Green Beans

Cousin Becky called today and said that Uncle Jack had green beans that needed picking, and she wanted to know if I wanted to pick them.  Well, I most certainly did, considering that my green beans didn't come up at all (twice).  I looked around the house for something to put the beans in as I picked them, and came up with a big blue plastic tub, the kind that would hold three bed pillows if you smash them down and snapped the lid on real quick. 

The first thing Uncle Jack said when he saw it was, "Your bucket ain't big enough."

I thought to myself, "Oh, shit!" 

Might have said it out loud, now that I think about it.

Uncle Jack went to the garden with me, bringing his own 5-gallon bucket.  His green beans are runners - rattlesnake beans - and he had them running up a sturdy hog-wire fence.  He picked on one side of the fence, and I picked on the other.  We did some good gossiping through the vines.  I'm not Catholic and have never been in a confessional, but picking green beans with Uncle Jack was kind of like what I imagine the confession process would be - talking to someone you can't see, and having them talk back!

Anyway, as we were picking, I thought about a local conservative talk-radio station conversation I'd heard on the way over.  The subject was California's new proposal that restaurants may turn away families with young children.  By far the largest consensus among the primarily Southern callers was that modern children need more discipline, so they would know better than to act up in a restaurant.  One caller said, "Why, if I'd acted like that when I was a kid, the minute we got home my mama would have sent me to the back yard to cut a switch for a whippin', and I'd better not cut one too little, either!"

I thought about my own childhood, and couldn't remember ever getting a whippin' with a switch.  My daddy whipped me with a razor strop once, punishment for deliberately disobeying his order not to cut off my doll's foot after he warned me that I'd get a spanking if I did the deed.  (In my defense, I had two male cousins in the background, egging me on.  He waited until they left before delivering on his promise.  I'd sweated it the whole time.)  That's the only spanking I remember getting from him.  My mother, on the other hand, had a more hands-on, shock-and-awe approach.  If you pissed her off or misbehaved, she'd haul off and smack you with her hand at the first place she could reach - cheeks, forearms, thighs, butt.  No warning.  Just whack!  But I didn't remember a switch.

I asked Uncle Jack if his mama had ever made him cut his own switch for a whippin'.  Indeed, she had, he said, and on more than one occasion.  He said his father, like mine, had been slow to administer punishment, but his mother, a little bitty banty hen of a woman, was just the opposite.  He said that whenever she whipped one child (3 boys), she whipped them all, regardless of who did what, and she grabbed the closest thing handy to whack them with.  As I was contemplating how whipping all the kids at once probably cut down on sibling tattling, Uncle Jack said, "I remember the last whippin' Mama ever gave us."

He said he didn't remember what they'd done to need a whippin', but it made his mother mad enough to get after them with a broom.  He said, "We just took the broom away from her and laughed at her.  She never did try to whip us no more."

I wish I'd asked which of the three boys first suggested resistance.  ;)

We moved on to other subjects:  grandchildren, gardening, the weather.  By the end of the row, he'd filled up his bucket, and mine was almost full.  We managed to pack them all in my tub.  While I wasn't looking, he sneaked five giant zucchini in my Jeep.  Maybe I'll make him some zucchini bread.

But, first, I have to do something with all these beans.  The Husband and I snapped them all tonight, and ended up with a 13-gallon bag half full of beans, ready to be washed and canned.  We pulled the canning equipment out of the attic tonight.  Guess what I'll be doing tomorrow.

Sanding....

When The Husband asked if I wanted anything in particular for my birthday, I told him I wanted a Dremel tool.  And guess what?  HE GOT IT FOR ME!  YAY!  And he got some cool accessories to go with it.

I could not WAIT to try it out.  As soon as I got home from work today, I loaded a wire brush into the collet, rounded up an extension cord, and went outside to see if the Dremel would take the chipping paint off my concrete patio table. 

This thing rocks.

Only maybe the wire brush was not the right tool for the job.  After about 20 minutes of sanding, I noticed that the brush was getting smaller.  Five more minutes, and the bristles were down to nubs.  And I didn't get anywhere NEAR finished.

