GroHappy

Digging out the garden

With over three feet of snow in less than a week, there is little time to think about gardening. My wife and I are from the school that likes to make many small trips outside to incrementally shovel rather than waiting for all the snow to fall so that it must be removed in one shot. But that is what happened last week as nearly two feet of snow was dumped in our area between 10 pm on Tuesday night and 7 am Wednesday morning. There was nothing incremental about it. Just large blades full of snow that were slowly and carefully removed.

When we go outside, there is a silence that is unique. There are no cars, no planes, nothing. Not even a barking dog.  The snow deadens all sound so the only thing you hear is your own breathing and the scrape of the shovel on the ground. At night it seems even more quiet and spiritual as the spotlights reflect on the falling snow. It is a magical time.

There is little time to reflect on that as my driveway and garden need to have vast quantities of snow removed. For me this is ironic as for once I had a good start this year on the fall (and winter) garden with us harvesting salads for two to three days a week through Thanksgiving. But then the cold hit and the raised beds froze up. And when we started to get a bit of a thaw, we started to get hit with snow every week.

It’s been a battle to keep the beds uncovered and this week I gave up trying to keep the back hoop clear, which has delicate little rosettes of miner’s lettuce growing nicely; at least they were last time I saw them in mid December. This winter’s experiment will be how well a hoop house can hold back snow.

The trouble with this much snow is that there is no place to throw it anymore. Three sides of my greenhouse have four feet of snow snuggled up next to them with over two feet on the roof. I’m hoping it will melt down over the week. It won’t.

One of the things I learned over the years is to leave the garden gate open before its snows because if you don’t and more than 6 inches fall, you can’t get it open. So I pry the gate open and put yet more snow on top of the strawberry beds as well as those that don’t have any vegetables growing. One of the beds is being used to winter-over some bushes I didn’t have time to plant this fall. We’ll see how well they do under five feet of snow.

It seems futile but I carefully remove layer by layer of snow from the cold frame and hoop house. They both have yet to collapse. The hoop house clips have held on to the Agribon and protected the now desiccated Swiss chard, romaine lettuce, beets, and assorted greens. My salads still may recover though it is hard to believe as both structures are bracketed by two feet of snow on all sides. With the sun and temperatures low and the frames pointing north, they will get little light or heat for weeks to come.

During the past week the neighborhood birds have ravaged the feeders as the snow has long since covered any food on the ground. The birds are perched in a nearby Japanese Maple like so many Christmas ornaments. Bobwhites, cardinals, pine siskins, chickadees, doves, finches, sparrows, bluebirds and the appropriately named snowbirds are just some of the ever changing decorations. They appear much larger than they are as they fluff their clothing to stay warm. The woodpeckers and blue jays don’t perch with the others; they have their own places to go.

They queue on the tree, which is near a feeder, as they wait their turn to grab a few sunflower seeds before flying back. It is a chaotic and un-orderly process as the larger aggressor birds take their time feeding, scaring other competitors away. So the smaller birds wait and bide their time hoping for a chance to grab a few seeds so they can survive another cold day.

A (relatively) cold winter to bicycle and bird watch

We fled the North nearly three weeks ago to embrace the warmth of the South, in particular the Florida Keys, but like many snowbirds have discovered that we need to crowd together to stay warm rather than luxuriate alone in a humid, warm climate. Don’t get me wrong, mid-60 degree temperatures (during the day) beats the sub-freezing temperatures back at home and the feet of snow that have been dumped over the last few weeks.

My shoveling children show me no sympathy as I complain that I need to wear a sweatshirt while in my shorts during the last few weeks in the Keys. And while it has warmed up over the weekend to the high 70s, I’m keeping a sweatshirt nearby just in case.

Regardless, this respite from the Northern cold has had a therapeutic effect upon me and has had me itching to start my flats of greens when we get back mid-March.  I brought down a handful of gardening magazines and made some last minute orders from Johnny’s and Territorial. I will have the full complement of seeds needed to start up early greens in my beds, which are still pretty frozen according to my kids. I can only hope that the recent spate of 40 degree days has warmed the earth a bit so when I return the soil will accept a seed easily with a simple finger push rather than a hammer and chisel.

But now that environment seems distant as I bicycle every day and watch over the myriad birds that are in the area. Red-winged blackbirds, pelicans, blue and white herons, ibis, egrets, osprey are but a few of the wonderful fowl that we get to see every day. While all the plants are green, to color blind me they have little difference though my wife begs to differ. Bromeliads, mother-in-law’s tongue, palm and coconut trees, etc. It all seems too much the same. To me the Northern garden has much more diversity and interest than what I am finding in the Keys. One of the reasons, I suspect, is that the Keys get less than 20 inches of rain a year and have a thin layer of sandy soil sitting on an old coral reef. We of New England get north of 50 inches of rain a year and often have plentiful amounts of compost and topsoil. This contrast tells me why the North in certain ways has much more gardening potential than in the Keys. (When it is warm, of course.)

