Just a Little Toady

I have a visitor.  My family has owned this property for over 30 yrs. and I have never seen this visitor on the property, but he's here.  I hope he finds a wife (or she a husband) and make many babies.  I like them hopping through my garden eating the bugs.  Be a gluten.  Eat all you want.

This is an organic pesticide. They eat 2-3 times their weight in bugs per day.  My toad's is a bufo americanus, i.e common toad in Iowa.  Toads hunt for insects primarily at night, so it was nice that I got a chance to meet my garden friend.  Rumor has it that if you half bury a clay pot on it's side and keep the area moist and shady, a toad will shelter there.  They are not fond of the hot sun ( I don't blame then, neither am I), so the moist little get-away makes them happy.  I suppose it is an amphibian's version of air conditioning.

The Kentucky Wonder pole beans are turning the back fence into a hedge.  The little white blossoms are promising a fence full of green beans.  These beans have been popular since 1864.  I suppose something pleasant needed to come out of the Civil War.  (Actually my favorite quote from that year was,"They couldn't hit an elephant from this distance!"   Quite the last words of one General John Sedwick.)  Not only was General Sedwick full of beans, hopefully my hedge o' Kentucky Wonder will be also!

 Notice the brown grass in the background?  Iowa is in the throws of a drought.  My little fairy garden alive with fire flys and toads is watered regularly, so it is just soaking up the hot weather with open arms.  But the neighbors corn field has started to turn brown.  That is not good at all. So if you're inclined, say a prayer for my neighbors and actually the whole state.  

Basil and Braided Garlic

This month has been a busy month of building paths, tying tomato plants, and weeding.  Pounding in fence posts and getting the tomato plants off the ground has been sweatier work than I thought.  I come in from the  garden smelling like a teenage boy's gym clothes.  Sweat literally runs down my glasses like it was raining.  This spring was marked by hurricane force winds and now that the temperature has spiked, the wind dies to placid stillness.
According to Nathaniel Hawthorne, " in the summer forenoons,—when the fervent heat, that almost liquefied the rest of the human family,"  the plants have stretched towards the sky, relishing the "liquefying" heat.  You can see them reveling in the sun.

The basil in amongst the tomato plants is bushing out nicely due to my husbands attentiveness.  He goes out regularly and plucks the tops and just a few leaves from the plant, leaving plenty for the plant to live off of.  He then either drys the leaves on racks or freezes the leaves.  Putting the leaves in the refrigerator will only result in a slimy mess.

The pumpkin in the plastic water tepee from the home page is flourishing.  The fruit is abundant and growing daily.  

The borage has it's petite, pretty blue flowers and the potatoes have their white ones.

The garlic scapes have been sauteed and devoured.  And the garlic has been harvested.  Way more than what we thought. Some bulbs were tiny, some were huge and everything in between.  It tastes wonderful.  Well worth growing your own. The garlic must be dried to save for the year.  Braiding the garlic must be easy.  I've braided hair for years.  My first try was a flop, but 6 vain attempts later I decided that I was really going for the rustic look.  You know, Italian peasants in cotton skirts in a Tuscan kitchen with a big fire place kind of rustic.

Yes, my fantasy does help me sleep at night.

Tomatoes

wood mulch

I have cried uncle.  The weeds are overwhelming. It is time to put in landscaping fabric.  Yes, I know.  It is a lot easier to put the new plants in to holes in the fabric, but I'm doing it backwards.  I make holes in the fabric and pull it over the tomatoes.  The landscaping fabric is black plastic with the advantage of being water permeable.  It is the only way I can figure out to get control over the grass.  I'm putting wood chips in the walkways and between the cuts of fabric.  So far the wood chips haven't become aerial in the high winds.

Earlier I had talked about the weeds that grow in the cracks in the cement.  We have been in drought conditions until last night (Thank God!).  Now if I weren't watering and babying my veggies, they would have wilted and blown away in the wind long ago.  But the weeds in the cement have gotten mid thigh high.  Yes they are huge in no soil, drought conditions...we need to mow the cement.  Uuuuggghhh!

