Maggie’s Farm

Last year was a great year for onions. I seeded onions and transplanted them into one bed, and planted another bed with young onion plants I purchased. I have yet to buy a single onion since last summer, and I believe this is the longest I’ve gone on a harvest. At this point though, most of the onions in the cupboard have sprouted. The ones that have sprouted have come in very handy, as I’ve gotten plenty of use snipping the tops and using them for all kinds of dishes. Interestingly, I didn’t find much difference between the sweet Walla Walla (which isn’t supposed to store well) and the other onions in terms of how well they stored. I also do not have a good storage space for them, as the room I have them in has too much light.

This year I’m all about minimizing the workload with the babies coming (next week!), but Chris talked me into seeding onions again as he promised to do the planting (which I always find back-breaking). So, I decided to use up the two packets of onion seeds I had left over. However, one packet did not germinate at all (my notes tell me they germinated poorly even when they were fresh). The other packet didn’t have many seeds, so I don’t actually have many homegrown onion seedlings this year.

Buying young onion plants can be expensive (although probably not in the context of buying supermarket onions for a year). Chris picked up a bag of onion sets this year at a local farm store, and planted a bed of them. The picture above shows them coming up. The whole bag (which planted most of a 4 x 10 ft raised bed) only cost 2 dollars and change. It is hard to buy a packet of seeds for that price these days. I’m really curious how they will compare to the young plants in terms of quality and storage.

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Ok, I’m not talking extraterrestrials or anything. A couple of years ago I asked Chris to make me some covers so that I could continue to grow lettuce through the winter. He eagerly took on the challenge, and quickly created these. Somehow we started calling them “the spaceships”, and the name stuck. But now that I actually think about it, they don’t really look like spaceships, do they?

At the time, I wanted something I could move around the garden easily, whenever I wanted. These fit the bill perfectly, as they are light and easy to take on and off. Also, because you don’t want all your lettuce maturing at the same time, the size was just perfect for one batch. The plexiglass is curved to maximize the light coming in (although two sides had to be wood, for stability). I wish I had my act together this winter, and had taken a picture of the lettuce with snow on top. We’ve never had any damage from freezes when using these, and have been able to grow lettuce outside all winter long.

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I should have written this post a long time ago, when my memory was fresher. In any case, writing it now has helped me refine my plans for this summer. Here then, are my reflections on the 2007 season.

Lessons Learned

Broccoli/Cabbage: I learned that although I like broccoli and cabbage, they are a pain to grow because of all of the pests they attract. And it wasn’t just one pest at one point in the summer, it was a succession of different pests that required different methods of control and constant monitoring. It really wasn’t worth it, in the end. I’m not in a big hurry to grow them again, but if I do, I would put them under a row cover. The problem with row covers is that you need to allow for pollination, but that isn’t an issue with these two plants, so I think it might be the perfect solution.

Plastic Mulch: I know it seems so unatural, and it feels a bit wrong to use it, but I have to say it really seems to work. I did a little experiment last summer, where I planted some eggplant with the plastic and some without. The plants with the plastic mulch were much healthier and more productive. It also eliminated weeding, and kept the ground moist.

Marigolds: I planted marigolds throughout the garden, in between the vegetables, and along the borders. I did this because I had read that they will help deter pests. I hesitate to put this in the “lessons learned” category because I really can’t say if it helped or not, but it might have. I have a lot of enemies in the pest world, but my # 1 archenemy is the squash bug. They didn’t seem as bad last year. Maybe it was the marigolds. Maybe I liked the marigolds because the garden looked so darn pretty with them all. In any case, I am planning on planting marigolds again.

Planting En Masse: There are some things you just always want to have on hand. In this group I count parsley, cilantro, and basil. I dedicated large sections of garden beds to these last summer, and just threw down lots of seeds. I had plenty to pick from all summer long, and the parsley is still growing! The photo above is not the prettiest, but it shows how the parsley looks in March after having survived winter snow. The cilantro reseeds itself (and I harvested the seeds for my coriander stash), so I didn’t need to worry about replanting it, it just came back on its own. Better to have too much than not enough of these three staples, and it is nice to start the spring with pickable cilantro and parsley without having to seed.

Strawberries: I didn’t realize how quickly they would spread. I initially planted 9 or 10 in each triangle bed and hoped they would spread to fill it up. They spread like crazy, and by mid-summer were spilling over the sides. Next time, I’ll plant very sparsely!

Watermelons: I finally learned how to tell if a watermelon is ripe, with a little help from Emma!

Thrifty Sunflowers: From my neighbor Tim I learned that you can cheaply grow tons of sunflowers by planting sunflower bird seeds.

Garden Favorites

Zephyr Squash: Still my favorite for grilling and eating raw, and believe it or not, I can never grow enough.

Sun Gold Cherry Tomato: Gorgeous tasting, unbelievably prolific, first and last to harvest each year.

Green Zebra Tomato: Love the taste, and also one of the prettiest.

Brandywine: Excellent flavor, and although not much of a producer compared to the hybrids, still well-worth growing. Huge tomatoes that are perfect for BLTs and gazpacho.

A Plant I Didn’t Like

Yellow Pear: I planted several plants, but didn’t like the taste, and just stopped picking them partway through the summer. They are very pretty, and I hate to disparage an heirloom (life is hard enough for them, isn’t it?), but I found them bland and uninteresting to eat.

I have lots of favorite plants in the yard. I have always had a fondness for herbs, and during the many years I lived in apartments, I would always have an assortment of large pots of various herbs on my patios. I would haul them from one apartment to the next, and lovingly care for them, despite the fact that I rarely used them in my cooking. The point was simply the process of growing them. When I was a graduate student, I finally was given a plot in a cooperative garden for a year or two after having been on a waiting list. It was there that I grew my first vegetables and started learning about gardening by simply trying things out and observing the results. I vividly remember picking the first ears of corn, and how excited I was to eat them.

Now that I am lucky enough to have a large garden, I find that I have a soft spot for one of the old trees in the yard. It is a dogwood that sits right outside my living room, and it is where I hang a bird house. I’m not quite sure why I feel like the tree is an old friend, but I love it. It isn’t perfect, by any means. It leans and droops towards the East and has some large white spots that grow on it. But sometimes is the most beautiful sight to see, such as when the blooms open in April or when a bright red cardinal sits on branches covered with snow.

We saw a few snowflakes mixed with the rain today. As I look forward to the first dogwood blooms of 2008, I thought I would post a picture (above) that my mother took of one of the dogwood blossoms last year. Isn’t it beautiful?

This was probably the last snow of the season that the garden will see. Amazingly, many of the herbs have survived the winter (they don’t look great, of course, but they are still alive). I’ve got parsley and cilantro still growing, as well as sage and rosemary. The strawberries are sprouting new green leaves underneath the dead debris. All in all, it has been a mild winter. Of course, this is good for some of the perennials that we tend to lose (mostly lavender plants), but it probably means a buggy summer.

I sure have missed blogging! One of the tasks I still need to do is to recap the crop from last summer, and identify the plants I really loved (and those I wasn’t so thrilled with). Hopefully that will be posted soon. My long hiatus has left me a bit rusty when it comes to blogging. Spring is almost here (you can even hear the peepers at night if you listen closely).