Category Archives: Garden

Integrated Pest Management

July 31, 2008 Charles 1 Comment

78 bar falls 29.68 2mpn NW dew-point 65 sunrise5:57 sunset8:40 Summer

New Moon (Corn Moon or State Fair Moon)

NOAA awakened me with its trademark ululation, alerting me to the thunder storm watch declared for Anoka County. Such notices are rare in the morning, mostly coming in the late afternoon as the heat of the day punches up cumulus clouds into congestus, then into the anvil shape of the thunderhead, sometimes 5 or 6 miles high.

This allowed plenty of time for Kate and me to conduct our family business meeting. This included Kate’s announcement of the fourth large quarterly adjustment in a row. She works hard and gets compensated accordingly. She’s off right now having lunch with Penny Bond at the Istanbul Bistro.

Last night while checking the crops I found an infestation of aphids in one corn stalk’s tassel. After checking others and only finding the one, I ripped that one of the ground and moved it far away. This morning I found another tassel with a few aphids, this one I squeezed between fingers and thumb instead of discarding. I’ll check it again, but I imagine that fixed it.

Watching for disease and pests is an important part of gardening. Another important part is not overreacting. I used to overreact, head straight for the pesticide or fungicide. Since then, I’ve learned that plants can sustain damage with no harm to their overall purpose. The trick is to know when the balance shifts from the plant’s natural defenses to the invaders. Even when I react, I almost never resort to pesticides (I use cygon on Iris Borers in the spring.). Instead I look for hand removal, plant elimination or measures such as squirting with high pressure water. That approach has served me well for the last four to five years.

Integrated pest management (IPM) encourages this kind of response. Good cleanup in the fall, creating a soil and growing condition favorable to healthy plants and either starting or purchasing strong plants also goes a long ways toward a manageable pest and disease environment. These are also part of an IPM strategy.

Garden

Onions on a Screen

July 30, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

80 bar steady 29.71 2mph W dew-point 61 sunrise 5:56 sunset 8:42 Summer

Waning Crescent of the Thunder Moon

Heaved sand out of the to be fire pit. Still a lotta roots even after the stump grinder. Sigh. It will get finished, and before 8/18 as a birthday present for Kate and as a Woolly place. Gotta get up earlier to make this happen however.

Pulled onions, put down an old sliding door screen over the raised bed and put them on it to dry. We have red and yellow, no white. Seeing them out there, all next to each other, soaking up the rays like California girls makes an aging horticulturist proud. All the allium crops are out of the ground now. The garlic hangs in the utililty room in the basement and the onions will go in the garage either in burlap or slotted crates.

With tomatoes coming and the bean plants producing we are well into the first harvest cycle. We will celebrate this on August 1st with some kind of ceremony in the garden. We also plan to invite the neighbors on August 2nd.

Garden

What a Tomato!

July 29, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

86 bar steady 29.66 2mph SSE dew-point 56 sunrise 5:55 sunset 8:43 Summer

Waning Crescent of the Thunder Moon

“Frisbeetarinism is the belief that when you die your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.” George Carlin, RIP

OMG! Picked another Cherokee Purple tomato. It weighs 1.5 pounds. That’s quite a tomato. These plants have just begun producing ripe fruit so I imagine the next month or so will see challengers. Now I have to figure out to save the seed and grow these monsters again next year. Each of these plants got their start in our hydroponics. Very satisfying to go from seed to a 1.5 pound fruit.

Kate’s sewing a dress for Ruthie. She already made two small suits for Gabe. She gets into a trance when the sewing begins, real flow.

Garden

One Slice Covers a Salad Plate

July 29, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

82 bar falls 29.66 1mph E dew-point 73 sunrise 5:55 sunset 8:43 Summer

Waning Crescent of the Thunder Moon

Dead headed the lilium today, their bloom period is almost past. Buddhists say flowers get their beauty from their transience. Makes sense. The flower symphony I outlined a few posts ago honors this notion, seeing the transience as beautiful. The hemerocallis, or day lilies have begun to come into their own, vigorous and bountiful. Their multi-colored, short-lived flowers will grace our garden for some time.

