Officially Ridiculous

And this is just the beginning.

Squashed

Suffice it to say we've got a glut of yellow summer squash over here. Actually, no, that won't suffice. We've done the sweet, buttery-yellow fruits sauteed, shredded, grilled, in pasta, in soup, in chocolate cake, with even more squash growing up along the garden fence and taunting us from on high. I'm snacking on a squash-basil muffin as I type this. Even the local food pantry turned down our offer to donate some squash--seriously. After Mark's band played last Saturday I was peddling them in the streets of Hoboken and leaving them on top of friends' cars.

And I haven't even mentioned the basil: quadruple batches of pesto, quarts of basil-lime syrup for tasty drinks both alcoholic and non, marinara sauce, salads, and stir fries. From just two plants of Genovese basil. That doesn't even include the Thai and holy basil plants. Geez.

We just started digging potatoes today--20 pounds' worth from just four of our many, many plants. The bounty continues...which is incredibly awesome, but it's starting to seem strangely ominous as well.

Green with Envy

You know how some annoying treehuggers go on and on about how home-grown and organic food tastes so much better than what the rest of us chumps can buy at the supermarket? Well, I'm here to break the news that yes, it does.

In other words, the payoff has begun! Last night was the first time this season that Mark explained to me the odd sensation of not feeling panicked about the garden. The steep incline of toil is beginning to level out, and the garden is already starting to pay out in pounds of snap peas and picture-perfect heads of broccoli.

Smugness aside, there's some science behind the fact that there's no substitute for a freshly picked pea. It simply has no shelf life because the sugars start to convert to starch immediately after picking. And those incredibly sweet, juicy strawberries we've been picking at Genesis Farm wouldn't even make it to the grocery store. Half of mine are a bloody pulp by the time I drive home and put them in a bowl.

The volume of peas we have is unbelievable, even though we didn't get a chance to trellis them, which Mark was afraid would be disastrous. We haven't had any animals noshing on our goods besides flea beetles, and even they seem to be under control thanks to some mysterious beneficial insect. The deer have eaten a few pea shoots that latched onto the fence, but we aren't plagued by rabbits or groundhogs even though we still haven't had the opportunity to bury the extra bit of chicken wire around the perimeter. Which means we're picking a huge bowlful of peas every couple of days, and still we can't keep up. An awesome problem to have, for sure.

Smells Like Victory

Today's accomplishments: 75 tomatoes planted, weeded, and mulched, followed by Marcella Hazan's escarole torta and braised carrots--the last of the winter CSA share, spring leaves and garlic greens from this week's Genesis share, and a stake (har har) in the food we hope to enjoy this summer and fall.

Even better, we're still cooking and gardening four weeks into this trippy two-child odyssey. Smells like victory to me.

Satisfaction

Family muck-around time in the garden. Nico gets some tips on mulching from the master.

Look how far we've come! Hard to believe this was a thistle-ridden wasteland just a few short weeks ago.

In the end we couldn't bear to uproot the dozens of peonies strewn around the garden. They got a reprieve until next year. Same goes for the mountain of mint.

Neverending broccoli.

Another Kind of Sprout

Yes, it’s been a while, but that’s because we’ve been busy growing this sprout:

She arrived on 5/7. But don't fret; Mark hasn’t been neglecting the garden by any means.

The broccoli went out the second week of April, but could have gone outside earlier. It’s happy and thriving, but it would be bigger now if we had been a little more ambitious.

The potatoes are positively exuberant. We planted La Ratte fingerlings and yellow-fleshed Carola; both shot out of the ground in a few days and haven’t looked back. They’ve been mulched with hay to keep them moist on these hot days we’ve been having.

Mark was intent on putting a trellis up for the two kinds of peas—Sugar Snap and Green Arrow shelling peas—but now we’re thinking it may not be strictly necessary, and goodness knows there are a dozen other things demanding his time right now. They seem to be doing just fine cozied up to the deer fence.

Beans: Planted them 5/16 and they’re going crazy; seems like our timing was dead on. We’ve got Jacob’s Cattle and Tiger’s Eye shell beans for soup or for drying, as well as Garden of Eden pole beans.

Even the melons and squash sprang up in just a few days. The black plastic we lay down will warm the soil and prevent weeds, and we may even put up some row covers for maximum TLC. They love the heat, and the weather has been more than cooperative lately with these warm days interspersed with cool, rainy ones.

Still, we’re waiting until next weekend to put out the tomatoes, and even another week after that to put the peppers and eggplant in the ground. However, we’re going to give them a break from the grow lights and let them sunbathe during the daytime this week. Since someone left our pepper seedlings balanced precariously and they fell over (even though most of them recovered just fine), someone decided to order a truckload of exotic peppers from Cross Country Nurseries, an awesome farm he discovered in central Jersey, and we just picked them up yesterday. We definitely need to go back and pick those folks’ brains about their forward-thinking pest control techniques and fascinating array of pepper and basil varieties.