But I've got a mouse sander and a wire brush, and that paint is coming off that table today, one way or another, for I want to repaint the table to match a two-butt rocker I bought this weekend. 

Running the Dremel and the sander are what I call "zone out" activities - you know, things you can do while you think about other things.  I was out there, sanding away, when I realized that the sun had come out and was cooking my head right through my hat.  I've laid the power tools aside for the moment, but as soon as the house shades the patio table, I'll be having another go at it.

Pitiful

I know you must be tired of hearing me whine about how awful my garden is this year, but I ain't playin'; it is pitiful.

NONE of the second planting of beans and peas came up.  None.  As I said in another post, it's as if the soil on that end of the garden has been poisoned, and maybe it has.  Last fall, we dumped loads of leaves (and a few pine needles) on that end of the garden.  After the fact, I learned that the decomposing leaves can rob the soil of essential nutrients.  Maybe that's the problem.  I don't know how to fix it, except to stop dumping leaves and maybe add some lime in the fall.

The tomatoes and the squash are stunted and yellowish.  The only plants that look halfway healthy are the okra and the cucumbers, both of which could probably grow and produce well in concrete.

Today I bought two 50-pound bags of 6-12-12 fertilizer.  (No, I don't intend to use it all at once, nor even all this year.  The second bag is for next spring.)  I fertilized the peas and butterbeans this evening.  Nanny said she thought that peas normally do not need fertilizing, but they sure need something. 

My no-till experiment seems to be failing.  Despite layers of newspaper and hay surrounding the tomatoes and squash, bermuda grass has seen the light and is creeping down the rows atop the hay.  It looks plumb snake-y. 

My only consolation is that most everyone I've talked to about gardens has said that their gardens look pitiful, too.  (Misery does love company.)  We're blaming it on the excessive rains we had in the spring, all the way through the month of June. 

Although I intend to continue to work this year's garden, such as it is, I have pretty much written off the idea of having any vegetables to put up unless some miracle occurs.

Thinking ahead to next year's crops, I have already asked The Husband to make it his project to plow and disc the entire garden this fall.  I will send off a soil sample to the Extension Service to see what nutrients the soil is missing as a result of this year's efforts and try to correct the problems we spawned this year.

4th of July

Cousins Gus and Ann always invite their extended family to a 4th of July cookout, every year, at high noon.  Gus roasts pork shoulders on the grill.  Ann decorates their garage in patriotic colors and makes gallons of sweet tea and probably does 90 million other things in the kitchen while Gus minds the grill.  The family starts pouring in around 11, bearing their specialty dishes, just about the time the shoulders are ready to be pulled apart for sandwiches.

If you have never been part of a shoulder-pullin', you have missed one of the most orgasmic food experiences in the world.  The skin on the outside of the shoulder is charred and crisp; the meat on the inside is warm and moist and fall-apart tender.  Juice runs down your arm when you sneak bites.  Heaven on earth. 

As always, I picked my brain for side dish ideas.  With so many people bringing food, it's hard not to duplicate.  We picked up a watermelon and a store-bought cherry pie while we were browsing the supermarket for ideas.  We ended up getting ingredients for a cool tropical fruit and marshmallow salad, with loads of pecans and coconut and whipped cream.  Thirty years ago, this salad showed up at nearly every family dinner, but I haven't seen it for a while. 

On the gardening front, my garden is still a mess.  I did some good work last week but didn't finish, and it has rained again (almost daily) since then.  My new "hula hoe" arrived this week, and I'm interested to see if it can make any headway against the grass.  Following some online video suggestions, The Husband sharpened the blades for me.  I may try it out this afternoon, if I'm not too full to move.

Redemption

Well, reader, I redeemed myself somewhat in the garden this afternoon. 

Ran the tiller, re-planted the green beans and some of the purple hull peas.  Planted a few hills of crookneck squash.  Hit the first few rows with Miracle Grow.

Can barely move now.

Worst Gardener Ever!

When I checked the garden last week, it was grassy and pitiful, and I made plans to remedy that situation this weekend.  Although I was up before the sun, it was late in the morning by the time I finally dragged myself to the garden. 

