11:57 AM [07 Apr 2008 | Monday] |
Tree Swallows |
Saw my first tree swallows in the yard battling for position. There were three of them. One couple and a third wheel on the telephone wires over the bird house they usually try to nest in. I've put up two new birdhouses to replace ones that have been in place since around 1998. Bought them from a neighbor who makes them for 8 bucks a pop. Don't know if they are going to stay. |
Mood: None, or other
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11:32 AM [05 Apr 2008 | Saturday] |
Crocuses are up |
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First Crocuses are up! Two beautiful purple ones that receive first sun, popped up in the side yard. We've made it trhough a very non-snowy warm winter. Sunny day, 50 F. |
Mood: None, or other
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12:16 PM [01 Apr 2008 | Tuesday] |
Onions and Scallions are Germinating! |
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Yesterday we put the onion and shallot seeds in their little germination chambers. The temperature today in the Catskills is a balmy cloudy 50 F and it has the feel of a tropical Storm. I know there are those in the tropics who might debate 50 F as anything but feeling tropical but we're working our way out of the Catskill winter. Yesterday it was snowing and raining. Sunday I barbecued and it was 38 F but very sunny. I have spring fever. Hopefully I won't catch a real fever from barbecuing in the cold.
Here's what my industrious better half planted yesterday.
Onions
Red Wing, White Sweet Spanish, Ailsa Craig, Vidalia, Red Burgermeister, Walla Walla, Super Star Storage, Mix Large
Scallions
Summer Scallion, Lisbon Scallion
That ought to do it. Still eating Purple Majesty, Russet Burbank potatoes from the root cellar. Shallots are almost out. I may plant a couple of those root cellar potatoes this year and see what happens. I'm feeling crazy.
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Mood: chipper
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11:23 AM [08 Mar 2008 | Saturday] |
Spring Birds Arrive! |
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The Red Wing Blackbirds and Robins have arrived! I also saw one Bluebird as well. Spring is here! Who cares what the calendar says. |
Mood:
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12:46 PM [24 Feb 2008 | Sunday] |
It's Time to Order the Seeds |
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February is almost over and it's time to order next year's seeds. My wife and I have already picked out last year's leftovers that we can use again. It's time to get my gardening hat on.
This past Friday we had snow but no big deal, just about 8 inches. It has been a pretty mild winter from a snow standpoint. Mostly rain and sleet. My wife bought me snow shoes four winters ago and I haven't been able to use them for the past two winters because there just isn't enough snow. Where has it gone? I mean, you can snow shoe in eight inches of snow but it really is silly, you can just walk in that with boots. We always used to have a foot to two feet of snow every winter. Oh well. I got to break out the seed catalogues and start setting up the greenhouse in the basement.
We still are eating out of the root cellar. The food that made it was the shallots, garlic and the potatoes. There are carrots and beets but they look pretty dried up. I have to work on that for next year. We did manage to eat all the winter squash. The temperature in the root cellar hovers around 40-45 F. If it gets below zero F it drops a little more. It's a great place to leave cold groceries as well.
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Mood: cheerful
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12:10 PM [09 Jan 2008 | Wednesday] |
Warm Days |
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Very warm these past two days. I actually barbecued yesterday. 50 and it hit 58 F today. This is what we call the January thaw but no barbecue, it was raining. Not much else to report today. |
Mood: None, or other
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12:41 PM [07 Jan 2008 | Monday] |
First Post of the Year |
Shallots and Garlics were planted before Thanksgiving! I'm not sure what day it was but I know I got them in the ground. The garlic were from Seed Savers. One package of Elephant Garlic and one of Georgian Fire. The shallots were ones I'd grown last summer and replanted this fall. I also replanted some of this year's garlic. Is it garlic, garlics or garli, I'm not sure. Microsoft likes garlic so perhaps I'll go with garli. I'm hoping last year's garli and shallots will work. I don't know why they wouldn't except for the fact that nothing ever seems to work when you want it to. I got tons of both of them and kept finding them in the soil when I was trying to put the garden to bed, hence the replanting of both. I got them into the ground just as the sun was setting. It was cold outside and I had to beat the hell out of the mulch to spread it on top because it was half frozen. I also planted the last of the winter rye in the upper lower garden. So we'll see what happens.
The root cellar is working out well but I didn't do what I planned with the carrots and beets. I was going to cover them with sand to keep them fresh but I wound up just throwing them in the cellar and letting them fend for themselves. The beets are beginning to look kind of dried up but some of the carrots are okay. We used them in soup the other day. I pulled out one the multicolored carrots and it looked great, much to my astonishment. The last carrots we sautéed were the purple haze. It seems to be trendy to name carrots after designer drugs. The purple haze have a deep purple red skin and it seemed like the color has soaked into the carrot with the passage of time so when you cook it, it get dark like a beet. That's got to be good for you.
The squash (acorn and delicata) were great. We ate the last acorn squash the other night. Just a couple of bones but very sweet. The delicata show no signs of decay. I'm not sure what varieties they are, sadly, because I just scooped them up hither and yon when I picked them but some of the delicata have an incredibly thick skin. It took a monumental effort to open them I almost cut my fingers off in the process and they tasted fine. The delicate, not my fingerfs. The other ones open with no problem. All are pretty small, so it's one delicata per person. By the way, Microsoft doesn't like the word delicata either, it keeps changing it to delicate. I suppose I have to teach it a new word.
