to the landlord, asking him to insulate our attic and fix our windows. The windows are old first-gen aluminum replacement windows, and they are loose in their tracks, making them dangerous to use and horribly leaky. In the winter, the curtains move in our bedroom when the wind blows, with the storm windows closed. We do hang heavy curtains, but I want landlord to also make them less leaky. We will see what happens now.

Local: Shopped at the grower's market, patronized the most local producers at the other farmer's market. Bought peaches and corn at a boy's road-side stand.

One of the growers, Two Gander Farm in Oley, has flyers out for a winter CSA. It's $475 for 20 bi-monthly boxes of winter roots and greens, including a 14 oz jar of honey with each distribution. Work out to $23.75/week, which isn't bad. I would normally spend that much at the weekly market among 5-6 vendors, but I never have a chunk of food money that large all at once.

Learned: Reading about "ollas" as watering devices in containers. You can make your own by gluing two clay pots rim-to-rim. I am definitely going to try that next year, to smooth out the moisture roller-coaster for my veggies.

Independence Challenge - Week 14

This is an extra-long update, covering 10 days. I was too busy to post on Thursday. My daughter went to a youth conference 50 miles away, and I drove 200 miles this week. Expensive ($50 in gasoline), but worth it just for the leadership experience she is getting. We also made some valuable connections during our trips - more below.

Planted: Fine-leaf basil from a cutting I rooted out of a market bunch. Also took rooted slips of a new yarrow from Mom's yard and potted them to establish for planning next year.

Harvested: 17 Taylor Dwarf Horticultural Beans - not 17 pods, just 17 beans, from 5 pods off one plant. I let them dry on the plant. Only one seed germinated from some I swapped last year, and I plan to use all 17 to grow a bigger crop next year. The beans are cute, cream with dark pink speckles. The plants are only 6" high. Also picked basil, and spearmint growing back from the drive-by weed-whacking a few weeks ago.


Cherry tomatoes, and the first three from the heirloom Brandywine - ugliest tomatoes ever! There was a big windy storm with hail last Sunday, and they started to split badly, so we picked them. The unripe ones are less cat-faced and split - so I probably became more regular with water and feeding as the season wore on. I should not wait until they are all red; I think the shoulders stay a little green.


Harvested potatoes and learned valuable lessons. I had planted a muck bucket with both Yukon Gold and Pontiac Red seed potatoes, starting shallow and adding dirt as the plants got taller. I will never mix varieties again. The YG grew, bloomed, died back, and started to rot before the Reds even bloomed. I finally dumped out the bucket this week, and got a short yield of both - most of the reds were very tiny and obviously needed more time. I had been concerned this whole time that the soil was too muddy and compacted, or that pill bugs were eating the taters underground. Neither of those things happened - the compost I mixed in did great, and the bugs only seemed to eat the tender shoots early on. But - that's what this little yard is for, experimenting for future larger planting. Maybe I should try buying storage potatoes from local growers, and just grow sweet potatoes, which went very well last year, with almost no care.

Preserved: A pint of pickled carrots and 4 pints of bread-n-butter pickles. Wow, pickling is a sweaty 3-day process: liming, brining, and canning. The boiling brine was enough to drive me out the back door for air at one point. I want to try Chow-Chow for my mom, but I'm using a refrigerator recipe for that one! Froze some split chicken breasts that DD11 spotted being marked to half-price at the store.

Cooked: Tried new banana bread and zucchini bread recipes, neither of them very exciting. This week's zuke bread is pleasant but crumbly, and the banana tastes like baking soda. I'm looking for never-fail recipes I can make without thinking twice. I do have some quick breads like that, but they often include lots of nuts and fruits for the holidays, like my Loaded Pumpkin Banana Bread. I even sold 6 loaves to a caterer last year. I love my parsnip coffee cake and Oatmeal Breakfast Loaf. But what if all the extra stuff were not available, and I just had thawed banana mash or grated zuke and local spelt flour? I want tasty, sturdy loaves for breakfast and lunch boxes. Not oily and heavy, but also not crumbly, without relying on cream cheese to give them life and structural integrity. Am I asking too much?

The spearmint tea I made was much less minty than the tea from chocolate mint, using a fresh handful of similar size in the same pot, with one white tea bag in a gallon pitcher for color and depth. As I experiment more with my own tea blends, I think the spearmint will be good as a secondary note in a blend with other flavors, where it will not overwhelm. The chocolate mint is good alone, and will probably make good mint jelly or syrup.