Weeding has become the surprising new joy of Mark’s life. He’ll disappear for an hour after dinner to hack at the earth with the cobra head tool and annihilate stealthy thistle taproots. The thistles will be the bane of our existence for at least the next couple of years, if not longer. Fortunately, this is my husband’s idea of a good time. So sad, and yet so serendipitously practical.

Group Effort

Tonight the three of us planted tomato seeds--Nyagous, Isis Candy, San Marzano, Gold Medal, and Pink Ponderosa. It was a true group effort, with Nico carefully placing one seed in each tiny soil block. We've come a long way since last year when his "help" was more of a liability than anything else.

We're also hoping the soil block method will be more efficient than past trials. The seedlings that sprout will be transferred to larger blocks, then eventually to the garden or to small pots if they're for giving. Anybody wanna call dibs?

Hurdling

This is how the plot looked on Thursday morning when Mark started spreading all that composted horse poop. My dad even found a horseshoe--a good omen! For a perspective on our insanity, that's the previous owner's garden in the center. Click through for panoramic view.

This is how it looks this morning after about 30 man-hours of working the soil. It may not be an impressive feat of agricultural engineering quite yet, but to us it's a gorgeous, blank, workable canvas. You can see the blueberries at the bottom, and the asparagus and garlic are off-camera to the right.

The alliums and broccoli are still partying it up under their disco lights.

Spring offers us this gorgeous little gem of a pomegranate flower to show us it's serious about its intentions. Still haven't found any of those snowdrops or crocus that everyone else seems to be chirping about.

Making Strides

I'm so exhausted I can barely type this, and I'm not even the one who did the lion's share of the work. Mark spent the last four days spreading 20 cubic yards of mushroom soil on our 50x75' garden plot, then tilling the whole thing using a beast of a tiller and digging holes for 6 blueberry bushes and a trench for 20 asparagus crowns. Mad props to my dad for putting in some serious man-hours yesterday. We were hoping to get the peas planted as well, but as it was we were out there until dusk tonight. I can't believe how the area has been transformed.

Every day it seems like a new box shows up on the doorstep--golden raspberries, fruit trees, blueberries, asparagus. All of a sudden our ambitious gardening plan is becoming real. It seems too good to be true, and in fact it is for Mark, who is his own worst critic.

The weather couldn't have been more cooperative, in the 70s every day and the 40s or 50s at night, practically unheard of for March in New Jersey. At the moment I can even hear a few confused, early-rising peepers in the pond across the road. The forecast is calling for a couple cooler days of rain ahead, which is just dandy for those baby blueberries and will create prime planting conditions for the peas. Garlic is up, albeit just tiny sprouts, but we're relieved since we were worried that we had planted too late for any decent result.

Before and after photos to come after we rise from the dead tomorrow.

Signs of Life

Sprouting leeks

Leek Mania

The first batch of seed starter is mixed up, the leeks are planted, and now one week later we've got about 10 seedlings going. The first alpha-sprouts appeared last Friday just five days after planting (beating last year's 7 day best). We've got the soil blocks directly on the heat mat which probably accounts for the accelerated germination. Now the trick will be to remove the heat mat without destroying the integrity of the soil blocks. The soil mix recipe is derived from Eliot Coleman's The New Organic Grower (also advocated by Johnny's):

Standard Blocking Mix

3 Buckets Brown Peat (30 Parts)
1/2 C Lime (1/8)

Mix

2 Buckets Course Sand (20)
1 C Blood Meal (1/4)
1 C Rock Phosphate (1/4)
1 C Greensand (1/4)

Mix

1 Bucket Soil (10)
2 Buckets Compost (20)

Wet 1 part water to 3 parts mix

Operation Deerterrent (Part 1 of Many)

According to my therapist, I'm finally ready to post this first installment in our latest mini-saga: Operation Deerterrent. Yes, those cute, pesky indigenous antelope roam in billions around our new locale. I've decided to take preemptive action before we start growing a damn thing. Immediately after installing leading-edge steel deercatchers on the fronts of both our cars, I broke ground on our first major gardening project at the new house--none other than the construction of a 6' high, 280' long deer fence.

As with my other past (and most likely future) projects, Operation Deerterrent began with a freakish amount of research, planning, and anxiety. After some online research and plenty of local scouting, I drew up some plans and then immediately abandoned them in favor of some other, more complicated and expensive plans. After discarding those, I settled on a hybrid design and gathered the materials:

280LF 4' wide hog-wire fencing
280LF 3' wide chicken-wire fencing
(28) 8' 4X4 pressure treated wood posts
(28) 60# bags concrete
(2) 6' wide chain link swing gates

The plan was pretty straightforward. The fence consists of 28 evenly spaced posts around a rectangular area with 83' X 50' dimensions. Each post was to be set in concrete at a depth of 30" below grade. Next, a 12" deep by 6" wide trench was to be dug and filled with a chicken wire barrier to stop burrowing varmints like rabbits, moles, and groundhogs. After securing the chicken-wire to the wooden posts, the hog-wire would be stretched and affixed to the posts as well. The chicken-wire would come up 18" from the ground and lap the hog-wire fence to create an "impenetrable" pest barrier. The gates would be installed last, one gate each in the middle of the 50' sides. Sounds pretty simple, eh? And how many of my past so-called simple projects have lived up to that expectation? Here are some of the myriad ways I underestimated the tasks before me.

