Organic Gardening Magazine and Camp return update

Wonderful Smelling Sweet Peas
Came back from camp Saturday to blooming Sweet Peas! Just love their smell; heaven. Didn't get to do much in the garden except pick lettuce, spinach, basil, carrots, and scallions for a supper salad. After a week away the gardens need tending, a lot of tending.

This morning I went out early to pick raspberries and got sidetracked when I saw all the weeds in the gardens! Certainly gives an amazing visual to the phrase, "Growing like a weed!" Spent two hours weeding; it was time well spent. It's really important to get the weeds out. They steal nutrients from the plants that you have spent all that time, energy, and money planting and tending. And they make the garden uninviting. There really is something to be said about the garden remaining an inviting place. Who wants to go pick luscious vegetables, herbs, and flowers if you have to look at and dodge weeds?!

My good news is that not only are the two vegetable gardens weed free (mostly), I didn't find a cucumber beetle anywhere! And the cukes, pumpkins, and squashes look great! Picked three zucchini this morning and the cucumber plants are full of flowers. Went through the tomatoes and trimmed the suckers, there were tons of them. It's amazing how a garden can change in a week. I also yanked all the pea plants, seeded radishes, and pok choy and got the spots ready for another planting of lettuce, beans, carrots, cilantro, and cucumbers. And as I expected, the potatoes are full of Colorado Potato Beetles. Ugh! Will deal with that later. Beans are almost ready to be picked. Water/rain barrels are almost empty. But rain is predicted. Thank goodness.

Here's a magazine that I got last year when I joined the American Community Gardening organization, Organic Gardening. I LOVE this magazine! http://www.organicgardening.com/ They even have a blurb on the dreaded cucumber beetle and squash bug on their website, both which cause havoc in my garden. Here's a link to that info: http://www.organicgardening.com/feature/0,7518,s1-2-9-1722,00.html ; click on "NEXT" at the bottom of the page to see info on other pests such as the dreaded squash bug. So you not only get a great magazine but you have access to their website. Well, the website is obviously available to anyone; you don't need to be a member to access it.

Now it's the next day, this post is two days in the making, and I guess I should stop being a veg myself and get back out to the garden. It still needs tending. It's funny, this morning I got up and thought, "Ugh" I don't want to deal with, aka -squish, potato bugs and deal with weeds etc. Then I looked at what I did yesterday here in my post and found that I still need to plant carrots, lettuce, etc! Yeah! So that's what I'm going to do. Isn't it great how there's always so many different things to do in the garden that you can choose to do one that suits your mood and fancy? :)

Parting note: the red Bee Balm has two hummingbirds visiting them. I love to listen to and watch them flitting about in the Bee Balm. Speaking of bee balm, I made a visit to my newly made medicinal garden. It's really just a patch near the rhubarb and apple mint and I think it may be something worth discussing....later. Out to the garden.

Enjoy your garden because gardens make the world clean and fresh. And they make good food too!
Mary

Peas and Scallions

My First Bunch of Scallions!

Finally cooled off a bit today. Was actually below 90F! Did a lot of work in the gardens getting them ready for my week away. Lots of watering because it's dry as a bone. Went through almost the entire 50 gallon rain barrel! Also added lots of compost and some mulch. Did some weeding and thinning. Even yanked some radishes and got in another planting of carrots and cilantro.
Picked a few quarts of raspberries and made some raspberry jam. Also made a final batch of garlic scape and cilantro pesto. I got the garlic scapes at the local farmers' market. Mine are all gone and I was excited to see some still there. They also had some delicious multicolored carrots! I love trying new veggie varieties at the farmers market. It gives me an opportunity to support our farmers; and we want to support our farmers! And it gives me an opportunity to try new veggies that I may then decide to grow myself next year. I bought a very large spearmint plant to bring to camp with us Saturday. :)

Right now in the garden it's mostly about peas and raspberries. Picking tons of each. I made a delicious fresh pea soup for dinner tonight. Had some bread that I get from a fantastic bread baker who sells at the farmers market.


