July - Summer at its Peak

Why can't we just have July all year round? I ponder that as I take many short breaks in between the endless outdoor tasks while resting in my Adirondack chair. I look out over all of the lush green trees and grasses amazed at how all of this life can somehow be able to survive dormant in our harsh winter months. July is when all kinds of garden flowers wild flowers appear. My Maximilian Sunflowers (pictured above) began flowering on July 3rd.

My Northern Catalpa tree appears to be happy. I was worried about it earlier in the spring because it looked like it didn't make it through the harsh winter. The small bloom was a nice surprise (see June's entry) but I don't see any of the "beans" on it this year.

I'm very careful when I mow the lawn. I have about 4 of these "islands" of St. John's Wort that I spotted growing wild. I always harvest some in mid July to make "good mood" tinctures for the winter.

The corn, yellow squash and beans have doubled in size since this picture was taken on July 4th. However, the beans have had a tragic setback...

 Yup, I'm saddened to say that the whistle pig is back. Woodchucks are basically country rats that love to burrow under fences and target tender green leaves in the garden. This year, IT got in and ate most of the 4 varieties of beans. All hope isn't lost because when it happened last season, I saw that the beans grew back.
Activity was very high July 10th through the 13th, (Full moon was on the 15th) with 3 of the four fenced gardens breached.
Then, nothing. I haven't seen the furry bastard since. Let's just say the next time I shoot, it won't be with a camera.

There used to be four, 3 ft. tall African Marigolds in bloom, but the Guinea Pig on steroids chomped them off with his smelly teeth. Behind them, the tomatoes are doing well with my new method of compost then a top layer of straw. A few of the plants were eaten by the wood pig chuck, but they have since re-sprouted new leaves.

The firewood in placed around the fence base to help keep the fur pig out, but he has managed to move them in a couple of spots and burrow under anyway. Apparently, woodchucks do chuck wood. If anything, I hope he got splinters. I ended up replacing the firewood with a cinder block at one of his favorite spots. This seems to be working for now.

Meanwhile, after fortifying my fences, I actually got my peppers planted. They look pretty sad a week after I planted them. Most of them are shedding their leaves under stress from the hot sun we've had all week. I'm hoping for a thunder shower tonight since there's a slight chance in the forecast.

Finally, I v'e got a lot going on in the window boxes in front of the greenhouse. The pole beans are getting big, but no tendrils for climbing as of yet. The tomatoes are deep green and full of blossoms and the lettuce is ready to be picked. I spent some time making a nice support net out of garden twine for the pole beans to climb. It would be cool to see bean plants cover the windows of the greenhouse - literally, as they would cool the greenhouse by shading the windows!

We'll see...
:)

Garlic Scapes and Garden Gates

June was all about planting at the beginning of the month. I've planted more varieties of seeds than ever before. The weather Gods have blessed the gardens & orchard with a steady diet of rainy days and sunny days - not too many extremes.

We had some strong thunderstorms at the beginning of June, in fact, if you go to You Tube and search for "Tornado Springfield MA" you will find some incredible videos taken on June 1, 2011.

I was sad to see that my peach tree took a hit from the thunderstorms. For the last 5 years, I have been bringing this tree back from dormancy.

Saddest thing is that this year it was loaded with baby peaches. Oh well, that's the way the mop flops... Mother nature always has a surprise or two each year to keep me on my toes.

Now for some happy news. I bought this rather large Red Bartlett Pear tree and planted it on June 11th. I'm hoping that it will be ready to flower next year.

And now for those garden gates. Mr. Woodchuck will be visiting any time now, so the best defence is a good fence!

I read that woodchucks don't like tomatoes. I've found the opposite to be true - they love them!

On June 19th I began cutting the garlic scapes. I only did one row of about 100.

 I like to cut the scapes once they've gotten to one full curl. I am letting the rest goto a second curl and will harvest them in July. I'm curroius to know if letting the scapes grow longer will influence the size of the bulbs in the fall harvest.

Garlic scapes have a wonderful aroma, but taste much milder than a clove. The scapes will keep in the refrigerator for 2 weeks.

May Blossoms, Storms & Dragonflies - Oh My!

I'm happy to report that my 5-in-one apple tree has bloomed for the first time since planting it 5 years ago. It was badly damaged last year because of a rodent which girdled 3/4 of the trunk bark. If you venture back to my May post in 2010, you can see how I saved the tree with grafted prunings.

These photos were taken on May 20th. The trees were full of apple blossoms!

Above are some blossoms which are just beginning to open.

Close-up of a Macintosh apple blossom.

These are radishes (as of May 20) next to the garlic. The German Giant radish seed was saved from an over-wintered volunteer which had a golf ball-sized plump radish. It was hard not to pick it to eat! But I let it grow to flower and seed. I hung the seed pods in the rafters all winter. Each pod averages 4 seeds or more, so letting one radish plant go to seed will offer you well over 200 seeds next year.

Some last minute transplanting was done last weekend (May 22) with the smaller tomatoes and basil. Some were second tries of varieties that didn't have very good germination rates. All plants have been moved to the greenhouse to experience natural daylight. The last day under the fluorescent lights was May 21.

The last two weeks of May are filled with the threat of thunderstorms. These ominous clouds were overhead on May 24th. The atmosphere was very unsettled and clouds were approaching the tornadic stage.

