The rainy, cool Maine weather continued here until this past Thursday prolonging the anguish for us gardeners! The tomatoes looked sad, craving heat and other plantings from seeds did little, if not simply fail to germinate at all. The strawberry harvest began though and they tasted great This is late June and "normal" garden growth would be different but gardening is always full of surprises both good and not so good ones. My attention switched to other projects while I awaited the arrival of real summer weather. The partial family gathering for the Father's Day weekend yielded more help with weeding and pruning of the flower beds, which by the way, all seemed to love the rainy cool weather. A second hazelnut bush was planted near the grape arbor so that the two could pollinate each other, hopefully triggering a yield of nuts in a few years. A new Honeycrisp apple tree was planted near the pear tree that was now gone from disease and added to the wood pile. Ever though the rain finally yielded to the sun and some warmth on Thursday the ground was too saturated for plantings of replacement seeds so it was time to cut the long grass and do other things. A burning permit was obtained and the large brush pile was burnt, a five hour project! The tomato plants began to smile!
On Wednesday, the 17th I was in Washington DC and had a chance to look through the White House fence for a long distance glimpse of the Obama Organic Vegetable Garden. Below are some images from that moment. I came back to Saco and saw my son, Julian's, posting about the recent media coverage of the garden as well. While in DC I had seen Politico's press stories and had planned a similar post when I returned! Thanks, Julian for doing it for me.
In addition to the positive value by this vivid example of organic gardening, the Obamas are definitely going to have a important impact on the nation's great need to return to healthy lifestyle habits beyond gardening. President Obama is making some important appointment to key agency positions that will start to turn around the laxed regulatory efforts that have led to many food safety failings, consumer products and drug safety concerns. The Obama family examples of morning workouts, limiting their kids TV/video games access, involvement with gardening and food preparation and Michelle's commitment to work with local school kids are also serving our country well. We don't just have a financial crisis and global image crisis to overcome. The neglect of good habits and overindulgences in the typical American lifestyle are getting some desparately needed attention thorough the Obamas' leadership.
we've been following the Obama Garden here @ schlaverseedfarms, and i thought i would post a couple of pieces that popped into the media today about it.
Starting with the worst, Drudge has this running across the top of his site today:
maybe someone should tell him that you can grow a head of lettuce in 40 days - apparently he doesn't know what us Mainers can do with a 3 month growing season.
Today, the more respectable org, Politico posted this article about the industry getting upset for Michelle's choice to go organic (something that we've been praising here on schlaverseedfarms).
Lastly - for your humor, here is a piece from the eminently respectable, The Daily Show entitled "little crop of horrors"
The mail order sweet potato slips arrived on Saturday and in the ground they went. See the first picture below. The question is: Will these slips turn into a nice harvest like last year's result picked in October as the 2nd photo shows? I have done well with sweet potatoes each garden year so far so hope the streak continues. Virtually the entire garden is now planted. I finished the day by planting the tiny cucumber plants from my greenhouse and added some additional hills of cukes planted from seed. Some okra seedlings were planted along with more cabbages, cauliflower and broccoli. I still have many tomato and tomatillo seedlings simply too small to plant yet so hope they grow more to add to the garden soon. The lack of warmth even on sunny days, continues to be frustrating.
Strawberries are now turning red on many plants growing in the sunnier Field Garden for the first time. I believed the first picking can occur next week. Strawberry harvest is always an exciting garden moment here and will continue through the 4th of July. I purchased two dozen additional canning jars in anticipation of the upcoming jam making.
The first rose has now opened and many buds of various colors are poised to follow. The orange poppies always make for a good picture image as well.
As I drive around town I wince when I see that people are bagging their leaves for trash pickup or dumping their grass clippings and other plant waste “over their fence” or in the nearby woods etc or even carting it all to the transfer station for disposal. Unfortunately many of these neighbors do not realize how simple and beneficial it would be to set up a composting system at home and turn this into food for their vegetable and flower garden plants or their trees and shrubbery. Money would also be saved in the process!
A purchased compost bin like this “Earth Machine" bin is all you need to start:
This sleek looking piece of “yard furniture” can be located near your kitchen door or out right in your garden so you can easily add material to it frequently. A nice instruction booklet comes with the composter as well.
