This past Saturday, one day past the first recommended spring planting date for Southern Maryland, I spent some time in the garden. It was a beautiful day. The temperature was around sixty. The rain we were expecting did not materialize and instead we had some blue sky and even a little bit of sun. I took my garden plan and my planting date chart outside and I planted spinach, spring leaf lettuce mix, onions, cabbage, Chinese cabbage and peas. It was an awesome morning. 

This morning, three days before the official first day of spring, we have snow - several wet, fluffy inches of it. It's on the trees, and the deck, and the cars, and everything that it could possibly be sticking to except the roads. It is lovely, and really, I guess I should count myself lucky to have been able to see this at least once this winter. It's really the first and only pretty snow that we've had.  

   

But still. I planted peas, darn it!!! My pear trees are getting ready to bud and I want to feel the warmth of the sun on my shoulders.

Spring! Come on, already!!!

 

Have you ever really wanted to do something that you know you shouldn’t – something that goes against all the laws of nature?

Yeah, me too.

 I mean, if you read gardening and suburban homesteading blogs you’ll start to recognize that there is a certain thread of Puritanism out there. I mean things like how you’re not “supposed” to grow hybrid plants because you can’t save the seeds. I understand that seeds are power. I’ve read The World According to Monsanto. And yet, I can’t resist planting Packman broccoli from Big Box every year because it matures so fast! I have broccoli months before I might otherwise have it.

And then there’s the whole peat moss thing. You’re not “supposed” to use peat moss as a garden supplement because it’s an unrenewable resource. I get that. I do. It’s just that peat moss is the one way that I know to lower my soil ph, and it takes me so long to acquire little pieces of scientific gardening knowledge like that that I’m reluctant to toss this one out the window and start all over again trying to figure out how to lower my soil ph.

And then there’s the mother of all foodie/suburban homesteading commandments – you’re not supposed to eat foods out of season. Which I imagine extends to the one that I have finally summoned up the courage to break – you’re not supposed to grow food out of season. But the truth is that I buy blueberries in winter. There. That’s right. I said it! I also buy peppers and strawberries and apples and bananas, and eggplants and zucchini and – let’s face it – I’m already a debauching suburban libertine.

So this year, I decided to go for it. That’s right. I got a greenhouse.

Here it is January, and I’m on my way to fresh tomatoes and cucumbers and eggplants and peppers, all out of season, and just ripe for the picking! That, my friends, is suburban homesteading power! I mean, let’s face it, who doesn’t get a little depressed at this time of year? Sure I am still harvesting broccoli heads and side-shoots from my 18 broccoli plants that are in the ground outside. Quite frankly I’m harvesting an unbelievable amount of side-shoots. After harvesting the main heads off of my Packmans back in November I left them in the ground figuring I could go out there a few times and cut at least enough side-shoots to feed a six-year-old who would rather eat a hot dog, and I did do that, a few times. But then in December both the six-year-old and I got sick with some nasty bug, and then at the tail end of that, right before Christmas, we both came down with the flu, which is to say that I didn’t set foot in my garden at all for every bit of four weeks. So when I went outside a week or so ago to see if there was any broccoli to harvest, imagine my surprise to find that said Packmans had put out “side shoots” the size of the heads on my Di Cicco.

 See? This is what I’m saying. Packman rules!

Not to mention that a quick peek up under the skirts of my Brussels sprouts showed me that I did manage to have some sprouts that could be harvested, though I have yet to do it. I am still battling the last lingering signs of illness, plus it’s been wet and foggy outside for what seems like forever now. So who came blame me for throwing my heart at my new lover? I have a greenhouse!

The thing is, though, that it’s still in its massive and heavy cardboard box down in the corner where our Christmas tree was standing, and it’s still ankle deep in Christmas gifts that have yet to be distributed, since, as I said, for Christmas (and New Years) my daughter and I both had the flu. It’s been too wet and muddy and just generally crappy outside to set the greenhouse up. Plus, I doubt that I can do it by myself. So while I do, in fact, have a greenhouse this winter, I’m not exactly  growing tomatoes or anything else in it.