I have a veggie village in the back of the garden.  Pole beans are reaching for the back fence (assuming the evil bunny doesn't continue to eat the tops of the plants....Mr. McGergor may have Peter Rabbit for dinner if he keeps it up).  The feathery asparagus was planted this year and is doing well at getting established.  The tomatoes fill in the spaces with a little lettuce on the edge.

Veggies are like teenage girls.  They have cliques and some veggies just don't play well with others.  There is the tomato clique, the potato clique, the cabbage clique, etc.  I thought it was interesting that tomatoes like basil in the kitchen and in the garden.  I suppose they are BFFs (Best Friends Forever-for those without teenagers).  I planted the basil in the middle of two rows of tomatoes.  The baby basil has peeked out of the soil and the Italian hubby is dancing (when he's not snatching scapes from the garlic).

A Week of Life

This week life absconded with my garden time.  Our old house has to be painted.  This means scraping to loosen all the old paint before applying the  primer.  Scrapper in hand, up the ladder I went.  Dodging wasps, beating the biting flies, and hoping the jumping spiders don't jump all made me question the wisdom of living in Iowa.

The scraping is mostly done and it is back to gardening.  The vampires (weeds) have been vigorously propagating while I was sweating buckets on the ladder.  It was time for war. Most mulches are gone with the wind in this land, but I think newspapers with sawdust on top will stay on terra firma.  I  did a test spot that squelched the vampires and stayed put in gusts up to 50mph.  Now all I have to do is fill in the rest of the garden paths.  

My teenage daughter not only helped with the scraping, but jumped in on helping with weeding as well.  She unfortunately does not share my passion for gardening, so weeding is a display of love for her mother.  With her lack of passion is an accompanying ignorance, but she was able to distinguish grass from tomato plants...I think.

While I was busy  working my shoulders out, my peas where flowering and making pods.  The pumpkin on the home page (in the wall of water) is starting to creep under the fence.  The tomatoes are flowering and thriving, also.

Today as I was dancing in the garden, I discovered the latest emerging vermin.  No-see-ums are now biting along with the flies.  This casual relaxed watering time that turned into dancing caused me to reflect on clothing. A hundred years ago most people lived on farms and spent a great deal of time out of doors.  They also worn more modest clothing.  My admiration of that societies morality has been thrown into question.  Where the long pants and skirts worn simply to survive no-see-ums and deer flies?  Perhaps they were just practical instead of having moral cape and tights in their closets.

Bucket of Taters

I took Saturday and Sunday off.  The weather was cooperating with rain so I had the chance to enjoy family time.  But Monday was consumed with weeding all day long.  I even convinced my teenage daughter to weed three of the beds.  Weeding is much easier when the soil is wet.  Destroying garden vampires (weeds) is rewarding, but left war scars on my blue jeans.  Muddy knees and bottom are the cost of being able to pull the garden vampires' roots.  I got about two thirds of the weeding done in about eight hours.  I'm sure some would be faster, but, well, I "had" to talk to my son in the Marines....for about an hour.  What can I say?  I miss him.

Back to gardening.  Earlier this season I started my potato experiment.  I had gotten food quality plastic buckets from a box store bakery.  My hubby drilled holes in the sides close to the bottom for drainage.  I filled the bottom three inches with pebbles and then put in another three to four inches of garden soil.  I also prepared a garden bed for potatoes, as well.  The buckets are suppose to be very easy to harvest and none of the potatoes get sliced from the shovel.  Well both were planted with the two types of potatoes: all blue and Yukon gold.

I don't think I realized how often I would have to water the buckets just to make the taters happy. Both tater styles need to be hilled some time this week.  Hilling is piling soil, straw, etc. on top of the taters keeping about  two inches above ground, but you can cover the whole tater and it will recover.  The hilling protects the actual tubers from sun damage and allows for proper water drainage.

