12:53 PM  [29 Oct 2007 | Monday]

Killing Frost Arrives

This morning at 7:30 AM ET the temperature was 21 F. The killing frost has arrived. Almost everything is harvested, just a few stray ornamental cabbages and leeks.

I also planted the winter rye on Sunday. Tons of rain on Saturday.

8:43 AM  [24 Oct 2007 | Wednesday]

2 out of 3 Gardens Tilled

11:43 AM  [21 Oct 2007 | Sunday]

The Warmth Continues

10.21.07

The warm October weather continues. This morning at 9:00 AM it is 55 F. Friday morning 65 F and Thursday 60 F. We've yet to receive another frost since the first frost back on September 17^th, which wasn't a killing frost, Just 30 F but did manage to kill a lot of plants. The pepper plants survived and to our amazement are still churning out sweet red peppers, something that never happens for us up here.

I have harvested the rest of the carrots and potatoes, the most successful potato being the "Purple Majesty". Sadly these are the potatoes with the least amount of flavor, they have some but not like the others, but they are really purple inside which makes them fun to eat. I'm thinking of making potato leek soup with them (once I yank out the leeks). Purple and green soup, don't forget to invite the kids. I'll search for a recipe online. We also have a good crop of "German Butterballs" which taste great. A modest crop of "Red Golds" which we're eating first and are almost gone. The "Burbank Russets" are a bit of a disappointment. I planted a ton of them and didn't get all that much and a lot of them were rather small. That's supposed to be the storing potato that gets us through the winter. Some also have holes bored into them (potato borers? I have to look into that, never had it before). I can't complain though, there's more than enough potatoes in my cellar now for the two of us and guest. I always just expect more, more, more! Hopefully we'll eat them all before they starting growing again.

I'm going up now to get the rest of the beets and then prepare the whole mess for roto-tilling. I have winter rye all set but I've yet to check if the roto-tiller is actually working, always a tense moment cause if it isn't, I'm reduced to pick and shovel, a daunting prospect. The good news is, no snow yet.

9:53 AM  [09 Oct 2007 | Tuesday]

Humid Warm October Weather

10.9.07

The temperatures here in the Catskills for the past three days have had a tropical feel. High 70’s low 80’s F with the sky turning blue and just as quickly clouding over and depositing stray thunderstorms. I’m battling to get the garden put to bed for the winter but this weather keeps fooling me. It just doesn’t feel like fall. But I have to leave the garden for a week and I know when I get back the weather will have turned chilly so I forced myself yesterday to harvest carrots. Carrots are okay in the ground during the cold but they are a real pain in the neck to prepare for the root cellar when it’s cold, same with potatoes. Your fingers get numb in the cold dirt, and you don’t feel like washing the cold wet mud off them. I know you’re supposed to leave the dirt on the potatoes and perhaps even the carrots but I don’t like all that mud going into my septic system so I try to get most of it off before I put them in the root cellar. So far we have beets, carrots, shallots and garlic in the root cellar. I have a good crop of winter squash for the cellar although our reading up on the subject says you should keep those in a drier place.  I may put them in there anyway, I don’t have unlimited space.

Because of the warm weather tomatoes that had been frosted two weeks ago are now producing red tomatoes like crazy and we really can’t keep up with them. Even the basil plants have sprouted new leaves under their frosted dead leaf canopy.

I harvested three kinds of carrots yesterday, Red Dragon, Rainbow and Purple Haze. The rainbow carrots are odd, my wife handed me the seeds and I just planted them so I didn’t know what to expect, except I guess a rainbow of some kind. There are three colors, orange, yellow and white. At first I thought the white ones were some kind of mutant so I was tossing them. Now I realize that was their intention.  They’re from Pinetree Garden, here’s a photo.

I also managed to harvest some Red Gold potatoes as well. Right now I’m going up to get the onions out of the ground before we get another frost and they start rotting.

