Spring garden-May 2012

DROUGHT…frost and insects


I decided to be efficient at the beginning of spring…I would work outdoors in my garden on sunny days and write blogs about what I did on the rainy days. After all, it always rains in the spring, doesn’t it? Well today is July 7, and no it is not raining today; it is just hot as blue blazes (108 degrees predicted) and I figure it’s time I got a blog in, precipitation or not.

I began to have a suspicious premonition when we started having consistent 80 degree May temperatures in early March. Could this global warming thing be for real? If so, how could I deal with a new “normal” reality? Where was the silver lining in this black cloud? If life was giving me lemons…how could I make some margaritas? Let me emphasize that everything which follows from here on is based on the fact that my soil (soil?) is pure sand. I read one author who said that when the first warm days of spring hit and he had a terrible itch to put in a garden that he went fishing instead. That is probably great advice for anyone with much clay in their soil. Working clay before it is dry enough supposedly ruins it for years. But I have a garden on high sand which faces southeast and warms weeks earlier in the spring and lasts weeks later in the fall than most gardens. The strong negative to sand (aside from the total lack of plant nutrients) is that the annual drought in July and August burns everything in it to a crisp.

What appeared the obvious solution to my particular dilemma was to plant early and fight the last of the spring frosts but be able to harvest by early July and then let the garden sit mostly idle and empty until rains and cooler weather returned in late August or September. At that time when there was again adequate moisture I would again replant and have a second garden of fall crops. What would I do during the dead heat of summer? Make compost. There should be plenty of dried up crop residues from the first harvest, especially cornstalks. This would be my “brown” material for the compost. The “green” material would be “garbage” in the form of melon rinds and melon culls. Watermelons are a natural desert plant and the summer drought only sweetens them up. Compost really rots quickly if kept moderately damp in really hot weather and so should be ready to be spread for the fall garden…at least as mulch if not completed humus.

So in early March, that was my plan to battle the usual summer drought…battle the frost early, get plants up and fairly good size before the insect hordes hit them and then allow the early summer drought to help ripen the produce. My most important concept for battling insects organically without insecticides is to get out of sync with and ahead of their natural life cycle. This year I have had to do nothing for insect control…not even spraying with soapy water. The drought and heat probably killed some of them too.

That was my plan for dealing with a “normal” summer drought, global warming and high sand ground. But a nagging doubt or premonition lingered in the back of my head. What if there was a bad spring drought in addition to the summer drought? Part of me wanted to blow this idea off; it always rains here in the spring…after all, this is Tornado Alley. Spring storms were bound to come. On the other hand Texas and the southwest had experienced extreme drought last year and Georgia and the southeast the year before. Maybe it was our turn this year. It was. By the time summer arrived we were a full foot behind the normal annual rainfall. According to my rain gauge we’ve received a total of only 3 inches of rain in two storms early in spring; since summer began we have received nothing. The grass died months ago and now the bushes and trees are struggling. If you’ve ever been barefoot on a hot beach you know what plant roots are going through all day long. I tried to get at least a thin mulch down in the garden from last fall’s leaves, dried bush beans, corn stalks and one bale of straw over several ply of newspaper. I read in a gardening book once that water is the elixir of life. How true! Thank God for the aquifer that lies beneath my high sand and my deep well down into it. I have a very rudimentary drip irrigation hose system which I constantly patch with duct tape. These three things along with planting early saved my garden. Nine tenths of my melon and corn patches were parched bone dry, but there was a six inch strip right over the corn and melon roots which the duct-taped drip irrigation kept just moist enough.

Now I don’t mean to brag (Hell, I am bragging and you know it, so why should I even bother lying) but despite the conditions our garden did OK. As I sit typing this in the rear utility room of our home I see three large boxes of newspaper–wrapped tomatoes (in addition there are still four producing tomato plants in the garden), there are probably 50 pounds of potatoes (plenty to last us until sweet potatoes come in for the winter meals), a small freezer filled with corn, beans, asparagus, grated zucchini and a little borsht soup. As I look through the kitchen door there are probably 15 watermelons and cantaloupe behind the kitchen table cooling in front of the air-conditioner vent (plenty more watermelons still out in the patch). The refrigerator and its freezer are likewise packed with corn on the cob, summer squash, beets etc. It is one of those years when there is plenty for us and family and friends, but not enough to sell. Sitting in the heat in a farmer’s market is not much fun anyway; I think I’d rather give produce away.