What a mess!

The original plan was to crank up the little tiller and use it to take out the weeds closest to the plants, then do the middles with the big tiller.  However, the previous tilling had left mounds and trenches that impeded the little tiller's progress, so I swapped tillers to do the middles first, then go back with the little tiller. 

The truth is that my heart just wasn't in it.  When I started, it was already putrid hot, but there was a cloud cover, so the job wasn't too bad.  About 45 minutes into the job the sun came out in full force.  I worked for another few minutes then shut the machinery down and came back to the house, intending to go back in the late afternoon, when the garden would be shady.  The return trip never happened.

None of the plants look very athletic.  Because of all the rain, everything is stunted and yellow.  I don't know if fertilizing would help or hurt, but something needs to be done.  The thing is, I am currently too lazy to do it.

Three Week Checkup

It's been about three weeks since we planted our vegetable garden.  I have not kept track of how many rain-free days we've had since then, but it hasn't been many. 

The nine cabbages that I planted in early April sat there like knots on a log, doing nothing, for the longest time, like they were fake cabbage sets.  When we planted the rest of the garden in late May, we dosed them with some fertilizer, and for a couple of weeks they grew like crazy.  They were fine until last week, when all nine of them suddenly went limp at the same time.  I think they are drowning.

Some of the tomatoes look great, but a few of them died, and a few others look blighted.  I am going to spray them with the baking soda/vegetable oil/water mixture that I used last year.

The squash plants are a little pale and sickly - too wet.

One end of my garden has a "dip" in it, and water tends to pool in that area.  For the past couple of autumns, we've dumped load after load of fallen leaves on that end of the garden, hoping to build it up, and for the past couple of springs, no seeds have sprouted there.  Last year, I thought the sprouting failure was because the soil stayed too wet for too long.  Since then I've learned that it's not a good idea to till those un-decomposed leaves into the soil, as it robs the soil of...something.  This year, I tried to rake the leaves away from the rows before I tilled them, but still nothing sprouted on that end of the garden, as if the soil has been poisoned.  I don't know what to do about this, except to stop dumping leaves in the garden.  I suppose I'll try to re-plant the seeds once the soil dries up enough to work.  Who knows when that will be?!

For now, the cucumbers and okra are doing okay.

The pepper plants are showing off.  They're already loaded with peppers.  I will have to stake them soon or risk having them topple over from the weight.

The newspaper/straw treatment is doing a good job of keeping down the weeds in the "no-till" half of the garden.  The other half of the garden is hairy with grass, but there's not much I can do about it until the ground dries.

This is not exactly garden news, but we have inherited a cat.  We had a cat, "Lucy" (short for "Lucifer") for years.  Although she was an extremely picky eater (nothing but canned shredded turkey & cheese cat food for Her Highness), she was a great rodent hunter, but she disappeared a couple of years ago.  Truth be told, we did not miss having a pet, as we like to travel and hated to ask the neighboring relatives to feed Lucy while we were gone.  But late this winter, we discovered that BOTH of our vehicles had become homes to rodents.  I found mouse poop in the front seats of my Jeep, and something chewed some wires in The Husband's truck.  I put a box of mouse poison under the rear seat of my Jeep and figured the problem was solved.  But about two weeks ago, I found more poop in the Jeep.  When I checked the rear storage compartment, I found a mouse nest!  We removed the nest and set a mouse trap in the compartment.  Evidently, removing the nest temporarily alleviated the problem, for the mouse trap has not been sprung, but I know it's just a matter of time before another mouse discovers the hide-away. 

Enter "Tiger."  Tiger is a full-grown male cat, orange and white, tall and sleek.  He's a card-carrying hunter, I'm told, and he eats what he catches.  When my son and daughter-in-law acquired some chickens this spring, Tiger watched them with longing in his eyes.  His family decided he needed to go before he developed a taste for chicken, and we agreed to take him, both to cut down on the rodent problem in our yard and to keep him available to our grandson.  They brought him to us yesterday afternoon.  I figured that he would immediately run home (through the woods, it's not all that far from our yard to Tiger's former home), but he's still here this morning.