I have a food weakness from childhood: Kraft boxed macaroni-n-cheese. But this week, I think I developed a replacement that is just as easy to make. Boiled 1/2 lb of elbows (too much - have to work on portion size), buttered them a bit, added some grated Pecorino Romano, a splash of dairy, and a spoonful of pesto. The pesto made a big difference - instead of a taste that my "mouth memory" would want to compare with the packaged stuff, it made a new mouth memory. I think that a key to slowly eliminating packaged food favorites is finding new favorites, not trying to duplicate the old ones. DD15 has been making curry right and left lately, and wants to learn to cook more Indian food.

Experimented with making peach BBQ sauce from the disappointing peach preserves. Will also try the jam as a yogurt sweetener with additional fruit. I have 6 more half-pints of jam that is a medium peach color, way too sweet, and not very peachy tasting. It was the Blue Book recipe, so I expected better. Peach season is just cranking up, so I have time to try more.

Managed: Stored a lot of Indian spices (a blog post about that coming up next), 10 lbs of basmati rice. I notice the jam-making is really making us run through the stored sugar. I need to buy it in larger bags and arrange barrel storage sooner, rather than later. Bought more spelt flour.

At yard sales, we found four nice casserole/soup crocks, and two flat baskets for drying herbs or onions. Fixed, cleaned, and sorted things. Fixed the weed whacker.

Got wonderful bench for the porch on Freecycle (photo at the top). The woman that gave it to me told me that her grandfather made the bench for her mother and aunts to sit and eat breakfast as children in the 1930's. I don't think I would have given it away, but she was downsizing and moving closer to her job to save gas as three of four teen daughters headed to college. It looks great on the porch.

Reduced, Reused, Recycled: Gave away an over-sized upholstered chair to make DD15's room roomier. Our house always looks messy, partly because we read and haven't enough shelf space. We have lots of books, magazines and papers in various piles. But we also have "stuff" like my large collection of egg beaters and potato mashers. And now the kitchen is crammed with new supplies and equipment. Gotta keep the house from 'sploding, somehow.

DD15 starts a new job as a barista next week, and we did the cost calculations of driving. We asked for her to work several longer shifts, instead of a lot of short ones, to make the 3 mile commute worth the time and energy. I would suggest biking, but the highway she would have to travel is dangerous. The job has the advantage that she is allowed to read and do school work during the slow times.

Think I got DH to order a Kill-A-Watt. Planning to have DD11 work on tracking our electric usage this fall. She will like that.

Local: Took a lot of photos at our little producer market, to make a blog post I can use to promote the market to local friends. The more business it gets, the more vendors will be attracted.

Visited two sets of friends that go on "the list" of people to stay in touch with in a crisis. One is a our former landlord and his wife, who has assembled a set of five city rowhouses on the edge of Philadelphia. They are surrounding themselves with their "family of choice" by selectively renting the houses. They have planted fruit trees, collected tools. The wife is a chef, who told me about the Indian grocery store we visited. The husband is very good at renovating, salvaging, building. Their houses are right on the train line that would connect to Reading. They are going to Burning Man, in the Nevada desert, in August, which is nothing if not an exercise in planning and eating out of stored food and water, while building a survival community with strangers.

The other set of friends are from the martial arts community. Very fun - she does roller derby. martial arts, and is taking med-tech classes. He is an artist, art installer, origami folder, black belt everything, skate boarder, and a good shot. They have their own connections to other multi-skilled people, and get along well with our kids. They have already moved from car to motorcycle. They might be interested in our local food explorations.

Learned: Suggested a skill to DH: locksmithing. Caught his fancy. Fits his previous experience as a Private Investigator. He got right to work looking for courses and checking our state's certification process. I think that could be a great sideline for him. He is also looking into becoming a notary public.

My "Adapting in Place" class starts online this week. Classmate introductions and preliminary discussions have begun. It promises to be fascinating to hear more about the challenges each different household faces.

Library: Found a 1972 recipe booklet Quick Pickling from the Heinz corporation. It describes the open kettle method for canning, so I will not be using the instructions, but the recipes themselves might be good. Have been working on printing out more of my recipe collection, as well as some related articles about preserving and storage.

Independence Challenge - Week 13

Planted: Got a bunch of native yarrow on Freecycle and planted it in my mom's yard for next year's yarrow salve production.

