Greens in the winter (not the kind you eat!)

While it's true I now garden primarily for food, I also think about other needs when I plant.
And one of them is my need for green in the garden in the winter. And no, that doesn't mean 'greens' grown under plastic, like my neighbors down the street at the little garden that could.

As I have said before, I don't grow winter crops-- I'm just too busy at work, and I'd rather not do something than do it with less than all my attention.

But I have planted evergreens around my one acre lot in strategic places for viewing, and I do make a wreath or swags from these trees and shrubs every December. It's amazing how a bit of green accented with red berries can cheer me up on a dreary day.

My favorite evergreen is the male Ilex opaca ( a holly native to much of the East Coast) which I planted as a rooted cutting from Appalachian Nursery in 1994.  It's now twenty feet tall, and gorgeous:

But since it's a male, it doesn't have berries.  Luckily, my one male holly can pollinate many closely related species, including the native Ilex verticillata, which drops it's leaves but sets lots of bright red berries:

The big holly also pollinates some hybrid English hollies along the eastern edge of the garden, and their shiny leaves make a nice contract with the matte leaves of the opaca in an arrangement:

The other day I took cuttings from all my hollies, including the small leaved glabra,

as well as branches from arborvitae, juniper and bittersweet (yes, I work hard to kill all the bittersweet, but some survives, and it is pretty):

I tied them all together with wire into two swags, then hung one from the pillar on my front porch:

The second swag adorns my beloved dry stone wall, a relic of the farm that was here long before my house:

It's amazing how these two simple arrangements of red and green cheer me up when I see them every night as I roll my truck down the driveway at dusk.

Thanksgiving asparagus bed clean up

It's thanksgiving today, and I'm grateful for the asparagus bed that will finally be 3 years old this spring, which means I can pick the new spears for about four weeks without weakening the plants.
This asparagus bed is the cornerstone of my plan for a more perennial food garden, and I've nursed the plants along from  mail order crowns through cold, rain, drought and asparagus beetles into an abundant and healthy patch of tall, ferny foliage. Yes, it's very ornamental-- but I'm ready to start eating rather than looking at my asparagus.
There were a lot of little bright red asparagus beetles this summer. I killed as many as I could, and became quite adept at capturing the sneaky little creatures. I discovered that they tend to avoid predators by dropping straight down when disturbed, and used this knowledge against them by positioning one hand under the bug and then waving the other nearby. Sure enough, most beetles dropped right into the waiting trap-hand, and were quickly squished.
But I'm sure some beetles laid eggs or pupated in the asparagus foliage, so today I cut it back and trucked it across the yard to my most distant compost pile, then packed dogwood leaves around the asparagus crowns to keep them cosy for the winter. In the late winter I'll add some lime (my soil is a bit acid for asparagus) and compost to give the asparagus a good start. Here are some pictures of the clean up, with Sol supervising.

Sol thinks the leaves are for him to sleep in, not for the asparagus.

Happy Thanksgiving.

2013 Sunchoke (Jerusalem Artichoke) harvest begins

I met a college student last week who volunteers at an inner city community garden, who asked me what  I thought were the most disease free, productive crops I've grown. The answer was easy --trombone squash and sunchokes!
Unfortunately, neither is ideal for a community garden plot -- the trombone squash needs lots of square footage to romp along productively (though it adapts well to being tied to a fence), and sunchokes need careful harvesting to be part of a crop rotation-- they are so vigorous that a tiny piece left behind will overwhelm the intended crop if not meticulously weeded.
But both crops are productive, nutritious, trouble free and mild flavored vegetables that adapt to a wide range of cuisines.
I did a few things different with sunchokes this year. Like my other perennial crops, they  now have their own dedicated bed, and will not rotate out of it unless there is an unexpected pest or disease problem. Because of the 10-12 foot height of the mature sunflowers, this bed is at the back of the garden, where it won't shade other crops.
I am also not going to dig up several bushels of sunchokes at a time, because they don't store well out of the ground. I will use thaws throughout the winter to harvest a few pounds at a time, using the bed as my root cellar.
And to avoid digestive problems I did not start digging the sunchokes until several hard frosts, so that they could change chemically into a more digestible starch.
The flowers were a great treat in October-- so fresh and bright:

We had several hard frosts in late October, and earlier this week I decided to cut back the tops and dig a few tubers. I used my loppers to snap the thick stems, then laid the frosted tops next to the bed:

Last fall the tubers were big, many larger than my fist. Would the harvest be as good this year, or had I planted them too thickly, or not watered enough during the October drought?

Finally the moment of truth-- I grabbed the bottom of a clump of trimmed stems and pulled.  And pulled-- finally I had to brace myself with both feet and use two hands.