So, welcome Tiger.  Now, get busy catching those mice!

Seeds in the ground

I cranked up the tiller at 9 a.m. and got busy.  Three and a half hours later, I'm sitting here in the cool, a little sunburned, but showered and shampooed and feeling accomplished.  Between me, Nanny, and The Husband, the garden is made. 

What went down was 4 rows of purple hull peas, two rows of Fordhook butter beans, three short rows of Marcotte green beans, 12 hills of cucumbers, six hills of butternut squash, and a row of okra.  I have space left for more crookneck squash, but I don't have any seeds.  I may run get some before the day is over, for it is supposed to rain in the next few days. 

Although I'd intended to do half of the garden in the "no-till" method, it turned out that only the tomatoes, squash, zucchini, cabbages, and peppers got that treatment.  I tilled the rest of the garden as usual.  I'd hoped to plant one row of beans in the no-till zone and one row of the same kind of beans in the tilled area so that I could compare their growth, but it didn't work out that way.  Long story.

When we prepared to dig holes for the plants in the no-till zone, we flipped over every other hay patty, and dug holes where they'd been.  After we planted, we put down more newspaper (HINT: wet newspaper is soooooo much easier to work with), separated the hay patties, and sprinkled loose hay around the plants.  This resulted in having about 1/2 of each hay patty left over to sprinkle atop newspaper and cardboard that we laid between the rows to keep down weeds.  I am crossing my fingers that we won't have to do much weeding in those areas.  Stay tuned to see if it works.

I am also hoping that this newspaper/hay treatment will cut down on blight infestation.  For the past few years, half of my gardening time has been spent fighting blight.  Hopefully, this mulching will separate the plants' leaves from the soil and keep down the rain-splash transfers of fungus from ground to plant.  As soon as the tomato plants settle in, I'm going to dose them with the mixture I used last year, which seemed to work as well as (if not better than) any commercial fungicide I've used:  one gallon of water, and a 1:1 ratio of baking soda and vegetable oil.  (I used 2 tbs. of each per gallon of water).  The baking soda creates an alkaline environment that the blight fungus doesn't like; the vegetable oil helps the soda stick to the leaves.

Tomatoes, Squash, Peppers

The garden looks more like a garden today.

The Husband, Nanny, and I spent several hours yesterday morning digging and planting.  We took a break around noon and went back to work about 5 p.m. when the garden was in shade.  Two hours later, all of the plants were in the ground in the "no-till" section:  48 tomatoes, 12 squash, 12 zucchini, and 12 pepper plants.

I did some tilling in the other half of the garden, but did not get finished.  Tomorrow, we'll be at it again, finishing the tilling and planting the peas, lima beans, and green beans.


 

Ground-breaking News

Wednesday afternoon, when I had come home from work and was about to walk across the road to the mailbox, Uncle B. came motoring toward me on his riding lawnmower, cutting the grass along the road bank.  I waved at him, got the mail, and started back toward my driveway.  By this time, he'd mowed past me and made a U-turn and was coming back.  I heard the blades shut down as he approached.  He eased to a stop at the end of my driveway and shut off the motor.

"You doing all right?" he asked.

"Yes, sir.  You?"

"I'm getting along pretty good, I reckon, for an old man.  I want to ask you something.  Are you going to raise a garden this year?"

(He's got his garden in, already.)

I said, "Well, yes, sir, I intend to."

He said, "I saw you out there putting down hay way back in the winter, and I thought maybe you were going to plant an early garden, but I don't see nothin' out there but a few cabbages."

I explained what happened:  I was going to try the "no-till" method; I planted cabbages, and later some tomatoes, but a freak late frost took out the tomatoes; then I got sick with a sinus infection and felt too bad to work in the garden; then it rained; and rained; and, yeah, well, I'm just late.

He nodded, asked after my mother, cranked up, and drove away, leaving me with a big guilt trip.