The onion harvest freed up a big patch of dirt, and I struggle to resist planting for fall. We still expect to move, but obviously not mid-summer. What if we are still here at Thanksgiving, and I wasted a whole season? Calmed myself by planting some store-bought potatoes that sprouted. Might not pay off, but it's a good experiment, and no big loss if I have to leave them in the ground.

Harvested: White onions, now drying in a tray. We got the first eggplant, and a sweet yellow pepper from the plant the neighbor gave us, another zucchini. But the zucchini plant is dying from a Squash Vine Borer larvae I missed. I am sure I won't have any trouble finding zukes to buy inexpensively.

Preserved: Bagged the dried yellow onions in net bags. Dried yarrow leaves and flowers. In the process of trying some pickling - bread & butter pickles from purchased Kirby cucumbers. Get the impression that I do everything in a 2-foot square of yellow 70's Formica? I do!

Canned 7 half-pints of peach preserves. We've been watching a peach tree down the block at the edge of a school district athletic field. The tree is untended except to mow under it, so it's "organic." Today there was a kid in the tree picking peaches, so we leaped into action and picked almost 10 pounds of free peaches. Gave a third to a little girl that went with us, ate about a third, and turned a third into peach preserves. My mother helped me scald and peel the fruit. Froze two cups of slices to make peach sauce for yogurt later.

Made and froze 6 quarts of organic chicken stock, but I don't count that as preserving, since we do that monthly, and I don't have enough freezer space to store more than a month's worth. I keep looking for a pressure canner, so I can put up stock in jars. I notice that I am more willing to do hot summer cooking and canning in our UN-air-conditioned house. When it's 90+ and high humidity, and I turn on the oven or boil a big pot, I joke that I am toughening us up for global warming.

Cooked: DD15 wanted to do things with lentils, so we started with a recipe for curried lentils and basmati, to which she added a chicken thigh for each of us, and some bok choy from the market. Very good, but at the edge of my spicy limits (she and DH have more expansive limits). Smelled fabulous. This is a good basic recipe that we can make from storage, and a variety of meat or vegetables.

Other new experiments: perfecting BBQ chicken thighs on the new grill, bread pudding with cherries for a potluck (yum!), a new pepperoni lasagna. Used a fine-leaf basil from the herb lady - gotta grow that next year. Falling into a nice pattern of standard cooking: yogurt, burrito fillings, brewing of teas, making of zucchini bread, grilling of chicken, etc.

Prepared: Stocked pickling salt, mustard seeds, celery seed, turmeric, sunflower seeds, yet more baking soda (after learning I could use it to nixtamelize corn). I basically buy sugar, salt, vinegar and baking soda every time I go to a store.

Cleaned, organized and inventoried the freezer. Not much room left, and we didn't even freeze any corn yet. Frozen quarts of stock come and go constantly. Guess I will have to dehydrate more. I will try to use the freezer as a holding space for things to can, and less as long-term storage. Frozen pesto, butter, and fruit need to live there.

Reduced, Reused, Recycled: We want to make our 2000 Jeep Cherokee last until we can afford a hybrid or some other more efficient vehicle. I figured out it costs about $0.25/mile when gas is $4/gallon. It is useful to be able to say, "It will cost $2.50 for that errand 5 miles away - am I saving enough money to justify driving further, or should I buy stuff at a slightly higher price, closer to home?" It costs $1.50 to drive to my Mom's and back.

Bought ice cube trays at a yard sale - need to be able to make an ice bath for blanching food. Also got a wooden crate, some pottery tools, and some burlap. Took some cotton flannel shirts from the freebie pile, to see if we can sew some reusable pads. At the good annual synagogue rummage, I got 8 half-pint canning jars, an extra pair of snow boots, a bundle of small white paper bags I will use as seed envelopes, a large cotton blanket, and some clothes for the kids.

We have added a second clothesline and I bought 300 clothespins. I have made it a priority in the girls' chores that someone bring up a load of laundry and hang it, every morning that there is no rain. The other day, DD11 even ran home from playing and took down the laundry when it threatened to rain! By George, I think they are catching on.

We got our car AC recharged, and it feels bizarrely decadent to use it. Car AC uses gas, but driving with the windows down uses more, and rolling them up is not an option in a black car in the summer.

Local: Someone brought mahogany rice to a church potluck, and I found out about a Vietnamese food store around Chestnut and Wunder Streets. We continue to enjoy the Sunday producer market - a new stand with stone fruit opened last week and we bought the first local peaches and plums. Eating lots of very fresh corn.

