Early Haying

I walk Sol by this dairy farm every day.  There is always a beautiful, ever changing view over the fence from the road.  I was struck yesterday by how golden the first cut of hay was- everything has been early this year!

Snakes and chipmunks

I know I share the garden with lots of other residents, but I rarely have hands-on encounters with them. That's what made last night so unusual. I picked up and moved both a garter snake and a chipmunk in the course of an hour.
There's a big population of snakes in the garden this year, and I welcome and enjoy their presence.  Here are some pictures from a week or so ago of two of the four garter snakes that live in and around my stone wall:

I love the variation in their color patterns. Snakes are welcome in my garden because they are beautiful and because they are predators of many larger insects.

I'm also comfortable handling them; my father kept snakes.  Last night I startled one of the garter snakes while it was warming itself on the concrete apron in front of the garage, and it slithered under the door. I did not want it to get used to hanging out in the garage, so I went inside, lifted it by the tail, and returned it to the lawn by the wall. I guess I'd better add some weather stripping to that door.
Later I was in the garden picking peas. Sol stood outside the fence perimeter attentively waiting for the  occasional older tough pea I'd throw his way.  As I leaned over the vine, I caught a flash of movement in the strawberry bed to my left. 
I put down the coffee can half full of peas and turned towards the strawberry patch. It had been a light harvest, mostly because the plants had been thinned hard the previous year. I'd also lost a lot of berries to thieves, despite my netting. 

I saw one of the thieves now, wrapped in netting. It was a chipmunk. He'd tried to move the wooden weight aside to get into the bed, and somehow entangled himself thoroughly.

I lifted the section of netting, and cautiously began to unwind it from his little body. He was hardly moving, but his eyes followed me. I suspect he had been trapped for a while, as he seemed to have lost his usual feisty nature.
I was still careful, knowing he might bite in fear. I hung the netting over the gate of the garden, and he  dropped out, and lay on the ground for a moment.  Sol was oblivious to this drama, busy eating peas on the other side of the garden, or their might have been further drama.  In a moment the chipmunk recovered and scurried off. 
I have no use for woodchucks, and very little for the rabbits that nibble at my garden. But despite their  depredations in the strawberry patch I have a soft spot for chipmunks, know at our house as ' little striped dudes' for their cocky attitudes and fierce chirrupping when annoyed.  Sometimes character makes up for other flaws.

Mammoth Melting Snow Peas

It's been great weather for peas-- moderate temps and lots of rain, but enough sun to keep fungus at bay. The snow peas are so vigorous I had to wrap them in clothesline to keep them attached to the trellis. But this year the trellis is tied to rebar pounded a foot into the ground, so it should hold under the load.

Enjoying June

I notice that in the last few posts I've been writing of the struggle to grow and harvest crops without sharing too much of my produce with the other residents of my yard. Sometimes the chores and challenges of organic gardening in the country (with so many hungry mammals, birds and insects around) keep me from sitting down for a moment and seeing and enjoying the beauty and bounty of June.  And yet back on December I thought so fondly of June ( see the post 'Remembering June').

So here's a little perspective in photo form:

The garden in March:

The garden in June:

The lush bounty of June is a joy that is worth pausing to appreciate. And this year I have planted and succeeded with more crops than ever before, including the  Jerusalem Artichokes on the left in this photo.
Lat year I planted them outside the fenced garden and the rabbits ate them repeatedly, even when I constructed makeshift fencing.
This year they are safe inside the main kitchen garden, and I'll finally see them bloom this fall, and produce lots of tubers for the winter.

Yes, the birds and chipmunks got some strawberries, but they don't touch the rhubarb, and I've even bartered some for food at my local diner.

Yogurt with rhubarb sauce and strawberries for breakfast:

This morning I harvested lettuce, snow peas, and english peas: 

The long warm days are perfect for walks in the woods that leave Sol contented and relaxed on the drive home:

And June flowers brighten the dining room table:

I resolve to enjoy June while it's here, in the midst of all of life's challenges,  not just when looking at pictures on dark winter nights. I want to enjoy both the present and the past. 

