her able hands

Oh, wait. Isn’t that what I’m trying to become?

I mostly take great pride in being so DIY, in learning how to do something if it’s not already in my repertoire, but sometimes I get tired. Sometimes I feel utterly defeated by that which I do not know, and I wish I could just pick up the phone and call somebody to come fix my problems. Which, I suppose, I could. But I can’t. I mean, I won’t. I’m stubborn like that. But far be it from me to suffer in silence, which is why I blog!

Things have sort of slowed down in the garden right now, nothing producing enough that I have to do major picking or preserving, and unfortunately, not very much eating. But yesterday it rained for hours, and we’re totally socked in with dense fog this morning and the forecast is saying rain for the next few days, with heavy cloud cover. Next week when the sun and heat return, the garden is going to explode.

Meanwhile, I’ve taken care of a few maintenance issues. My first tomato that formed a month ago, a Brandywine, developed blossom end rot. Curses! I can’t tell you how many hours I spent with the hose in hand, the nozzle turned to soaker, dangling the thing down around the roots of each and every tomato plant. I added manure and peat moss to the soil to build up the organic matter. I crushed egg shells and worked it into the surface lightly, then mulched with a six-inch thick layer of straw.

So if blossom end rot is a physiological problem caused by uneven watering that makes it difficult for the plant to pull up calcium from the soil, my best guess is that I still do not have enough organic matter in the soil. I’ve mentioned before that my in-laws dumped a couple tons of sand back there years ago, then never really gardened after the amendment. Water drains out of the garden beds very quickly. It’s possible I also don’t have enough calcium there, either.

I noticed the tomato last week and thought about solutions until the weekend when I remembered that my father in-law had offered me some soaker hoses he had stored in one of his sheds. This was back when I first started the garden at the old house, but he didn’t have enough for me to make good use of, so I didn’t take him up on it. But I was pretty sure he’d have enough to run through the tomato bed. It took us a few trips in and out of the various sheds, packed to the gills with everything the man had ever owned, but eventually Chris saw them on a high shelf, wrapped neatly around electrical wire spools. Beautiful!

There was enough hose to catch every tomato plant, and to run a double row in the next bed over (potatoes, summer squash, beans and dill). I had two boxes of Epsom salts and my rake, which I moved along with me from plant to plant. First I pulled back the straw, then lightly scratched the surface of the soil, trying not to damage the hairy roots that develop just below, shook some salts around, then worked them in with my finger tips. I made sure to bury the soaker hose close to the plant stem, under the straw.

Seeing as I was already working in that bed, and Lila was playing at the neighbor’s house, I took the time to thread the vines through the climbing string, and to heavily prune the suckers and lower branches so more air and sun can get through to the fruit developing down low.

I see hundreds of tomatoes, and none of the others seem to have blossom end rot yet. Hopefully my three hours of attention will prevent it from happening with the rest. I’ll definitely get more manure to add along with chopped leaves and straw in the fall. Hopefully in the spring, I’ll have some real compost to spread on the beds, too. The pile feels cold, though. Maybe that should be this weekend’s project.

I have some horse manure left, and the slab of chicken bedding from the last time we moved the girls. I’m not planning to put a garden bed there, so I can shovel all of that up and use it to layer in the compost with the leaves, straw and grass clippings I have already layered in a giant heap behind the perennial bed. Yes, this sounds like a good plan for the weekend. Better get it out of the way, because I can see that the following weekend, I’m going to be up to my eyeballs in pickles. I counted over one hundred mini cukes out there on the trellis, and after this rain, they’re going to press their point in earnest.

Technorati Tags: garden, organic gardening, blossom end rot, tomatoes, growing tomatoes, compost