Learned: Talked to a woman that's been married 60 years (!), who grew up with lots of canning. Her father managed orchards in New York State until he could buy his own. She recalled that her mother canned every night, as she cooked dinner. Her loaded pressure canner held 12 quarts. It would cool overnight, the jars ready to be put away each morning. Wow. A dozen jars a day, almost every day. But - it was the systematic inclusion of canning in her routine that struck me. No dramatic "Ooo, today I will can!" Just can something, day in and day out, as part of the regular cooking.

Priced parts at Lowe's to make a rain barrel, and learned how vague most water barrel instructions are. I want to make a few barrels for mom's house. Will be testing instructions in the weeks to come.

Joined lists for edible container gardening and preserving food, where I am already learning new things.

Library: After weeks of waiting for the big book sale, I didn't get to go. Had to use the book money to pay an unexpected auto repair bill. Boo hoo! I will have to do the best I can at yard sales and auctions. Did buy the latest edition of the Ball Blue Book of Preserving, replacing my vintage copy. The supermarket had Blue Books for $4.55, displayed next to the canning jars.

Rainy 4th of July Photos

Most activities were rained out today, including fireworks, cherry-picking, and a bandshell concert. We spent the day cooking, catching up on recorded TV shows, and reading. I took advantage of a break in the rain to take some garden photos.

The yellow onions are ready to be harvested when it dries out:

A spiderweb caught a lot of raindrops:

Potted guara leaning over to kiss the celery:

Last of the roses:

Mystery cabbages:

Lotta basil:

Japanese Bloodgrass:

Sedums:

Battleground: Garden

It's bad day in the yard.

I've been saying that this garden is meant to experiment with more veggies than I normally grow - a sort of "practice garden" to try out things I want to grow on a larger scale in a bigger yard. I am having just a few more "learning opportunities" than I wanted just now.

The lush green honeymoon of spring is over, and the long hot summer garden battle is being waged. Drought, bugs, nutrient deficiencies, and wayward neighbors with weed-wackers are all in play.

Yesterday evening, someone came along and weed-whacked the back alley behind our row of houses. Normally, each resident is responsible for maintaining the strip along their back boundary, out to the middle of the alley right-of-way. But SOMEONE thought they should whack along EVERYONE'S boundary. My neighbor and I lost all our spearmint. I also lost iris, salvia, and peony I was planning to transplant on a cooler day. The year's passionflower is probably gone, which will be a huge disappointment to all the solitary bees that loved it last year. I also lost the ripening larkspur seed I was going to save. I usually let the ones in the alley look ratty until I can save seed, so I don't have to leave them looking dead in the backyard proper. I have some seed from 2007 I am going to broadcast instead, to overwinter for next year.

I was at my Mom's when this happened, and my DH was waiting for me when I came home. He looked grim and said, "I have bad news." He and the kids didn't want me to see it unprepared and have a screaming fit. Apparently, the neighbor DID have a screaming fit, in Spanish. I wish I had been there to join in.

I think I saw a Japanese beetle today. I hope I am wrong.

The potatoes look like hell. I may dig some up and see if there are new potatoes, or if the pill bugs have just eaten them all up. The zucchini isn't pollinating - we must be more short on bees this year than last. I am going to try manual pollination. I've only gotten two zukes so far, and I should have had 6 or 8 by now.

At least the celery, parsley, and cowpeas look OK so far. The tomatoes are setting fruit and the eggplants are finally growing and blooming a little. Those mystery "lettuce" plants look more like a brassica of some sort, but they are at least robust in the fish boxes. The onions are looking dry, but that might be normal this close to harvest.

I am going to go buy some fish emulsion, a new hose watering wand, and some more potting soil for herbs. Maybe I need to visit a nursery. Shopping therapy, of the garden geek variety.

Spring Veggie Review

This week's record-breaking temperatures in the upper 90's have pretty much ended "spring" for us, even if Summer Solstice is not quite here. This seems like a good time to review the spring veggie season. For spring harvest, I planted lettuce, spinach, mustard greens, green onions, and peas - all for the first time.

Lettuce: directly sown into styrofoam fish box, very early in the spring. I over-sowed, and while the lush carpet of sprouts looked great, they were very hard to thin and I failed to be ruthless. The lettuce was productive, but would have grown larger if it were thinned better. The bigger problem was that no one really liked the "Black-Seeded Simpson" variety. DD15 and DH both thought it was bitter.