The good bugs are back.... and other things that make me happy

 I haven't posted much in the last two weeks because my husband has been ill, and I just didn't have the focus to write. He's not better, but the initial shock has worn off, and I'm able to notice and write about the good things that are still going on in the garden.
And lots of good things are happening.  Despite my recent fears the vegetables are not being decimated by  hungry insects. Instead, my companion plantings and other strategies to bring in and retain beneficial insects are working.
What other strategies? Not spraying with indiscriminate pesticides that kill everything. Not over fertilizing so that the plants are excessively lush and tasty. Encouraging birds in the garden with shrubby habitats, water, and native berried plants. And finding and moving praying mantis egg cases.
I mentioned the egg cases in an earlier post. There were a half dozen in my bed of grasses last fall, and I clipped the twigs attached to four of them and stuck them into the strawberry bed, where they would be protected from harsh weather when young.
Mantis eggs hatch in late May, so I've been watching for them. And I found the first young mantis a couple of days ago while picking strawberries. We were eye to eye, and he (or she) tilted his tiny triangular head to look at me.  I stared back, and noticed he was clutching a fat green aphid.  My hero! Here's a picture of him (or a sibling) I saw tonight on the red romaine:

Meanwhile, the June crops are coming in.  Tom Thumb lettuce is forming perfect one meal lettuce heads on the deck:

My short and tall peas are full of fattening pods:

On the deck the Brown Turkey Fig (new this year) is finally leafing out:

And all the summer crops from seed are sprouting -- including five kinds of squash, all planted with radishes next to them as a repellant for cucumber beetles. 

And both pole and bush beans, including these Masai filet beans.

Note the living pole-- a privet branch from a recent pruning which rooted and started growing when I used it to hold this fence in place.

Finally, there are lots of strawberries ripening.  Sol doesn't like  strawberries unless they are mixed with yogurt, despite the hopeful look he's giving me in this photo!

The Garden Today

The bugs are back! (but all is not lost)

April was the honeymoon month in my  kitchen garden, when lots of things were growing and nothing ate them but my family. Now it's May, all chance of frost is past, and many bugs are chowing down in my garden.
 OK, yes I have a degree in horticulture and  in 2003 passed the test to be a certified pesticide applicator in the state of Massachusetts, so I should not call them bugs. But disease vectors just doesn't sound right!  Now that I'm organic a lot of the chemicals I learned about are not options for many reasons, so I'm studying pest management all over again. My first defense is close observation - knowing my enemy.
Here's a list of what I found yesterday: unspecified green caterpillars (cabbage moth or winter moth, probably), slugs, snails, potato beetles, scale insects and aphids ( both black and green).
 The lettuce looked great from afar, but up close there were telltale piles of dark droppings, with caterpillars nearby. It's a big, crowded patch, which means that birds aren't able to spot the caterpillars and help me much:

So here's my plan of attack for preserving the lettuce: thinning so the birds can find the caterpillars, and spraying with spinosad, a natural pesticide for  many kinds of larvae. It's non-toxic to most beneficials, and won't hurt the birds if they eat the dead or sick caterpillars.  I could not spray today because there was so much rain on the lettuce that the spinosad would be diluted and ineffective, so tomorrow morning I'll thin, and tomorrow night I'll spray.
There is some slug damage in the  vegetable garden, but most of it is on flowers, such as this poor iris:

Here's a fat and nasty slug on a rudbeckia:

It's been so wet the slugs are thriving. To think I was worried about drought a couple of weeks ago.  I'm not sure what I'll do about the slugs-- probably cut back the plants and get the slugs off, then fertilize and hope they come back. The slugs on the iris are definitely causing a fungal problem too-- that's the vector part; the slime trails are a place for fungus to thrive. Yuck!

I've been pretty successful just hand picking and spraying aphids off the peas. Here's my first pea flowers:




My strategy for dealing with potato beetles works for squash and beans too. The first thing I do is plant small patches all over the garden, rather than all together. One patch of potatoes I inspected yesterday had lots of  potato beetles, which I handpicked, and eggs, which I crushed.

Here's a pic of the eggs on the underside of the leaves:



Other patches of potatoes had no beetles. By spreading out the plants I reduce the chance of a heavy infestation of potato beetles.

Here's a patch of potatoes I've found beetle free, so far. They are planted in the flower bed, next to geraniums and under a cotoneaster:

And so the war begins.  Everyday I walk the garden and look and touch, monitoring the plants as they grow, trying to stay ahead of all the non-humans who find my crops tasty.

Sometimes I worry needlessly, and have to laugh at myself. Here's a picture of my jerusalem artichokes covered with what I feared were whiteflies:

Then I brushed my hand across a leaf and nothing flew up, which is the characteristic whitefly response.  I looked overhead and saw a wild cherry shedding it's tiny white petals all over the garden. 

I laughed, then I kept looking for pests. I believe it's better to be vigilant and wrong than blase and hungry.