You see, I'd toyed with the idea of not raising a garden this year.  When I said that to The Husband later that evening, he gave me THE LOOK - the one that silently shouts HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?  I knew what he was thinking:  All that time and effort and money to put down newspaper and hay, and she's thinking about not having a garden....

So, between Uncle B. and The Husband, the guilt forced me to the garden center today to buy plants and seeds.  I got 48 tomato plants, a dozen or more pepper plants, and squash and zucchini plants.  Got purple-hull pea and Fordhook lima bean seeds.  Meant to get some cucumbers.

I came home and played a mean trick on The Husband.  He usually mows our yard and Nanny's on the weekends.  I need him in the garden tomorrow, so I mowed our yard yesterday and Nanny's yard today, to take away his excuse. 

Yeah, I'm mean that way.

About those early tomatoes....

I planted 8 tomato plants on the 12th of April.  On the 14th, we had a cold snap that brought a light frost for a couple of nights.  I did not cover the tomato plants because the cold snap sneaked up on me.  They are now brown and crispy.  Dead, you might say.

Early Tomatoes

It was so warm last week that I could not resist picking up a couple of 4-packs of tomato plants.  Late Saturday morning, I set them out in the garden and mulched them with straw.  I also began planting a row of Mascotte beans, but I hadn't gotten far down the row when The Husband announced that we were supposed to meet some folks for lunch, so I had to quit.   To be honest, I wasn't all that sorry to quit.  Having decided to try "no till" gardening this year, I had to poke individual holes for the beans, rather than opening up a furrow with the tiller then running the bicycle-on-a-stick planter down the row.  It was a pain.  The ground was really too wet to be planting things, anyway. 

Last night, we had stormy weather.  After sunrise, the temperature went down instead of up.  There's a frost warning out for tonight.  Figures.  The ONE YEAR I actually get to plant something early, and we have a late frost. 

Maybe the tomatoes will be safe nestled in their straw beds.

Cabbages

Today when I was leaving the nursing home after visiting my mother, Mr. Fred was sitting on the front porch, taking in the warm breeze.  We greeted one another, and then asked me where I was going.  I told him I was fixing to go home and plant cabbages. 

He said, "You late."
I said, "Yes, I know."
He said, "Anyhow, you don't 'plant' cabbages, you 'set 'em out'."

He told me he always raised a garden because he just liked to grow things.  Then he said, "I don't take much out of it, myself, but I give things to the old women in the neighborhood."

That Mr. Fred sure knows the way to a woman's heart. 

Then he said, "They won't hardly come pick it, but they're right glad to have whatever I'll take to them."

I said, "Ain't that just the way, Mr. Fred?"  ;)

So I came home, got my gloves and my shovel and my cabbage sets, and went to the garden.

I have been grooming about 8 rows for the no-till gardening method - layers of newspaper, covered by layers of straw, and sprinkled with alfalfa sprouts, like the man told me.  I peeled back the hay, plunged my shovel through the wet newspaper, and lifted out a shovel full of dirt.  Guess what I saw?  WORMS!  Big, fat, juicy ones.  YES!  The soil man said that worms are a sign of healthy soil, but I haven't been seeing any.  Maybe they've always been there, and we've just been chopping them up with plows and tillers.  In any case, I was happy to see them. 

Now, it's really too wet to be planting anything, but I planted - excuse me, set out - those cabbages anyway, because it's supposed to rain again tonight, and I can let Mother Nature do the watering.  Besides, if I keep waiting, it'll be way too late, and my cabbages would probably croak.

I also had a package of brussels sprouts that I bought a month ago and never got around to planting.  They are limp and pitiful, but I planted them, anyway, in a flower bed in front of my house.  It will be a miracle if they live. 

So, the gardening season on the hill has officially begun.

In about two weeks, I'm going in with some squash seeds and bean seeds, maybe even a few tomato plants. 

I'll keep you posted.  ;)

Cousin Roger and the Kefir

Heh.

Cousin Roger came over from across the road today.  He came in with a beer in one hand and some paperwork that he needed some help with in the other.  After The Husband got the paperwork fixed up, Roger sat back to visit a while and tell us about the date he had lined up for this evening. 

