The Stone Soup Farm Project

I’m feeling a bit of a failure with the garden, to be honest.

I know this is coming in from other parts of my life as well, but I look at my beds and wonder where all the food is.  The heat has slowed a lot of it.  The tomatoes every day look like they’re going to surrender despite all the green fruit, the summer squash may or may not be eaten through (although the surviving zucchini seems to be putting out new leaves.  Hopeful sign), the leaves on the pumpkins are dying off from the bottom up, although the ends are incredibly vigorous, and the corn has all fallen over, only to be assaulted by the neighborhood squirrel before I could get any of the booty.  Like I said, very depressing.  But I keep on.  Maybe the zucchini is a sign.

On the plus side, the cucumbers are going like mad.  We’ll have several kinds of pickles put up by the end of the summer.  We also have one white pumpkin that is growing at the top of the trellis and is in desperate need of a sling before it pulls the whole plant down.  Our two little sugar bush watermelons haven’t increased in size at all, but I’m still holding out hope, and the carrot tops are lush, even though we’ve seen no signs of the veggies below.  It’s my first year.  I have to expect failures and unexpected successes.

I am starting a list of lessons learned:

Lesson 1:  Drip irrigation is your friend.   Next year I am absolutely installing overly complex drip watering systems.  The hoses are about $20 for 75 feet, which is about enough to do four beds if I chop and change them with regular hose and all the splitters and whatnot.  It will be worth it to be able to water at the roots, maintain the soil and not leave lakes in the rest of the yard.

Lesson 2:  Heirlooms are nice.  Hybrids produce.  I’m fairly well convinced that my tomato problem is fusirium wilt.  All my tomatoes are heirlooms, so none are terribly resistant.  I like the heirlooms, but I think next year I either need to go half and half or experiment with grafting heirloom plants onto hybrid rootstock.  Won’t that be an adventure!

Lesson 3:  Fence the damn corn!  I saw a couple of other gardeners recommend this, but of course I never got around to it.  Now all the corn and the pole beans they were supporting are down on the ground.  I suspect it’s too late to salvage this year’s crop.  Next year I will not be so stubborn (or lazy).

Lesson 4:  Nylon trellising is a waste of money.  The nylon trellis I got from Burpee failed after two months.  I mean completely, shatteringly FAILED.  It just started separating and snapping off the frame.  Of course, the ones to fail first were the ones supporting the cucumbers and tomatoes.  I have since replaced them all with plastic fencing, but this caused additional damage to the tomatoes and may have endangered the pumpkins, as the vines on those were so long I actually had to cut them free of the trellis and lay them down before reattaching them to the new fencing.  Next year I’ll start with the plastic fencing, woven onto the frame properly instead of attached with twist ties like this year.

There will be more.  That’s the whole point of a garden.  I just wish they weren’t being learned at the expense of this year’s crop.

As mentioned earlier, it’s too damn hot.  We’ve had ten days of high 80’s/low 90’s.  The only rain in that time was the storm that whisked through, wreaking devastation on the western suburbs, drowning us here at my office and barely sprinkling at home.  *sigh*  I’m having a really hard time keeping up with the watering.  It has to be done daily at this point, and really probably twice a day.  And even then I haven’t been able to keep the tomatoes happy.

They’ve looked like this every day when I’ve come home.  I dump a half gallon of water on each of them, they perk up a little, but by the next day, despite a heavy layer of straw mulch, they’re back to looking half dead.

Finally yesterday in desperation, I cut the bottoms off some soda bottles and made automatic waterers.

Now I give them a good soak, fill the bottles and go on about my day.  At least in theory.  In actuality, the bottles are empty again in about ten minutes.  I can’t tell if the soil really is that dry and is absorbing it all or if it’s just leaking away, but at least the tomatoes seem happier.  I’m going to collect more bottles and do this for the squashes and watermelons, too, and possibly for the chards I’m going to attempt again.  And next year, ALL the beds are getting drip irrigation.  I don’t care what Mel says about the benefits of hand watering.  The “sunwarmed” water buckets just bred hoards of mosquitos, and it takes a long time to hand water 64 square feet of garden.  Since I want to double it next year…  Yeah, time to start laying out the hose.

It’s only June. It feels so wrong to be saying stuff in my garden is done already. But it is.

The spinach has been out for weeks. It bolted in the first of the spring heat waves (and I can’t say I blame it much), and went so fast that I couldn’t get any of it in the freezer. A second round will go in in August, but in the meantime I have to replace them with…something. I still haven’t decided what.