Spinach: directly sown into styrofoam fish box, very early in the spring. Again, over-sown and under-thinned. The plants are starting to bolt, without ever having gotten large enough to pick. I do still have some transplanted into the carrot bed, and they may still produce leaves.

Spinach Mustard: winter-sown in a tray enclosed in a bag. First thing to sprout in March. Way, way too densely-sown and hard to transplant. I had no place to go with these. A few went into the ill-fated Mom-box and are still growing - the critters didn't like them. The rest of the tray bolted (photo above) without getting more than an inch high - the crowding must have been too stressful. There are also a few in the ground near the carrots, but I think they are bolting, too.

Green Onions - directly sown in prepared ground in March. Slow to germinate. Fairly robust, but still not large enough to harvest. Seems to be a success. Could have been sown more evenly. Requires little labor beyond some weeding. I also planted lots of yellow and white onions from sets, to harvest later in the summer. I find the onions all to be low-labor and easy to weed. Onions may be cheap to buy, but they are also easy-peasy to grow. It felt very productive to have something to plant in the earliest part of the season.

Peas: directly sown around St. Patrick's Day. Pear tree twigs later added as pea trellis. These were a lot of fun to watch sprout and bloom. Pretty plants and flowers. We have already harvested all the peas and eaten them the same day. I need to add innoculant next time, to increase the yield. I would need to plant many more of them, if we want to have peas to freeze. I count the peas very much in the success column.

However, if our overall goal was to reduce our spending on produce, the spring was a failure. I've harvested and dried thyme, lemon balm, and mint. We ate a little of the lettuce, and about 2 cups or so of peas. But much was learned at little expense, which is valuable before we start growing on a larger scale. The germination was very successful, and the fish boxes are great containers. I need to work on less-dense sowing, better thinning, and more containers for transplanting. We would have been fine with 8-12 full-sized plants of each variety of greens, and I sowed hundreds. For lettuce, I think I want to stick with growing romaine, which everyone likes, and was grew nicely last year. I will have another shot at spinach and lettuce in the fall garden.

I've pulled out the lettuce in one fish box, and planted transplants of a head lettuce I hope is heat-tolerant. We also pulled out the pea vines today, and planted a short row of 20 cowpea seeds in their place.

So... on to summer gardening!

May Bloom Day Photos

First day of the first flower (in four years) on the peony we named Dolly. I am joining the many garden bloggers who post "what's blooming" on the 15th of each month. And it also happens to be the day that the peonies and iris first bloomed. DD15 saw it first from her window when she woke up, and ran downstairs into the yard in her pajamas, yelling, "Look out back!"

The peony "Betty" also has two flowers, slightly different than Dolly, with a little white fringe in there. I should try to figure out what these are one day. I don't even know if May 15 is an early, mid-season, or late peony.

This is also opening day for the iris, another plant that was already here when we moved in, and for which I have no ID. I know some people have thousands of iris, and I have just these few, but they are mine and I love the deep solid royalty of the purple.

Just yesterday, it looked like this.

The peas are blooming. Took this snap yesterday, and today they look a little ragged because I put in pear twigs as peas trellis, and made them stand up better.

The salvia looks great, and the yarrow behind it is close to blooming. So much to anticipate.

The sweet little lyre-leafed sage just got flowers a day or two ago, and I hope it casts seeds around under that hosta. I have to clear some of the sedum so it isn't choked. Last year, the hosta provided shade for the sage later in the season.

There is a tiny viola at the edge of the veggie bed, self-seeded, self-empowered.

Neighborly Pepper

I noticed the neighbor planting his garden and stuck my head over the wall to see what he had. Lots of transplants of hot peppers, lots of tomatoes only about 6" apart, cilantro, onions. From previous years, I know that he will put in tall stakes and make rope trellis for the tomatoes. He gave us a yellow pepper plant that looked longish on the tag I glimpsed - not sure if it is hot or not - but we stuck it in an empty spot among the green onions to try it out. We will have make sure to give them produce this summer. Our conversation is a little short since the man has limited English and I have no Spanish - but gardening somehow makes that inconsequential. His wife and I trade food samples, although she has even less English - we mostly smile and nod at each other.