 And yet all is not lost. Prior to getting this walk-in greenhouse (6’ x 8’) I acquired a small, four shelf “greenhouse” on wheels which I placed proudly on my back deck in a spot that doesn’t even begin to get enough sun, though I didn’t realize it at the time. Still, I optimistically started a winter salad mix of lettuces and baby greens down in the cellar under the growlight, in a low plastic tub with holes drilled in the bottom of it for drainage. It seemed like it was going to work. The seeds all came up! Then after a few days in which I actually remembered to go downstairs and water them they began to look a little yellow. And could I find my new bottle of fish emulsion anywhere? No I could not. So eventually I stopped even watering them because I felt guilty and frustrated about the lost fish emulsion every time I saw the yellowing little seedlings, and now I think it’s safe to say that they’re all pretty much dead, and carrying that tub of dirt back up out of the cellar and figuring out what to do with it is just something else that I have to do.

That wasn’t my only seedling experiment though. It occurred to me that maybe it was a bad idea to start the seeds inside in the warmth under a grow light, anyway. I mean, these were winter greens I was trying to grow. Even in the little upright greenhouse they were probably still going to have plenty of winter days where the plastic cover might keep it heated to about forty. So I filled two more, smaller plastic tubs with seed-starting mixture, skipped the hole-drilling part, since I couldn’t do it myself and my husband wasn’t around at the time, and tossed in some seeds. One tub got Spinach, the other got Chard.

Lo and behold, they came up! They came up beautifully, in fact. Their long, slender, vibrantly green first leaves reached up towards the sky like a congregation with their arms raised in a hallelujah!

And then nothing happened. It’s been a few weeks, now, in fact, and nothing has happened. It’s like they’re frozen there in time – not dying, but not growing either. What the heck? I haven’t been setting any world records watering them, but then having been inside that plastic cover the soil is actually still fairly moist. Maybe they’re not getting enough light. I can’t remember the last time we had a sunny day around here. But I kid you not, these little seedlings have been out there in suspended animation for like a month. I suppose it’s progress. I mean, it’s further than I got with the winter lettuce mix in the cellar.

I guess the confession here is that I don’t really know what to do with a greenhouse. I mean, I don’t know what to start in it. Or when to start them. Does it need to be heated? It probably does if I want to grow bananas. Probably not if I want to grow spinach. And then as far as the tomatoes go, my husband pointed out that it’s not just a matter of temperature with them; they also need a certain number of hours of sunlight every day which is just not possible to give them in the middle of winter, even a relatively mild winter like we seem to be having.

So, there’s a learning curve here. Check back with me as I stumble through this one. In the meantime, I think I’ve learned one thing, that yes, you can start seeds right in the greenhouse. It’s not much, and maybe I could have Googled that information and saved myself the trouble of my failed experiments, but then that wouldn’t be anywhere near as much fun, would it?

*   *   *

My Books, Confessions of a Vegetable Lover and More Confessions of a Vegetable Lover are available on Amazon, in both e-book ($.99!) and print!

When I woke this morning it was 25 degrees outside, making last night our first frost. 5 November - not bad. I knew when I went to bed last night that in the morning my eggplant and peppers would be gone, and sure enough when I got home from work today they were dark and shriveled up. So were a few volunteer tomatoes and nasturtiums that I had been letting go just for the heck of it. The nasturtiums were frozen into a full-flowered wilt, and there were actually a few small green tomatoes on the larger plant. What surprised me was that my one volunteer borage that had recently given me some of its lovely wedgewood blue-colored flowers was still upright and lovely. That, I didn't expect. Also still around and looking great this afternoon is my one Gerbera daisy plant with its two big, beautiful coral-colored heads. This is good to know as I stop fussing so much outside and start doing more indoor garden planning. Next year I will plant some of these flowers late on purpose, just keep some color and beaty out there once it starts to get cold. Next survival test - first snowfall. I gathered some gerbera daisy seeds from that plant ealier this year so I may start them under lights this winter. They've always been one of my favorite flowers. I think it's thier Dr. Suess-ness that gets to me.

Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbages, beets, turnips, rutabegas, Chinese cabbages and lettuces are still going strong.

An interesting thing - when I pulled up my nice, large Black Beauty eggplant, I was surprised to see how long its main roots were. There were two or three of them that extended laterally out somewhat past the upper width of the plant. Something to keep in mind when thinking about spacing for next year. I have to say that I was kind of sad to pull that plant up. It was quite the largest and most robust eggplant I have ever had.

Do you know how when you’re in a new relationship, you tend to be willing to do things which, left to your own devices, you probably would not do? Things like chaperoning middle school field trips, or spending Monday nights in front of a television in a sports bar sucking down buffalo wings, or – my least favorite of all – camping?

I have done all of these things in the initial throes of attraction back when I was still a single girl, and I have not done a single one of them since those attractions wore off. The thing is, in order for a relationship to last, you need to be able to be yourself, and you need to be with someone with whom you feel you can be yourself. Am I right?

You may be wondering just when, exactly, I intend to meander out to the garden, and the answer is right now. Here I go, and here is the subject of this post.

My lone Minuet Chinese Cabbage plant is making a Napa-style closed head. Right outside in one of my new raised beds, even as we speak. With temperatures threatening to plunge down into the twenties tonight, he has thrown his cloak about his shoulders and is settling in for the winter.

You may not immediately grasp the significance of this confession. If you have not read my book, More Confessions of a Vegetable Lover, you will not be familiar with the passionate goings-on in my garden earlier this year between me and Minuet. Here’s the short version. I bought seeds for a Napa-style closed head Chinese cabbage, but when I planted those seeds this past spring, what sprung up was a vividly green, open-headed cabbage that continued to unfurl all spring like an endless rose. I harvested the outer leaves again and again, and enjoyed countless stir fries, all the time marveling at the mystery of how I ended up with something other than what I had ordered.

But now, with fall finally fully arrived I find that the mystery has been solved in the simplest of ways. It is that there never was any mystery. Minuet has always been a Napa-style closed head cabbage. But for some reason, this past spring, he didn’t feel that he could be a Napa-style closed head for me.

So what was he doing with me? Was it more akin to chaperoning the unruly middle schoolers with a student teacher, or camping? Either way, this past spring Minuet was obviously not really being himself.

I have to admit that my first reaction was to feel a little betrayed. I mean, why couldn’t he be himself with me? Did I smother him? When I approached him with the proposition of continuously harvesting his outer leaves did I make him feel that he had to be something other than what he was? And what does it mean that he’s decided to return to his true nature now? Is he purposely being something other than what he thinks that I want him to be? Was I deceived this past spring? Or was Minuet just – gulp – slumming with an ignorant gardener?

If I have to look honestly at myself, I think that this last explanation was the case. I admit that I do not necessarily know what I am doing in the garden. I do the best I can. I try new things, and I take the stance that everything is an experiment. So it is in that spirit that I put on my lay scientist’s hat here to form the following hypothesis: Minuet didn’t make a closed head in the spring because by the time he reached that level of maturity the weather was getting warmer instead of cooler. Which is to say that – at least in my planting zone – Minuet will only ever fully realize himself in the fall. And lest you think that he didn't make a closed head because I kept pulling off his outer leaves, that's not it. I had six heads of Minuet this spring, and I couldn't possibly keep up with eating the outer leaves of all of them. I left most of them to make closed heads - but they never did. From which I surmised that I had somehow ended up with the wrong seed in my Minuet packet.

Minuet is good in the spring, don’t get me wrong. Next year I’ll plant one or two heads and harvest their outer leaves until the weather gets the best of him. But next fall, instead of only having one or two heads to harvest leaves from, maybe I’ll plant half a dozen or so and just let the heads be.