The cauliflower is done. It was a good experiment, and very exciting when the white heads started growing, but in the end it was just too much space for a one shot crop. At least with the broccoli there were side shoots after the main head was cut. With the cauliflower, it was once and done, and again because of the heat, they bolted early, so I really only got two good heads out of the four plants I put in. Next year I’ll just get it from people who know what they’re doingthe farmer’s market.

Of course, the broccoli is pretty much done, too. I got good heads off of all four of those plants, with one left lingering to produce its side shoots. The heat may be ruining any chances of that, but I’m giving it until Wednesday before I pull it completely.

The beets are almost done. I harvested one full square to take to my mother’s last weekend for Russian potato salad, and they were WONDERFUL. I could have just eaten them like candy after we roasted them. So I will be planting at least four more squares of those.

The things that surprise me are what we still do have. I’m actually still getting peas, even this late in the season. I pulled one set of vines, but the others just don’t want to give up. Which I’m fine with. I love peas. I’m trying to decide if I want to attempt a late crop in September to have more. I think it will depend on where the cucumbers are at that point, since they share a trellis. The romaine is also doing amazingly well, despite being the favorite home of earwigs. I still have two heads of the spring seeding left, and the later seeding is just starting to get big enough to pick from now. I need to plant a bit more, but that may wait until July/August.

The tomatoes are making me pretty happy so far, heat issues aside (but that’s for another post). They’re all putting out fruit, the paste tomatoes more than the Brandywines. Rumors of lingering late blight have me jumpy, but I’m staying positive that there will be red on the vines before long.

And speaking of vines… The zucchini and summer squash are banging along. We have blossoms! And one lanky summer squash that I suspect is suffering from the heat as much as I am. But watering strategies are in place which I’m hoping will help. And the watermelon has finally taken off, at least vine wise. I’ve been able to start weaving it through the trellis at long last, so I’m taking that as a hopeful sign. The pumpkins, on the other hand, we can’t slow down. The one (what I suspect is the orange) has already grown to the top of the trellis, five feet high. I’m going to loop it over the top for extra support and then start weaving it back down.

And then there’s the Three Sisters bed. The corn is already 3 feet high, and the beans are coming along at an equally good clip. I have to get out and trellis them up the corn stalks when it’s not so damn hot. (sensing a theme?) The squashes almost all came up, but disappeared when I mulched the bed. I have to go out on my hands and knees and make sure they’re okay.

So everything’s growing, which is all I can ask. Now I’m wishing I had more beds to grow more!

The weeks get away from you so quick during the summer. I can’t believe I haven’t posted in two weeks. It’s certainly not for lack of things to talk about. The garden is growing, summer trips are being planned and the kids are winding down school (only a week and a half left on their strike extended school year!)

I promise a bigger post later, but for now, I wish everyone a Joyous Litha and hope the sun shines brightly, if not too hotly, on all good things for you.

As I said, the corn is doing very well, already 2-4 inches high.  And I only had to do minimal reseeding.  So I’m expecting a nice crop from these babies.

But in reading another blog (waves at Inadvertent Gardener), I was reminded that there *are* other plants that are resistant to walnut wilt.  Including squash.  And beans.  As a daughter of New England, I know my pilgrim history and the significance of these three plants.  In the early days of the settlement at Plymouth, the local Wampanoag tribe taught the less than farm savvy settlers to plant corn, squash and beans together.  The beans fix nitrogen in the soil for the corn, which in return serves as support for the bean vines, and the squash plants spread out at their base to provide a living mulch for both.  The perfect symbiotic relationship.  It was so beneficial, it was called Three Sisters Planting.

Did I mention they’re all resistant to the walnut tree?

Armed with this happy info, I started shopping for beans and squash.  The beans weren’t as important, because honestly, none of us are mad for beans.  I take the blame for that, as I don’t serve them much because I was burnt out on dilly beans as a kid.  I just knew they had to be pole varieties, which are harder to find than one might think.  The squash, however, the squash had very definite requirements.  My mom’s Thanksgiving tradition is to take a big old blue hubbard squash out in the back yard and smash it apart with a hatchet.  You have not lived until you’ve seen my 70 year old mother with her hatchet, butchering a squash with rampant glee.  So I knew we had to have hubbards.

With that in mind, Hero and I made a last trip to the Burpee outlet.  Yes, I have access to a Burpee outlet.  Envy me.  The outdoor plants were kind of mangy looking.  Too late to find a Brussels sprout plant unfortunately, but we did find Sugar Baby watermelon plants to replace the seeds that got eaten didn’t come up.  So bonus.  And while the seed selection was sparse, we did score one pack of baby hubbard squash seeds as well as a pack of purple pole beans.  Woot!  We supplemented this with Kentucky Blue green beans, acorn squash, golden hubbard and acorn squash.  Variety and spice, right?