The acorn squash plant that had designs on much of the area in its not so immediate surround had to give up some of its space today. While cutting back the vine, I harvested squash blossoms for soup or salad. This vine has small prickles on it, stay away signals.

Kate harvested four of the Cherokee Purple tomatoes yesterday. They are huge. They taste sweet, a subtle flavor with undertones. One slice covered the bottom of the salad plate on which I put it. The heirlooms have a different feel, a different texture on the palette. Sort of like eating history. I imagine pioneers or turn of the century farmers plucking these giants and serving them up just as I did, slice after slice with a little salt and pepper, no need for garnish.

The corn, some of it, has tassles. With tassles, ears of corn are not far behind. This is Country Gentelmen, a shoe peg white corn with irregular kernels. The beans planted in the space between their rows flourish, too, as do the second planting of beets in the bed now vacated by the garlic. Today, too, I plan to dig up all the onions and put them on a large screen to dry, then bag. There are a lot of onions.

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television, Garden, Great Work

The Heart of What Ails American Culture

July 24, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

75 bar steady 29.84 0mph NE dew-point 68 Sunrise 5:50 Sunset 8:59pm Summer

Last Quarter of the Thunder Moon

A Deborah Madison recipe I used this noon called for tomatoes, beet greens, oregano, olive oil and garlic. The beet greens came from the golden beets I picked just before the lunch. The oregano from Kate’s herb garden. We had a couple of dried garlic bulbs. I thought they had not differentiated. but I decided to use it as it was. When I peeled back the white, papery layers over the bulb I found cloves. This meant two things. I had enough garlic for the recipe and the garlic in the bed could be harvested now. The dish was great, but the cloves excited me.

There is no reason why growing garlic bulbs with cloves should excite me so much, except it entered my head early in the gardening season–last September. They grew throughout the winter and were ready to harvest in July, just as the cultural recommendations for it said. Their taste is more intense and more sweet, at least this variety. I planted three.

In the furnace room, hanging from green gardening twine are four bunches of garlic bulbs. Set aside from them are the largest 2 bulbs from each variety. They will go in the ground in late September or early October to produce more garlic for next July. Kate will take a large head from each bunch out to Jon and Jen so they can have garlic in their garden. They too will be able to harvest the largest heads and plant from them. This chain of living things, nurtured and in turn nurturing, is the true great chain of being.

Watched 10,000 BC on the recommendation of a friend. Well, the anachronisms were many: iron, boats, buildings, captive mammoths and the story line fed on coincidence. On the other hand the Woolly Mammoths and the Sabre Toothed Tiger were very real. A mish-mash of times, cultures and continents. Just what I thought when I was the first ads. In fairness, the same friend watched There Will Be Blood on my recommendation. He thought it was too violent and the lead character, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, a poor guy with whom to spend a couple of hours.

There Will Be Blood is a mythic movie of great power. It speaks to the heart of what ails American culture and it speaks the truth. The truth is neither pretty nor easy and the film knows it. It is uncomfortable, but that it is different from bad. 10,000 BC is an entertainment and it works sometimes and not others, but it is not mythic, either in truth or in story.

Art and Culture, Garden

A Flower Symphony

July 24, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

75 bar falls 29.89 0mph N dew-point 59 Sunrise 5:49 sunset 8:49 Summer

Last Quarter Thunder Moon

The garden speaks. Last month, when I dug up my first garlic, it was not a head, but a single large clove. What the? Back to the garlic culture book. Descaping? Oops. I forgot to take off the flower and seed forming stalk. It suppresses bulb formation. Now, a month later after I descaped, bulb formation proceeds. I do not know whether it will get where it would have, but I just pulled up one garlic bulb that looks pretty well defined, though not completely. The individual cloves are not yet distinct, though their formation is clear.