The drought has taught me a few things, like harvesting early. The virtues of a “vine-ripened” tomato or melon are much over-rated. Most produce will continue to ripen after it is picked and be better off for it. I don’t know how many times I’ve told my wife “either I pick it early and I get it or I wait and the worms and bugs get it.” In these temperatures a cantaloupe that is “almost ripe” in the morning can go to “cooked” and ruined after another day in the sun. Tomatoes are members of the night shades and poisonous, I think, to most pests. The only thing that bothers mine when they’re green are those giant horned green tomato worms (and they can be controlled by hand picking and heel squashing) but let one turn red and some bug will take a few bites and rot will set in and the tomato is lost. Best to pick tomatoes when they are opaque green and let them ripen in the house. I had a gardener friend who complained that she had grown nice large green tomatoes but that the drought and triple-digit heat caused them to fall to the ground before they turned red. I suggested that she treat summer tomatoes exactly like she would the last one before a fall frost. Pick them green, wrap them in newspaper and store them one or two rows deep in a cardboard box. They ripen perfectly, no insect damage and you can often check them without unwrapping them with a touch or gentle squeeze…hard, they are still green; soft, and they are turning red. This allows for a longer eating season as a dozen or so ripens each week; leave them on the vine and they will all ripen at the same time. I pick cantaloupe after they turn from green (hard to see, camouflaged among the leaves) to beige (real easy to spot against green background). More often than not I pick them before the vine “slips” easily from the fruit. I take them in the house to just sit out and ask my wife to sniff them once in a while. When the cantaloupe gets that fragrant “musk melon” smell, they are ready to be cut and refrigerated. Get the corn early too, or the ear worm will do too much damage.

So that is where things stand now. Much of the garden has been harvested and is taking a rest under cornstalk mulch. The watermelons and sweet potatoes are drought hardy and will muddle through with a little irrigating. I have Waltham butternut winter squash growing with mulches around their root bases and shaded by the still standing stalks of the corn patch they grew in. Asparagus, rhubarb, four tomato plants, a few egg plants, carrots, and bell peppers still require watering but none take up much room and all should take the heat well if kept watered. Darn…it’s hot! Think I’ll get a big glass of ice tea, eat some salted cold watermelon and wait for rain.

Just Desserts

When I plan my garden I think of my plate…and my bowl. In regards to the bowl I consider what vegetables I need to grow in order to make hardy winter stews and soups. On my plate I envision one third containing a healthy starch, (one of those tuber crops I discussed in the previous blog.) I think of another third of the plate as holding either a healthy cooked green such as cooked cabbage, spinach, asparagus, etc. or a healthy colored vegetable like tomatoes, corn and so forth. Thus what I want on my plate determines what I plant; I hope to grow two thirds of what goes onto my plate and only buy the meat portion. I’ve tried to keep my garden quite small so that most people could try something similar even if they do not live in the country; a 50’X25’ plot should fit in a suburban back yard or on a vacant city lot. Either that or I kept it small so I could water my whole garden without moving my chair.

I have a terrible sweet tooth and so I feel the small garden should also provide year-round desserts. Not everyone has room to plant fruit trees. The southwest side of my garden is semi-shaded because of an old apple tree. I noticed that raspberries were volunteering under the tree so I planted a 25’ row of raspberries along the fence on that end of the garden along with several thornless blackberries. I stretched hay bale string taut between the fencepost and trained the bramble into it. Behind the raspberries (to keep grasses and weeds out of them and to give me a clear walking/picking path) I laid a three-foot wide piece of old carpet. Volunteer butternut squash also liked the semi-shade and grew to cover most of the carpet then climbed over the raspberries into the garden. Just inside the garden fence I mulched up to the raspberries with cardboard weighted down with leaves. Before I put the cardboard down I dug bushel basket sized hole that I worked my best compost into and planted half a dozen rhubarb plants. So on this one end of the garden I have the makings for berry cobbler in the late spring, rhubarb pie through the summer, and squash pie in the fall and winter.

