her able hands » Garden

Further thoughts on blight

Kelly — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 13:18:10 +0000

I haven’t had time to get out to the garden to pull and bag the blighted plants yet, and we’ve had several days of rain again, so I’m sure it’s spreading through the neighborhood. But school started on Wednesday for my first grader, and on our morning walk I noticed dozens of small gardens or potted tomatoes also in collapse. At the market yesterday tomatoes sold faster than the farmers could load up their boxes and I overheard many conversations about home gardeners losing their entire crop.

Marcy reminded me in her comment on my last post that it’s late blight, not early blight. We are about to step into September, after all. She also mentioned spacing and pruning, which I meant to talk about in my post, but obviously got all caught up in the drama of oh, my tomatoes! So yeah. These tomatoes got planted directly into a new lasagna bed with something like a 12″ spacing give or take an inch or five. In other words, all wrong. I pruned the heck out of them when I first did the runner strings from the bamboo trellis, then I went away for three weeks. During that time, it rained every two days and the sun blazed in between. By the time I returned, my tomato plants had grown into an unruly hedge that crept across the grass in every direction. I did my best to trim out the most offending runners, but good gracious, those branches were heavy with fruit and who wants to sacrifice fruit?

Silly me.

I doubt I would have survived the blight even with better spacing and pruning this year, but I know I’ll manage my crop with a little more precision and care next year, and will consider covering the soil with black plastic to keep the spores down. My sister and brother in-law do that with their blight-prone crops and I swear their garden was the only one in New England that didn’t succumb.

I did pick a big bowl of almost ripe tomatoes but didn’t have time to process them that day and overnight they rotted in the bowl. That was disturbing. I keep thinking of what would happen if I’d blanched and frozen them. Would they rot in the freezer? Or instantly when thawed? Ugh.

Also in the comments, in case you missed it, Farmgirl Susan pointed me to her green tomato relish recipe, which sounds super easy and delish. So, I’m going to get out there today in the 65 degree sunshine to pick the rest of the green ones. Thanks so much, Susan.

I hate to waste so many tomatoes, and we do like relish.

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The blighted season

Kelly — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:17:27 +0000

I’m so sad. My entire 40-plant bed of paste tomatoes has early blight. My schedule has been so nuts over the last week since I discovered the first signs, and I haven’t had a moment to pull plants and dispose of them. My apologies to the neighbors if it’s traveling from mine to yours on the wind. I stopped my truck on the way out of the driveway yesterday morning to survey the damage and it’s bad, but the vines are FULL of giant fruit. I must be in denial because I keep thinking, oh maybe it’s just going to effect the leaves. Silly me.

I didn’t realize blight had made it this far west. I thought I was safe because I started my tomatoes from organic seed and organic soil in my basement instead of buying plants from a big box store. I was wrong.

I know this is just one of those things that happens and it’s been a ridiculously wet summer, which makes blight thrive, but every day I read another gardener’s account of bagging up their tomato and potato plants and forfeiting their gleaming jars of sauce and salsa and it feels like the plague has hit. I suppose early blight is a sort of plant black plague. I’m going to skip photos, it’s too depressing.

I’m wondering if my new lasagna bed made the plants more susceptible to the blight, and it’s time to find out if there’s anything I can do to safely treat my soil so it doesn’t recur next year. I noticed a bunch of yellowed and browned leaves in the Matt’s Wild Cherry and Cosmonaut Volkovs last night, so it’s just a matter of time before my entire tomato crop is wasted. I should probably pull my potatoes immediately, too.

Oh, this gardening year has been the worst ever and I’m pitching a little fit in my heart. Can you feel me stomping my feet? I started off with such high hopes! Most of my beds were prepared for spring planting in the fall and I got so much in the ground early. Then I went away and the ground hogs and rabbits moved in. Now blight, which means I lost eighty percent of my summer crops. Sigh.

I guess it’s a good lesson in attachment. I’ve come to identify myself so strongly with my gardens and things are percolating under the surface of the community that is leading me towards work in gardening. I’m a little bit worried that this season just proves I haven’t got what it takes. But only a little bit worried. I can shoot out the other side of that black tunnel of fear into the stupid blinding light of my list of things to do to prevent the same scene next year. Buried fences. Soil amendments. Crop rotation. You just move forward or you stop, right?

