Many people sent messages asking if all was well.

Yes all was well and is well.  It was nice to hear from so many of you wondering if I was okay!

Why wasn’t I writing?  I’m not sure.  It wasn’t the best gardening year for me, but it wasn’t a total disaster.  I had wonderful luck with beans and the garlic was the best ever.

Still, there was no question that my soil is very, very, very tired.  You could practically feel it wheezing.  To compensate heading into next year, I have made the most compost ever.  For me anyway.  I need to get that soil nutrified.  (yes that is a word that I made up.)

My plans for next year are (for me) ambitious.  I’d like to add some space for at least another row.  I’d like to dig out a better and more permanent fence that will angle into the ground with chickenwire.  The voles… must… be… kept out!  I can’t stand my garden without carrots and potatoes.

For the extra row, I’d like to do more with my kids and devote some extra crops for our food bank.  Seems like a good thing to do and a nice thing for my kids to participate in.

Otherwise… things are great!

I do have another blog going if you are interested.  I’ve been working with a bunch of my lifelong friends on a comedy improv group we call The Sticks… since we’re way out in the sticks.

The blog is here.  The twitter for The Sticks is here.

And I sure do tweet a lot on my personal account.  If you’d like, you can get pretty regular updates from me here.

My goal this gardening season is to get some small hoops up over at least one of my garden beds.  I’ve been reading about how to grow greens through the winter and it’s really about two warm and comfy layers – a warm row cover and a greenhouse.  It’s simple enough to create a small hoop house covered in greenhouse plastic.  Even I should be able to construct that!

And it’s equally easy to use row covers.  You can see a couple of my garden sections covered with a light row cover in this picture.  These row covers add some protection against the cold.  It’s not a lot of protection (these are very light row covers) but it’s enough to protect against the cold nights for my lettuce and broccoli.

Using these light row covers at this time of year is a good idea – mostly because they keep out pests and blowing weed seeds.  If you’re not using row covers, give it a shot.  There’s nothing to it.  They allow in water and sunlight and keep out the bad stuff!

We’ll see how it goes this winter when I build the layer system.  But for now, the light row covers are helping my plants get a jump start.

Why? Why do I like this symbol of the suburban chemical warrior?  Why do I aspire to a lawn like Augusta?

I don’t know.  I just do.   I like to walk in my lawn and feel the thick grass.  I like to see the sprinkled (and NECESSARY NITROGEN-FIXING) clover.  I like to watch my dippy dog roll in the dew.  I like to wallow in the gorgeous green.

Nice green lawn! Note the stalking border collie coming at me

But, after many years of not knowing better, these days I most certainly do not like using the vile, evil, soul-stealing rotation of Scotts fertilizers.

Before I knew any better, I believed in the petrochemical miracle of seasonal fertilizing.  How could you not think that weed killing, bug killing, summer stabilizing, fall fertilizing was a good idea?

Well, those fertilizers require tons and tons and tons and  tons of gasoline to happen.  Creating that magic mixture of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium.  And the weird pseudo ecology that they create in your lawn… well, it turns out that it’s not so good.  Back in the day, I wanted to believe that I was doing the right thing – especially when suppressing (gasp) weeds and (holy shit!) ticks and fleas.

But, and this is important, it’s not doing the right thing.  There are better, easier ways to get a good healthy, green lawn.  Paul Tukey and the SafeLawns.org have been showing the way for a long time now.  I follow a few of the simple things that they suggest:

1. Compost in the Fall. A good spread of compost works wonders.
2. Aeration every other year or so.  My soil is pretty compact.  Aeration helps a lot and is great thing to do when overseeding.
3. Cut it high.  Most people cut their lawns way, way too low. Let the grass come up.  It stays healthier and can smother out the growing weeds.

I do feed the lawn as it is waking up.  For this I use corn gluten meal.  It is a crazy source of nitrogen and is very safe – no crazy pesticides or petrochemicals.  If you watch carefully, you can tell the right time to apply it.  Here in Connecticut, when the crocus come up and when the forsythia start to bloom, I spread it.  It has a component that will inhibit new seedlings from establishing sufficient roots and will therefore prevent many common weeds from getting started.  Just be careful not to spread it near your garden starts until they are established.

So.  I’m not a total lawn crazy person!  But I do like it green.

(Picture from the University Of Maine Farmington)

History!  The inconsistent story of the people and events that happened before us.  Yes!  Clear, consistent, truthful history.