The tallest corn is now well over 6 feet high. No tassels yet. The beans have begun a very productive season and the onions are ready to dry. After we dry them, we can story them in burlap bags in the furnace room. The squash and watermelon have demonstrated their power to dominate territory. Our garden paths and boulder walls are in danger of disappearing at some points.

The Cherokee Purple tomato plants have fruits that have begun to turn a dusky red, shading now toward purple. So far I have not noticed a tendency to disease which can be a problem growing heirloom vegetables. I plan to save seeds and heads of garlic since these vegetables will breed true and not separate into warring varieties as most hybrids will.

The lilies continue their quiet fireworks.

I have had this idea for a long time about a flower symphony. Each flower would get a lietmotif, as in Wagner, each color would have a note or a phrase. The whole piece would have a somber, quiet opening, andante, for the slumber of winter. Then an agitato as the ground breaks loose with the warmth of spring and, in their bloom succession, the flowers emerge, their leitmotifs varied by color phrases, until we pass out of the spring flowers into the early summer blooms. This third movement is tranquil as the garden settles into its summer patterns, again the leitmotifs ordered by bloom time and varied by color phrasing. The fourth and final movement returns to andante as the asters, the fall blooming crocus, clematis and mums emerge, then die back. The final movement stops for a bit, then a presto sequence of lietmotifs, then grave, ending with bassoon, bass drum, and bass viol.

Many do not like programmatic music and I understand why, being a fan of Mozart and Bach, both abstract and interested in following the music’s own logic, not an outside one. Even so, I offer this because it is the way I see the garden now after so many years. The flowers emerge, bloom, dieback and another group, adapted to a slightly different season, replace them. These movements are like a symphony in my mind.

Garden, Our Land and Home

Brute Force

July 23, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

81 bar falls 30.07 0mph WSW dew-point 60 Summer

Waning Gibbous Thunder Moon

The stump grinder applies brute force to the problem. It has carbide tip blades on a rotary cutter that looks like a saw with few, but deep set teeth. The first time required something of a learning curve, but not too much. What it required more was strength. The weight in it sits low to the ground and the tires were soft, so yanking it around the property had aerobic and resistance qualities.

The two yew stumps out front disappeared, though the mugo pine stump remains. It had too much that required cutting with a chain saw, something to do before the next rental. Four smaller stumps in the back went under the blade. The major work though required putting the blade deep in the earth in the area where the fire pit will go. This was to eliminate a number of roots encountered on the first round of digging on it last fall.

Kate made a nice lunch of encrusted sole with beans from our garden and a salad that contained some items from the garden. The heirloom tomatoes have begun to change color, perhaps next week we’ll have our first. These fruits are as big as my fist.

Now, a nap.

Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Our Land and Home, Writing

Even Though It’s Still July

July 20, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

71 bar steady 29.87 0mph ENE dew-point 62 Summer, wonderful

Full Thunder Moon

The color: deep red, pale yellow, pink, mauve, orange, red, virgin white, flame pink with a burnt orange throat,white with a pink throat. Scents ethereal as they are ephemeral. The true lilies and the day lilies are in bloom. A chaos of color.

The true lilies have a bloom architecture clean, sweeping, grand. They have colors with hues so intense they can make the heart dance. These are the regnant plants of this garden and this is their time.

Here’s the problem with putting stuff in writing:

“We will also finish creation of a fire-pit, family gathering area begun last fall. These will be finished by the August date of my meeting.” from my Woolly project notes.

Kate dug this up yesterday and reminded me of this commitment. Sigh. The one aspect of gardening that seems always to drain from consciousness is the July slump. Not much gardening gets done by me in this month. It’s too hot, too many bugs and I’ve usually worked way more than I intended in May and June.

In July I begin to need indoor time, book time and writing time. By August things have become marginally cooler, I’ve satisfied the reading itch though probably not the writing and the bugs become tolerable. August and September, sometimes in to mid-October can be intense gardening, too.