So Minuet is out in the garden, doing his own thing – without me. And it’s cool. I can respect that. Especially when I have a dozen buxom bok choi beauties growing right there in the same raised bed beside him, all vying for my attention…

 *  *  *

 If you now feel that you can't live without reading the story of Minuet and Me in More Confessions of a Vegetable Lover, the e-book version will be FREE this weekend, October 20th and 21st. This will be the last opportunity to get this e-book for FREE before my KDP Select contract with Amazon ends and I return the e-book to other marketplaces in November.

 Don't have a Kindle? You don't need one. You can download a Kindle Reader App for free from Amazon. 

I caught an interesting inteview on NPR this week while  I was in the car. Andrea Wulf has a new book out called Founding Gardeners, The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation. The gist of it, according to the author, is that while Washington, Jefferson, Adams etc. have gone down in history as our first presidents and the men who shaped our nation, that thier fundamental passion was not politics, but gardening. Gardening, farming, and the self-sufficiency that these activities bring was well in the minds of our founding fathers as they contemplated our country's political liberty, both as private passions of thier own, and as a way to provide for independence from imported goods. Sounds fascinating. I totally plan to check this one out.

There is an interesting post over at Root Simple that I thought I would pass along. Have I mentioned that I really like this blog? Anyway, seems there's a new T.V. series about post-apocalyptic suburban homesteading. Most people probably already know this, but I kind of live in a hole so I figured I'd pass the news along to anyone else who hadn't heard. As part of living in a hole I actually no longer have any cable/satellite/TV access - I cancelled it due to extreme lack of interest - but this review of the pilot episode contains a link where you can watch the pilot episode online, which is interesting and which I will probably do. If you're interested, check out Root Simple's post here.

Conventional relationship wisdom has some old standbys, the things that everyone knows that a relationship cannot last without. You know what they are: communication, commitment, patience, being friends, blah blah blah. They all basically point to the fact that in order to endure, a marriage must be built on a strong foundation. 

The same is true for the garden, and anyone who has been married to their garden for a long time will be happy to share their wisdom with you, and let you know how it is that their relationship with their garden was able not only to last, but to flourish. I’m not exactly long-married, but my garden and I have been together for five years now, coming up on the seven year itch, if you will, and I’m starting to understand what all these other, better gardeners are talking about. And like all of my other deep, private thoughts and epiphanies, I feel compelled to record this one here. You ready? Here is the gardening wisdom that I’ve been collecting of late: 

It’s the soil. 

I t’s the soil. 

It’s the soil, stupid. 

That last one is particularly harsh, and yet I have actually read something that said that, more or less, in an online gardening discussion thread titled something like, I love gardening but I suck at it, wherein people like my good self can commiserate. But some people don’t understand what it means to commiserate. Some people think that people looking for moral support and a shoulder to cry on are actually looking for answers, and they feel compelled to provide them.   

But how much help is it, really, to tell someone like me that I need to pay more attention to my soil? I mean, what does that mean that I’m exactly supposed to do? Part of the problem is that building good soil – like building a good relationship – takes time. It’s no one thing that you do that makes the difference, it’s everything that you do. And any “difference” that you may manage to bring about can take awhile to see. 

The truth is that I’m not that good at growing plants. I hardly ever feed anyone. I went through one bag of tomato tone a few years back, and every time I opened it I had heart palpitations and became consumed with my own inadequacy. I have no idea what I’m doing! Is it too close to the stem of the plant? Is it enough? Too much? Of course I read the directions but still I feared I was doing it wrong. And then, as often happens in relationships, inadequacy becomes defensiveness, and defensiveness becomes attack and the next thing you know I’m chastising Tomato – why can’t you just get your nutrients from the soil like a normal plant? Why do I have to spoon-feed you something every few weeks?  

Why indeed. 

I bought a bottle of fish emulsion from my favorite nursery, on the advice of one of the experienced gardeners who works there. I used it once or twice – like the time we killed off Cucumber watering his leaves at the height of summer with diluted fish emulsion which he did not need and did not appreciate – and then I stuck it under my kitchen sink and thought little more about it. 