Just prior to Roger's arrival, I had been straining today's batch of kefir.  The kefir is making faster than I want to drink it, and I've been pawning off the extra on anybody who will take it.  My "reserve" jug in the refrigerator was too full to hold today's batch, so I poured up a big glass of the chilled kefir to make room in the jar and set it aside while I did the straining.  Before I got around to drinking it myself, Roger came in.  I remembered that he'd said he'd been having a lot of heartburn, and I asked him if that was still the case.  When he said that he was still suffering with it, and eating antacids like candy, I handed him my glass of kefir and said, "Here, drink this.  It might help your heartburn if you can choke it down."

He looked suspicious.  "What is it?"

"Fermented milk.  Be a big boy and drink it, and if you like it I'll send some home with you."

"Hell, I'll try anything if it'll help," he said, and he turned the glass up and chugged it like a beer.

A few cusswords later, he handed the glass back to me, and went on talking about antacids.  He said he recently heard that eating too many antacid tablets could cause constipation.  "And you know," he said, "come to think of it, I'm not real regular."

I said, "Well, you might be regular by tomorrow."

We shot the bull a little more, then Roger went home.  (He didn't ask for any kefir to take home.)  The Husband left to go pick up The Grandson.  My telephone rang just after he left.

"Let me speak to The Husband," Roger said.

"He's gone to get The Grandson," I told him.  "What do you need?"

"Listen, tell him NOT TO DRINK THAT STUFF," Roger said.  "I didn't even make it across the yard good before it hit me!"

"Oh, no!  What happened?  Did you puke?"  (After he drank the kefir, I wondered if it would react with the beer in his stomach and blow him up like a toad, but I didn't mention this to Roger.)

"Naw, I didn't puke," he said.  "I had to come in and wash my clothes, though!"

Heh.  Silly Cousin Roger.  He was kidding.

I hope.  ;)

Early Progress

I managed to get The Husband out of the recliner this morning by threatening to go to shopping for a new lawn sweeper without him.  He got up, put on his shoes, and off we went.  We shopped, had lunch, then came home and started assembling the sweeper.  It wasn't as bad as we expected.  Either this model was easier to assemble than the last one, or the instructions were better.  In any case, I swept up most of the remaining leaves in the yard and dumped them in the garden.  After that, I prepared another row for "no-till" gardening.  So far, I've done about half the garden, and that's all that may get done this year.  I'm worried that I started too late, that the soil won't be soft and ready in six weeks when it's time to start planting.

While we were shopping, I noticed that the garden center had gotten in some plants.  I bought a package of brussel sprout plants and a Mediterranean White Heather.  I set them on a patio chair while we assembled the sweeper.  It wasn't long before The Husband said, "Look at the bees in the heather."  Sure enough, it was crawling with honey bees.  It amazed us that they discovered the heather so quickly.  We tried to figure out where they were coming from, but couldn't. 

The broccoli plants I started last week are growing well.  It took them about three days to sprout.  I've got my Ott sewing lamp shining on them, hoping to give them enough light to keep them from getting leggy.  The brussels sprouts may have to join them under the lamp.  We've had pretty weather for the past couple of days, but it's supposed to get crazy again tomorrow or Monday.  Have I said, yet, how sick I am of this winter?

Onions & Broccoli

Last week at the get-it-all store, I picked up a bag of Siberian iris roots, a bag of daylily roots, and a sack of onion bulbs.  I intended to plant the onion bulbs in the beetless end of the horse trough, but when I poked my finger in the dirt I discovered it was frozen solid about 1" below the surface.  I put the bulbs away until yesterday when the weather made me feel like I ought to be gardening.  I also set out the iris and the daylilies, and started a batch of broccoli seeds. 

That little bit of digging made my out-of-shape self a little bit sore in the get-along when I got out of bed this morning.  After breakfast, I decided the thing to do might be to work the soreness out.  So I put on my gloves and my hat and went outside to pick up limb debris from the ice storm, rake some leaves, etc.  The Husband came out with his chainsaw, and together we worked all day.

We are already regretting it.  Every significant movement is accompanied by an agonized groan.  We may not be able to get out of bed in the morning.

