Farm City

There's not much going on in the garden these days, thanks to Mr. Groundhog. Once he polished off all the brassicas he moved on the to the nice baby lettuces I thought were hidden under the asparagus fronds, chewed the chard plants right down to the roots, and he's even eaten the parsley! So far, at least, he hasn't discovered a taste for leeks, so we've still been able to harvest those for fall meals. For now, the only real garden-related activity I've been doing is planning for next year (more about that later.)

This leaves me time for reading, and I've just finished a great little book: Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter. This is the inspiring and hilarious true story of how Novella turned an empty lot in a blighted neighborhood in Oakland, California, into a real urban farm, complete with chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, rabbits, and two pigs! The fact that she was able to feed all of these critters (that would ultimately feed her) with excellent food she foraged right out of the dumpsters of her city says a lot about the waste in our society. (Makes an urban farm seem like not such a crazy idea after all!) And as a result of her dumpster-diving she got to meet a chef, learn his charcuterie secrets and together they transformed one of her pigs into these magical foods. Novella Carpenter tells her story with such humble, self-deprecating humor that it's easy to overlook the breadth of her accomplishments. Not only did she raise food for herself and her friends, but she brought people in her dicey neighborhood together as a result of her project. Great food for thought! Now I'm REALLY inspired to get my chickens next year!

86 Red Cabbage, Broccoli and Cauliflower. Dinner Special: Roast Groundhog

I wish! Sadly, this culprit is way too wily to let me catch him in the act. I can only imagine his modus operandi: first he nibbles his way through the plastic deer fencing, squeezes his fat self through the hole, sniffs and rejects the beets, then proceeds on to the brassica bed where he wreaks groundhog havoc! Oddly enough, the cabbage whites really did leave the bed alone this year. Unfortunately they aren't the only ones with a taste for cabbage-related veg. What do I have to do to get a red cabbage--adopt an orphaned groundhog?? Given my luck, if roast ground hog was truly on the menu I WOULD wind up doing just that! Although somehow I don't think that would count as good karma if I'd murdered the parent!

Sigh Don't worry, I'm not grabbing the shot gun just yet. (I don't even own one!) No calls to PETA necessary! The longer I garden, the more I realize that if I'm not ready to "take it on the chin", I'd better just get out of the ring! This season has been particularly painful, but I am officially picking up my tomato blight-bruised and groundhog-battered self and am already planning for next year. Unfortunately for Mr. Groundhog, those plans also include some major groundhog fence reinforcements!!!

Time to Plant Garlic!

There's a definite chill in the air. Actually it seems like it's been here since July--did we HAVE summer this year?? Looking back on the garden season there were certainly highs and lows. The peas were wonderful, and we're still eating carrots and parsnips from our garden bags. And the fairy squash were as prolific as usual. Last week I finally pulled out the pathetic remnants of our tomato plants, along with the barren eggplants and monster ground cherries. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat! But one of the really great things about gardening is that one can always find solace in the crops yet to come. The drop in temperature means it's time to plant one of my favorite crops: garlic! The raised bed that for the most part gave us next to nothing this summer will (hopefully) produce lots of garlic for next year!

Garlic likes nice fluffy, well-fertilized, loamy soil. To prepare the bed I made sure there were no weeds, and added some basic organic fertilizer, lime, and a bit of compost. Since our raised beds are pretty well-established the soil is really nice and light. I turned the amendments into the soil, and then covered the bed with black landscape fabric. The fabric not only keeps weeds to a minimum, but it seems to give our garlic a head start in the spring because of the extra warmth it gives to the soil. Next, cut some "X's" into the fabric about 4-6" apart. Plant the biggest, fattest cloves you have, pointy-side-up, about 2" down in the soil, one clove per "X". Prior to planting I put each clove on top of its "X" so I don't lose track while I'm planting. Remember, the bigger the clove, the bigger the head of garlic you'll get from it next year!