I needn't have worried-- I pulled about five pounds off that one clump! I rinsed them off, them put them in the garage on newspapers to dry. Then I mulched the rest of the planting with leaves from the lawn. That was it-- my sunchoke bed is ready for harvest through the winter.

I  ate my newly harvested tubers for the first time tonight, prepared very simply.  I scrubbed them and cut off any brown spots, then parboiled them several minutes,  then caramelized them under the broiler with olive oil, rosemary, salt and pepper. Crunchy on the outside, soft in the middle, all delicious.

First frost, lots of squash, last tomatoes, and nasturtiums take over!

According to local lore (and the nearby Taunton averages as recorded by UMass) my first frost happens on October 15th or thereabouts.  My first frost of 2013 was overnight between the 13th and 14th --very close to average, despite all the weather changes of the last few years.
It was a mild frost, and only nipped the lushest leaves of my trombone squash:

Meanwhile the production of more squash continued unabated:

I've had several 'free squash' days at work, and the half dozen curved fruit I brought each time have gone fast.  At home we are all sick of squash.  Well, that's not true-- Sol (my dog)  still eagerly eats it steamed al dente.

Unlike squash, every tomato is loved around here, and today we had a moment of silence when I ate the last one. Here's a pic of the last bowl of tomatoes -- my husband Tom wanted me to have them all, but I wouldn't let him, so we split them and each savored every bite. I wanted to start singing Guy Clark's 'Home Grown Tomatoes', but I can't carry a tune, so I didn't.

I have been astonished with the Nasturtiums in the kitchen garden this year.  My  Nasturtiums  are usually either all leaves because they got too much fertilizer or scraggly and full of flowers because they got too little.
This fall they are all lush and green (except for variegated 'Alaska') and full of flowers. As I have harvested the beds I've let the nasturtiums sprawl across the the garden, much to the delight of my faithful bumblebees and some actual honeybees that have appeared in the last couple of weeks.  I am so happy to see the honeybees that I talk to them like old friends, saying 'hi sweety, enjoy those flowers' and so on.
Here's some self seeded 'Alaska', spreading out in the former Butternut squash bed:

Here's a mix of self seeded hybrids and some 'Jewel' I planted this year, along with reseeded Nicotiana:

And the frost didn't reach my 'Heavenly Blue' morning glories, which are cascading over the fence behind my asparagus bed:

Fall harvest continues-- tomatoes and squash

I let one of my trombone squash mature, in hopes of checking out how it tastes as winter squash and collecting seed-- here's a pic with Sol for size comparison:

And I have pulled all my tomato plants, but lots of fruit are still maturing in the garage:

There are a few peppers in the middle basket-- I may get enough Hungarian hot wax peppers for a few more jars of refrigerator pickles.
Meanwhile, the planning for next year begins.....

A season of flower bouquets

Before I was a kitchen gardener I was a flower grower, and the many beds of tough perennial flowers that still fill my yard supply me with vases full of color and scent from April until frost.
They are not 'arrangements' -- I rarely spend more than 30 seconds stuffing them into water on the dining room table, but they do remind me that gardens feel the soul as well as the stomach.

Heres a selection, in seasonal order:

This  next one is special - it is from this week, and these are the flowers of my delicious Sunchokes!
Vegetable and flower garden combined in one plant.

And there are more to come-- In October there are Asters and single chrysanthemums. I hope I'm not too busy to pick a bunch and take the time to sit and enjoy them.

Late summer -- tomatoes and amaranth and sunchokes

Well, the moisture and the heat finally did it-- my tomatoes have blight. So I've harvested anything with a hint of color and moved them into the garage and dining room to ripen.
 I pick them over everyday and cut up and freeze the good parts of any showing sign of blight, and eat the rest fresh. There are at least a hundred tomatoes between the two locations, and I picked more today, along with a few peppers, an eggplant, and several squash:

That's a barrel of late bib lettuce in the background.

The blighted tomatoes are a sad sight, though I have noticed most other gardens in my neighborhood were blighted weeks ago-- I hope that means my early measures to reduce spread (picking off lower leaves and mulching with grass cuttings) helped slow the arrival and spread in my garden.

Meanwhile, the older, root end of the trombone squash is dying off:

But the leading edge, 20 feet ahead, is lush and still going:

And some plants are just peaking, including the amaranth (which I grow mostly for it's beauty-- the leaves are only tasty when young, and I'm not interested in all the work and little return from harvesting the grain).  I love how the flowers turn upwards towards the sun when the stalk falls over under it's own weight.