Photo from: http://brokeassgourmet.com/articles/pea-soup-with-scallions-parmesan-and-basil
**Fresh Pea Soup Recipe: from Roberta Bailey May/June MOFGA 1989
Note: this makes 3 bowls of soup. Next time I'll double it
-1 Cup of onions sauted in 1 Tbsp olive oil...I used some onion and leek thinnings from the garden (I also put about 1/2 cup of fresh farmers market carrots in
-Slightly steam 2 cups of fresh shelled peas
-Add 1 1/2 cups of veggie broth to the onions and then add the peas
- Cook 10 minutes
- Puree anywhere from 1/3 to all of the soup mix. I pureed all of it in my food processor
- Put back in pan and add 1 cup milk - I used raw whole milk to make it nice and creamy
-Heat gently but do not cook; season with some pepper and just a tiny dash of salt if you must use salt
- Serve with minced basil, mint, thyme, and/or tarragon. My guys are very picky when it comes to herbs so I serve herbs minced well and separately. My son choose basil; I chose a combination of basil and mint to garnish my soup with.
- Opt: steam another cup or 2 of peas. Serve the whole peas with the soup. People can choose to add whole peas to their soup.
- Serve with warmed bread and some butter. Herb butter is even more tasty. My herb butter had garlic chives, chives, hint of mint, hint of parsley, basil, thyme, hint of tarragon
Serve with a colorful and crispy garden salad and enjoy!

I may not post for another week. So in the mean time, Happy Gardening!
Mary
PS- Picked our first bunch of greens from the community garden to donate to the local soup kitchen! We picked lettuce, chard, spinach, beet greens, parsley, and 1 pea pod :)
Yeah community garden! I'll update more on that in a future post and get some pictures of it up too.

Blueberry netting

Some ripening yet still green blueberries on my high bush blueberry bushes.

Did I mention that it is HOT here! Close to 100 degrees F the third day in a row. I guess it now officially qualifies as a heat wave. So Maine, and most of the Northeast is experiencing an official heat wave. But to be honest it looks like the garden is loving it! I go out each evening and look to see what I haven't mulched yet with compost or straw and give it a drink of water that is diluted with either fish emulsion or liquid sea weed in it. And I must say that the garden looks to be enjoying this heat as it all looks good. (Except for those blasted peas!; remember the peas?)

Last night in this heat Ger and I went out and netted the blueberries. I was getting a bit testy because 1) I hate the heat and 2) the netting structure wasn't what I had in mind at all. I jumped in the pool and things looked better. That made Ger happier too.
I do notice that the three bushes at the far end get a bit more shade from a large lilac bush and seem to be struggling more than the other bushes. Not sure if I should dig them up next year and transplant them or just let them be. What do you think? Anyway, here's a picture of the blueberries and netting.
In this picture you can see the blueberry bushes inside the very crude netting structure. I definitely want to work on the materials and design of this for next year. In front of the bushes are some thyme plants. I planted them because the bushes are on quite a slope and I was worried about erosion. Even though I mulch, the erosion is noticeable. Thyme is a nice spreading low growing herb and it seems to be filling in and doing a good job at controlling the erosion. I do weed them back away from the blueberry bushes though because we don't want plants of any sort competing with the blueberry bushes for water or nutrients.

When I planted the blueberry bushes three years ago I chose this spot because I read that blueberries like good drainage. They also like a slightly acidic soil so I didn't add any lime. Instead I added peat moss. I struggle with the use of peat moss because it's harvested from wet bogs in Canada. So I use it very sparingly. This was the first time I used peat moss in my garden and I haven't used it since. Just something to think about. Here's a very short blub on Peat Moss: http://www.peatmoss.com/pm-what.php Then I dug in compost and planted. The first two years I picked the flowers off the bushes so no berries would develop. That sends needed energy that would be used to produce fruit back down into the developing roots. I also spread compost around after a good rain. That worked as fertilizer and mulch. This is year three and the first year I'm allowing the bushes to produce blueberries!

This year I will prune the bushes. I haven't done that yet so will write about it after I do it.

More about blueberries as they develop.
Enjoy your garden!
Mary

Daily Gardening Chores

The photo above shows plants of squash, tomato, garlic, onions, and calendula in a small garden bed. The open spot had cilantro that went by so I uprooted them and planted lettuce there. Once I put up some shade for the lettuce I hope to get some fall lettuce from this planting. This successional planting is important in gardening if we want to make the best use of our garden space and keep all of our garden productive.