I’m not going to give detailed voice to how much I want to stop at this moment. Amen for the winter. In past years I’ve said that — meaning how nice it is to give my body a rest. Gardening at this scale is a lot of physical work. But now? Now I’m simply hopeful that winter will heal my blighted heart and bring me back to the place of loving my garden again. At the moment, I’m thinking a bulldozer might be the answer. Double sigh.

I feel so bad for the farmers that are losing their cash crops. I’m just missing out on a freezer full of marinara and a pantry self of salsa. I can still go buy tomatoes from a u-pick (as long as they don’t also have blight). Yes, I was counting on my crops for winter. Losing 280 foot row of shelling beans when the beans were *just* about ready for the first picking, to the furry little f*ckers has put me in a space of no mercy. But I can buy beans. They won’t taste as good and I’ll spend money I don’t want to spend, but I have the option.

I don’t know, you guys. Something about this season feels like an alarm sounding. Guess I’d better make my list and get to work.

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My weekend in pickles

Kelly — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:50:45 +0000

So it turns out a bushel of little Kirby cucumbers makes something like 40 quarts of pickles. It makes considerably less than 40 quarts when the person doing the pickling has planned said pickling for the hottest Sunday of the year and the air conditioning is on the fritz.

Dumb. Hiney.

I have missed my Bread and Butter pickles so much. The last batch I made was the summer of 2003. That year, my 50-foot fence row in the garden put out enough cukes to make 64 quarts of Bread and Butter, 24 quarts of garlic dills, 24 quarts of spicy dills, 24 pints of relish, over $250 worth of cukes to sell at market, an entire giant crock of half-sours that went bad and got dumped in the compost, bags of them given to friends and neighbors, and who knows how many left to bloat and rot on the vine. Can you say prolific?

Since we moved into this house, I have not managed to harvest a single cucumber from my gardens. Blight, mildew, vine borers, beetles, and now this year we can add a family of piggish woodchucks to the litany of problems keeping me from making pickles with my own blamdam cucumbers. It’s just not in the cards here (yet), so I ordered a bushel of organic pickling cukes from Sandy at Elizabeth Telling Farm for $30. I just refuse to go through another year without my own pickles and the sound of Tyler groaning with happiness every time he makes a sandwich.

Oh, how he’s going to hate my rationing.

My mom made Bread and Butter pickles when I was little. I can’t recall if she did it every year, or just a few times, but I do remember spreading mustard on two slices of bread, slapping thick slices of bologna on the bread, then covering that with a slick layer of super-thin-but-crisp, sweet pickles. Oh, sense-memory. Dang. These jars will be ready in a few weeks, I must put bologna on the shopping list.

But, as I mentioned before, it was blazing hot on Sunday, and the idea of canning that whole bushel made me want to pack up my things (my laptop, my iPhone and a few beers) and move into the freezer in the basement. So I got my step-dad’s half-sour recipe and made up a bucket that will be ready to taste-test tomorrow.

TO! MOR! ROW! (squeee)

Of course, that still left about eleventyseven cucumbers to deal with, so I also made up a four-quart container of dill chips using Martha Stewart’s Dill-Pickle Chips recipe because it looked quick and painless and did not involve boiling ten gallons of water on the stove top.

These will be ready to sample on Sunday.

I think these are going to be incredibly crunchy pickles. Five days later and I’m eating some of the cukes I left out for nibbling with hummus, and jiminey they’re SO crispy and I never even put them in the fridge.

OK. How about some recipes?

I have no idea where I got this one…

Bread and Butter Pickles (yield approx 6 quarts)

4 quarts sliced pickling cukes
2 chopped green peppers
1/3 cup canning or other coarse salt
1 1/2 tsp tumeric
2 tbsp mustard seed
1 1/2 tsp celery seed
6 chopped medium onions (I use sweet onions)
3 whole cloves garlic
5 cups sugar
3 cups white vinegar

In large bowl, mix together cukes, peppers, onions and garlic. Toss with salt and cover with crushed or cracked ice. Let stand for 3 hours (in fridge if it fits, but my bowl won’t, so I just leave it on the counter and that’s worked fine).

