Last Thursday's dinner...ended up going all-garden vegetarian :) After I started frying up the taters, I realized I had no meat that would cook up in the same time frame, then decided I really didn't need it. Went to visit Mom in Maine the next day,
Sunday night's harvest.
Had Monday off...spent Sunday pulling weeds (between jumping in the pond). Today was another 93º day...hour in the garden, ten minutes in the pond, short break in the house, and repeat.
Planted today for the fall garden:
Tall Telephone Peas
Knight Peas
Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans (tore up what remained of my 2nd planting of bush beans; a rabbit got in and really did a wonder on the young plants)
Several different lettuces
Spinach
Beets
Pak Choi
Kholrabi
Swiss Chard
Cucumbers
Early Prolific Yellow Squash (42 day maturity)
Squash.
Durn it, I deleted the photo of the tomatoes!
Hmmm, my Better Boy(?) Tomatoes are growing WAY taller then the U-posts holding the twine. I had to buy some wooden stakes to tie them up to today. Next year I'll need some 5' or maybe 6' T-posts to use by them.
The fierce winds when a line of Thunderstorms passed through last Tuesday didn't help -- it was swirling (not swaying) the tree tops at first...with Tornado Warnings up for our area! That contributed to bending them over, so I had to straighten them carefully today.
Greeen and yellow beans, cucumbers (showing signs of stress from heat and dryness!), squash, chard. I think I was supposed to start picking the chard a bit sooner.
Plus some lettuce (last until fall, it's finally turned bitter), baby yellow squash and zuke, couple red onions that were flowering that I didn't pick yesterday, couple of shallots.
Fixins for Saturday's dinner after I got home from Old Sturbridge Village (Photo essay here.)
Oh my this needs cleaning! Glad it's a 90º day, I'd hate to get a chill while doing this...
So, I had been thinking a bird or something was "sitting" on some of my onions because they were randomly bent over.
Du'oh. That's HOW they're SUPPOSED to act when they're done. Never had them come out this well to recognize good!
Picked the yellows and reds today, the whites still haven't started flopping.
99 Days since I put them in the ground, rule of thumb I read this year is 100 days, so we were right there. I think it'll be interesting experiment next year to make some successive plantings from late March to late April and see how they do.
Later in the afternoon.
I had to give the bush beans a little support with poles and twine...I tried to keep it "loose" as I did it, just enough to prop them up off the ground.
In between the U posts, I hammered in some red oak stakes I made, from branches of trees I cut down for firewood. These just pushed back on the baling twine to push the whole row back, nothing fancy.
57 Onions curing in the garage. They'll stay here for a few days, a week for the tops to dry and the skins to harden up. I'll have to sort through them then to see which ones seem like they'll store well, and which ones I should chop up and freeze (or give away for use fresh).
Tonight's dinner -- Hot Italian Sausage from Campbell's Farm in Griswold fried up with my onions, baby zuke, and baby yellow squash.
It's summertime. There's no new Mad Men this summer.
Instead, I'm watching Ally McBeal on Netflix. FML.
Let's see, 2010/2011 Must See TV:
1) Community
2) Game of Thrones
3) Mad Men
How bad is TV now that I can only figure out three shows that I can put a number to?
Chuck...meh when it's ordinary, phenomenal when they recapture that Season 2 magic. Budget cuts alone don't excuse the inconsistency of the writing. But what a cast. But it takes writing to get a number!
Glee...a TV show that needs Ritalin. I just can't bring myself to give it a number. Focus folks, focus...I know it's bubblegum, but focus.
Sons of Anarchy
House...meh it's run it's course.
Can't even think of any other fictional shows I watched this past year!
My first cauliflower ever. I squeed when I saw it.
In the basket! (To be steamed for dinner tonight)
July 4th weekend I cleaned up some by the entrance to the driveway, and moved a selection of native and hybrid daylillies down there. Over the next couple years I hope to expand this bed more, too.
Was originally forecast for 1"+ of rain on Sunday night when I planted them; we got a trace. It's been over a week since good rain and I've started irrigating the garden using a hose that diverts some of the flow from my sump pump -- just leave the open hose in place for a few hours to flood a section at a time (not enough pressure for sprinklers or soaker hose, but I'm already using the electricity so just let it have at it.)
Not enough hoses to reach these flowers though, so I'm hauling it by five gallon bucket...I like the looks of the American flag buckets.