Gardening in July really consists of balance. A balance between gardening, harvesting, and using what you grow. As the summer garden chugs along it's fun to let the garden direct that balance. Plan on spending an hour working compost into the soil but notice that the raspberries are so ripe that their canes are hanging to the ground? Sounds like the garden is calling to have those raspberries picked! Having delicious fresh food is the reason for the garden after all. The compost will be there later, come back to it. It appears now is the time to harvest and enjoy raspberries.

On most summer days a walk into the garden will reveal what daily tending needs to be done. There are times when I go to the garden with a "to do" list and I stay in the garden and follow that list until it's done. Other days I have no idea what will need to be done because I think I did it all the day before. But a walk in the garden reveals some weeds that need to be pulled, a patch that needs some compost and/or mulch, some thinning that needs to be done, some watering, some staking that is needed, some dead heading... on and on the list may go. Some chores that are important to keep up with is that of compost making and spreading as well as watering and mulching and weeding. When in doubt do those things. If they are done then do the next most important thing. Pick some flowers or herbs that smell pretty, sit down in a nice spot, and just enjoy your garden.

Remember, your garden helps make the world clean and fresh. Sometimes it's easy to focus on what may be going wrong in the garden because let's be real, things always go wrong in the garden. That's a given. There is no perfection in life. A better way to go is to focus on what is going right in the garden because let's be real, things always go right in the garden too. We learn what to do right by learning from what went wrong. So the "wrong" in the garden is there to teach us to do it differently next time and if you're a gardener there will be a next time.

Ok, I'll fess up with my test of this philosophy. I went out to harvest the peas that I tried to add more stakes to support yesterday but it didn't work. I told myself that it didn't matter and I would focus on all the luscious peas. Remember that? Well as I was hunched over rather than reaching up to pick peas that thinking was really, really challenged because I really wanted to focus on how I screwed up the pea planting this year. You don't, after all, bend over to pick peas!! Then I thought about how I was picking enough peas to last my family quite a while and enough peas to donate to the local homeless shelter. So the question really was, "Who cares if you're bending over harvesting peas! Certainly the kids in the homeless shelter don't care. Your family doesn't care. Only you care." Well with that little chat going on in my head now finished I realized that the important thing was, "We had PEAS!"
-My peas all bent over. You can see some that are still upright at the end by the post-

So enjoy your garden no matter how successful or how challenged it may be,
Mary

I Hate Bad Bugs!

I Found These on the Underside of a few Potato Plants Today!

This is going to be a rather morbid post. Between the heat and the bad-bug killing spree...just let it be said that you have been forewarned.

Today was H-O-T! High 80's and very humid. But I worked in the garden anyway. It was a quiet 4th of July here so after preparing for our cookout I worked in the garden. I just planned to reinforce tomatoes to their stakes and to tie up cauliflower. Tying up the large cauliflower leaves up over the plant blanches the cauliflower as it grows, making the head a nice white. In the photo below you can see how I just used some twine and tied the big leaves up over the top to shade the growing cauliflower flower. Yes, when you eat cauliflower or broccoli you are eating the flowering part of the plant!
Then I noticed the peas all dropping over and tried to put a few more stakes in the pea fencing but that didn't work. A lot of the pea vines broke right in half from the weight from all the peas! It is obvious that chicken wire fencing and posts at either end is just not enough support.

You can see in the right side of the photo above how that pea vine is bent right in half. I don't think it can continue growing like that. Stems of plants are like the nutrient highways. Think celery and colored sugar water set ups you did as a kid. When the stem of a plant is broken, the nutrient highway has become disabled causing that plant to eventually die. Leaves, on the other hand, are the power houses of the plant, transforming sun's energy and water from the air into sugar, aka food. Since there are more than one leaf on a plant a plant can live if a leaf dies. But not if the stem dies. That is why if you are transplanting seedlings the method that is recommended is to take gentle hold of the seedling by the leaves not by the stem and transplant holding onto the leaves.