Drain and pack in jars while you bring the vinegar, sugar and spices to a boil in a large pan. This time, I cut my cukes on the thick side for some unknown reason, and they didn’t pack into the jars as well. You can see some of the jars in the photo above have a huge amount of pickleless brine at the bottom. Oh, well. Pour the hot brine over the pickles in the jars. Run a butter knife around the inside edge of the jar to work out any air bubbles. You’ll probably have to top off the brine. Wipe the rims, top with lids and rings. Process in water bath 15 minutes. Let them sit for a few weeks before you sit down one hot night with the jar between your knees and a beer in hand. Trust me, the flavor gets better with age.

Half-Sour Pickles

Place 3-4 grape leaves in the bottom of a 6-8 quart food grade plastic container or crock, and then top with 24-30 small, washed, whole pickling cukes.

add 1 stalk celery (optional)
1 bunch dill
1 tbsp pickling spices (I didn’t have the pre-made, so just used mustard seed, dill seed and celery seed
3-4 whole cloves garlic
3 tbsp kosher salt
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 tsp alum if you don’t have any grape leaves.
If you like ‘em spicy like I do, then add 1 tsp (or more to taste) hot red pepper flakes (homemade if you have).

Bring a teakettle of water to boil and pour it on top of everything in the container until just covered. Place a plate on top of the pickles to weigh them down and keep them submerged in the brine. Cover with a clean dish cloth and leave on the counter 5-6 days. Taste. If they’re good, start eating and put the rest in the fridge. You can cut them up into spears and pack in jars with the brine.

I doubt mine will last long enough for all of that.

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Aliens in my garden

Kelly — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:26:22 +0000

I started out writing this post about mysteries and how sometimes I’m disgustingly incurious, and sometimes I really need to solve the puzzle. The post was smarmy and boring and full of cliches about weaving threads together to make a blanket, and the blanket is a story, and the story is my life. It was all reflective and inward-looking and totally front-loaded in order to try to make this post into something more than it really is. I deleted all of that.

You’re welcome.

BUT DUDES!

What in the everloving fark of all that is holy is this stuff that’s strangling my Chard plants?

There was a little bit of this thread-like vine stuff (see threads/blankets/cliches above) growing in this cold frame before I left for vaca, and I forgot to take a photo before I pulled it all out. And when I say “pulled it all out” I don’t mean out of the soil. This stuff just grows in midair and wraps itself around and around the plants. There is no root system in the ground.

I have aliens in my cold frame.

When it first appeared, I thought it was part of the new Chard variety I planted, called Orange Ruffles. Made a little bit of sense because the tendrils are orange. But they’re all over the Basil. And in my absence, they have just about choked the entire bed to death.

So, garden people. I’ve exhausted my Google skills on this one.

Is this some cruel Monsanto trick? The newest terminator gene, that doesn’t just kill the seed from the plant, but then moves on to wrap the entire world in a web of thin vines until it disappears?

ETA: A helpful gardener in CA sent me a link identifying this parasitic plant as Dodder. Time to yank it out, Chard and all.

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The space between

Kelly — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:54:51 +0000

My camera battery died and I keep forgetting to stop in at Campus Camera to pick up a new one, so I haven’t taken a photo in weeks. Meanwhile the perennial garden is showing off in a big way and I can’t show you. My yard is filled with trellises strung for tomatoes and runner beans and it looks like a fleet of ancient, dream-time sailing ships flying through on their way to Nod.

I intended to grow enough for the market this year, but somehow I didn’t. I don’t know what happened, but I’m glad I don’t have all of that harvesting to do right now while I’m working on so many other things and am heading out of town soon. I did pick a giant bowl of snow peas the other day and still haven’t dealt with stringing and blanching and freezing them. So much for processing produce at the peak of freshness. I don’t know. My heart’s just not in it. I pass the bowl on the counter and think, string your own damn selves, you stupid peas. What the hell is my problem?

Bugs. That’s my problem. We’re having a lot of bug issues in the gardens this year. Well, that’s not really my problem. It’s a problem. One of many, so add it to the list. My real problem is that I’m trying to change habits, and my cranky self is fighting back by filling me with melancholy and pensive thoughts to keep me from being as productive as I’m attempting to be. Or something like that.