And the sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes) are just beginning to form flowers-- they will bloom in a couple of weeks, about the same time as my late chrysanthemums.  Here they are reaching for the clouds (12 feet hight!) in the late evening light of my mid September garden:

September 1 video tour of my kitchen garden

Here's this month's video tour:

Spotlight on: Scarlet Emperor Runner Bean

I have grown runner beans in my kitchen garden several times over the last ten years. Each time I enjoyed the flowers, but was disappointed by the low production of beans-- the few I got were wonderful, with a deep rich flavor, but production was sparse compared to pole beans such as Rattlesnake.
This winter the catalog description of Scarlet Emperor convinced me to include runner beans in my garden again. Well, despite a rainy spring the seeds sprouted well. During the heat wave last month there were more flowers than beans (heat can reduce bean set in runner beans), but now that nights are cool and days are warm the Scarlet Emperor is the ruler of my August garden, producing lots of deep green, rich flavored beans that are still tender even when eight inches long.  And the flowers! Every time I'm in the garden the resident female hummingbird buzzes by, protecting her beloved red runner bean blooms from all comers.

Here's the trellis full to overflowing this week:

And a  closer view of the many young beans and flowers:

And a stem of  buds and blooms -by far the showiest runner bean flowers I've grown:

Besides the runner beans, romano pole beans, trombone squash, raspberries, Hungarian wax peppers, and finally, tomatoes are yielding well. Here's a picture of today's harvest:

And lots more tomatoes coming -- I have 24 plants left after the early demise of the potato leafed heirloom.  Which, by the way, ended up producing a dozen fruit, since all the fruit  I harvested green when I pulled the plant ended up ripened on the kitchen counter to red juicy deliciousness. I still prefer my Mortgage Lifters --- I have a dozen healthy specimens full to falling over with fruit.

Hunting the tomato hornworm

Last week I noticed something new about a clump of intertwined Celebrity and Mortgage Lifter tomatoes in a planter -- leaves were disappearing.  When I looked closely I realized that it had been going on for some time, but the overall lushness of the two plants had hidden the loss until it was substantial.

Here's a picture of the plants.  As usual I did not offer them enough support, and the strategically placed garden chair is helping them stay up right under the weight of a hefty load of young tomatoes.

Here's a close up of a well trimmed branch, with all the soft tasty foliage eaten:

And horror of horrors, a half eaten green tomato:

After I examined the damage I knew the culprit, because I had seen it before -- a tomato hornworm.  A week before this discovery I removed and killed one on a hungarian wax pepper plant. Unfortunately I killed the hornworm after it had eaten a substantial portion of the plant, but I have hope that there is still  time for regrowth and new peppers.
I also recently found a  rather deflated hornworm covered with the spiky white eggs of a predatory wasp, which I left to die slowly in place (they stop eating when they start getting eaten). It's  a gruesome fate that I have no sadness about after observing the damage done by  hornworms left unchecked.

But I could not find the hornworm on the intertwined plants. For three days I searched, looking for the characteristic drops of black worm poop, and gently pushing eaten leaves aside to search for the elusive pest. It was obviously healthy and not wasp infected, based on the newly denuded leaves I found each day.

Finally yesterday I found it! A drop of poop on a leaf, and just above, fat and munching slowly, my enemy. I read an essay in my local paper by a squeamish gardener who put a live horn worm, attached to a small branch, in a sealed baggie and into the trash to suffocate. That seems crueler and less green than my solution-- position it under a brick and step on the brick. Here's a portrait of my enemy shortly before it's demise:

The good, the bad and the ugly-- heirloom tomatoes, bean beetles and a young toad

First the good-- I took a lot of green tomatoes off my potato leafed heirloom tomato that died. And they are turning red! The other 24 tomato plants are full of mostly still green fruit, but are largely healthy.

Now the bad: I grew "Burgundy' bush beans for the first time this year, and possibly the last.  They are beautiful and productive, but at least from my so far limited experience, a magnet for mexican bean beetles. I fought a good fight squashing larvae, eggs and mature beetles, but finally gave up and pulled the plants.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the garden I got only a few beetles on my 'Dragon Tongue' bush beans and yellow romano pole beans. Were the "Burgundy' a trap crop, which means that now that they are gone I will get more beetles on the other beans? I will watch and report back.
Meanwhile I killed as many stages of the been life cycle as I could when I pulled the crop-- I squished the adults and left the plants on the lawn to dry and deprive the larvae of enough food to get them to maturity, then composted them on the other side of the garden.
Here's a picture of a just pulled 'Burgundy' -- still full of good beans which I harvested after I took the photo:

And here are some eggs:

And the voracious larvae:

I took a lot of satisfaction in leaving the larvae to starve on the dried up plants. I can't always win in my fight for organic pest control, but I can glory in the death of my enemy.... even if it is a tiny yellow larvae.

I don't have a picture of my ugly new friend, but it is a young toad, about an inch long, that I found in the middle of the lawn. I moved it to the 'Dragon Tongue' bean patch last week, and found it there today,  quite feisty and camera shy. I hope it like the taste of been beetles-- I could use the help.