8:23 AM  [01 Oct 2007 | Monday]

10.1.07

10.1.07

This morning at 7:30 AM it is 50 F. We’ve not had a frost since the first one but that first one really did the trick. All the summer squash is dead along with most of the basil. There are live basil leaves under the taller basil plants so we were able to use basil to make tomato sauce for freezing. We froze roughly ten quarts of tomato sauce. My wife usually does that but while she was out of town I tackled it for the first time. The delicata squash this year was incredibly prolific, which was a big surprise considering how devastated all the squash was by the cucumber beetles. Yesterday while I was out in the garden pulling up the old squash vines in preparation for putting the garden to bed I saw the cucumber beetles in the few squash blossoms that still exist. I suppose that means they’ll be wintering over with us, we probably won’t grow cucumbers next year and see if that helps.  So seeing all those delicatas was a big surprise. We also managed to get some acorn squash, roughly ten, pathetic, but it was a surprise because I really could see them until we got frosted. Our pumpkin patch produced what can kindly be called tiny pumpkins, around six of them. They’re not good for carving but it’ll be something to put on the deck for fall.

Our leaves began to change on September  22 (last day of summer), pretty early. People are saying it’s because the summer was so dry. It may have been dry but I never had to water the garden this summer by hose because there was always enough rain to keep the plants from dying. I think if I’d been up there watering the onions might have gotten bigger.  I’ve only pulled a few out of the ground, so I might be surprised when I pull the rest out. Many of their stems are still green, we’ve pushed them over but they still persist.

I’ve been harvesting the potatoes in a piecemeal fashion, they are terribly overgrown with weeds so it’s a challenge to find the dead stems and then pull out the potatoes. The Burbank Russets and the German butterball seem to be the tastiest. We had some russet golds, that looked great but tasted a little bland, the other night.  We’ll see if they are all like that. The Purple Majesty potatoes are bland as well. They are pretty but I don’t think we’ll go with them next year.  Of course there are tons of them.

Every meal we’re having save for the meat comes out of the garden still. Most plates consist of carrots (huge crop this year) sautéed with mint leaves, beets (huge crop as well), pole beans, potatoes and onions. Our poles beans came on strong when we were out of town in August and are a bit large and chewy so we might be at the end of eating them but they do fill out the plate in a pinch. I’m going to try to get this garden put to sleep before the month is over. I like to get those potatoes out of the ground before it gets too cold; it’s much easier that way.

9:20 AM  [17 Sep 2007 | Monday]

We’ve Been Frosted!

8:39 AM  [30 Aug 2007 | Thursday]

Buy Local and Grow Your Own Food When You Can

Late summer is the golden time of the year for me. I can go out in my own backyard and yank stuff out of the ground, put it in the pot or on the grill and cook away. No middleperson between me and my mouth. And that's the way I wish it could always be. There are so many things that bug me about the grocery store, starting with the carts. I can't park because there is a cart in my way. Why do people just let their carts go after they shop, do they imagine they'll go back to the store of their own accord? Do they think they're setting them free to wander the world, but where would they go forever branded with the mark of the store? So I have to get out of my car, move the cart and then park. And that cart is broken. I push it back to the store, it wobbles, it creaks, one of it's wheels doesn't turn because it has goo in it's bearing. I think the cart may have hit a deer because it has severe alignment problems. So I exchange it, leaving it for the next dupe. My new cart has last week's flyer, someone else's shopping list and a lost child in it. But I brave on planning to ditch the child in the frozen food section.

Next headache are all the deals, 20 cents off peanut butter if you buy ten gallons. Three packs of baby bellas for the price of two, are they moldy, tough to tell, they are fungus. Manager meat specials, purple steaks 2 bucks off. There are red tag sales everywhere but I need rain checks for everything I want. How many rain checks do you need? I used to be timid now I say give me as many as possible, I'll freeze the turkeys or I'll throw them at the bears. Just give me a deal to compensate for the outrageous prices of eveything else, make me feel like I'm getting something. It cost three bucks a gallon to get here, I want a deal on spumoni, can't grow that in the garden.