But the yard sure looks better.  The flower bed along the back of the house has been taken over by ivy, but I got in there and raked and ripped and pulled as much of it out as I could.  Now, that bed is down to bare, rich dirt.  If I can keep it that way until it's time to plant flowers, it'll be lovely. 

Crazy Weather

When I left off writing last week, I'd just spent a weekend doing outdoor gardening.  It was warm enough that I sweated without a coat.  About 4 p.m. Sunday, I looked out of my kitchen window to find ice forming on the trees.  By the next morning, the trees were so heavy with ice that they were bending and breaking. 

Monday afternoon, as I was in the kitchen, pondering what to do about supper, I heard a CRACK! like a pistol shot, and a WHOOSH! and a sound like a thousand martini glasses crashing off a shelf.  I ran to the window in time to see the last of the ice shards cascading to the ground, right on top of the crippled leaf sweeper I'd parked under the trees.  The leaf sweeper was flat as a pancake under a huge limb. 

It snowed Friday night, came down pretty fast for a while, but only piled up a couple of inches, altogether.  Today, the temperatures rose, the snow mostly disappeared, and we have been hearing ice raining out of the trees.

And I've just been piddling around the house, thinking about how all that good moisture is going to flatten the leaves I've piled up in the middles, and soak the straw and newspapers and alfalfa pellets I've put atop the rows, and make my garden a rich paradise by spring.  ;)

More Straw

It has been warm here for the past couple of days, but tomorrow the weather is supposed to get crazy (again).  I wanted to put more newspaper and straw on my planting rows before it starts raining.  My boss has been saving her newspapers for me, as has Nanny, and so yesterday when I got busy in the garden I had enough newspaper to finish using up the straw  I bought last weekend.  Those 10 bales of straw covered about 3-1/2 rows, probably 1/4 of the garden. 

Since The Husband was going to town this morning, I sweet-talked him into going to the farm store for more straw.  While he was gone, I hitched the lawn sweeper to my 4-wheeler and started gathering leaves from the yard to dump on the garden, thinking I'd rake it into the middles for weed control.  I made about 4 trips from the house to the garden before the sweeper quit working.  The Husband arrived back at home with a truck bed of straw about that time.  We took the sweeper apart and discovered that a plastic gear had cracked in two places, and some of the teeth were worn down, and it apparently doesn't have enough oomph to turn the brushes.  I searched online and called stores; evidently, replacement parts of this sort are not available.  Looks like we'll be shopping for a new lawn sweeper, and it needs to happen in time to let me get more leaves on the garden before spring arrives.

We unloaded our 10 new bales of straw and started distributing it down the rows.  Ran out of newspaper again, and quit.  The Sunday paper might finish up the straw bales. 

I Should Be Planning

My sister gave me a gardening calendar.  It says that in January I ought to be ordering seeds and starting seeds for cool weather crops.  I guess since it's almost the end of January, I'm already behind, eh? 

The priority right now is getting the no-till method cooking.  I ran out of newspaper before I finished even one row last weekend when the weather was nice.  Folks are saving newspapers for me this week, so maybe I'll be able to finish two rows this weekend.  It looks like it's going to take about 5 bales of straw per 75-ft-long row, so I'll have to lay in more straw, too.

I bet you're wondering how the pineapple upside-down kefir cake turned out.  It would have been better had I remembered to add baking powder and salt to the flour.   :\  The kefir had just enough leavening power by itself to make a dense cake with a texture almost like cheesecake.  But we're eating it!

Kefir

One cold, drizzly day last fall, a friend and I went to a butter- and cheese-making class at a local farm.  During a break, we overheard a gentleman telling another gentleman that he had been drinking some stuff called "kefir," and that since he had been drinking it, his blood pressure and cholesterol levels had gone to normal, and he had not had any trouble with heartburn.  My friend and I looked at each other with our ears perked up.  Both of us have been eating over-the-counter antacid tablets and capsules for years.  My friend even takes prescription-strength heartburn medicine.  We insinuated ourselves into his conversation, trying to find out what kefir was and where we'd get some.