Dame's Rocket just came into bloom on May 25th this year. It's also the time of year when I selectively mow parts of the lawn and leave some sections alone so they can flower, such as Daisy's, St. John's Wort and the brilliant colored Orange Hawk Weed - A.K.A. The Devil's Paintbrush (See next month's photos of these June flowers.)

After a brutal winter, this Northern Catalpa tree finally came back to life last week. I planted it last year because I have childhood memories of the one at my grandparents' house. I would fill my (kid-sized) purple wheel barrow full of the "beans" that fell from the tree. I called it "The Bean Tree."

I was concerned because many of the lower branches snapped from heavy snowfalls. It appears to be doing fine now.

I moved most of my houseplants out to the porch on May 29th. It's great to see the front porch come to life for the rest of the summer. Watering is easier with the hose and all of the leaves get a good misting treatment.

The Dragonflies have just come out as of May 29th. It's always great to watch them dart about by the hundreds at sunset. They provide added entertainment when I mow the lawn because the mowing stirs-up bugs that the dragonflies eat. Talk about 3D dive bombing!

:)



Warmer Weather Finally Arrives

The warm weather has finally arrived. The apple trees are beginning to show signs of life with buds starting to swell into the Silver Tip stage. This means that it's time for me to break-out the spraying gear for the first organic spraying of the season - the first of many.

Speaking of trees... This is a shot of my twin black willow trees with the morning sun melting the frost on its branches. The yellow color appears before the leafs begin to bud - yet another observation to let me know that spring is finally here.

The garden out front gets the most sun so all of the snow has melted away. I still need to fix the battered fence. It's hard to believe that this was covered by 3 feet of snow only weeks ago. But guess what?

The garlic is up! I was worried that I set them out too late last November, but they seem to have done just fine. It will take a few more weeks to see if they all made it, but for now it looks like most have begun to sprout through the straw.

The larger gardens to the east still have some snow as of April 9th, 2011 - but with the temps expected to be near 70 degrees over the next few days, the rest of this stubborn snow should be history.

Back inside, the seed flats are slowly coming to life with flowers, peppers and tomatoes. The T8 florescent lights are turned on for 14 hours each day. I will list the pepper and tomato varieties started here:

Peppers:
Beaver Dam, Budapest, Bulgarian Carrot Chile, Early Jalapeno, Fish Pepper, Hot Portugal, Pizza Mild Jalapeno, Purple Beauty Sweet Bell, Purple Jalapeno, Serrano Tampiqueno, and Tomato Pepper.



Tomatoes:
Better Boy Hybrid, Alaska, Crazy, Dad's Compost, Djena Lee’s Golden Girl, Experimental - 11-F-A Medium Red, Ildi, Orange Roma, Red Robin Small Red, Sasha's Altai, Siberian, Silver Fir Tree Red/Orange, Striped Cavern, Taxi, Totem Small Red, and Valencia.

There are three varieties of marigolds started (both African and European) which will hopefully keep the moles and voles away!
:)

Spring is here, but it's posing as winter...

Yup, spring is here and much of the relentless snow has been melted. This photo is dramatically different than the one in February's entry. By the way, it may still be cold outside as the temperature rocketed all the way up to a balmy 37 degrees today - however inside the greenhouse...

How about that! 78 degrees in here and it's all from the sun. I don't have anything growing out here yet because even though this is a heavily insulated greenhouse, the temperatures dip well below freezing each night. My only source of heat is from a space heater which is suspended from the ceiling. It works well, but I won't be using the greenhouse until mid-April.

Still, it's a nice place to visit when the sun is nice and high in the skies after noontime and it stays bright and sunny until nearly 6pm these days.

However, the snow still lingers on. As you can see, much snow still remains in the big garden. I actually was happy to see the tops of my herb garden signs! This means that the snowpack is below 2 feet - woo-hoo!

The snow is nearly gone from the straw covered garlic in the garden out in front of the house. The fence has been damaged from the heavy amount of snow this season. The posts are fine because I set them in 1 foot holes of Quickcrete (luckily) so all I need to do is re-staple the fence to the posts.

Okay, it's narly time! All of the planning, seed ordering, and organizing have been done. It's time to start some seeds! As of 3/26 & 27, 2011, I will first start my peppers, cabbage, basil, dill and marigolds. I use a big bin to mix my organic seed start potting mix with pure seed starting mix.

Here's another super-secret weapond I use for starting seeds - a split wooden clothes pin used upside-down, with measured marks drawn onto it. I call it my "seed dibble."

This is a photo of six pepper varieties seeded within the dibble holes. Only one more step remains before I cover the seeds with only a 16th of an inch of surrounding soil...

I always give each newly planted seed a good two shots of WARM water before I cover the seed with soil. I swear by this and usually get 100 percent germination rates.

Meanwhile, one of my cats is basking in the sunshine which floods the southwestern windows upstairs. This is where I built a two-level shelving system to start seeds (my cat is on the lower level in this photo.) I start the seeds on the top level because heat rises and is warmer on top in March. The starter shelves are 8 feet long, on two levels with 4x2 T8 energy efficient shop lights hanging above the seedlings.

So as you can see, a lot of planning and years of experimenting makes it look as if I actually know what I am doing!

All that I can say is, the more I document this stuff, the easier it gets.

:)