This year I pulled it out and tried to use it on my greens. I actually had a fantastic spring. I had broccoli, chard, spinach and peas all verdant and burgeoning and wonderful. So I decided to leave the fish emulsion outside with my other gardening things. It was fine, until I went looking for it this fall, as I was getting Broccoli and Kohlrabi settled into their carefully prepared soil, and it was nowhere to be found. I wandered around the garden, under the carport, in the sheds, and back into the kitchen to peer, dolefully, under the sink. What the heck did I do with that bottle of fish emulsion? I swear I had taken it outside and left it under the carport with my tons of empty plastic pots and seedling trays and empty plastic bags from Big Box. 

Finally I located it. That is, I located something underneath of our old, broken-down white box truck in the back yard (don’t ask, and no this is not going to be a “you know you’re a redneck if” joke). It was a white plastic bottle without a label, slightly crushed, with strange holes in the side of it. I picked it up and turned it from side to side, and smelly fish emulsion ran out onto my hands. It took me a few moments to realize that the holes were tooth marks, and that moving the fish emulsion outside had been a fatal mistake. Probably attracted by the intense fishy smell, the dogs had gotten at it. There’s no telling how long ago this had happened. Apparently it hadn’t hurt whichever one of them had done it. But it might explain those several days awhile back that my Cocker Spaniel was drooling uncontrollably… 

Hard to say. 

And don’t even get me started on compost. My first compost pile contained a season’s worth of food scraps, dead vegetable plants (with and without vine borers, seeds, and who knows what else), gigantic weeds pulled haphazardly and far too infrequently from the summer garden, at least one dead snake, at least one cardboard box, and a very flimsy and unsatisfactory tomato cage. Oh, and at one point, LOTS of yucky grub-like organisms that sprang into existence there and had the time of their lives. As a matter of fact, I will even go out on a limb here to say that about the only thing that wasn’t in it – ever – was compost. 

Another tenet of organic gardening is that healthy plants do not really get attacked by insect pests. This is another of those things that just sends me over the edge. It’s hard to take. It’s like having to send your child for therapy – and pay through the nose to do it – so that you can have the privilege of being told that the child’s problems are all your fault. 

And I hate it when things are all my fault. 

As a novice gardener, for years I only heard “blah blah blah blah” whenever anyone started talking soil composition and tilthe and ph – get thee back away from my virgin ears! The science of soil was overwhelming to me, and it’s still overwhelming to me. But something has changed for me this year, as I pull up the next-to-last of my summer garden. I’m starting to formulate a “soil plan” that I’m hoping might amount to something by the time I’m ready to put plants in next spring. Here’s how it started. 

In late July, I was in Big Box for compost – I buy their bagged manure compost because it’s cheap – when I happened to see that they had fall transplants set out for sale. Of course I fell all over myself getting to them. When you read about sowing fall vegetables the seed packets all say “sow in late July”, so of course in late July I start thinking that I ought to have broccoli growing in my backyard, and Big Box – who knows their customer – is happy to oblige. I wasn’t there to buy transplants, and Big Box isn’t even where I usually buy fall transplants, but here I was, and here was Broccoli, and here was Kohlrabi rubbing shoulders with him and hinting about a threesome and what can I say? It had been awhile since I’d been with Kohlrabi and I love Broccoli and he knows I can’t resist him, so I threw caution to the wind, and it was on. 

I was already thinking about soil at this point. I mean, this is my fifth year of gardening, spring and fall, and I can’t help but think that my soil might be getting a little, well, tired. Do I rotate my crops? Yes, more or less, in a bare-minimum, lazy kind of way. I don’t plant potatoes or tomatoes in the same place twice, and I haven’t really had a whole lot of problems with disease or anything. I do mix compost and sometimes peat moss into my garden soil. And yes I know I’m not supposed to buy peat moss because it’s not “sustainable”, but I’ve only recently found that out and am not sure about a good substitute yet.  