Anyway, back to the peas in front of me: note to self, next year, stronger and taller fencing and more posts. The fencing I used this year was only 3 feet tall. Not tall enough. Well I guess I can focus on the fact that the plants are falling over and I can't get them to stay up or I can focus on the fact that the reason they are falling over is because they are so darn full of so many large, succulent, and sweet peas! I'll go with the last :) Last chore was to check out the pumpkins in the upper garden. They were loaded with those gosh darn cucumber beetles still!!!! There were so many of them and they were just partying away. I squished as many as I could but they just kept flying away. Darn buggers!! And the pumpkin plants look like they are wilting. Not good. After I killed as many as I could I went to check the potatoes because I guess I just felt like a glutton for punishment today and it just seems like that time to begin finding those potato beetles. And sure enough I found some eggs just like in the photo above. I just folded the leaves over and squished them too. I found 1 large adult Colorado Potato Beetle and used two rocks to squish that bugger. It must have been the heat! After this massive killing spree I couldn't take it anymore and jumped into the pool to cool off. It felt fantastic. The water was a balmy 66 degrees F. Ha! It was cold but felt fantastic and incredibly refreshing.

Finally, after some swimming I put bird netting up over the blueberry bushes. I only have 8 of them and they are 3 years old this year. I've never allowed them to set berries until this year. The first 2 years I picked the flowers off, sending energy used to flower and fruit back to the roots to build the roots up. This year is berry picking year! And I want to get to those ripe blueberries before the birds do so netting went up. And guess what!? I did it all wrong. Ugh! Time for another swim in the pool. I was silly enough to just put the netting right on the bushes. But when I came back in and researched it online I see that I should have built a simple, crude structure of some sort to put the netting over so that the netting isn't sitting right on the blueberry bushes. Logical. Will work on that again tomorrow.

Lovely and Sweet Smelling German Chamomile - Matricaria recutita - a tiny, delicate daisy looking annual that self sows profusely :)

The garden can be a magical and wonderful respite. But as today demonstrates, it can also be a challenging and difficult encounter. Just breath, do what needs to be done, and walk away from it. It'll still be there in all its glory to enjoy tomorrow. And tomorrow there will be peas to pick, chamomile to smell, mint to snip for iced tea, cilantro to put in the salsa, and some lettuce, scallions, spinach, and calendula blossoms to pick for salads.

Remember, gardens make the world clean and fresh. Enjoy your garden,
Mary

Give Peas a Chance!

Peas!

Yesterday the idea of a subtle seasonal shift in the garden was discussed through the lens of basil. Today to add to that feeling of shift is the harvest of peas. The growing of peas takes place during those cool early garden months. But the harvest of these sweet morsels occurs during the heat of the stereotypical summer garden. A common goal of New England gardeners is to have corn knee high and eating peas by the 4th of July. Thanks to the use of a special bird repellent milar tape that I purchased from Johnny's Selected Seeds in Winslow the corn this year is knee high! We out smarted those blasted crows! In the past I've had to plant and replant corn because crows keep pulling the seedlings out of the ground as they emerge. Not this year! Here's a photo of what Johnny's calls Bird Scare Flash Tape. It's only $6.00 and the best $6.00 I've spent on critter control.

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-5441-bird-scare-flash-tape.aspx

Today we had a yard sale so I didn't get out into the garden except to pick peas. We had salmon with garlic scape pesto over it, spiced rice and peas, and a garden salad with, of course, peas. The recipe for garlic scape pesto is in another post. Just use the search bar to find it. Here's a recipe for the spiced rice and peas, taken from my summer time staple cookbook, The Victory Garden Cookbook. It's easy to use this cookbook. When you have peas that you want to use up you just look up peas. The recipes are listed alphabetically by vegetable. So I looked up peas and found this recipe.
Spiced Rice and Peas:
1 Cup of Shelled peas (I prefer to use 2 cups, 1 just isn't enough)
3/4 cup chopped onion
6 Tbsp butter ( I prefer to use extra virgin olive oil)
1 Tbsp finely minced garlic ( can certainly use scapes!)
10 whole cardamom seeds
10 whole allspice berries
10 whole cloves
1 inch cinnamon stick
3 cups rice (this is a really lot so if you don't want this much just 1/2 the recipe)
6 cups combination of veggie broth and water (you could use chicken broth too)
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup sliced almonds
**Pick and shell the peas....blanch them and set aside. To blanch- bring water in pan to boil, put peas in, bring back to boil and remove from heat and drain immediately! Rinse in cold water and let sit a bit in cold water. Set aside.
**Chop onion and saute in olive oil until wilted in a REALLY large pot! Add garlic and spices and cook another 5 minutes. Stir in rice (uncooked rice) and saute 5 more minutes.
**Add hot water/broth, cover, bring to boil, simmer until liquid is absorbed. Follow cooking times on rice container.
**As rice cooks - soak raisins in some boiling water for 5 minutes to plump them up - drain and set aside.
** Then saute almonds in some (2 Tbsp) olive oil until brown.
**When rice is done add the raisins and almonds, stirring well and cooking until heated through.
** Add the peas and heat a bit more.
This makes a ton! I made this and since there is so much extra I will make a rice, Maine shrimp, and peas scampi type dish. I usually do this with linguine but will try it with this rice since I have so much.
Note: the rice tasted really flavorful.