For example, Johnny Appleseed.  (That’s right… I’m talking about critical history here.  Next week, Paul Bunyan.)

Johnny, the do-gooder, pot on the head, randomly scattering apple seeds hither and yon, yon and hither.  Driven by his love of apples and his fellow man, compelled to plant, to nourish, to feed the country!  It seems that the history of his charity is pretty accurate.  He liked to do good things.  He liked animals and people.  Of course, he was also deeply religious and enjoyed cramming his own version of the supernatural down everybody’s eager gullet.

I don’t know much about apples, but I do know that they require grafting to be truly edible.  The history here seems to agree – he didn’t scatter seeds randomly.  He planted orchards on something like a commission.  But he also didn’t like grafting.  (This from Michael Pollan’s The Botany Of Desire.)  So, what do you do with inedible apples?

You turn them into booze!  Glorious, sweet booze.  And that’s the real reason why people, and history, liked Johnny Appleseed.

My own history is simpler.  I am a scatterer of Pea Seeds.

Stevie Pea Seed.

Lots of people that I know are starting gardens and I always, always encourage them to grow peas.  The Connecticut climate works well for them.  Today, I will be giving a few seed packets away to first and second-year gardeners.

Be kind to me history!  There is no booze you can make from Peas (that I know of… hmmmm), but I am likable nonetheless.

I was able to get out and get the whole garden cleaned up.  I really, honestly, sincerely intend to frame my raised beds this year, but… maybe I’m lying about that.  I should.  I really should.  I know!!  Come on!  Get off my back already.

Not likely to happen.  I did get my pea trellises built.  This year I went the wholly pleasing aesthetic look and used those ugly but functional metal things that you hammer into the ground for fencing.  They have little notches that you can then string wire across.  Here’s a video from veggiegardeningtips.com that shows basically what I did.

I got some spinach in.  I planted some lettuce.  I raised my beds up a bit.

And I had my youngest son Sean (3 in June) helping out with peas for the earthbox.  (My earthbox trellis is just made from chicken wire.)  I think that Sean may be a permanent garden fixture since he shares my love of being outside.  My oldest son, Kyle (7), helps too, but Sean just seems to really like the dirt!

Sean wanted to eat that pea seed

So what stopped them?

The cost.  The effort.  The feeling that they would fail.  Not knowing what to plant. Or when.  Or where.  Not wanting to dig up their lawn.  Worrying about soil tests.  Water usage.  Sunlight.  Bugs.  Pests.  Animals.  Will they start and lose steam?  Will they not grow enough?  Too much?  Do they have to start seeds?  Is it okay to buy from Home Depot?  Will they have time? What will the neighbors think?  Will it be an eyesore?

For those of us who tend our vegetables, in small backyard plots or in hundreds of acres, we should encourage people to push past these questions – even though they are legitimate.

My Ten Things For Would Be Gardeners

1. Do it.
2. Don’t worry.
3. Stuff wants to grow.  You can help.
4. Start small.  10 x 10 is fine.
5. Raise the beds.  Either frame it or just raise the earth.  4 feet wide and as long as you want.
6. Use compost mixed in with your good soil.  Take care of your soil.  You’ll learn how as you keep at it.
7. Start with simple crops.  Lettuce and peas, carrots, beets, beens, broccoli.  Buy some of the plants that you can like broccoli, and direct sow the stuff like carrots, beets, beans and peas.
8. As you advance, try things like row covers and move into more complicated crops like potatoes, tomatoes, gnomes and komodo dragons.
9. If you’re afraid of being ugly and judged, relax.  My garden is boring, brown and rectangular surrounded by chicken wire.  Stuff grows just fine and I judge the taste of the veggies to be excellent.
10. If you have a design sense and dream of an English/French paradise, go for it.  People like me with no design sense will be jealous.

These last two points are getting some chatter the past few days.  I sure wish that I was a gifted designer.  But I’m not.  I suppose I could pay somebody to come in and make my garden prettier (I may get a nice wooden fence!), but it’s not high on my priority list.  So, I don’t want to scare anybody off of gardening with the fear of “it must be pretty or it ain’t a garden”.  Plant your stuff, weed when you can, take care of your soil.  That’s about it.

I’m hopeful that there are lots of people out there who think like that.

For the record, here’s my ugly garden.   A couple from above from this weekend.  Dirty, brown, boring rectangles.  And chickenwire.  I love it!

