GroHappy

Hot, hot, hot

By now there have been all too many stories about the heat that has enveloped the East as well as much of the country. Nature is neither cruel nor kind. It just is. And we have to accept and deal with it. Acceptance has meant determining what we decide to pay attention to in the garden and what must make it on its own. At Green Chimneys this has been a tougher choice as the water pressure in the Children’s Garden is so low only a trickle of water is available at any one time. Irrigation has been ineffective.  So many of the fields have remained parched. The beets, which last year were lush and thick with growth, are just tiny stubs sticking out of the ground. Weeding is a dusty exercise as the roots barely hold on to the dry soil. Last week the temperatures were in the 90s and peaked over 100. We tried to work in the mornings but by noon it was just too hot and we decided to give up any efforts to weed or work in the garden. Better to stay inside with air-conditioned comfort.

At home, I had similar choices to make but decided to fight the elements by watering and weeding. More watering than anything else. The plants that are the most unforgiving in this climate are the flower boxes containing annuals as well as our indoor potted plants that take up residence on our balcony for the summer. They need watering sometimes twice a day, particularly if they are out in the sun. But most plants can take a deep every-other-day watering and get along nicely. The only solace in this type of climate is that the slugs have burrowed deep into the ground, leaving my greens and other plants alone.

I have focused more on the flowering plants and the vegetables as their production (and beauty) are more needy of water than the trees or large bushes like my rhododendrons. These denizens are used to long periods without water and can tolerate it without much fuss. The same cannot be said of the hydrangeas, butterfly bushes, tomatoes and squashes whose blossoms will either droop or drop without the needed hydration.

But I haven’t minded watering too much as it gives me a chance to think about the day ahead (or behind) in a quiet way. I can look carefully at all my different plants to see how they are doing and if they need a nip here or if an errant poison ivy or grape vine plant has taken root somewhere in my yard. Watering was one of the ways I become more enthused about gardening decades ago as it became my balm after difficult and long days in the office. Rather than soak my liver in alcohol or my family with rude comments, I retreated to the garden and relaxed with a watering can and hose. I quickly become human and able to care for my family.

Most days I spend between 60 and 90 minutes watering. Last Wednesday because of some travel, I spent nearly 4 hours getting my plants wet. With a pouring rain last night, the first in weeks, we have finally got a break  as I woke up to a cool temperature of 62 degrees and soaked soil. I don’t have to water for at least a day or two. And now I have some time to harvest. The tomatoes have started to come in, the potatoes are ready to dig out and I need to pull some blueberries off the bushes.

Berry days

One of the more delicious harvests are berries. My wife claims that I must have been a bear in a prior life as I devour anything with berry added to it. For us the berry season starts with strawberries during the first week of June. Strawberries have always been spotty as they require almost perfect conditions to reach their potential. After popping out from a bed of straw in the winter, you hope that they were not killed off by the feet of snow piled on their bed over the winter. Then as they awaken and green up, the tiny white flowers express themselves and soon after tiny rock-hard berries form. Then you wait. Impatiently.

Some years the crop is a total wash as excessive rain and clouds ruin everything that nature has teed up. Other years everything is perfect and each morning a crop of ripe berries hang on the vine, ready to pick. This season was a little of both as the first week of picking was perfect with nearly a quart of berries coming off the vines every day. Each morning we stuffed ourselves with fresh, sweet berries of the like money can’t buy. And then the rains came and with them slugs and rotted berries. We were able to salvage a few but their taste and appearance paled to those of a week before. And then the season was over.

But with more berries to come, we can’t be too sad.

Next were the raspberries. We didn’t plant any of these, but a few shrubs took up residence on a southern corner of the property unnoticed until a year or two ago when they started to crowd out the forsythia. We decided to let the plants fight it out; it appears for now the raspberries won. But this variety of raspberry, unlike the patch on our northern boarder, is much more difficult to harvest.  First, the berry is guarded by a stem with small, sharp and frequent thorns; a cultivar I could do without. To remove the berry you have to squeeze the berry, not too hard, to remove it from its receptacle. It gives fruit nearly a month ahead of the other raspberries on the property. Unlike the other raspberries we have, this raspberry has a more concentrated and sweet flavor making it worth the risk of getting thorned while harvesting.

And this year we have started to come into our own blueberries with the bushes I planted three years ago. They struggle somewhat as I continue to amend the soil to drop the pH to the acid levels that they love. But despite the soil, this year we have five bushes that are giving us nice quantities of berries. I learned my lesson last year as I did not net the bushes. Over the course of a weekend, all the berries, ripe and otherwise, were stripped from the bushes. I did not make that mistake this year as all the bushes were veiled as would be a pristine bride.

We selected a variety of blueberry cultivars so that we would (theoretically) get berries from July through late August and so far the bushes are delivering what they should. One bush is almost empty of berries as we have been picking it every other day and another has groups of tiny white berries looking to mature.

And as these blueberries come in, so have another set of raspberry bushes. This patch is thick with fruit and it takes only a few minutes to fill a pint container. And we are still waiting for the blackberries to come in.

Last year I planted five thorn-less blackberry bushes. Their canes struggled last year with the heat but they have come back strongly this year and have started to flower. They should be giving us fruit in two to three weeks.

Picking fruit is one of the ways I have started every morning. I let out the dog and the cats and make my way to different parts of the property with my small plastic basket. In certain times the pickings have been slim and repulsive: a perfect looking strawberry on the top reveals itself to be housing a slug dining on its innards as it excavates a home for the day. Other times it is boundless plenty. But everyday for the past month and a half I have been picking berries.

Berries are often the best reward for the children that I work with at Green Chimney’s. They always want a strawberry or this year a raspberry or blackberry from the patch we planted last year. Perhaps their favorite berry is a gooseberry, one that I don’t have as it has a tart taste that is not a favorite with my family or myself. Ironically, in my last house we had a gooseberry bush, which we used to put up jam, and mulberry trees. I used to love the mulberries in my morning cereal but hated the purple spots that were tracked into the house when the berries hit the driveway by the thousands daily.

I sometimes pine for those other berries but am more than content with our current selection.