Catching Up

This week's flower availability: yarrow, valerian, iris, and bee's friend
Thanks to everyone who made it out to the bedding plant sale! I have planted all the leftovers from the sale, aside from the native perennial fruits. I may use some of those to replace trees and shrubs that didn't take off once they were planted in the orchard, but there are quite a few left if anyone is interested. The inventory includes high bush cranberry, lilac, basswood, Juneberry, chokeberry (Aronia), and American wild plum. I am selling them for $6 each or 2 for $10. I also plan to bring whatever is left to the Fond du Lac Resource Management division's Ganawenjigewin Maawanji'idiwin (Taking Care of Things Gathering) farmers' market on September 6 at the pow wow grounds behind the Fond du Lac Ojibwe School. I will also bring cut flowers, winter squash, melons, tomatoes, and whatever else I have by early September.
So far this year's garden is off to a good start. A big buck has been sneaking in occasionally to eat the tops off the peas. The grasshoppers are everywhere for the third year in a row, but once again they mostly don't bother the crops I planted. They destroyed some small, young tomato and pepper plants and skeletonized my rhubarb again, but for the most part they stick to the weeds and the compost when feeding. The fava bean plants all came up but suffered a bit from being splashed with dirt. The dirt seemed to damage the lower leaves, and that combined with the poor, sandy soil has resulted in few flowers on the plants. The fava beans in my work garden are doing better, and the bumblebees seem to love the flowers. I picked two different corn varieties to grow this year. I am hoping they will flower and silk separately, but I have corn condoms in case they don't. The varieties I picked are Lindsay Meyer blue, the corn that matured fastest at work last year, and Glass Gem, the most beautiful corn I've ever seen. I don't think I would mind if they crossed, but I prefer to have "pure"ish seeds if possible (John Navazio's book, "The Organic Seed Grower," stresses that there is no such thing as "pure" seed) .
I mentioned my poor, sandy soil. This year I finally have finished compost, but I have not yet made time to add the biodynamic preparations to it so I can add it to the garden. I will have to get on that soon. I have been spending so much time at work that it has been hard for me to get my butt out to my home garden when I have some free time. I haven't sprayed 500 or 501 yet either! i am thinking I may spray the barrel compost I got at the biodynamic farming conference last fall soon, and spray 500 in the fall. I have also tried using cover crops this year. They are only planted in about 1/4 of the garden, but I have more to plant as the season progresses. Currently there is crimson clover and bee's friend, plus a few volunteer buckwheat and vetch plants.
I just transplanted my sweet potato plants today. They arrived from Sand Hill Preservation Center last week with a note stating that it is in fact okay to plant them so late, and that they would catch up to sweet potato plants that were put in the ground up to a month ago because the warmth of the soil helps the plants grow more than the length or number of days it has to grow. I am trying a few traditionally southern crops this year, including okra, melons, and cotton. I had meant to try peanuts, but put it off for too long and now it is too late to plant them. My work garden got some, and those are doing well. Sand Hill Preservation Center sells black peanuts that have a maturation time of only 100 days, which is about all we have here.

My strawberries are ripening finally also. Are there many other places in the US where strawberries ripen in July? Some animal helped itself to the first few ripe strawberries but I got a handful this morning. Last year only 3 strawberries grew on the plants but there are scores more this year, which is exciting. I also have some alpine strawberries growing, in three different colors: red, yellow, and white. Those probably won't flower this year, but next year I will have some cool treats.

Spring arrives just in time for summer

The garden is coming to life despite the persistent cold weather. Peas, fava beans, garlic, turnips, and cover crops have emerged and I'm still holding off on planting my warm season crops. The elderberries, irises, honeyberries, asparagus, catmint, and other perennials are returning, and the honeyberries especially look vibrant. They have flowered already. Ground nesting bee nests abound, probably more this year than in the past two because the garden wasn't tilled this year. Despite that, the weeds haven't been too bad. I think the weather has helped keep the weeds at bay more or less, so I have actually had time to pull them occasionally.

 I put in over 100 new perennial fruits in the backyard behind the garden, including grapes, Juneberries, American wild plum, Aronia/chokeberry, blueberries, a red fleshed apple, a peach, more sand cherries, elderberries, currants, and raspberries. I am looking forward to 2015, by which time all the perennials from this year will be "running." I've heard people say that in the first year a perennial "sits" and doesn't grow much, and the second year it "crawls"  (grows a little). The third year it "runs" (grows a lot). Right now they don't look like much--just a bunch of sticks in the ground. Some have leaves, but no flowers yet. I have potted up the extras for sale. Contact me if you are interested in purchasing some native superfruits. They are $6 each or 2 for $10. I also have purple lilacs, basswood, shrub roses, and hazelnuts. Tulips are available for $5 per dozen.

 The compost failed to change much over the winter, even though I put it in a sunnier spot than 2011's compost and covered it with a black tarp. I think the problem is too many "browns," or too much carbon, and not enough "greens," or nitrogen-rich materials. I will mow the lawn this weekend before I turn the compost and add the grass clippings to it before I apply the biodynamic preparations.