Before A Little Clean Up

After A Little Clean Up

Green!

I had a mullet.  A beautiful, ridiculous mullet that was like Patrick Swayze or Richard Marx.

I liked music (still do) and it was that year that I started a tradition.  I had my mother’s car – a Chevy Celebrity station wagon (I know ladies, I know). On one of the first truly spectacular days of that Spring, I drove down a gorgeous back road in Middle Haddam, Connecticut with the windows down.  My mullet was likely waving gloriously in the breeze.  It was probably mid May and the trees, full and round from their leaves, were leaning perfectly to form a tunnel.  I flew down that street and had Led Zeppelin Living Loving Maid completely cranked to 11.

Each Spring I have repeated that ritual.  Always with that song even though my tastes have become more refined.  Today everything was in place for it again, but there just aren’t any leaves yet.  Still, I drove down that road with my two boys in the back seat – both of them trying to holler over the volume We’re too hungry to rock out!!!!!  It’s too loud!!!  Somebody save ussssssssss!!!!!!

What a gorgeous day.  But I couldn’t help myself and I had to listen to a different song.  This one is from The Shins and it just makes me think about being a kid and playing outside.  It’s not quite about that, but what can I tell you.  That’s where it takes me.

One By One All Day – The Shins

Howdy, lem,” my grandfather said with his eyes closed
Wiping the eastbound dust from his sunburned brow
A life before doubt.

I smell the engine grease and mint the wind is blending
Under the moan of rotting elm in the silo floor.

Down a hill of pine tree quills we made our way
To the bottom and the ferns where thick moss grows
Beside a stream.

Under the rocks are snails and we can fills our pockets
And let them go one by one all day in a brand new place.

You were no ordinary drain on her defenses
And she was no ordinary girl
Oh, Inverted World
If every moment of our lives
Were cradled softly in the hands of some strange and gentle child
I’d not roll my eyes so.

A softer song that makes me think I should be so darn cynical all the time.  Anybody else have Spring rituals or songs?

Filed under: Uncategorized ]]> http://compostings.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/signs-of-spring-loud-music-softer-music/feed/ 4 sjones71 marx mullet http://compostings.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/is-it-time-to-plant-peas/ http://compostings.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/is-it-time-to-plant-peas/#comments Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:04:17 +0000 sjones71 http://compostings.wordpress.com/?p=1019 ]]> I’ve got the seed packets.  They’re right in front of me! Come on!  I know it’s only March 10th, but can’t these peas go in the ground?  It’s 55 degrees.

That’s right.  55 degrees in Connecticut.  I’m in my bathing suit.  White skin blinding the children.

Fine.  Too early to plant my peas, but it was warm enough to work the dirt a bit.  I’ve got a lovely infestation of weeds going that will require more work, but I got to hoe ‘em around a bit.

Since my beds are raised, the soil is actually workable right now down to a few inches.  They’ve been covered in a dome of snow and it’s allowed for some spinach snacks through the winter.  I’ve been reading Eliot Coleman’s “Winter Harvest Handbook” (Podchef’s review here) and there is no question that with just a little construction, I’d be able to eat greens all winter long.

In any event, we were out today.  Light duty, but the dog and the boy were loving it.

So, what am I interested in?

1. Blogs that deal with vegetable gardening almost exclusively. I’m not opposed to flowers, it’s just that I don’t do anything with them other than plant for pollinators or pest repelling power.
2. Blogs that are mostly small scale.  There are plenty of blogs that I read that do things MUCH bigger than me.  But, even if they do, they tend to view things in a small way.  I’m interested in large-scale organic farms, but much of what they do isn’t practical for me.  The blogs that matter the most to me, look like me (small, backyard vegetable garden) or can talk to me like me (larger scale farms that get small-scale operations).
3. Blogs that are nice.  Mean doesn’t cut it for me!

That’s about it.

Blotanical is a wonderful aggregator for gardening blogs, but even that site doesn’t let me filter through all of the flower bloggers.

So, I am hopeful that Google’s custom search engine thing can make a big difference.  If you haven’t seen it, check it out here.

I have built my first custom search engine and I’ve tried to incorporate most of the vegetable garden blogs that I like.  Please send me your URL if you think you’ve got a blog that hits my big three above.  If you’d like to try my custom search engine, here it is!  It still pulls from the whole web, but it’s supposed to pull more from the blogs I select.