I never harvested my leeks so my dream of purple potato leek soup may remain a fantasy. But the weather droid says it will be in the 50's F in a couple of days so who knows, maybe I'll grab one.
We've had some snow and the temp dropped to ten below zero F the other night but now we seem to be warming up. It reached a high of 38 F today and the snow is melting away. |
Mood: cold
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10:28 AM [11 Nov 2007 | Sunday] |
Catfish are Jumping and so are Worms! |
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This morning at 7:30 AM ET in the Catskills it was 16 F. We are dropping into the teens and I've yet to plant my shallots and garlic. No need to panic, I'm sure it'll warm up again soon. We also had our first snow that actually stuck to the ground. Here are my leeks.
But there is reason to panic about something else. Worms, killer worms, some as big as a ploughman's forearm are coming to chew your forest to bits. Could this be the beginning of Frank Herbert's vision? A dried up planet where worms rule the world. I read the first Dune Book in college and have seen many incomprehensible incarnations of it on the Sci-Fi channel. I never thought I'd experience it. Am I excessively panicking, you bet I am. There's not much to do in the garden and it's the weekend.
Fisherman refer to them as "Alabama jumpers" because these annelids can jump (scientists call them Amynthas agrestis). They are great bait because they wriggle and have more verve and panache than your standard earthworm. They are the "Little Richard" of the live bait genus. That popularity could be what's causing them to spread out. With their obvious physical skills can worm jumping competitions be far behind?
They are a threat because they voraciously eat the leaf litter on the forest floor, some which has taken up to hundred years to form, in a manner of minutes. Maybe not minutes but quicker than the docile worms we've grown to know and love. My undying love for the earthworm stems from it status as a master composter, a welcome addition to my garden that tirelessly aerates the soil, chomps up organic matter and passes it into the garden, filling it with nitrogen, phosphates and potash (not sure what potash is, I rank it with myrrh).
Now I must keep a steely eye out for these creatures. They're described as 5–6 inches long and a bit fatter than your average worm, no doubt a result of their bad eating habits. I don't know what it is, groups migrate to the US and immediately put on the pounds. In certain parts of the country they're known to wear a top hat and a monocle, outside of that, no big difference from your average worm.
When you find them, um, don't do anything. It's still a worm, it's good for your garden! I mean what can you do? Professor I. L. Heiberg of State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry has stated that in optimum conditions, the worm population may even reach 250,000,000 per acre (thanks wikipedia). 250,000,000 an acre! Is he crazy? Can that really be true? That's many more worms than we have in the US house and Senate. And look at the damage they've caused!
Some of the facts in this post may be inaccurate. Read the excellent story by reporter Lee Sheer of the Athens Banner-Herald (Athens GA) by clicking this Read the full story
I'll be hiding under the bed. |
Mood: anxious
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12:12 PM [08 Nov 2007 | Thursday] |
Our first snow shower |
Just a quick note, we had our first snow shower on Tuesday afternoon. The sun was shining through the sparkling flakes. Magic. That morning at 8:00 AM it was 30 F. Today we had more flurries but I forgot to check the temperature. Here’s what the garden looked like two years ago October 23. Our elevation is roughly 1900 feet. I put tilling off too long that year.
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Mood: awake
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12:03 PM [06 Nov 2007 | Tuesday] |
All 3 Gardens Tilled! |
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Friday afternoon November 2, I tilled the final garden. No glitches, roto-tiller worked fine. Now it's time to plant the garlic and the shallots, then fill in the rest with winter rye and we'll be all ready for winter. Most of the leeks are still out there (I always seem to leave something out there) but everything else is in the root cellar. Now that the temperature has finally consistently dropped, most mornings are in the mid 20's F and the root cellar is starting to cool off. Right now it's 52 F in there. During the summer it never got warmer than 68 F but now we'll be able to store milk, beer, wine and of course all the vegetables.
Our root cellar is connected to the house. We poured a basement under our house in 2003 and the root cellar sticks out of it. It's 8' x 8', shut of from the rest of the basement by studs, drywall and a metal door (so the door doesn't rot). The floor is dirt, then a layer of the leftover stone we spread around the foundation and ultimately on top of that we'll put pea gravel so you can walk around in your bare feet. There is an air pipe that goes from the bottom, under the foundation footing and up the other side. This is the first winter the first floor has been connected to the basement, so I don't have to go outside in the snow to get the vegetables. A staircase to the basement, that's living baby. It never freezes down there, it's below the 4 foot frostline but it did drop into the mid 30's F last winter. That's the first time it's ever really been shut off from the rest of the house. At that point we were still under construction so we'll see how low it gets this year. Here's a shot of it being prepped for backfill.
 
The root cellar is such a luxury and of course I was against it, my wife was for it. She was right, again. I love going down there and getting our summer produce all winter. I read that you can store your carrots and beets in sand and it keeps them fresh longer. I have to experiment with that. I hope it works. The problem with the carrots is they start growing again and rot. I also have to remind myself to check all the produce to make sure nothing is molding up.
Like many Northern Hemi folks I'm checking out Gardening Blogs from the Southern Hemi for vicarious kicks. Here are two good ones from Australia. http://www.gardeningtipsnideas.com/ and http://scarecrowsgarden.blogspot.com/ |
Mood: None, or other
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