9:56 AM [24 Apr 2007 | Tuesday] |
Et Tu Roto-tiller? |
The greenhouse is built and we have moved our seedlings into it. We’ve been experiencing some very warm nights in the Catskills so last night the baby plants had their first sleepover in the greenhouse. When I checked on them at 8:00 AM the temperature was a toasty 50 F. They seemed happy but I do worry about them. They’re just little baby plants! It's crucial we start the hardening off process so they’ll be ready for planting in the garden, but that won’t happen here until June 1st after the threat of frost has past. The cold crops can go out sooner, cabbages, potatoes, beets, but there remains a stumbling block.
Last fall the roto-tiller refused to start so I had to till the garden with a pick ax. A tiring task, I assure you. Unfortunately I need to take the tiller to the shop because my infuriating lack of real world skills does not include fixing small engines. This requires borrowing a truck and transporting it or maybe snagging someone to make a house call. Either way it’s crucial I get it up and running now because of the erratic weather we experience this time of year. If we happen to have a stretch of good weather I must be ready at a moments notice to till. No lazing in the sun. Sometimes the entire month of May can be cloudy, 40’s and raining. And you sit and wait and wait for that reluctant sun to peak out, dry the earth and then till, till, till. While the pick ax is a very effective method, we have a large garden and I am but one man.
A neighbor used to have a pig and a pig is probably the best roto-tiller you can find. Just let’em loose and they’ll root around, churn the dirt, eat the grubs and never run out of gasoline. I hear they have wonderful personalities as well. Of course you want to avoid getting too attached to someone else’s pig because of the inevitable holiday picnic. After the pig is through you can let the chickens in to peck about and eat the grubs the pig didn’t get and boom, you’ve got a garden ready for action.
Unfortunately I don’t have the time commitment to make to farm animals so I am at the mercy of my troy-bilt tiller and my pick ax. Oh well, we always seem to get that garden in one way or another and this year will be no different.
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Mood: None, or other
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12:35 PM [17 Apr 2007 | Tuesday] |
Earthworms The Backbone of any Healthy Garden |
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Annelida
Class: Clitellata
Subclass: Ologochaeta
Order: Haplotaxida
Suborder: Lumbricina
What the earthworm lacks in personality and looks it more than makes up for in benefiting your garden. The earthworm is a professional composter. Composting is the process of converting dead organic matter into rich humus, which is helpful for all plant life. They do this by pulling down below the from the soil surface any organic matter (leaves, manure etc.) they find for food or for plugging up their burrow. Once in the burrow they shred the food and partially digest it, then pass it into the soil.
The Earthworm also ingests any other soil particles that are small enough into it’s ‘crop’ where it is ground into a fine past which is then digested in the stomach. When the worm excretes this in the form of casts, they are filling your soil with nitrogen, phosphates and potash.
By continually digging around in the ground, the earthworm keeps the dirt open which allows air and water to pass through. They are a 24 hour a day gardening crew. These tireless invertebrates are the backbone of any healthy garden and are the gardener’s best friend. 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).
What is it?
An earthworm is an annelid, which is a large phylum of animals that comprise segmented worms, including earthworms and leeches. Earthworms have a clitellum, a thick section the body wall that secretes a sac in which the eggs are deposited. Once the eggs are in the sac, the clitellum slides off their body. The benefit? More Worms!
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12:24 PM [10 Apr 2007 | Tuesday] |
So Many Tomatoes, So Little Growing Time |
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The bedding plants that we have growing in the basement are coming along nicely although some of the little tiny flowers are so delicate I get nervous just spraying them. Pouring water on them knocks them over and I fear I’ll be accused of planticide. We had to leave for a day and the baby Violet Cleomes seem to have vanished. I thought they were there before we left but, we leave for a day and a half and they seem to have disappeared, dried up, gone away. My wife plants a boatload of plants and I’ve always had a very hard time keeping up with the varieties at this crucial stage. So I’ve made a vow this year to list them starting with the tomatoes. I always argue against planting too many tomatoes for lots of reasons, it’s cold here in the Catskills, we can’t get them into the ground until after Memorial Day. It’s a pain to plant them, stake them and then keep an eye on them but my whining does not seem to stop the many varieties we get in the ground each year.
>For the past five years or so we’ve used a tomato structure that was a collaborative effort and it rose out of the fact that I hate digging holes for tomato cages, especially for 19 varieties of tomatoes. The structure is a series of tripods (7 foot poles) connected at the top with 8 foot poles. I run strings down from the 8 foot poles and tie them to a rock on the ground so the string stays taut. Then I roll out black plastic to keep the ground warm and weeds at bay, plant the tomato plants and train them up the string. It’s very easy to pick them this way and they get quite tall. Unfortunately I don’t prune them properly (that’s the trick I think) so even though I try to train them they do ramble about. I have a picture of the whole shebang in my garden structures group.
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Here is a list tomatoes we're growing thus year, bred to grow in a cold climate.
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Amish Paste
Big Rainbow
Black Krim
Buffalo
Caspian Pink
Juliet
Larrissa
Nyagous
Peron
Oregon Spring
Red Zebra
Siberia
Speckled Roman
Stupice
Sun Gold
Super Marmande
Sweet 100
X-mas Grape
Yellow Pear
I still think it’s a bit much but we wind up having delicious tomatoes each year that I never see anywhere else.
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Mood: None, or other
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