Another possibility would be to make your own compost bins from old wood pallets often found for free.This image shows some of my compost bins. They might not be pretty but are easy to load with grass clippings, weeds, ground up leaves and kitchen waste. Also, the bins’ openness lets me turn the pile easily with a pitch fork to speed up the composting process. At least once a season, I visit a local dairy farm with my pickup truck and purchase, for $15, a load of cow manure. I back right up to the bins and add some manure as well as put some manure directly on the garden in the fall after the harvest of vegetables.
Another variation of composting is to add the waste materials directly to the gardens around the base of growing plants. There is no reason that you cannot simple put the coffee grounds, grass clippings or ground up leaves right on top of the soil around the plants or on top of the garden throughout, especially at the end of the season. Some decomposition will occur over the winter and this blanketing help to kill off weeds. Some gardeners even buried their kitchen scraps directly in their garden throughout the season.I prefer the bin method but do use some plant materials for mulch in the garden to stifle weeds and retain moisture for the growing plants.
Lastly, I should mention something called “lasagna gardening.”If you want to start a new flowerbed or vegetable garden spot in your yard currently a portion of your lawn, the task of digging up the sod is quite daunting.A smart and easy method to prepare the new garden spot would be to use this lasagna method. Start with a layer of cardboard and/or newspapers several layers thick, wet it down and then pile on some compost, ground up leaves, grass clippings or whatever you have on hand.Periodically add more layers of materials to this pile as the weeks go one. To your great surprise in a few months or if started in the fall, next spring you will find that a shovel easily goes through the composting materials and the sod is now soft and full of worms. You can simply insert bulbs, plants etc. into the individual holes you easily dig.The weeds and previous grass doesn’t have a chance to survive either. I have even found that by the second season you can plant rows of seeds in this new spot because by then all the “lasagna” layers have turned to soil.
So my advice is to get a kitchen scrap bucket and place it on the counter near the sink or under the counter. Put all your fruit and vegetable scraps in it (no bones or meat scraps) and take it outside regularly to your new compost bins and get busy putting back into the soil this waste instead of in the garbage can!
No rain all week so it was time to do serious gardening work. Unfortunately even with sunny days the temperature rarely even reached 70 degrees so there was little veggie growth even in the greenhouse! I soldiered on though and focused on endless hand weeding in the Field Garden so more seeds could be planted in anticipation of eventual summer heat. Two large beds of various beans were planted including Edamame (edible soybean) and pinto and kidney beans anticipating a winter dried bean supply. About 150 leeks and yellow onion plants were put in as well. The potatoes are growing steadily and the strawberries are looking great. I gave some attention to the Raised Bed Garden with a full morning of bed prep and seed planting including more green and yellow beans, carrots, beets, lettuce, arugula, kale, Brussels sprouts and radishes. Most of that garden is now planted.
Since there is not much to show in images of vegetable growth I thought a few images of some beautiful flowers was in order. The first poppy is quite a site and the irises are doing well...Enjoy!
Julian and I had grand plans for the five plus days he was here to work on “The Farm.” But 2.5 inches of rain fell slowly, but for most of daylight hours of three of those days, added greatly to our challenge. Yet two major new construction projects were completed in grand style and lots of weeding and planting occurred as well.The new grape arbor and planting of four varieties of grapes vines purchased down Ferry Road at Moody’s Nursery have to take the visual prize for the end of May. The eight foot cedar posts are solidly in the ground and three lines of wires for the vines to climb on are in place. The four varieties planted are: Concord Seedless (purple) and Reliance Seedless (red) will be especially tasty for jams, jellies, juice and eating; Marquette (red) and Edelweiss (white) will be potential wine grapes.
The next big construction project was to stabilize and re-roof the Sanborn shed so we can use it for equipment and tools needed for the FieldGarden and keep fewer things in the garage like the riding mower and snow blower.Julian worked especially hard, spending much time on the roof nailing the OSB boards in place and then covering and securing the rolled roofing paper.The finished effort is of great benefit already for so much gardening activity now occurs on the Sanborn farm land in the orchard, and FieldGarden so now equipment is handy. The shed also offer a shelter place to sit and relax and watch the garden grow.
The first twenty tomato plans are in the ground!Many, many new plants including peppers, cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, eggplant, herbs and perennial and annual flowers are now in the ground as well.The first planting by seeds of sweet corn, sunflowers and many marigolds surrounding the tomatoes was also accomplished.
