Glass Half Full

We managed to sow all our cover crops this weekend, blanketing most of the beds with field peas and a couple others with an oat/clover mix once the peas were gone. This is the first year we’ve managed to do this consistently and in a timely fashion; previous attempts have been kind of sporadic. We’re motivated by the visible benefits from limited cover cropping last year. We can see the improvements compared with the beds that weren’t cropped: looser soil with better tilth, less erosion, better water retention.

Of course, it’s not all coming up roses at Chez Markate. Although I try to be meticulous with my seed starting, I’m having all sorts of trouble with some of my seedlings. In the past, I’ve started peppers, tomatoes, and basil in mini soil blocks that heat up quickly to 70 degrees or more. This year is no different, but the results certainly are. Germination has been great, but I’m finding many of the emerging seedlings are failing to take root. The tiny plants have been bowing over and petering out within a day or two of sprouting. The effect is somewhat different from damping off fungus, where the base of the stem withers visibly. Even the seedlings that have survived are anemic and slow growing. I’m pretty sure there’s something wrong with the soil block mix I made for the mini blocks.

We expect to get only about 15 tomato plants and a handful of peppers--a poor showing compared with past years. Fortunately, there are many local sources of live plants for the nightshade family. I just put in an order for 25 pepper plants from Cross Country Nursery and managed to score most of the same varieties we were planning for this year. We also plan on attending the annual Catalpa Ridge plant sale at Lafayette Village in May to augment our tomato stock. We used to do all our tomatoes and peppers from purchased live plants, so in a sense we’ve come full circle. The alliums and brassicas continue to thrive, fortunately, so we’re currently trying on our ‘glass half-full’ hat for size.

It helps that this week truly feels like spring. Look how happy our rhubarb is!

Glimpse of Green

Leeks sprouting from seeds we saved two years ago--success!

Our floor-to-ceiling seed-starting rack is filling up quickly with flats of onions, leeks, and spinach. Next up are lettuce and peas, radishes and broccoli. Mark is mixing up huge tubs of seed-starting medium that have become permanent fixtures in the kitchen and, confusingly, look remarkably edible once they've been made into blocks. It's a little confusing, even for me, to keep what look like huge pans of brownies on the counter. Everything is germinating well, and the weather is seasonal but generally cooperative.

In even more exciting news, our shipment of baby chicks arrives tomorrow! We're dizzy with excitement and have the guest room all fixed up for them--literally.

Pickin' Chickens

It’s good to have goals, right? It makes sense to begin each year with some objectives in mind for the coming growing season. As usual, 2012 left us with plenty of room for improvement but also lots of enthusiasm for the future. Here’s the short list for 2013:

Chickens! This is the big one, and we just placed our order for chicks this week. They’re scheduled to arrive at the end of February. Mark has already done a lot of prep in anticipation of these little dynamos’ arrival--they have a coop that we hope is secure, their own little nesting boxes. We’re hoping the birds will improve the health of our soil through tilling, manure, and composting. Chickens do a lot of scratching and rooting around, which happens to mimic exactly what we’d do to prepare a garden bed for growing. They’ll generate manure that will enrich that same soil, and they also process a lot of waste biomass into compost while they search for food. And then, you know: EGGS. Kate is already entertaining fantasies of the kids collecting dozens of eggs in old-fashioned wire baskets every morning and not breaking a single one. The key word here being fantasy.

One of the coolest parts of this process was using Mother Earth News’s Pickin’ Chicken app to choose the chickens based on their characteristics. That was pretty fun. We chose Dominique and Wyandotte breeds because they’re known for having decent foraging abilities, being well suited to our climate, laying well, and having a peaceable temperament that’s resistant to curious children. Unlike some people who choose their chickens because they look like they’re wearing pants--you know who you are. But big questions remain: Should we name all of them? And if so, what? Should we have a theme? Please weigh in on the comments.

Next up: perennial vegetables. Mark expanded the size of the hugelkultur mounds in autumn with the hopes of adding some more perennial vegetables this spring. Reading Eric Tonsmeier’s book Perennial Vegetables and attending one of his lectures has inspired him to rely more on perennial gardening for diversity and time savings. We’ll be adding exciting and obscure veggies like sea kale, turkish rocket, sorrel, and even some more rhubarb to the hugelkultur, filling in the gaps with a range of perennial flowers to keep the beneficial insects happy.

Finally, we’re going to focus more on keeping the plants content, which is code for MORE WEEDING. There are bound to be disappointments every year, of course, but I think we missed out on some of our favorites like beans, potatoes, and basil last year because we fell behind in keeping the weeds at bay as the end of summer came and got overwhelmed with harvesting and preserving.

Right now we're keeping warm by perusing seed catalog porn, and next up will be the big compendium of all the varieties of vegetables, flowers, and herbs we'll be planting this year. Planning the garden is like a slow IV drip sustaining us until we see some green again--besides last year's Asian mustard greens still alive under the snow. Kate is already asking how soon till we start the first seedlings. Answer: Not soon enough.

Last Hurrah

The garden's last hurrah before Friday night's killing frost. I can't believe we're here already--too soon for my taste.

Going to Seed

I've been hearing the same refrain several times a day: Where did the summer go? At Markate Estates we're knee-deep in tomatoes, making confit, sauce, ketchup, salsa, gazpacho, and canning like crazy. The Titan sunflowers, which grew to a towering eight feet this year, are already hanging their heavy heads. We're still waiting for the seeds to darken and dry, though, so we can harvest and eat them. A friend told us that the entire sunflower head can be roasted and eaten as a delicacy, but we haven't attempted that yet.

Three cheers for the ground cherries that are finally dropping off their bushes! But I'm still in denial about the pumpkins; a couple of them are already ripe! My brain is unable to make the transition from summer to fall just yet. And we have three more weeks to go till the autumnal equinox. I'm in no hurry for the bounty of summer to trail off, even if processing all these tomatoes is a full-time job.

I took these photos yesterday at dusk, in my favorite light with my favorite lens. Man, I love our garden, even when the overgrowth is trying to swallow me whole.

 

 

The Jungle

As you can see, this is the time of year when the garden starts to take on a life of its own. Eight-foot-tall sunflowers, watermelons as big as basketballs, and a bumper crop of tomatoes on the verge of ripeness. We're steeling ourselves for the weeks of desperate round-the-clock canning. Not that I'm complaining. We just have to keep telling ourselves that it's okay to feel out of control sometimes.

Fortunetelling

I see a number of feathered friends in your near future.