The garden one seems healthier, but we'll see if the extra watering is worth it by the end of the season.

While weeding I saw the first color on my strawberries.  Yeah!!!   They're not ready to pick yet and I have noticed that my garden is popular with the birds.  I hope they won't get my ripening fruit first!  Birds like the fruit "greener" that people do.

My Babies are in the Dirt

Today was a blue sky, hot (90 degrees) summer day.  Thunderstorms are forecast for tonight.  We haven't had rain in two weeks.  I had to get my tomatoes in the ground!  I put in about 150 plants today and about 60 yesterday.  All started from seed, all heritage tomatoes.

I had put black plastic on the beds and it made a world of difference.  The prep for the eight beds today were so much easier than the three without plastic.  I am a fan of black plastic!  I'm growing organic, heritage tomatoes and love using petrochemicals in big black sheets to destroy weeds.  These garden vampires (weeds) actually are killed be eliminating light.  Kinda the reverse of real fictional vampires.  Does this make my garden an alternate dimension?  Do the weeds have tiny goatees that I can't see??? I digress.

It was a long, hot day, but, of course, there was a "gentle" breeze to cool the brow.  A steady breeze of about 30mph with gusts that actually moved my heavy wooden greenhouse again!  Not during a storm, just a blue sky, fair weather day.  Watching the huge greenhouse, that normally takes a forklift to move, glide across the cement like a bird on the wing was surreal.  I was in awe until I notice it heading directly for a building.  Yikes!  Thank God it stopped before it hit the building.

It started by the fence on the right hand side of the photo.

I was unnerved by how fast the greenhouse moved....and then I realize I had to get what ever survived out of it.  Will it move again while I'm in it???  It would easily break my legs.  Actually everything survived and no bones where broken in the extraction.  Huzzah!!!

I had my hair back in a ponytail for the day of work and a few strands actually stayed in the ponytail during the stormless hurricane of a day.  I was wearing shorts and the dirt line on my legs from the blowing soil was impressive.  You can even see the dirt marks from the air vents in my tennies!

As the wind picks up (yes, gusts up to 50 mph) in front of the in coming thunderstorms. Every thing is ready.  The clear plastic (to keep the moisture in the soil for germination) is off the carrot bed.  My baby tomatoes survived the USS Greenhouse and they are tucked in the rich black soil of Iowa.   Finally all the dirt has been washed off the limbs.   All in all, it was a productive day.  

Strawberries

I scrounged strawberry plants from friends and family to start my strawberry bed.  I applied pine needle mulch to make the soil more acidic (mine is slightly alkaline) and supposedly to repress weeds.  Weeds...they are evil.  I weeded most of the bed, but I'm sure you can see where I stopped.

Weeds are pernicious villians of the gardening world. If you accidentally break the vine of say a melon or cucumber.  It's dead as a door nail.  If you pull a weed and leave a tad of the root, it will sprout up with a vengeance.  You water and put covers over your little seedlings and maybe they live.  Weeds flourish in cracks in the cement.  Jump up and down on them; they're fine.  Drought conditions; they're fine.  Are they like the vampires of the plant world??? Sucking the life out of your little babies and harder than heck to kill.  These vampires live in the path.  You know the path that you just have to cover in mulch (like the strawberry bed) to stop the weeds.  Hahahah (add a maniacal tone).  If cement can't kill them and 30 mph winds make every other kind of mulch an airborne missile, what hope do we have???  And it's only May.  My crystal ball tells me, I'm going to give my landscaping gloves a work out this summer.

Enough of my weed diatribe.  Let's get back to something fun.  My scavenged strawberries are flowering and some even have berries!  Yeah, I have actual berries on my plunked-into-the-ground-2-weeks-ago immigrants. 

My strawberries are already sending out runners.  This means that they are very happy and healthy...or they are making a break to try to escape the weeds.  I prefer to think they are very happy in their new home. 

