12-21-2012 Winter gardening.

It is hardly credible to be talking about winter gardening when we get some gorgeous, sunny 65 degree days!

Not so long ago, winter gardening meant that, in early September, you started seeds for some rugged vegetables that would have to endure the cold weather out there in the garden with limited protection.

After last year and, in spite of all the deniers, things have changed and the gardener has to change right along even though (s)he does not know any better than anybody else what to expect: a freezing cold winter or a beautifully pleasant  improvement over the summers we get around here? After all, 65 and no mosquito feels like paradise! You can actually do some work out there without melting away.

Adjustment is the word of the day! Adaptation! To what? We're not totally sure but we also cannot keep doing what we were just a few years ago and hope to get the same results.

Expectation: because we now never know for sure what will work or not, we do know for sure to expect some losses. This year were my head lettuce that went to seed before filling up. Head lettuce is so much tastier than leaf lettuce thanks to crunchy heart but it also requires constant cool weather, not the ups and downs we have been getting lately.

Experimentation: if the solid experience and history is not reliable enough any more, our best choice is trying some experimental planting that has a fifty/fifty chance of success. I now have two beds of young head lettuce and escarole that might produce in spring. Or not! Something I would not have tried just a few years ago. I am also trying some fennel that usually freezes around here.

Appreciation that no matter what we try as human beings, mother nature has the final word and all those in between. In spite of what we might believe or hope, we're here for the ride; we're not really in control. So I'll just keep trying, appreciate the good, chalk off the not so good and be thankful that North Carolina is still green, gets a decent amount of rain and that I get way more out of my garden than I ever lose.

Success stories: 

 My escaroles looked like they were heading the same way as my lettuce but they have turned out absolutely scrumptious, crisp and sweet with a ting of light bitterness, just the way I like them.

Kale: even though they sweeten well after a couple of hard frost, mine tastes very nicely after just a couple of brushes with light frost.

Leeks: I just wished I had more of them but summer was a little too hot and too harsh of them. Now counting on my spring crop.

Chervil (cerfeuil): a tasty herb pretty much unknown around here, great for winter chervil soup. 

And an all time favorite herb I can't live without: parsley. I made sure to plant enough this year. I don't like running out of it.

Onion greens: another taste I like adding to my salads.

Carrots! Fresh carrots, even though they never grow as large as those grown in deep dirt and wetter, cooler climates.







And, of course, the winter garden wouldn't be quite the same without some blooming Johnny Jump Ups: 

12-18-2012 Growing more than flowers!

Last night at dusk, I heard the front door bell ring. I opened, expecting UPS or Santa Claus but I got much better. There, in front of me stood a golden hair young lady I recognized as having lived, as a kid, three doors down from me a few years ago.

Stacey and her father Lewis were on a romantic, old neighborhood, re-visit, an idea that can work both ways between the old house that has changed too much to the old play buddies who do not remember you.

Not only was I glad to have recognized her but she was on a mission: to thank me for all the years I had let her and her brother Sean play in my "jungle" (the neighborhood kids' nickname for the very informal collection of odd plants growing in my yard.) She remembered hours of playing hide and seek in there, watching the frogs in the pond or marveling at the size of my exotic banana plants. Her new surprise, last night is that while she has grown, those same banana plants seemed to have grown even more and still tower over her.

When we moved to this quiet neighborhood, twenty six years ago, the selling point for me had not been the wire grass that had taken over the front lawn but the little "cul-de-sac" around the corner, on Crepe Myrtle Ct. It had been turned into kids' world. During the day hours, children would play in that street and traffic had to creep in slowly: a vision of childhood in America that barely existed on TV by then. It was the selling point for us.

Once I built up the garden with water ponds, bamboo, banana trees and delicious tomatoes kids could sample any time, some of that flow diverted to "the jungle". 

Last night, Stacey reminded me what it had meant for some of them and her "thank you" had more sweetness than any Christmas present. It meant that my intention to share with young and old in the neighborhood had been fully accepted, appreciated and absorbed, justifying all the sweat equity, the mosquito bites and other prices paid.

Right now I regret not having old pictures to post showing the little rascals but part of the deal, at the time, is that I let them be in "their" garden, without my interference.

