GARDEN NOTES, JUNE 23

We arrived back at the farm this morning, startling a small doe and her little fawn in the yard. They vanished into the south field. Mike is out mowing the lawn and I have already picked another three cups of strawberries from the tire. I baked a white cake last night in anticipation of this pick.

 

We left here Tuesday (6-18) and during our absence it was cool and rainy. It amazes me to see the progress my gardens made in the interim. These are the best gardens I’ve had here.

“To what do you attribute this success?” you ask.

Well, I used time release 10-10-10 fertilizer. And then – remember the horses that were here a couple months ago? Well, as we cleaned the yard, I saved the manure. Some of it went into the composter and when that seemed enough, I saved a washtub full. (The horses had been here a while.) When I planted the gardens, I packed manure around the edges, being fearful that it might not be aged enough, and as it dries I work it in around the plants. They seem to love it.

I’ve always been cautious when it comes to fertilizer, preferring not to rather than suffer the consequences of perhaps overdoing. I guess it’s because my dad told me when I was a young gardener that I had over-fertilized the strawberries and they had “gone to leaf.” Mother, too, used fertilizer judiciously, worrying that she would burn her plants. But, Hallie has encouraged me to experiment, opining that the soil here just isn’t that good.

There’s one area where the soil is quite good – where the old chicken coop used to be. That’s part of the yard now and Mike says it’s the best lawn we have. I can tell he doesn't want to part with it.

Anyway, I'm growing peas, beets, radishes, spinach, carrots – and lettuce. Instead of planting a row of lettuce, I sprinkled seeds from a package of Italian salad blend seed mixture (14 varieties) over the top of the beds – all three of them. The seed mixture was old and I didn’t care if the birds ate it. I figured some of it would germinate, and I was right. I have some nice leaf lettuce in my garden. In fact, last trip here I forgot lettuce and we made do nicely with baby spinach and lettuce from the garden. But the problem is – I don’t recognize 14 varieties of salad greens. “Is that a salad green or is that a weed?” I ask myself.

 

And the peas. I have never provided support for the peas. I figured they could just trail over the soil. But, this year I put a certain frog ornament in the tire . . . 

 

 and noticed that the closest pea plant attached to it and was growing more vigorously than the others. 

 

So, on our last trip, I placed some of that flimsy wire fencing in the tire, and it’s amazing how quickly the rest of the peas rose to the occasion. In the regular raised bed (see second photo, top right), I placed small trellises for the peas, and they, too, are happily growing up.

But the beans didn’t germinate and another planting of peas didn’t do well. Perhaps I’ll try again with the beans.

We’re supposed to see a spectacular moon tonight, but alas! -- it’s overcast here and I fear we won’t see the moon at all. KW