One thing that's really hit me since I started growing vegetables is just how narrow the supermarket offers are. Buying garlic at the supermarket is simple: what's in that little bin in the produce section is pretty much your one-and-only choice. The only decision-making necessary is whether to buy garlic or not. Deciding which garlic variety to grow from the seed catalogs is another experience entirely! For true garlic connoisseurs there are seemingly infinite varieties to choose from. Over the years I've narrowed my ultimate favorite down to one: Music. It's a hardnecked garlic, which means come early June you'll get a preview harvest of scapes. It has a great garlic flavor, but best-of-all, it makes great big heads with great big cloves that are easy to peel. (And since they're big, you don't need to peel as many of them!) Whichever varieties you choose, you'll be glad you chose to grow your own. Garlic is one of the most satisfying crops I've ever grown, and once you've tasted fresh garlic you'll never go back to the generic stuff in the supermarket!

At Least Someone's Enjoying Aunt Molly's Ground Cherries!

I first tasted ground cherries (also know as husk cherries or Cape Gooseberries) when I got a bag of them in my CSA a few years ago. I had no idea what these curious berries that came in their own little wrapper were, but I figured they had to be edible sitting there in amongst all the other fruit and vegetables the farmers had packed in the box. So I unwrapped one and popped the little apricot-colored fruit into my mouth. The taste was unlike any other fruit I'd ever had: it was slightly sweet and tart, but with wonderful overtones of custard. I had to have more!! Luckily they were selling them at the Farmers' Market that year, so I managed to have a few more tastings until they were just a sweet memory.

After I'd discovered what they were I found the seeds for an heirloom variety, Aunt Molly's Ground Cherries, in the Seed Savers Exchange catalog, and had to try growing them for myself. I carefully planted my ground cherry seedlings in the same raised bed the tomatoes and eggplants were in since they're all similar plants requiring similar growing conditions. Of course I had no idea how ground cherries grow, other than the description in the catalog, so how was I to know these monsters would eventually take over the entire bed??! Just two plants, and the poor eggplants were totally covered by the ever-expanding branches. I ignored the recommendation for landscape fabric in the catalog description, thinking it was just for weed control. It wasn't. Ground cherries got their name for a reason: when they're ripe they fall to the ground. Having landscape fabric under the plants would make harvesting them off the ground much cleaner and easier.

Despite the lack of landscape fabric I was able to harvest a fair number of them in the beginning, and the papery husks protect the berry inside from getting dirty. And if you leave the husks on they store for a long time a room temperature, so you can "stock up" enough to eventually make a pot of jam or a dessert from them. Unfortunately for me, however, "somebody" else at the garden has discovered the ground cherries. By the time I get to the garden to harvest them, the little husks are all empty! And the little hoarder leaves the empty husks in piles all around the garden, just to mock me! Sigh. I was tempted to pull the plants out, just out of spite (and to give my eggplants a last gasp of hope), but I didn't have the heart to deprive the little critter his treats. Luckily I put in a couple of plants at home too, so I've been able to have a few ground cherries for myself.

A Sack of Potatoes

Well, the potato harvest wasn't quite what I'd hoped. I'd planted two garden bags with seed potatoes (French fingerlings and red fingerlings). As the plants grew I added compost to the bags until they were full. Once the plants started to die back about three weeks ago we harvested the potatoes. The French fingerling potatoes weren't terrifically prolific. In fact, I think we got back pretty much 1 potato for every seed potato we put in! They were beautiful and delicious nonetheless! The red fingerlings did a bit better. I think from both bags we got about 5 pounds of beautiful potatoes. Perhaps not the best return on our investment, but having freshly-dug fingerling potatoes for dinner is, of course, priceless!

It's Looking Pretty Blighty 'Round Here!