For one thing, we live on top of a mountain. Granted, our little mountain is no K2 or anything (think foothills of the Appalachians), but the two share the distinction of both being made out of almost solid rock. As I soon discovered, rocks and digging implements don't get along too well.

Another potential problem arose from the sheer scope of the project. Digging a 12"X6" trench is no big task if it's 10 ft long; digging a nearly 300' long trench is another story. Obviously, this necessitated the use of power equipment which I didn't own and couldn't borrow. I added rental costs to the ever expanding expense list.

There were other challenges as well. Rented power equipment is not as easy or well-suited to the task at hand as it may seem. For instance, a mini-trencher sounds like the perfect tool to assist in the miserable labor of trench-digging. The model I rented was basically a colossal, unwieldy dirt chainsaw without any kind of safety mechanism at all. And that was even before the buried boulders began ambushing and mocking me. You'll have to wait to hear the rest. Time for a Xanax.

Out with the Old

Seed catalogs have started appearing in the mailbox early and often, and the post-holiday doldrums are perfect for planning the coming year's garden. This morning we went through our store of seeds, keeping the packets from last year we never got the chance to plant because of the move and tossing ones from 2007 and leftovers we weren't too keen on. There are also some special varieties we saved ourselves like San Marzano tomatoes and aji dulce peppers.


Here's the collection of old seeds, which, once the snow melts, we'll sprinkle in a corner of the property and see if anything sprouts. Maybe we'll be surprised.

And now, in with the new: Garlic is planted, fruit trees ordered, deer fence (mostly) finished. Let the 2010 garden planning begin!

Cloves of Raven Dark

By the light of an infernal moon, we plunged cloves into the black earth, one by one, with needles of sleet piercing our weary backs... oh wait, that's another blog. What I meant to say is that we finally scraped the grass off a few meager square feet of earth tonight in order to plant some garlic. There was a sense of haste brought on by the prospect of sleet and snow tomorrow night. (Seriously, WTF, October?) Since everything seems to take longer at the new homestead, we didn't even get out to the garden until after sunset. But considering the agonizingly slow progress of the deer fence and the lack of funds to buy the fruit trees we're coveting, this garlic is an accomplishment. We actually planted something on our new plot of land!

Mark has been spending all of his meager spare time digging trenches and post holes for the deer fence. Naturally, it's taking much longer than expected. The next step is to pour the concrete and get those posts in before the ground freezes. Considering the brutal frost on our cars this morning, that might be sooner than expected. Cue roar of the frosty undead...

Second Life

We know our adoring fans have been itching to know what we've been up to at the new homestead. Well, mostly we've been painting, unpacking, and adjusting to our colossal lawn, which needs to be mowed every 10 days or so. This lesson was learned the hard way, since we waited almost a month to mow it the first time. It was so long that only half the grass was cut by the mower blade, the end effect being one of a haircut by a blind or sadistic person.

Our ambitious plans for the fall have been scaled back for for reasons of cost and sanity, but we won't be sitting on our hands, that's for sure. We were going for a fall crop of root vegetables and greens, but we took the prudent option to spend more time planning. But seed garlic will be shipped shortly, and the big project looming is to mark out the new garden and put in a hardcore deer fence before the ground freezes. This will be a lot of work, of course, but just as difficult has been determining the dimensions of the main garden. It needs to be big enough so that we'll never feel hemmed in, but small enough to be manageable. The existing vegetable garden is 50 x 25', and we're looking to enlarge that to 75 x 50'. Now that's a lot of space, but it includes 10 annual beds, 2 of which will have cover crops each year to let them rest, interspersed with 4 perennial beds containing strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus, and a wild card--chives, hardy kiwi, something like that. There will also be a considerable 4-foot buffer of wildflowers on two sides of the beds, which will deter pests and attract birds and bees for now as well as give us room for expansion later.

There's also been plenty of salivating over fruit and nut trees over at Trees of Antiquity and Gurney's, finally settling on some cherries, almonds, apricot, hazelnut, persimmon, blueberries, and our favorite golden raspberries. (Actually, after looking at that list, we may have to pare down a bit more.) Mark's grandparents also have an orphan fig tree we'll be adopting. Fruit trees will help cut down on some of our huge freakin' lawn as well as yielding the obvious deliciousness after a few agonizing years of waiting.

We're still struggling with how much of the property will be lawn come next year. It's a challenge to find portions to allow to go to meadow while keeping some nicely trimmed spaces for socializing and running around, all the while keeping the holistic approach to our place in mind. Our mantra: This is a process, not a goal. Rinse. Repeat. Repeat.