During the heat of July and August I eat the cantaloupe and early Crenshaw melons that usually grow in front of my sweet corn; we can freeze some of the melon balls for winter consumption. Waltham butternut squash can be grown in every other corn row and still allow room to harvest the sweet corn before the squash spreads to cover the entire patch by late summer. Waltham butternut, unlike other squash and pumpkins, is very bug resistant so that is all I grow for winter storage. It tastes like pumpkin but without the huge seed cavity. Of course the sweet potatoes can be made into sweet potato pie which can taste like pumpkin pie to pecan pie depending on how much butter you put in it.

My main point is that a small garden can serve you up something to satisfy your sweet tooth year round and still have plenty of room for your other vegetables too.

Roots

I’ve been pondering my roots lately…both the ancestral and garden varieties. First the ancestral. I remember one winter as a young lad going down into the basement cellar of my grandparents’ big white two-story old farm house. I discovered in one room down there a huge pile of potatoes, about a pickup truck load, lying on the concrete floor. These were the fruits of my grandmother’s gardening. This was in the early 1950’s when Americans were meat, potatoes and gravy eaters so in the corner of that cellar was a good portion of my grandparents’ and their Sunday visitors’ eating until new potatoes came in the following year. Mashed potatoes and country fried potatoes were a mainstay on grandma’s dining room table. From an early age I was impressed with my grandparent’s self-sufficiency on their small integrated farm.

Fast forward to my own gardening experiences with root crop for this year. Part of my self-sufficiency gardening plan worked and another part did not. The part that did work was that my stored sweet potatoes from last year did last through the winter until early summer when my new white potatoes matured; the white potatoes in turn have lasted until my crop of sweet potatoes have come in for this winter and next spring. So my idea of succession eating of some root crop year round has been a success and I have been able to microwave me a hot potato for buttering any day of the year. This winter my wife will help me to explore the versatility of sweet potatoes in varied recipes. We are most interested in oven baked sweet potato “fries” spiced with red pepper and also with using sweet potatoes in soups, stews and pies.

I dug my sweet potatoes a little early this year and did not leave them in until the approach of the first frost. It was a trade off; I lost a little in the size of the tubers so I could plant my cover crop of annual rye grass before really cold weather stunted its growth. I really appreciate rye grass as a winter cover crop; it puts down so much root growth deep into the garden so easily. Those root systems produced over winter will be the soils organic material for next year’s garden. It is very easy and cheap; $5 worth of ryegrass seed transported in the back seat of the car. Despite digging them a few weeks early, some of the sweet potatoes were still large enough that one tuber could feed four people for a meal.

The part of my plan for root crops that did not work this year was my delusion that I could plant a succession planting of sweet potatoes in ground where white potatoes came out of. The reality was that the white potatoes were harvested in early July and I planted the sweet potatoes in late April. So successive eating worked but successive planting did not. Still I haven’t given up entirely on successive planting of root crops. White potatoes could be followed with beets, carrots and those huge rutabagas for November harvest. Sweet potatoes (which just sit on their mounded rows for a good month before they begin to spread vines) could be preceded by a quick growing spring turnip like Tokyo Cross® or onions in the valleys between the raised rows. My wife did make some borsht soup with the few beets that I did raise this year and I really liked the flavor so that could become a winter staple. Borsht seems to me to be a stew where the potatoes have been replaced with beets. Good cooking in the kitchen and good recipes are what make self-sufficiency vegetable gardening work.

I have mixed emotions about root crops. They produce huge quantities of food in a small area, they are easy to grow, they store well for long periods and they can be made into a variety of delicious recipes. But they are also inexpensive to buy in the grocery and normally I prefer to grow something expensive like watermelon or cantaloupe or sweet corn. With all the craziness that is going on in the world today maybe it just makes me feel a little more secure knowing there are tubers in the back room and beans and rice in the pantry.