It turns out that kefir is fermented milk.  The fermentation process begins with kefir "grains" - they're not a true grain; they just call them grains because they're grainy - little clumps of bacteria and yeasts.  The man said that we could order them in dehydrated form online, or he would give us some of his grains (they grow over time and produce enough to share).  I decided to order some grains and have been making kefir since October.

Kefir has a consistency that is much like buttermilk.  It tastes a little like buttermilk, too, or plain yogurt.  I kind of wrinkled my nose up at my first taste of the stuff but quickly got used to it.  I'm addicted to it now.

I can't personally testify to kefir's effectiveness in lowering cholesterol or blood pressure (there are studies online that you can read, both pro and con).  I CAN personally testify to almost complete relief from heartburn when I drink 1/2 cup of kefir on a daily basis.  I can also testify to a serious reduction in irritable bowel symptoms.

I can also testify to the fact that it makes KILLER cornbread.  Seriously.  KILLER.  Just use it in place of the milk in the recipe (you might need a little more kefir than milk to make the batter wet enough because the kefir is thicker).  The taste is not much different, but the texture is heavenly.  There are also recipes online for making loaves of bread with kefir.  I tried it, both with whole wheat flour and with all-purpose flour.  Because it has to sit for a long time to rise, the kefir flavors the bread much more strongly than it flavors the stir-it-up-and-cook-it cornbread.  Kefir bread is dense and tastes a lot like sourdough bread.  The crust is a little tough, but it's good.

Of course, cooking the kefir robs it of its probiotic properties, but it's a good way to use up surplus kefir.

In two minutes, a pineapple upside-down cake made with kefir will be coming out of my oven.  I bet it's going to rock.

The "No Tilling" Method Begins

This morning, I installed a shiny new trailer hitch on my Jeep, borrowed my son's 10-foot trailer, and headed to the garden center for straw bales and alfalfa pellets.  My intention was to buy 20 bales of straw, but The Husband said he didn't think I could get 20 bales on that trailer, so I just asked for 10 bales at the garden center counter.  (It turned out that I easily got 10 bales on the trailer, with room for at least 6 more.)  Bought two 50-pound bags of alfalfa pellets.

I took everything straight to the garden, unloaded the trailer, and started to work.  I laid sections of newspaper right over the existing debris, separated the straw bales into patties and laid them on top of the newspaper, then sprinkled alfalfa pellets on top of the straw.  I ran out of newspaper before I got the first row covered.  Two bales of straw did a little over half of a 75-foot row.  Looks like I'm going to need more straw.

Also, I can't help but suspect that the deer are going to come eat the straw and the alfalfa pellets before they get a chance to decompose.  We'll see.

The weather is supposed to be reasonably nice tomorrow, so I'll raid Nanny's newspaper stash and finish the straw-spreading job before it turns cold again.

No-Till Gardening

Last weekend, I went to a lecture on soil.  The speaker was a proponent of "no-till gardening."  You can google the specific hows and whys of no-till gardening, but the basic idea is to add layer upon layer of organic material on top of the garden soil to provide nutrients to the soil and condition the soil from the top down so that tilling becomes unnecessary.

I patiently listened to the lecture, visualizing my garden plot in my mind, wondering if the no-till method could ever work for me.  During the question/answer period, I asked him what specific things he would do to begin the no-till method on a garden like mine, a 75' x 75' plot of concrete-like soil that currently hosts debris from last year's vegetable garden (unpicked greens, frost-bitten pea vines, sundry weeds, okra stalks, all of which is blanketed with a couple of inches of leaves).  He said to scatter "a couple of bags" of alfalfa pellets over the mess to speed up the decomposition process, and begin piling more organic matter (shredded newspapers, coffee grounds, wood chips, leaves, grass clippings, etc.) on top.  When I asked how I was going to get the seeds and plants into the hard-packed soil come springtime, he said to use a "dibble" to poke holes in the ground for the seeds. 

Though I am skeptical, I think I'm going to try it.  It's probably going to be more work than running the tiller, but it may help solve the blight problem that I battle every year.