By the way, the pumpkin plant in the wall of water picture on the home page has out grown it's tee-pee of water and is now free to roam the pumpkin bed.

Tomato Starters

I wanted a variety of heritage tomatoes and the only way to get them is to start from seeds.  Well, Iowa doesn't have a long enough growing season to just drop the seeds in the ground, so I had to start them inside first.  That sounded great to me, but my family kept insisting that they be able to walk in the living room, so Plan B had to be implemented.  The greenhouse project was a simple affair.  PVC pipe and some plastic.  How could you go wrong?
Plan B-1:  wind plus square PVC pipe construction resulted in rubble.
Plan B-2:  wind plus A-frame PVC pipe construction resulted in more rubble.
Plan B-3:  Heavy wooden beams with an A-frame wooden frame construction plus wind resulted in success.  3-mil plastic covering the wooden frame plus wind resulted in shreds of plastic caught in the surrounding bushes and trees
Plan B-4:  Heavy wooden frame covered in 6-mil plastic plus wind resulted in repairable damage----I'M CALLING IT SUCCESS.  Seriously, where does this gale force wind come from?  30mph winds are called breezes here.  50 mph winds are not unusual at all.

The greenhouse was next to the fence until it hydroplaned across the cement during a thunderstorm.  My brother had to use a fork lift to move back in place against the fence.

The vast majority of the seedlings survived the skate across the cement.

Baby plants are so rewarding.  New and fresh life in the world.  Vigor and life flourishing, renewing the landscape and indicating a fruitful future.  Delighting and refreshing the soul, as well.

Cucumber Trellis

We had built 4 greenhouses this spring.  Two where built from PVC pipe.  They both where destroyed by the windy spring...sigh.   But that meant we had mangled pipe left lying in a heap.  Being a scavenger the heap looked like a trellis to me. We buried the poles a foot in the dirt.  (Post hole digging really works the shoulder muscles...or I'm a wimp.) One of the trellises blew down in the wind.  (No, we don't live in Oklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plain---it's Iowa.) Up went the trellis again today...this time staked out.  Two rows of chicken wire where zip tied to the trellis and wallah it was done.

The middle was wide open and I just couldn't let the space go to waste, so I planted lettuce.  Yes, I'll have to crawl on the hands and knees to weed and harvest, but I just could let it go to waste. (I also have a two year old niece that may enjoy it as well.)  The trellis will be used for cucumbers and beans.  I transplanted the baby cucumbers this evening as the final triumph of the trellis trauma.

As a final joy of the day was the first harvest of the garden.  Yeah, finally something in return for all the work!  Radishes, purple plum radishes, round, plump and ready to eat.

Garlic

Welcome to the Clay Pot Gardener.  My gardening is truly a clay pot adventure.  Often times the clay pot cracks.  This is not for those looking for polished experts, but for a fellow earthy planner.  Journey with me, my friend, and see if we can beat the weeds while enjoying the fruits of our labor.

Last year this garden was an abandoned horse coral.  Weeds thrived for years.  I rototilled the ground last fall convinced the wild was tame-able. We added old horse manure from the horse barn and compost from our local land fill.  (We call it black gold)  We dug the walk ways and raised the beds.  Finally we decided to plant garlic. My husband is Italian and chaos would have ensued without the herb.
 In northern Iowa (our home) we plant garlic in the fall.  It was not a good idea to wait until the fall to order the seed garlic.  By the time I was ordering most companies online were already sold out.  Order early!  I finally found some online line and some from the local farmer's market.   We planted German Porcelain , German Red, Kilaney Red, and Susanville. They are actually thriving.

The fall planted bulbs were covered with straw about 4 inches deep.  Most of the straw survived the winter, but not the windy spring.  We're down to about half that depth now.  Straw keeps the soil moist and the weeds down (but unfortunately not out).  No scapes (curling center stalk that is the "flower") yet, but we are keeping a look-out.  They should be removed for good bulb production.  Scapes can also be eaten, so we'll report on the flavor after they appear.