 I am growing some new things this year, like garbanzo beans, fava beans, lentils, cotton, and peanuts. The photo on the right is of a Kabouli black garbanzo bean. I purchased them from both Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and Irish Eyes Seeds. Perhaps I did something wrong, but so far it seems like the germination rate is a bit low for the Baker Creek Seeds. I have tried to fill in the bare spots in garbanzo beds with seeds from Irish Eyes, so we'll see if the germination is any better for those. I have direct seeded the lentils, but haven't seen them sprouting yet. The favas are coming up. The grasshoppers may be chewing on them a little. They seem to like sheep sorrel, which grows around the garden perimeter and creeps into it every chance it gets. So I am tolerating a dense patch of sheep sorrel in the garden to feed the damn grasshoppers so they don't eat the fava beans or anything else I plant. Depending on how pesky they get this year, I might try eating the grasshoppers this year. Someone suggested it at a work meeting recently.

 Here is one of the honeyberries I planted last year. There are 8 in the garden, and all of them have come back looking so much better than they did last year, and certainly bigger. They seem to have nearly finished flowering, and I'm looking forward to having my first taste of honeyberries once they ripen.
I tasted a few spears of asparagus. I ate them raw less than 5 feet from where they grow. Delicious! It's hard not to eat all of them, but I want the asparagus plants to grow big so I have to restrain myself. I have been checking every day to see how many spears are up and if any plants might be able to spare one or two spears for me. The ones I let go are growing tall. I can't wait for the asparagus to "run." I planted it last spring, and I think it was 2 year old crowns (maybe 1 year old crowns? I have only recently started to keep better records).
I mentioned above that I put a red fleshed apple in the back yard. I just heard about red fleshed apples a couple of months ago. I found them by looking through Southmeadow Fruit Gardens catalog. Southmeadow Fruit Gardens is a company in Michigan with an enormous collection of heritage and commercial varieties of apples. They sell other fruits too, as well as rootstocks. I wanted the apple called Hidden Rose, but they were out so I asked for the red fleshed apple with the reddest flesh they had left, and they sent Almata. It had red flower buds about to burst when it arrived, but unfortunately the uncouth four-legged neighbors ate them all. Now the tree is sprouting beautiful red leaves and the vegetarians in the neighborhood seem to have found other sources of food (though I'm pretty sure they are the ones chomping the strawberry leaves). My uncle in law dropped off some straw bales and fence posts and short rabbit fencing. I will be installing a fence soon to try to keep at least some of the critters out.  The straw bales will cover up the insulation in the front of the house, catch rain from the roof, and grow some cucurbits. So much work to do still! But it is a labor of love.
As for the heirloom bedding plant sale, let's wait until next Friday and Saturday, June 14 and 15. By then the starts will look better and the soil might even be warm enough for planting.
Friday & Saturday, June 14 &15 from 9 to 3. Email me at the contact link above for directions.

how my garden grows

It rained today for the first time in over a week, and like most areas of the United States, northern Minnesota has been rather hot as of late. Still, miraculously, the majority of the plants in my garden show no signs of water stress. I credit this to evening shade and tough love. I have found that most plants adapt to a lack of supplemental water, and that if watered too often, plants will begin to depend on it and wilt if the watering isn't kept up. Our high temperatures have remained in the double digits, so that has certainly helped as well. There were some casualties, though. Some of the peas died, and the rosemary I overwintered from last year and recently replanted in the garden is looking pretty bad, and a couple of the hardy kiwis (including the only male) have lost all their leaves to drought. Perhaps the rain falling now will bring the kiwis back (they seem to be rather tough--the ones I planted at work have survived trampling and neglect) and the rosemary.

I harvested two sunflower seed heads yesterday after working on staving off the invading grass. I saw some bees crawling all over the yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta) flowers so I decided to let them remain in the garden. The peas are finally starting to form. The plants are growing so tall and erect, full of pretty white flowers.

The grasshoppers are abundant again this year. At first they weren't so bad, and the crows were showing up to eat them regularly (hopefully they still are--I just haven't noticed any). Then they started eating stuff I don't want them to eat. They have nibbled my rhubarb and turmeric down to nothing, they have bitten half-moons into many of the gladioli, and they have probably finished off my last remaining chamomile plant by now. Something--I'm not sure what--has eaten two of my rosemary plants entirely. I didn't think anything would eat rosemary.
I sprayed the biodynamic preparation 502  on the garden a couple of weeks ago. 502 is supposed to help plants maximize the energy they absorb from the sun, and it can be used to regenerate leaf damage. I was hoping it would give the watermelon radishes and red Russian kale the boost they need to stay alive after a brutal attack from the grasshoppers. Their frass (droppings) are visibly littered all around what is left of the poor plants. I don't notice much of a difference, but I remain hopeful they will pull through (um, long enough for me to eat them...)

The garden truly does feel magic this summer. I love having so much space and freedom to help facilitate the creation of this beautiful, edible landscape, and I feel energized by it and lucky to be its caretaker.