Then the check out, fifteen registers, two of them staffed, one is the express lane, two items or less. I grumble in line with the rest of the suckers angrily eyeing the staff as they laugh about some incomprehensible anecdote having to do with a mix up in shifts, or a party that so and so made a jerk of themselves at. And when they finally wake up and staff the rest of the registers the mad rush begins. You roll over a senior citizen with forty bottles of Ensure and  a stack of frozen dinners, what the heck, all's fair in war. And you ignore the person behind who thought  they could shop without a wobbly cart and wound up with their arms filled with bread, cheese and a two twelves of the beer that destroyed Milwaukee's reputation. Just ignore them, I'm first. Just one person if front of me. Uh oh, the check out person needs a key, not the key! The announcement reverberates throughout the store. Key on one, key on register one. The old lady I ran over to get in this line casts me a smirk as she rolls out the door. I've already loaded my stuff onto the conveyor belt and am writing out my check, which must now include my driver's license number, my phone number and a DNA swab. I can't repack my cart so I wait it out. Now they're squabbling in front of me about expired coupons. I'm doomed, so I while I wait I peruse the tabloids. Out of focus pictures of over the hill glamorous people who stomachs and thighs look like hell now and are all apparently dying of a mysterious disease while their current spouse cheats on them, and there's a photo the cheating couple frolicking nude on a beach I will never be able to afford and you wonder why anyone would prance around in public naked, especially someone famous, at least I think they're famous, I've never heard of them, I don't know why they're famous they look like hell. I'm no Brad Pitt, but I don't drop my trousers in public, anymore.

Finally the argument over the coupons for the smoked oysters has been resolved and it's my turn to check out. Oh boy! I start bagging myself, I can break my own eggs thank you. I'm filling the bags, plastic, when the dreaded words "price check" come up. Now everyone's looking at me like I'm a paroled child molester. The girl asks, "Did you see how much these were?" "I don't know. " "Well are these the South African lemons or the Florida lemons?" "They better be the dammed US lemons, why do I need South African lemons, if they're South African lemons, I don't want them. I don't need my lemons flown in from god knows where. Lose them, I don't want those lemons. I want American lemons!" Oops, I might have gotten to emphatic, oh no, here it comes. "Key on register one!" Ahhhhh!

Why do we have to fly in lemons from South Africa, why do I need red peppers from Chile, brocolli from Guadalajara, don't we grow this stuff here? How much did it take to bring that lemon here. Buy local, grow it yourself, okay in the Northeast maybe not lemons, but surely brocolli, peppers, eggs from someone local with chickens. Local milk. I live in the country, there are cows everywhere. Support your local dairy.

After receiving a long strip of coupons I'll never use for stuff I don't need, I finally check out.  Wobble the cart out to my vehicle, positive I paid too much for that cat food that will probably kill my cat. She eats local, a steady stream of moles and mice.

I get back home, to my garden, my grill, and let loose a sigh of relief. I love going out back and picking my own food. I don't mind the weeding, the bugs, the tomatoes that get sluggified. It's mine. I grew it. And I can eat it whenever I want. I can also freeze it and eat it all winter.

And if you can't grow it yourself try going to a store that buys local or try your local farmer's market, or a food co-op. Farmer's markets connect you with the local farmers and you get to know your food. Farmers make 8 cents on the dollar for food they sell to the big grocery chains. You're paying truckers, oil companies and airlines, not famers when you buy at the chains. You'll still have to make a trip to the local grocery store, let's get real, there's some stuff you can't buy local like drugs, bandaids, mouthwash, bleach, hydrogen peroxide, greeting cards, sugar, cranberry juice, lychee nuts, . But it's time we got back to growing and eating our own stuff, trust me, the grocery stores'll survive and always be there when you need them.