My herbs...I'm really liking them in containers like this. I had thought about a raised bed, but now I'm thinking next year I'll get a table and just continuing to use containers for a bigger assortment. Plus with them up this high, Oscar can't pee on them :D
Potatoes, tomatoes, daylillies, squash all blend together...there must be a trick to good garden photos I haven't learned yet for situations like this!
Toms
Volunteer tomatoe in the big pile of manure...where the heck did that come from!
Summer Squash...maybe a smidge not enough sun way back here. There's more in the weeds towards the back, hopefully I can mow this weekend for mulch for them!
Chard! Hrrmmph...just remembered I wanted to taste it and then I started weeding, and watering, and photographing...and forgot to taste it!
Red lettuce is starting to wind down, but the green one is going gangbusters still!
Onions...I think a bird landed and flattened several onions in several spots. Only explanation I have, they've been squished, it's not a natural lay down.
Beans doing well...no beans yet though. Soon.
The big squash is a Blue Hubbard, specifically planted as a trap crop. It's July 6th and I haven't seen a Squash Bug yet. Past history is I've found egg masses on 7/1 and seen adults by 7/8...so I'm watching patiently :)
Sometimes folks use the words "conventional" or perhaps "modern" to describe how most farmers (and gardeners) do things today. "Industrial" sometimes is used, and "organic" especially since it was codified by USDA for use as a marketing term doesn't necessarily mean what many thought it did -- and thus is born the type of farming called "Industrial Organic." Might be an interesting Venn diagram to draw one day!
More then anything else, I guess you'd describe modern (the style that became dominant after World War II) as "high standardized external inputs" -- add self-propelled machines, fuel, fertilizer, pesticides at specified levels to achieve X result (from which commercial farmers also need to pay a decent finance charge to the bank for the money you borrowed to get going for the year.) Many "Industrial Organic" folks do just that, they just substitute different things for fertilizer and pesticides compared to the Industrial Non-Organic world.
WWII had many impacts -- one is mentioned in the first video, alternative pesticides were recommended. Although one specifically mentioned in the video is a mineral-derived pesticide, other synthetic pesticides were increasingly popular. The war had disrupted supplies of what's today considered organic insecticides like rotenone* and pyrethrum, just like it had disrupted supplies of natural rubber and silk. Synthetic pesticides could be manufactured from petroleum, something that didn't have to be shipped through war zones. Similarly, the Muscle Shoals Munitions Plant was built in World War I to supply nitrates for the war effort. Afterwards it was auctioned off to produce fertilizer with the caveat the Government could take control and re-convert it to producing nitrates for explosives in the event of a war; this kept the plant active and maintained instead of being mothballed to rust away. Come WWII it was greatly expanded, and after the war once again a market was needed to keep the plant producing nitrates so at a moments notice it could support a war effort again**.
With the switch to modern input-driven farms and gardens, a lot of the more intensive "brain power" of observing and adapting to local conditions withered. It didn't die, but greatly reduced to pockets here and there. Folks turned to simple answers in charts in pamphlets published by the Universities and commercial enterprises; the complex calculus of nature was reduced to simple, discrete arithmetic that took a lot less time and thinking to figure out.
But there's also something I'm sure about -- the best of our modern thinkers about the "old way" of integrated systems and lower inputs have pushed the state of the art beyond "the good old days." The knowledge may not be as widespread, but at least in a few folks like Coleman and Joel Salatin and the like it's a deeper knowledge and greater wisdom then the best of the best had several generations ago.
And Elliot Coleman today -- the first 14 minutes of the audio is really poor quality, so you may want to fast forward through that. That still leaves an hour of wonderful stuff:
* I'm asterisking rotenone since it's largely being withdrawn from the market as I type; EPA asked for more information from the companies that sold it in order to keep listing it as an insecticide due to concerns about water pollution and Parkinson's Disease. The companies decided not to spend the money on the research and instead asked for several years to wind down their operations. The date the last supplies may be shipped from their warehouses is July 14, 2011.
It will remain listed as a piscicide since it's the only poison fish & game departments consider 100% effective at killing fish -- and it's used to combat invasive species by killing all fish in a body of water followed by re-stocking with only native species.
** We forget how many things tie back to national security. We had a need (perceived at least) to keep up a nitrate manufacturing capacity in case of a future war, so we encouraged farmers to use synthetic nitrogen fertilizers to provide a market to fund the plant. We had a need, again at least a perceived need, to build a lot of atomic bombs in a hurry so civilian nuclear energy was guided to using reactor designs that produced feedstock for nuclear weapons programs.