Yesterday morning while the kids were still asleep and the heat hadn’t become unbearable, I went out and planted.  First I replanted the gaps in the corn.  Then I planted 3 blue hubbard, 1 bottle gourd, 1 golden hubbard and 4 acorn squash down the middle of the bed.  Then I put in about 20-25 green bean plants on one side and the same number of purple on the other between the outside rows.  Hopefully most of the corn is up enough that it will beat the beans up to be able to support them without getting pulled over.  But as long as I get at least one good hubbard out of it?  I’ll be happy.

The weather forecast has been warning of terrible thunderstorms for the past 3 days.  We’ve gotten hardly a lick of rain.  ::kicks the Weather Channel::  It’s been so hot and miserable the last few days.  I am NOT a hot weather person.  Four months of blizzards I’m fine with, but let the temp get over 85 and I’m done.

The hot weather has meant watering the raised beds twice a day.  The poor things just can’t keep up.

I lost the spinach to bolting.  One hot day at work was enough to  send it shooting right up, and it was concert week at school, so even though I picked it all, I didn’t have any opportunity to pack it up before the refrigerator ate it.  I have to remember, pickpickpick.  I’m going to plant a fall crop, so hopefully that will work out better.

I also lost the bok choi, this time to slugs.  Fortunately they don’t seem interested in anything else in the garden, which is a good thing, considering how big and lush the brassicas are.  I put out the pie pan of beer (Coors Light, thanks, Deb!) and had a few little slugs each night over the next few nights. Once I pulled the plants, I haven’t seen much more activity from the slugs, and hopefully the side benefit of this heat will be death to slugs.  We’ll see as I plant round two of the chard and bok choi.

The peas are mixed results.  I’ve started picking them, and OMG they are soooooo good.  The first batch just got sauteed in butter and were absolutely perfectly perfect.  But now they’re dividing into the light side and dark side.

The light side is still lush and green and putting out beautiful pods.  The dark side is turning yellow and putting out mottled pods that would have ended up in the compost, if I had a compost bin.  (I know, I know, it’s on the list.)  I’m hoping it’s just a water issue and I’m not already losing my peas.  That would make me sad.  But there *will* be a second crop of those as well.

The tomatoes are puttering along, and we’ve been picking happily from the romaine.  Came close to missing the first cauliflower, and it and the first broccoli are going to end up in a salad tonight.

The corn is doing great, but deserving of a post on its own.  That’s become a bit of a saga.

Now for a day of hunkering down in front of the fan and praying for rain.  Maybe we’ll make ice cream today.

Last weekend was a whirlwind.  With the extended weekend, the kids all needed entertaining, so in addition to yard saling and the garden, we threw in a day trip to the Jersey Shore and a visit to a local alpaca farm.

The details.

Last weekend’s yard sale take was stupendous.  All of the above was less than $50:

Dehydrator: $3
Ice cream machine (new in box): $10
Stick blender (new in box): $5
Antique sock blockers IN MY SIZE: $15
Rolling backpack: $3
Set of 3 Celtic mirrors: $3
Yugi-Oh cards: Free with stick blender
Hourglass: $3
Balancing toy: $3
3 tea cups and saucers: $3
Slate message board: $2
Silver spoons: $2

The bottom half of that list is all kids’ stuff.  Xander (previously known as Junior Junior) has quite a way of charming sales ladies and his mother into buying interesting things he doesn’t really need, and Hero just couldn’t decide on which tea cups to get, so I got her all three so she could have her two girlfriends over for tea.  The dehydrator and stick blender were on my list, and the ice cream machine was so cheap I couldn’t not get it.  But the treasure of the lot is the sock blockers.

The guy I bought them from assured me they were 100 years old and used by his grandparents.  He also told me he had been planning to paint them read and mount pictures of his favorite Red Sox players in the holes.  *shudder*  All I knew was that they weren’t made in the last 50 years and they were the same size as my foot and a good proximity to my wide leg.

The size stamp makes me question the age, because it has a definite mechanical look to it, but I don’t care.  I love them as useful art.  Worth every penny.

I promise a two week garden update this weekend, but that trip to the beach I mentioned earlier did a job on us doing anything productive this week.  See, through a comedy of errors, we ended up on Island Beach in NJ on a beautiful, 85 degree day with no sunscreen.  Three hours of surf and sand and I didn’t need to grow tomatoes, because we already *were* tomatoes.  It’s been a painful week (I couldn’t even wear a bra until today), but we have all now entered the peeling phase, so the end is in sight.