Actually, the issues of soil balance and insect invasion strangely reflects the life inside this house, too. We’re feeling besieged with minor emergencies that suck up our attention and energy. The floors are dirty, the piles have all reappeared, bills need paid, filing is long overdue. I wonder how many years it’s going to take–inside and out. I wonder how many more years I’m going to feel as if I’m living full-time in the waiting place, paused on the shore with the small waves washing across my feet and sucking itself right back into the ocean. One step forward. Thirty two steps back. The tide moves in, so it’s about trust. Or something.

Here’s one of the last shots I took before my battery died. I just wrote *camera battery* on my grocery list for today. Maybe I’ll take the camera in to get the sensor cleaned, too. If I go out.

I wonder if I can get my sensor cleaned?

Meanwhile, I listen to this again and sway my hips like the hoopers, and stomp my feet and jump up and jump in.

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Spinach, arugula, rhubarb, broccoli raab, green garlic, oh my

Kelly — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:06:13 +0000

Yesterday was my 42nd birthday–the first birthday in years where I didn’t feel any anticipation about the day or pressure to somehow celebrate. No party plans, just a relaxed dinner at home. I eased into the day with warm wishes from my family, deep snuggles from Lila, soft kisses on the back of my neck from Chris, a long hug and homemade breakfast from Tyler. Phone calls and gifts waiting in a small pile from family back east. Roses from my gang, deep and stunning in the pot my brother gave me. Neighbors stopped by with sweet cards full of sparkly wishes, honeysuckle hand lotion, cheers.

I pulled weeds and transplanted broccoli and lettuce starts, seeded some more greens, watered the transplants. The day flowed and the intermittent sun warmed my back and I didn’t have to fight to stay with the feeling of my feet on the land.

I planned a dinner of fish tacos, Spanish rice, spinach and arugula salad (from the garden!) with blue cheese, sauteed broccoli raab with green garlic. Chris snapped this shot of me with my first bouquet of broccoli raab and I wish I could also share the fragrant, sharp and sweet mustardy air that surrounded me.

The rhubarb ignited my dessert passions with just enough ruby stalks to bake a cobbler. I had starred Deb at Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for rhubarb cobbler earlier in the week, but knew I wouldn’t have quite enough mature rhubarb, so also picked up some decent looking strawberries (from CA, I know, sigh).

This is seriously the most scrumptious cobbler I have ever eaten. I made a few adjustments as follows:

OK, so my sister and I were talking last week about rhubarb cobbler and cornstarch and how gross and milky it makes the sauce, but I couldn’t remember what she said she did instead of the cornstarch, so I tossed it in. I really don’t like the look of it, and wish for a sauce that’s bright and clear and better complements the gem-like fruit inside. But believe me, I got over it. This is by far the most incredible cobbler I have ever eaten and I can’t wait to try the biscuit dough with other fruits as they come into season. Oh, peaches! And sour cherries, too!

The fresh food season has begun and my garden is beginning to fill the table. I don’t even have the words to properly express how happy this makes me. See photo above…the smile says it all.

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Healthy partnerships: schools, families and businesses

Kelly — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:05:19 +0000

Pattie Baker has a terrific post about her efforts to change the way food is viewed and promoted in her daughter’s school system. Her school gets extra money the way many schools do, by partnering with an area fast food restaurant for a “fun family night out” with a portion of the proceeds going to the school. Go take a look–she’s got a bunch of informative links in addition to her own great story.

So after I read her post and followed a few of the links, I was thinking how cool it is that Lila enjoys working in the garden with me, and how at her school (the lab school on campus) all of the kids love the school garden. I wondered how difficult it would be for schools to take that partnership model and apply those principals and reap the same rewards by partnering with a local farm stand, green market or farmers’ market. Our region’s challenge is the short growing season and lining that up with when school is in session, but there’s enough overlap for some arrangement to come to fruition. I intend to bring this idea to the table at our first Haymaker Farmers’ Market board meeting. There’s got to be a way the market can build a healthy relationship with our area children and their schools. And maybe as our market grows into its new incarnation, we can hire Lisa
to visit and do a training on her fantastic Sprouts at the Market Program.