Not if I could just grow my own fuel for the car.

12:36 PM  [28 Aug 2007 | Tuesday]

Beets, Yes!

This is the greatest garden ever for beets. We have phenomenal beets this year, bigger than we’ve ever had. And the great thing about them is, we didn’t do any watering or feeding the entire summer. No miracle grow, no fish emulsion, no nothing. And no water. It actually rained enough for them to happen. Now our onions, that may be a different story, they are looking a little strange. There are dead spots all over the stems. I’m not sure if it’s white flies or thrips but there may be a problem. But with onions you never know until you pull them out of the ground. Our beans are coming on strong, too many to eat ourselves, we’re going to be giving them away. And the tomatoes seem to be working. In the Catskills, for the first twelve gardens we could never get a decent tomato but now, they’re doing great. And the carrots, chard and fennel. While we were gone for two weeks our Japanese beetle traps filled to the brim and a black bear knocked down the fence and tore open the bag only to find a disgusting mess. The good thing is, the black bear didn’t do any damage in the garden, it just left. We do not grow corn and if we did, they would be attacking it. But tomatoes and beets, please, there are plenty of berries for them to eat. There continue to be Japanese beetles eating our stuff, primarily the pole beans but there are still plenty of beans. Our trees have not begun to change color. We have plenty of summer left.

8:31 AM  [28 Aug 2007 | Tuesday]

A Light Gone Out

This summer's gardening was put aside for two weeks in order to attend to a family medical emergency. My mother in law, a wonderful energetic and prolific painter of nature passed away after a courageous struggle with cancer. She died surrounded by family in her house with the evening sun shining on her and the walls adorned with her paintings of birds and plants.  She will be missed by everyone who knew her. We planted mums for fall and bulbs for next spring in her flower garden. She was a force of nature and our lives were enriched by her presence.  

9:40 AM  [06 Aug 2007 | Monday]

You Win Some, You Lose Some

As we dive headlong into August there are certain things that are working and certain things that are not working in this year's garden.

Successes

Beets, beans, peas, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes (still green but vigorous), fennel, chard, garlic, shallots, cabbage, broccoli, peppers, winter squash (sort of).

Non-Successes

Eggplant, cucumber, melons, zucchini, yellow squash.

How on earth can you not have a decent summer squash crop? That's the one thing we've always been up to our ears in, skip a day and there are a couple of Louisville Sluggers out there, but this year, so far . . . eh. Yes we've had some little ones but I have to wait days for them, days. I had to ask my neighbor for some and she responded with that usual retort, "Have I got summer squash? Boy have I got summer squash!" I blame the cucumber beetles, who've been diligently chomping away on their flowers. The plants are there still so perhaps we'll get some decent squash once the beetles are played out. The cucumber beetles have devastated our cucumbers, there's nothing there, an occasional cuke happens, but the leaves are destroyed. Again my neighbor's share their cucumbers with us, which is nice because they're from plants we grew from seed, so they're varieties we wanted in the first place. It's almost like we grew them. Here is the cucumber patch.

I plan to construct a cucumber beetle trap for next year. It will have the pheromone we received from Johnny's, a clear baffle atop and some kind of dish with soapy water below or a sticky surface. It's a work in progress. The Japanese Beetles are here in full force now as well, filling the traps quickly. There is a weed in our yard they are especially attracted to and I'm not sure whether to pull it up or let them mass there and leave the hollyhocks alone. Does anyone know what this is?

We are on the cusp of a major bean crop just in time for the decline of the sugar snap peas. I thought the beans would come in staggered but they seem poised to hit us all at once. Here are the bean towers and a stand of Masai Bush beans; there are also two other bush bean patches and two pole bean teepees.

The plan is to take the excess beans down to New York City to the Catholic Worker for their soup kitchen. They're always appreciative. We try to do that with all excess vegetables.