All this means I sometimes (always) project more completion than I will realize. Even so, I want to finish the fire-pit, family gathering area, too. I have not told Kate that I intend to rent the stump grinder this Wednesday, but I do. That will clear out the roots I found lacing the fire pit hole last fall as I dug. After some weeding, moving some sand and rock and cutting up a few logs for seats around the fire, the fire pit will be done by August 18th. That’s the date of my Woolly meeting and Kate’s 64th birthday.

Maybe I’ll go out there right now and start pulling weeds. Even though it’s still July.

Dreams, Faith and Spirituality, Garden

Corn in the Mist

July 17, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

81 bar steady 29.84 0mph NE dew-point 66 Summer, hot and muggy

Full Thunder Moon

“Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.” – Thomas Alva Edison

I like Edison here. He illustrates a fundamental flaw in the planning paradigm. When we plan, we have a criteria for success. Most planners see that as the summum bonum of the plan. I know I did when I worked as an organizational consultant in churches and other organizations. Time-limited, quantifiable and concrete. That way you know one when you see one.

The problem here? Just what Edison says. The serendipitous. Think of Roentgen who saw his hand on a photographic sensitive paper while working with radioactive material. Not the point. But. Roentgen saw X-rays. The North St. Paul 3-M’er who worked on glues and found one that didn’t work so well. He used it for a while to stick notes in his hmynbooks. Then. Oh, Post-It notes.

The problem is deeper yet. Plans and goals put us into a pass/fail world where our progress or lack of it runs up and down a scale, with our self-image and our sense of self-worth often traveling along for the ride. In fact, life offers so much to us, whether we write that bestseller or become an academic superstar or get straight A’s or climb the mountain or ski the double black diamond or not, that too often the important parts of life get overlooked in the scramble to meet the plan.

A child’s smile. A flower opened, beautiful, transient. A partner’s caress. A dog’s eager greeting. The smell of fresh cut hay. A tomato fresh from the garden. A shooting star. A full moon. None of these come according to plan. They come only with attentiveness, when we live in the now and notice not the graph headed up the chart, but the beating of our own heart and the breath of our own soul.

Plans. As Scrooge might say, Bah, Humbug. Buy that Christmas goose and pass out alms for the poor. All better than getting the account books done on a holiday.

Here’s a shot I took this morning. When I take my camera outside on these muggy days, the lens fogs up. I often clean it, but this time I decided to shoot anyway. This is corn in the mist.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden

A Time of Burnt Sacrifice

July 16, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

85 bar steep fall 29.89 0mph WNW dew-point 68 Summer, warm and sunny

Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon

We long ago passed the midpoint of summer, June 21, and have begun the fattening, browning, bursting journey to the harvest season. It begins in earnest as July ends, but some early givers have offered themselves already: lettuce, beans, beets, carrots, onions and garlic. We all, at least all of us up north of 45 degrees latitude, await squash, cucumbers, corn, watermelon and the full seasonal abundance of beans and peas and tomatoes.

Even the angle of the sun reached its apogee at the Summer Solstice and has begun steadily declining since then, shortening the day and lengthening the night. The deepening shadows of afternoon tell the tale, too, as does the now far gone blooming of the daffodils, tulips and scylla.

This partly benighted soul finds a comfort in the change, preferring the winter to the summer solstice, the sweet melancholy of fall to the bursting forth of spring. When the wind direction swings to the north, and the winds begin to howl, then the weather begins to stir the deep reaches. The inner cathedral gains in holiness as the need for candles increases. Walking those corridors, those ancient trails of the interior journey, demand a commensurate gloom, or, at least, welcome it.

Until then, Persephone above ground keeps us focused on food and external pleasures. We soak in the sun, till the earth, travel the highways and airways. This is, too, a time of burnt sacrifice, smoked hecatombs appearing on decks and patios across the land.