They are not the only ones: every Spring my kids alert me to "drive by viewers" taking in the sights or snapping pictures and disappearing when they see someone or, as often happen on a weekend when we come home, we find visitors, known and unknown, traipsing about, catching glimpses of plants and flowers they don't see just everywhere anymore. 

All are welcome, Spring is too beautiful not to share!

As I was taking Stacey around for another look at the,now, frozen banana trees, I couldn't help but be thankful for having had the opportunity to share with little and not so little kids alike. thankful for living in the middle of paradise (a bare looking one today, but yet!) in an old fashioned neighborhood where neighbors still count more than the model car you drive.

              Thanks, Stacey! 

Come back any time!

12-07-2012 planting time

One of the things I have added this fall, is more raspberries, by far my and my wife's favorite fruit. This year, they have tasted even better than ever so I decided to increase the local production. Only the future will tell us how well this will work.

    Through the  years, I have planted a number of larger fruit trees like apples and pears to lose them, a few years later to fire blight a nasty disease that makes the tree branches look like they have been burned by fire. there is no cure for it! :) Or they would fall victim to disease carrying fungi that have survived underground on the roots of former hard wood trees that used to grow where my garden is now located.

My latest survivors have been four Asian pears, producing nicely but two of them showed signs of the blight this year.

I decided to go to plan "B" and try some dwarf fruit trees in large pots to avoid the underground menace while not totally protecting them from the air spread blight.

Hey! What's an eager gardener to do but dig in and keep planting?

So here is what I planted. The pictures come straight out of the catalog since the real thing still looks more like a stick in potted dirt at this point. 

Hardired Nectarines:
 

Firm, yellow, flavorful flesh (almost sounds like a pole dancer)

Royalton Cherry

mouthwatering flavor

Harglow a luminous Apricot

Like most everything else in the garden, I'll have to wait three years to find out if it works. We, gardeners are in for the long haul, with  six months, two year, ten year expectations.

Patience is the first ingredient that goes into a good garden soil!

12-07-2012 Gray December day

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What does a gardener do ?

On a gray winter morning, what does a gardener do ?

On a cold, gray winter morn', what does a gardener do ?

Well a gardener dreams of Spring

Fall and Summer too!

On a gray winter morning, what does a gardener do ?

On a cold, gray winter morn', what does a gardener do ?

He dreams of ripe tomatoes

and fresh figs too !

On a gray winter morning, what does a gardener do ?

On a cold, gray winter morn', what does a gardener do ?

He has visions of sunflowers

and taste of berry blue !

On a gray winter morning, what does a gardener do ?

On a cold, gray winter morn', what does a gardener do ?

He digs in his roots

and patience too !

For the music, see Charlie Musselwhite”What does a stranger do?”

very “bluesy”, perfect for a gray winter morning. Feel free to sing at your heart's content!

What's new this week?

First you won't have any picture this week because, apparently, I have filled my picture quota and, second, it does not let me upgrade from this page. 

So, once technicalities are resolved I'll post more pictures. Or maybe I'll just write another ode: " Picture quota blues."  :)

10-25-2012 fall/winter look

While we still deal with some 83 degrees, the summer garden has long been gone.

We see here the last bush beans of the year with flowers in the background.










Lettuce, leeks, carrots and cilantro. What is amazing is that I took this picture a week ago and the lettuce has doubled in size in that week.

 

Surprise: while trimming some Nandina, I found those two garden snakes curled up in one of the crown. They stayed there three days doing the wild thing but in a very subdued way ( not worth posting on Youtube.) When romance was over, they moved to a less obvious place.

Last flowers of the year, all in yellow and purple:

 

10-04-2012 Today in someone else's garden

The last few days have been great for our transition from summer to fall/winter garden with all the gray days, some rain and some cooler weather (except the last couple of really muggy days.) Eating the last few tomatoes and some of the best late planted cucumbers.

Someone else's garden:
I have not been to Sarah P. Duke's garden since last spring when they had gorgeous displays of wisterias and tulips. Today was very different with more subdued colors and amazing lily pads, including the Victoria Regina large pads.