Oh those elusive tomatoes!  Why is it that I grew tomatoes as a kid with no apparent problems (and absolutely no gardening experience!), and now that I've been learning about how to garden, pampering my soil, growing companion plants, encouraging the good insects, blah-blah-blah, tomatoes are about the only thing I haven't been able to grow so far!  (Well, tomatoes and charentais melons, but that's another story!)  What's the deal??? I've heard that "other" people grow such of a glut of tomatoes that they actually . . .  gasp . . . GIVE them away!! (Unfortunately I don't know any of THOSE people!)  Either my plants are beautifully green and lush with no fruit (too much nitrogen, I KNOW), or if they do have tomatoes on them, just as that brandywine is ripening some creature decides to taste it, then leaves it on the ground!!! If I'd have had a shot gun and caught the bugger in the act, I don't care HOW cute, it would have been TOAST! Tomatoes bring out the true beast in me!  I think the only brandywine tomato that actually got to ripen on the vine last year had a bite mark on it!   I ate it anyway!  All I can say is, thank goodness for the farmers' market and for tomato-growers much more talented than me, or the taste of home-grown tomatoes would be a just a childhood memory!

This year was SUPPOSED to be different! But then,  . . . THIS!  It's blight, alright, and it looks like I'm not the only one at the garden with some awfully sick-looking tomatoes!  Those ugly brown blotches on your tomato leaves and green tomatoes that turn brown instead of red are sure signs of tomato blight.  It's caused by a fungus that can live as spores in the soil that can then infect your plants if they get splashed up onto the leaves.  It's certainly been present at our community garden since tomatoes are grown there year after year, but this year is particularly bad.  One major reason is the cool, wet weather we've been having, which tomatoes don't appreciate but is ideal for blight.  Another reason may be that tomato seedlings purchased from some of the "big box" stores (Wal-Mart, Lowes, KMart and Home Depot) were already infected with blight right at the start, according to this New York Times article.  Whatever the cause, it's pretty heart-breaking for us tomato lovers!  

Is there anything we can do to save our tomato crop?  That depends on how far along the disease is on the plant.  If you have enough healthy growth you can remove the diseased leaves and fruit (don't compost these--get rid of them or you'll just spread the fungus.)  There are organic fungicides that can help, but they may be a bit pricey.  I found a recipe for a home-made solution here.  This site suggests spraying the plants and soil with compost tea.  The organisms in the compost will help fight the fungus, and the compost will fertilize the plants at the same time.  I'm going to try some of my worm tea since I have this on hand.  The best overall way to fight blight is prevention:  make sure your plants are healthy from the start, make sure your soil is healthy, and don't plant tomatoes for at least 3 years where there has been blight in the past.  That last bit is pretty tricky for those of us with small gardens here in a community of gardens.  I'm guessing a three-year moratorium on tomato-growing at our garden wouldn't go down very well!!  I'm not quite ready to yank out my plants just yet, and we are forecast to be getting some hotter weather, so I still have a little bit of optimism, for now anyway.  Though I must say, I was glad to see heirloom tomatoes at the farmers' market this morning, just-in-case!

Growing Up

I'm pretty greedy when it comes to garden space.  I want to grow as much as I can in a pretty small garden.  One way to expand that space is to garden in three dimensions: don't forget the vertical space!  Space-hungry plants like squashes and cucumbers can be trained to grow up a trellis, which keeps the squash clean and dry off the ground, and also keeps the plants from sprawling all over.  Unless you're growing huge pumpkins, the stem grows to support the squash, so there's really no need to worry about them falling off.  I grew butternut squash this way, and they really did stay on the plant, even the largest ones.  Just be sure your trellis is sturdy enough to hold them!

My trellis is a permanent structure made out of steel tubing sunk into the ground, with heavy-duty plastic fencing material on it.  This works well, but isn't the most attractive option.  The other down side of the permanent trellis is that I pretty much have to grow the squash there every year. I like to at least try to rotate crops and I try to make up for the every-year squash dilemma by planting peas on the trellis first every spring to give me a little rotation.  But a moveable trellis would better in hindsight.  These vegetable ladders that I found from the Territorial Seed Company would be one moveable option. They're a bit pricey for what they are, but I'll bet they'd be really easy to make for yourself.  (Or find an old wooden step ladder and put it to a new use!)  So, when you're looking for more space in your garden, don't forget to look up!