(Oakridge consumed more power in World War II making the fissile material for four bombs then all of Canada! After Trinity and the two bombs dropped on Japan, a fourth was in reserve and it would take Oakridge another six months to produce enough material for a fifth bomb. This was not something the Government could scale up in a race with the Soviets)
We have a nuclear waste "problem" today because it was never intended to be waste -- the spent fuel rods were supposed to have been re-processed into either bomb material or new fuel rods. Jimmy Carter halted reprocessing plans as part of a nuclear non-proliferation strategy, which left the Government holding the bag for what do with the "waste" that they had wanted produced in the first place and now wouldn't allow to be recycled. Private enterprise would've likely chosen lower cost designs that didn't produce as much waste if they had been told from the start they'd be on the hook for it.
The idea for an Interstate Highway System already existed before World War II; but experiences with motorized warfare, Germany's Autobahn, and relative vulnerability of bombing rail lines reinforced the importance of one. With the advant of single weapons that could destroy a central city in a flash, decreasing density of both residences and offices made good strategic sense -- defense by diffusion; and with plenty of land in the U.S. and plenty of synthetic fertilizer to boost yields on what remained in production, we didn't have the constraints of small nations in Europe each trying to maintain enough farmland to be self-sufficient...so suburban expansion made sense to us where it didn't necessarily make the same sense to Europe.
Oh, and they created this highly decentralized, self-healing computer network designed to survive attacks called the "internet."
Was just a gorgeous low humidity, warm but not hot day!
My straw hat doubling as a basket...since I forgot to bring a basket or bag with me. Lettuce, peas, and young red onion (sent up a flower, so I decided it was worthy of early harvest :D )
That's Oscar.
Now follow directly back of Oscar (click the pic for bigger version). See that black and white thing on the concrete pad? That's one of my barn cats. Sunning himself. With me and Oscar having spent a half hour in the garden.
Jake would not have tolerated this.
Yellow and red potatoes and Vidalia onions my mom grilled in butter, salt, and pepper on Sunday. She nailed it just right, they were surprising very good!
Salad:
My lettuce
My peas
My onion
Organic carrot
Croutons, Craisins, Walnuts, Cranberry Raspberry Vinagerette
Burger:
Kaiser Roll
Local hamburg
Oil-packed herb mozzarella cheese
Bacon (fried it up while I shelled the peas and cut up the rest of the ingredients, before putting the burger on the George Foreman)
My Red Onion
My herbs
Couple dashes of horseradish sauce
Little bit of Ketchup
The north end of the fence I stapled up Sunday. Used to be much longer and just laid in place. That's a 2"x4" mesh, which is on the big size -- baby bunnies could squeeze through. But I already owned it (used to be around the front yard to keep the dogs in, but with just Oscar I don't need that area fenced anymore).
I've decided rather then gates, it's much more flexible if I leave the fence loose so I can make a wide opening to bring equipment in when I need to.
My onions look beautiful!
Peas!
Lettuce...with red lettuce needing weeding behind them.
Pulled back some mulch...golf ball size bulbs...come on babies, start putting on some girth!
All my Early Girl tomatoes have flowers, but the one from a 4" pot has had fruit set for a week already.
Outside row is green and yellow snap (string) beans.
Inside row by the peas are Jacobs Cattle and Soldier dry beans from Old Sturbridge Village.
Outside row is more green and yellow beans I planted this past Friday. Inside row is Kidney beans I planted Monday.
My little herbary -- Basil, Marjoram, Oregano (Thyme in the pot you see peaking on the right)
Garlic Chives, Yellow Oregano, another variety of Basil.
Hauled more mulch on Saturday, two good loads. Need at least two more good loads -- one to finish covering the manure, and one to cover the southwest corner of the garden to help build up organic matter there.
Worked on the north end of the fence Sunday, stapled it up.
Went kayaking Sunday afternoon @ West Thompson Dam w/ April & Paul. 2-1/2 hours on water. Need to rebuild or replace my kayak rack, and some members rotted on it!
Friday I planted more green and yellow beans (once I ran out of green bean seed), tonight planted Kidney Beans, and threw in some sunflowers. Also Saturday I planted four mounds of Blue Hubbard squash as round #3 of those for trap crops. Hubbards and sunflowers both went in what would've been the east corn bed had any corn germinated :(
Friday I also put up more string on the east row of tomatoes.