Busy

I've spent bits of sanity time doing things in the garden, but haven't had time to post. Our Mother's Day gardening plans were derailed by a trip to Lancaster. Probably won't have time to get out there again until after the weekend. Incredibly busy and stressful week.

But the peonies are about to bloom. One is starting to loosen up. There are iris right behind, and I don't know how much bigger the yarrow can get without exploding.

I have been shearing parts of the grass and mulching with it. Weeding the onions and carrots. Reduced the pill bug population in the potato bucket by just scooping them out with a spoon and throwing them in the neighbor's desert-like yard. DD11 put some in her bug tank and has been reading about them - who knew they were crustaceans? Got the germinated parsnip seeds planted in the cardboard tubes, and a whole lot of garlic chives in a trough. The stolen Sedum seems to be doing OK.


Disappointed that I have now missed both the Master Gardener Sale and the Vo-Tech greenhouse sale. Maybe we will go up to the Kutztown Produce Auction one day soon - I know they have plants, as well as huge quantities of produce, if I start putting up more food.

Idea from a garden blog: a re-seeding garden full of annuals that reseed themselves. Forget-me-nots, larkspur, cleome, snapdragons, sweet alyssum, portulaca. Might be a good informal idea for Mom's side yard along the fence.

More veg in

Weather - nice steady light rain forecast for the next few days.

Our dentist appointment in Oley was canceled, but they didn't tell us before we got there, so we had breakfast at the Legion diner instead. I need to ask where they get their chipped beef; it has a smokier taste than the usual diner SOS.

Of course, we had to stop at Glick's. To replace the murdered eggplant, I selected a "Little Fingers," since I really liked that one last year. It was a good-looking plant and very productive. I also got another 4-pk of celery to add another little row. And four sweet potato slips that I hope to plant at Mom's.

The zucchini will be "Green Spineless" this year. I liked "President" last year, with its big silver-spotted leaves, but Glick's offered a different variety this year. It looks so small in the big bucket but I know that will change quickly. I am going to try collaring the plant in tin foil against the vine borers. Or maybe drape the whole pot in row cover.

(Zucchini, Cherry Tomato, and Chickpeas lining the walk)

Also got a 4-pk of Profusion Zinnias in "Apricot." I know I have seeds, but I didn't get them planted yet and I am impatient. The iris and peonies are going to explode soon, and I feel like I have to check every few hours to make sure I don't miss it!

I planted the eggplant, celery, and zucchini right away, in the rain. Everything looks very lush when it's wet. The grass and clover seem to have grown 6" in a day. All the potatoes are now poking out of the ground. Some of the yellow onions bulbs seem to be sticking out of the ground too far, although they are growing nicely. I think I will put a little layer of compost in that patch, and mulch it with cut grass - on a drier day.


I need to find more planting room - maybe carve back the grass edge of the path to make a narrow bed for something. I have a lot of herbs sprouting, and I could use a bush cucumber.

Eggplant Tragedy

I was busy today, so I didn't go out in the yard until dusk today. Something had eaten one of my eggplant seedlings. The Ichibana. It was just gone. Not dug up, but eaten to the ground. Just yesterday I scattered crushed eggshell around the peas, eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes to stop the slugs. I wish I knew what ate it.

Transplanted Tomatoes

Weather: Rain off and on the past few days. Nights in the low 40s and days in the 60s. Weekend forecast to be in the 70s during the day, and 50s at night.

Planted: transplants of the tomatoes and eggplants, and put the last two Norland potatoes in the skimpy end of the green onion bed. I hope we are done with last frosts, but if one is predicted in the nest week or two, I will cover the plants.

Got worried the bucket of potatoes was rotting and dug one up... it's sprouting. I think we just need some warmer days to warm up the bucket. I still have a sweet potato to find place for.

Challenges: Independence and Local Food

I'm signing up for two blog "challenges." Challenges seem to be these things where a bunch of bloggers all decide to do something and post about it for a period of time.

One Local Summer is one where you commit to preparing one meal a week that is made from ingredients all produced within 100 miles of your house. It starts June 1 and goes to August 31. Once a week the challenge watcher will visit your blog to gather your post about your local meal. Fortunately, the West Reading producer-only market starts Sunday, June 1st. Later in the season, we should be able to do a few from our own yard. There are some exceptions, like oil and spices. I better get to work on finding a local source for flour and cornmeal - maybe FM Brown's Sons.