Tomorrow:  More yard sale treasures (we have a guitar and more canning jars on the list this week) and Three Sisters…

Already there are big changes in the garden, but I’ll save that for the weekend report.

Instead, here’s the tale of last weekend’s distractions:

After a simply amazing morning of yard saling, I took Nikki and the kids strawberry picking last Saturday. It was perfect weather, and I was flying high of the hunter/gatherer vibe of the morning, so I went in with plans to conquer the strawberry patch.

Picking strawberries is hard, yo.

The farm we went to, Hellerick’s up in Doylestown, specializes in early varieties, but I think it suffered a bit from small fruits and high traffic. The kids did a terrific job picking. Every time they said they were done and I let them take a break, two minutes later they were back in picking again. But even with the five of us working, we only filled about a flat and a half, which was maybe 4 quarts. Still, it was fun, and the kids keep nagging me to go back. There’s another place near us, Willow Creek Orchards, that hits their season in June, so we may try again then.

That night I made strawberry shortcake for dinner.

Yes, you heard that right, dinner. This is an old tradition from my side of the family. At least one night every summer, my mom would make homemade strawberry shortcake as the entrée for dinner. It was glorious, and when I was a kid always felt like we were cheating the dinner rules somehow. With my brood, though, apparently one isn’t enough. They scarfed through it in no time, and even cheated me out of the piece I had saved for me for later. Ungrateful. Her Majesty requested that she have that for her birthday cake in September. So I measured out a batch and put them in the freezer.

The next day, she and I went erranding. We went to Willow Creek to buy four more quarts to supplement what we had, then to the grocery store for dinner supplies and lids for all of the pint jars I had scored for a song yard saling (told you it was good!) as well as pectin to turn all those strawberries into jam. I got the full sugar pectin, which I don’t think I’ll do again. The jam just ended up a bit too sweet. But that’s later. Got home, put beef and pea pods in the crock pot and started hulling strawberries. Her Majesty helped with that, her first time with a sharp knife. I was sure she wouldn’t last through the first pint, but she hung in through all three batches. These kids do surprise me. Once the cooking started, it was a constant fast pace, boiling one batch, prepping the sugar for the next, keeping the jars and lids warm in the dishwasher, filling, water bath, rinse, repeat. In the end, we had twelve perfect jars canned (everything sealed!) and a pint and a half in the fridge for immediate enjoyment.

I had meant to get more pictures, but the jam train is an express, no stops allowed! We ended up with about a quart and a half left, so those went on a cookie sheet in the freezer for another shortcake, maybe in August for Lammas.

I had leftover whipped cream from the shortcake and some tapioca I’d made earlier in the week, so I drizzled it with jam and added the whipped cream. Perfection!

We may do another batch when Willow Creek’s strawberries come in week after next, but I’m already looking forward to blueberries…

Where did the week go?  I had plans to write an update post to last week’s garden adventures, but all of a sudden it’s Sunday again and I have new things to report.  WTH?

Anyway, as I mentioned LAST WEEK  *sigh*, I did knuckle down and put in the corn bed.  As I expected, the turf was my worst problem.

Each of those hunks is about four inches thick.  Rather than fight with it, I just took the whole thing out, roots and all, for 2′ x 12′ and hauled all the sod out to the weed patch by the shed.  We’ll see who’s stronger, the creeping whatever that’s back there or the grass.  The dirt that remained was mostly clay and VERY hard.  Luckily I had all that Mel’s Mix left, so in it went.

It’s a happy little plot of ground now, harboring well-soaked corn seeds that I hope are just waiting to burst from the ground.  After a week we’ve only seen evidence of one incursion by the rabid neighborhood squirrels, so hope for the best.

I did, however, kill a large patch of grass with the soil mixing tarp…

Sorry about that, honey…

I also got the herb bed properly dug.  Same story as the corn bed, but only 2×4 so much more manageable.

At the moment I have oregano, lemon thyme, garden thyme and two lemon verbena plants, for no other reason than that I love them ridiculously.  I have a lot of herbs in the SFG beds, so I may end up relocating the chives over here later in the season.

Everything in the garden is doing well.  I had chives and parsley in my scrambled eggs last night, which was wonderful, and the bok choi and spinach are going like mad.  The peas are making their way up the trellis with only moderate coaching from me, and one of the zuccinis we planted last week is pushing up through the dirt.  And to top it off, we have this little angel making an appearance…

I haven’t had much time to garden this weekend, as I’ve been obsessed with another project (starts with “S”, ends in “berries”), but it’s nice to know the garden goes on without me.