Another idea is to have that fun family night out at a restaurant or cafe that makes local and sustainable business choices. That one’s much harder to come by in our community, as I’m sure it is in many others–none of our restaurants work with local producers or growers. But I believe that the tide is shifting and that the sea change is heading our way. I have heard several people talking about food service businesses they would like to open in Kent–from cafés to coffee shops to coffee roasters, and all of them have used phrases like locally produced, organic, local farms, and sustainable.

We also have a group of young families in our town who are interested in working together on various environmental projects. One of them is to bring healthier foods into the public school system. They’re looking at the elementary level because their children are just entering the system this year and they’re already shocked by what passes for lunch. Many of them are vegetarian or vegan, and they grow some of their own foods already. They frequent the area farmers’ markets and health food co-op, and buy memberships in a growing number of CSAs. They’re finding that their children’s first exposure to unhealthy food is happening in the school system and they’re not happy about it…not happy at all. It sounds like they might just have the energy needed to agitate for change.

One of the moms is organizing a meeting for interested families with the help of the Kent Environmental Council. The purpose of this meeting is to figure out areas of interest for environmental projects and then set up task groups and action plans. The school lunch thing is one, another is cooperative gardening in neighborhoods to share food and possibly sell at market, as well as donate a portion of each harvest to the area shelters.

I know it can take a long time to make big changes in systems that are so firmly and deeply entrenched in old ways. But I’m encouraged to hear that so many people are putting their attention on the problem and are looking for ways they can begin to chip away at it in their own neighborhoods. I’m thrilled to see it happening in my neighborhood. I believe the more voices that join together, the more likely we’ll be heard; the more hands that pick up tools, the more likely we’ll build the world we want.

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Fruits of my laboring breath

Kelly — Mon, 04 May 2009 12:39:40 +0000

Wheeze… wheeze…

I meant to take the camera out this weekend. The yard is spilling over with lush green and I’m sure the light in the afternoons had that gold-filter quality that makes the world feel this close to sepia. But I squinted a lot due to headaches and couldn’t get over feeling sorry for myself, so didn’t do very many of the things that I know would feel fulfilling. Now I have no eye candy to illustrate this post.

I think it’s allergies, but I’m not positive. It’s showing up differently than it has in springs past in that my body is throwing off histamine reactions all over the place. My tongue swelled and I bit it in the middle of the night. My eyes are rattling around dry in their sockets. I’m coughing and only sleeping because of the wonder that is NyQuil.

It’s much worse when I’m outside, so I moved between the house and small garden projects for days, stopping to rest often because my breath isn’t properly oxygenating my body. How can I feel so winded just bending over to pull a few weeds? Let me pull up a chair so I can sit to finish the job. What am I eighty?

Spinach and arugula are nearly ready to pick and the peas have begun to grasp the trellis strings with their bright, curly tendrils. I made a new patch for the raspberry canes on the southeast corner of the front porch, tucked in a sunny alcove so I can easily run some wires to support them once they shoot up.

The front porch is now one of the fruit areas in my permaculture quest. I dug out most of the mallow to move to an area around some trees by the driveway, and now will be able to tuck some broccoli, chard, baby bok choi and leeks in around the berries and pear trees. I’ll start a few more medicinal herb perennials in those beds, as well, so we can have a little bit of color and height variation. The real visual splashes will come from the cut-and-come-again bounty of the rainbow chard and zinnias.

So much going on in the background. Our renters are moving out and we’re back to trying to unload the other house at the same time Chris isn’t collecting any pay for his 12 hour days at his business (probably for a couple more months). Interesting times. I confess to struggling with keeping a positive attitude, but am satisfied to report that I have not sunk into despair or allowed the drama to pull me out of my life as it would have in the past. Feeling so ill on top if it all has sucked for sure, especially because my normal response would be to go out and work in the gardens until exhausted, and I haven’t had the energy to do that this week.

Life will have her way with me. No use fighting it, right? I can only point myself in a certain direction and take the steps as they appear. One at a time. Sometimes backwards. Sometimes forwards. Always leading me where I most need to go.

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