Independence Days Challenge is an ongoing challenge to do at least one thing a day to advance toward independence from the industrial food system:

Plant something.
Harvest something.
Preserve something.
Prep something.
Cook something.
Manage your food reserves.
Work on local food systems.
Compost something.
Learn a new skill.

So far, I transplanted pepper plants, started a plate of parsnip seeds germinating in wet paper towels, and potted up the sprouted chickpeas. I also started tracking the tax sale lists, to watch for a city lot I could "farm", although that will depend on where DH gets a job. Later today, I will go back to Mom's house to do more work. I plan to work on preparing a bed for root vegetables, and talk to her about straw bale gardening. I will plan to post each weeks activity on Thursdays.

Wet and chilly week

Of course, as soon as I jump the gun and buy tomato and pepper plants, the weather turns cold. It will go back down to 37 tomorrow night. Lots of rain and somewhat chilly weather forecast for the next week to 10 days.

I planted the celery and parsley, which will be fine with the chill. They are in front of the peas.

We pounded in stakes and set up a cage for the two eggplants and the Brandywine tomato, but didn't plant them. I am debating whether to keep bringing them inside at night, or to plant them and cover them with boxes at night.

I planted the Pontiac Red and the Yukon Gold potatoes, but I am worried about the soil in the bucket. It seemed too wet, like the bucket wasn't draining well enough. I did start with half compost and half topsoil. Now it is supposed to rain for a week - I don't want them to rot. I may have to dig them back up quickly and work more organic matter into the bucket. Or drill more holes in it.

I must thin the greens this week. I will think some into the third fish box and take it to Mom's house. Some will be transplanted into little lettuce basket-gardens as gifts. Some of the lettuce may even be eaten immediately. But I will still have far more little plants, especially mustard spinach, than I can use. There is my lesson in succession planting - I planted the whole envelope at once. I need to get more boxes and set up a better system of planting every two weeks.

My seed swap arrived - commercial packets of Parsnip "Harris Model" and Pak Choi. Also a packet Roma tomato seeds that I won't use this year. I posted looking for a swap to get lemon cucumbers.

DD11 offered to weed the onions beds, and found a tiny white potato attached to one of the weeds. We realized that a piece of potato in last year's trench-composted kitchen scrap must have germinated. We replanted it in a spot with no onions.

More things to get done in the next week or so:

Thin greens
Make basket-gardens of greens
Find 5-gallon bucket for sweet potato
Buy more bags of dirt - try Lowes
Plant parsnip seeds to in toilet paper cores
Prepare bed at Mom's for carrots and parsnips
Spray the peonies with baking soda water

Trip to Oley

I love going to Oley, about 8 or 10 miles into the countryside. We had an early dentist appointment at the Vo-Tech, and then we went to the Oley Legion Diner for breakfast. Less than $10 for three of us to have breakfast, and the conversation is fabulous - peak oil talk, discussion of artisan bread and cheese, gossip among people that eat breakfast together on a regular basis. I got a farm auction flyer hanging on a fish chain on the wall - lots of garden tools and canning jars, but I wonder if its worth driving to Colebrookdale Township on May 10 at 9AM.

A man in "overhauls" came in with two loafs of bread for the waitress (who is think is a part-owner). The man and the waitress are both "bread freaks" and he wanted her to try the extra-sour pumpernickel he just got. It was from the Oley Bakery, which is mostly wholesale to fancy urban outlets, but can be found at Christman's Meat Market just down the road. He offered us a sample slice - it was definitely sour, but it made me immediately want to put corned beef and swiss on it to grill. The man was from Philadelphia, now living in Oley and wearing bib overalls in diners.

I asked if they knew anything about that Old Earth Farm, and they had heard of it, but didn't say much else. Don't know what that means. They told me about an organic farm run by an Aaron Burkholder near Bowers. Googling turned up an address: 460 Bowers Rd, Kutztown PA 19530. We'll have to check that out.

We did stop at Cristman's - no pumpernickel, but they had other great Oley Bakery loaves for about $3.25. But better yet - the meat market is great. Premise-made scrapple and pickled tripe. I found real lard with no additives for $1.19/lb. They render it right there and dip it out of a bucket for customers.