That's it. So grab yourself some fresh peas and enjoy!
Happy Gardening and 4th of July,
Mary
PS - Another simple way to eat peas: blanched peas with butter and minced fresh spearmint is DELICIOUS!

4th of July and a New Shift in the Garden

Today's work in the garden revealed a shift. A bitter-sweet shift. Bitter in that springs cool season vegetables are coming to an end and sweet that summers heat loving vegetables are coming in.

Each year when I pick my first basil like I did today I know we're moving into the true summer garden. Basil made it's "pinch the tops off" sized appearance today. The first time you pinch off basil each summer and release that delicious aroma you experience a feeling nothing short of pure Heaven! Oh that smell! If you do not grow basil I highly recommend that you do. If you had to pick one herb to grow basil is THE herb to have in the garden. And there are so many basils besides sweet basil. It's fun to grow a variety of scented basils such as lemon or cinnamon scented basil. I have been noticing the basil growing inconspicuously as I tend to and harvest other plants that have been taking center stage, such as spinach, swiss chard, pak choy, lettuce, cilantro, beets, and snap peas. The spinach, pak choy, radishes, and snap peas have pretty much gone by and I've already cleaned up those spots, removed the plants that went by and threw them into the compost pile, dug in shovel fulls of compost, and replanted with more lettuce seed, cucumber seedlings, and carrot seeds. I put the cukes where the snap peas were so they can climb up the trellis. The lettuce went where the radishes were and the carrots went where the spinach were. I figured I'd trade root for leaf plants and visa-versa. I'm going to cover the spot where the lettuce is with burlap in hopes that I can shade and cool the area a bit. Replanting today was my major goal but I also spent a lot of today mulching with compost. I composted the onions, peppers, and beans heavily. Yesterday I compost/mulched the squashes, corn, and tomatoes heavily. I also gave all my tomato plants a good drink of worm tea.


Very Cool Vermiculite Set Up

Worm tea you ask? Well, my friend Lisa brought me over the best present; an already established vermiculite container complete with healthy red wiggler worms! Thanks Lisa! Vermiculite is the culture of worms. Gardeners raise worms for their castings, aka worm poop, and for the tea it produces. This set up that Lisa gave me is ingenious. In the photo above I don't know if you can tell that there are two kitty litter containers, one right inside the other. The one inside is where the worms are living and there are holes drilled throughout that container. The holes allow air to circulate but also they allow the moisture/water/tea to drain out the bottom. Just drain the liquid, add more water, and you have the best worm tea that plants love! To keep the worms healthy you just feed them kitchen scraps daily. To deter the pesky fruit flies you just bury the kitchen scrapes (veggie and fruit peels, coffee grounds, pasta, bread; no meat or oils...just like regular compost) and put a handful of moist newspaper in. Lisa said you can even cover top of the inside with garden cloth. I'm thinking that means remay floating row cover cloth. It's kind of like a thick cheese cloth. She said tomato plants with flowers on them love this stuff. So I did just what she said and diluted it with some rain water from my rain barrel and watered my tomatoes with it. We'll see.

On a different note, strawberries are just ending and I made several batches of strawberry jam and strawberry butter; yummy! Time to get out the raspberry recipes as raspberries are just starting! And shell peas are coming in too. I'll share some recipes shortly. But in the mean time there is nothing like standing in the garden on a hot sunny day shelling peas one at a time and popping those luscious, sweet little green pearls into your mouth. They are wonderful raw in salads too. Make a special July 4th garden salad with some sliced beets, scallions, peas, and goat cheese on top of some garden greens with a dash of vinaigrette; yummmm!

Finally, blueberries, plums, and cherries are also developing and getting slowly bigger. The plums and blueberries are are still green. To deter birds from eating all our blueberries right as they are ripe and ready to pick I'm going to cover them with some bird netting.

Enjoy your garden and your 4th of July!
Mary