Anyway, so I prepared a bed for Broccoli and Kohlrabi. I put them where the beans had been this spring. I mixed manure compost and peat moss into the soil, and stuck them out there. It was still hot as hell in July, and they frequently wilted in the afternoon, so I tried to water them everyday. At first they were doing really well. 

But then the harlequin beetles arrived.  

And I’m not talking one harlequin beetle either. I’m talking tons of them, and constantly mating. Before I knew it, my broccoli and kohlrabi bed looked like a No-tell Motel for harlequin beetles, with a day care attached, because there were teeny, weeny, itty bitty ones munching too. 

I immediately went into smushing mode. I made a few trips a day out there, picking the beetles off of my plants and pinching them between my thumb and my forefinger. It was nasty, brutal work, but the majority of the beetles seem to be gone now. And Broccoli and Kohlrabi, you ask? How are they faring? Well, they didn’t start out looking unhealthy. But they sure look unhealthy now. 

But here’s where I’m going with this. I have some cabbages on the other side of the garden that were not attacked. I got them at Big Box the same time that I got Broccoli and Kohlrabi, and they’re still doing fairly well. I planted them, too, in soil that was mixed with manure compost and peat moss. So what’s the difference? 

Well, Cabbage’s neighbors are all marigolds. They haven’t been dead-headed in awhile, and they’ve been beat to hell in a few bad storms, but they’re basically still healthy plants. Broccoli and Kohlrabi, however, are living right next door to some pretty sad-looking cherry tomato plants and some peaked-looking peppers, which is to say that I can’t help but wonder if I would have had such a bad time with the harlequin beetles if I had planted Broccoli and Kohlrabi somewhere else. I mean, I think these sad hangers-on from summer were already bringing the bugs in. I even saw harlequin beetles on the tomato plant, and tomatoes are just not their usual fare. 

I have since added more broccoli, some Brussels sprouts, some lettuce, and various greens and root veggies to the garden, mostly in my new raised beds, and some in Cabbage’s side of the garden. I bought some compost to plant them all in because, as I said, I thought the garden could use it. And here’s where things took a sharp curve for me and I began to stumble and slide down the slippery slope of garden ardor, because the thing that has my heart pounding outside this September is Leaf Gro soil conditioner. Have you seen this stuff? Leaf Gro is not flashy. He doesn’t show off, but you know that he’s rich just by looking at him. It’s in the way he carries himself. It’s in his well-made but unpretentious, classic crumbly-black clothes. 

I had already kind of come up with a composting-in-place plan. I’ve been working my way around the garden where things aren’t planted – and won’t be planted – until next spring and summer – and spreading my kitchen scraps directly on the soil. I’ve then been collecting a few big buckets of dead Bradford pear tree leaves from around the yard, and covering the food scraps with the leaves. I figure that by next summer it ought to all be good and broken down. I mean, I may not have the observational acuity of a scientist, but I do know that never in my life have I raked leaves in my back yard, and that the leaves from our four trees always break down and sink into the soil, every year, without fail. 

So I was pretty happy with that plan, and now I’m thinking I may take it one step further – lasagna style. I am absolutely infatuated with Leaf Gro. If I could afford to do it I would have my entire garden covered with him right now. And again in the spring next year too! But in the meantime, I think that I can handle a few bags a week, and I may start spreading Leaf Gro over my kitchen-scrap and dead leaf soil lasagna. 

It can’t hurt. 

The important thing is that I’m starting to think about my soil. I’m making an effort. Like every other effort I’ve ever made in the garden, I expect both failures and setbacks. But Albert Einstein said that no problem can be changed by the same level of consciousness that created it, which is to say that if I want things to be different, I must be different. If I want to romance Broccoli and Kohlrabi then I must romance Soil.  

*   *   * 

  

I have two gardening books available at Amazon - Confessions of a Vegetable Lover and More Confessions of a Vegetable Lover. E-book versions are 99 cents each! 

But I also write about people. I have a new novel available as an e-book - the print version is forthcoming. In The Best Laid Plans a woman trying to plan her way out of childhood heartbreak expectedly falls in love. Available now on Amazon!