Then we went to Glick's, which is full swing. The front parking lot was full. I stayed out of the perennial section - I knew I would be too tempted. I had to limit myself even in the veggies. Market 4-packs are $1.45, or 45 cents for single plants. Perfect for small gardens where you can only support one or two of each plant. Here is what we got:

Potatoes: Yukon Gold (1), Pontiac Red (3), Dark Red Norland (2)
Sweet Peppers: Valencia (red), Baby Belle (dark red-purple), Chocolate Beauty
Eggplants: Ichiban, heirloom Black Beauty
Tomatoes: Brandywine, Sun Sugar (yellow cherry)
Celery "Tall Utah"
Italian Parsley

I thought we were only growing cherry tomatoes for DD15, but she also wanted a slicing tomato for sandwiches. I must pay more attention to pruning, water, and fertilizing this time.

At $0.90/lb, I only spent 45 cents on seed taters, and I already need more buckets to grow them! The whole bill was $6.90. I saw a lot of brassicas I would have tried, but I can already see the white cabbage moths - I am not buying until I have row cover arranged. Maybe I will get some when they have the spring sale, if there is any room left in the yard!

Hitting 80 on Friday!

Wow! This week is supposed to be in the 70's, almost 80 by Friday. Nights only in the 50s. That should really warm up the ground. The warmer days have had a dramatic effect on the returning perennials. The peonies are just about jumping out of the ground. There are violets in the grass.

I pressed some violets in a phone book the other day, along with some daffodils, hyacinths, and tulip petals. Never tried those before; can't wait to see how they turn out. I'm trying to press some of everything has blooms this year.

The green onions finally sprouted. I thought they weren't going to do anything. I guess they just needed warmer dirt. All we need to see now is the carrot and beet sprouts. DD11 checks every day.

I should get more planted. I am swapping some guy in Arizona for some parsnip seeds. We cleaned up some stuff in the yard today. Pulled some weeds and stacked some bricks, preparatory to laying out a new brick path. It will just be a temporary path, with the bricks set right on newspaper over dirt, so I can get into the back corner of the yard after things start growing.

The short breaks taken out in the yard have been sanity-saving lately, as I am yanked in different directions by competing responsibilities.

Lots happening now!

Weather: Clear and cool. Nights in the low 40s, days in the upper 50s. Occasionally warmer.

Things are cooking now! The peas popped out of the ground on the 11th. A few of the yellow onions have already sprouted, but many had to be replanted after cats dug them up - I guess the new plot looked like an attractive litter box. And now the bunching onions are also sprouting. The greens continue to do beautifully - developing second leaves. Will need thinning soon.

The jugs have not sprouted anything yet, but if the week warms up a bit as expected, that should change. I have decided to look for some broccoli transplants for the larger fish box. I need to get it off the ground and find a cover, to keep the cabbage butterflies away.

To do, this next week or so:

Find broccoli transplants
Get more seed potatoes (killed the first batch by forgetting to plant them)
Find tires for potato tower
Find 5-gallon bucket for sweet potato
Get parsnip seeds to plant in toilet paper cores
Lay out the brick path
Get the abandoned pallet behind Turkey Hill to use for a bed paths
Spray the peonies with baking soda water

Ohh! I found out when the spring Master Gardener Sale will be - Friday May 2 is the first day. Yay! Loved it last year - must put money aside.

On the ornamental side, a few tulips are blooming and I pressed a few daffodils and hyacinths to see how they turn out. Most of the perennials are showing good signs of new growth, some faster than the others. One peony is definitely racing ahead - could be a different cultivar than the slower ones, or the others could just be weaker plants. It's the only one that bloomed last year.

Taking the kids to work in Mom's yard on Wednesday. Should prove interesting. Have stopped in and looked at the things I transplanted in the fall, and they all look good. Getting her to make room in the back yard will be a priority, as well as clearing the junk out of eyeshot just inside the gate.

Taylor Bean propagation disappointing

Nothing much happened with the Taylor beans. One looked like it was thinking about germinating, and poked out a little thing that might be a root one day. I stuck it in a pot of dirt. Maybe it will grow, maybe not.

I need to find something else to try. I want shell beans and dried peas this year. Some snap beans and garden peas will be okay, too, but I want the dried ones more. I need to find out what grows well around here. I posted to the PA forum at GardenWeb, but it doesn't seem to be getting much traffic. A woman did give me a good method for intensely planting peas and beans - dig a wide shallow trench and plant the seeds all across it, 1" apart in all directions. Then cover and insert twigs for pea fencing, or supports for pole beans. She said it came from an old Victory Garden book - and she never soaks them first.

Maybe I should look for the things I buy in cans! Cannelinis, garbanzos, northern whites, black beans, etc...