Failures so far this year:
-- Only two red leaf lettuce planted from seed germinated, and didn't grow well. Must plant earlier.
-- Poor germination/growth of Swiss Chard, Leeks, and Beets. All in the SW corner, I think there's just not enough organic matter there. Seedlings do OK as they did last year and the tomatoes this year, but not seeds.
-- Corn. Complete and total failure x 3 varieties. Need to put some seed in damp paper towels to see if it was poor germination from improperly storing them (although other seeds stored with them germinated fine), or if it was something with the soil/planting (I didn't tamp 'em)/something eating them (though the seeds were treated seeds).
-- Flea beetles on the eggplants. Looks like the plants are just starting to grow past them. Cross fingers.
Other notes:
Saw first flowers on potatoes today...which means there are spuds forming underneath :)
Picked some pea pods. Those, plus lettuce and spinach, plus some herbs from the planters on my deck, all went into a cheeseburger for dinner -- yum yum yum!
Another 1" of rain on Friday AM...guess between recent rains and the compost spread earlier this year, the Rhubarb is looking the best of the year! Should be wilting by this time of year. This is the second year in a row it's been in real good shape this late in June, I wonder if it's the plants are maturing and have established roots now?
I have very seldom seen hail, and only one decent and even that wasn't too bad hail storm that I remember when I was kid -- up on Tripp Hollow and I remember mom & dad were real worried...I think mom even had me move away from the big bow windows in the dining room.
So this morning we're getting a frog strangler -- had 6/10ths of an inch fall in 20 minutes -- and I heard a weird noise. I'm looking around the house, in the kitchen...finally I notice hail outside bouncing off the deck and everything else solid!
No damage, the very biggest pieces were maybe 1/4" (I just measured, "dime size" is 3/4").
While I usually try to work normal hours, I'm doing some after-hours upgrades so I was working till 8:30 last night, and was back at 6:50 this morning to see if the Indian team saw any problems. They did, I fixed.
Had a small project in the garden I wanted to get done before it got hot and we got any more wind -- staked up my asparagus...the tallest fern is 6' 8" and that's measuring from the top of at least 6" of mulch!
Some, I hope not most, of my onions have been bolting. Those won't store well, but are fine as green onions. Had my first one today -- in a green onion and spinach omelette. Oscar ended up getting about a third of this, which he snarfed up like no tomorrow:
A number of onions were forming flowers...not a lot, but more then I wished :( I caught one this weekend, probably pinched off nine today...probably doesn't really matter since they won't store well. Hmmmm...I think I'll pull one and make an onion-and-spinach omelette for lunch tomorrow.
No slug bait in the garage, need to pick some up this weekend. Found some small slugs on my lettuce this week.
Rigged up a diverter valve from my sump pump and started diverting flow down to the garden. Not enough umph to drive a sprinkler or likely even a soaker hose, but I can move the open end of the hose every couple hours :) Call it good exercise walking down to the garden and back during the work day. No photos as the lense on the Droid must be dirty; all the pics were blurred.
Finally gave the Blueberries a drink of Miracid. I'd really like to be doing that like 5/21, 6/15, and 7/1 or so.
The "Basic 7" was introduced in 1943. One thing we forget today is that, other then "farm boys" (and not even all of them, particularly from poorer southern / share crop farms) and their families, a lot of Americans were undernourished through the 1930s. Not just in diversity of food, but also raw calories.
While today's challenge for the military is to get most recruits thin enough to serve, the CCC and military in the 1930s struggled to get new members up to weight. Which is one reason why fats and other high-calorie foods were emphasized.
From '56 to '92 we had the "Basic Four / Three square meals a day" plan, then the food pyramid, and just released "My Plate" -- we went from the the mess that was the pyramid's recommendations created by committee...to My Plate which is graphic design by committee.
Have severe t-storms threatening (and may still get one tonight...three towns north of me in Mass they got hammered by a tornado) so I stopped at the garden when I got home from work to tie up some tomatoes that were getting tall enough to worry about wind, and I was so proud how my "spring" stuff looked I needed to take some more pics:
Spinach
Lettuce
Lettuce
All I can say is wow...just wow...at my onions. They're all forming big thick necks. I am chomping at the bit to see how they turn out.
BTW -- I've determined that I *love* by scuffle hoe. Perhaps the best single purchase I've ever made for the garden!