There are some plants attempting to flower out. A few hibiscus are making a show with orange and red flowers getting ready for pollination. A few weeks ago, most of the leaves of this shrub were shriveled and few buds were left because of the cold snap. Now many of the plants have swollen buds ready to bloom.

Bees are starting to make their rounds near these shrubs and a few smaller trees with yellow flowers (that I could not identify). We went to a local nautical flea market over the weekend and between countless sellers of rods, reels and chum containers found a local apiary that sells the most delicious honey. Bees-n-the-Keys sells the the honeys of Southern Florida including Black Mangrove, Key Lime, Tupelo, Jamaica Dogwood, Florida Holly, Sea Grape and Mango. We went for the Key Lime.

And of course there are the wonderful sunsets. Our cottage is on the bay side of the Keys and we get to congregate with others who share the grounds with us most evenings in a salutation to the sun. Every night it is different and the sun sets a minute or two later each day leading us to the end of our vacation and the beginning of our spring garden back up North.

Harvesting the winter garden

I was hoping that this winter would be milder so that I could get some greens from the garden, but with night time temperatures in the single digits and the beds as hard as rock, nothing is growing. Technically, little grows in the winter garden as it is merely a refrigerator for certain plants holding onto life. Harvesting, rather than growing, is what winter gardening is all about.

Unlike the prior few years, this year’s Connecticut winter weather has been picture perfect—if your picture is the Bing Crosby/Fred Astaire movie, Holiday Inn. Since before Christmas, there has been snow on the ground and every day over the past week has come yet another thin layer of white that we have to sweep or shovel away. It has not been above freezing for over a week and any signs of vegetative life outside the house are muted by the snow and cold. For my hoop houses, any kind of real growth starts in mid-Feb. and kicks in big time in March when the beds become soft and the sun is higher in the sky. I’m just hoping that at least some of the greens will winter over so that when a thaw comes I will be able to harvest a few.

Unlike the other three seasons where you can plant and harvest, winter permits you harvest and think about what you will plant in the seasons to come (at least outside.) Perhaps the largest harvest now for many gardeners is the unending stream of seed and plant catalogues that present themselves in the mailbox daily like so many welcome wildflowers that pop up unexpectedly.

For those of us encased in snow, perusing through Johnny’s,Territorial, or Bluestone takes us away from the cold and back into the garden we want to be in rather than the garden we find ourselves looking at from the warmth of our homes. Now some of us will cheat nature a bit by getting grow lights and starting seedlings in a heated area. In fact, that is something we will start this week at Green Chimney’s with the children as it is too chilly to be outside. We will grow mini greens in January and in February start to plant for the spring garden with the hope of being able to transplant outside in March. 

But March seems far away as the rhododendrons are fully desiccated, their leaves sadly drooping to survive the chill. Our dog Daisy, is missing the squirrels, who are in torpor and not romping around the yard looking for nuts and other foods. The only real activity comes from the finches, woodpeckers, sparrows, blue jays, snowbirds, titmice and other birds that are visiting the feeders in record numbers requiring me to refill them every day. We cut some greens from the firs to spruce up a vase of forced tulips that sit in the middle of our dining room table. The paperwhites have finally bloomed indoors and the amaryllis are starting to show some growth. Time to read another gardening book.

I like to watch: Gardenless on the Garden Isle

 

After a season of wet, fungus-rich weather, my past week in Kauai has been nothing short of a blessing. Morning walks on the beach, beautiful sunrises and -sets, rain only in the evening for brief, short periods. Paradise. But after a while I feel restless. Like something important is missing. As we were walking one morning, my wife put her finger on it.

“You miss your garden, don’t you?”

At first I thought she was crazy. After all I’m in paradise with mangos and papayas falling off the trees, hibiscus in bloom, and palm trees swaying in the wind. But after seeing the local gardener raking up some leaves I realized she was right. I missed my weeds. And my fungi. And the slugs.

Taking a vacation in the middle of the summer for a gardener is like a politician taking time off in the middle of October right before an election. It is the busiest of seasons and ill-advised. But gardens cannot be put ahead of familial needs so we make compromises and go away. And we fantasize.

So rather than get our fingers dirty we imagine what it would be like. We are like Chauncey Gardiner, in Jerzy Kosinski’s book “Being There,” who “likes to watch” when we cannot get our hands dirty. As we drive north near Hanalei and see the taro fields in the distance I imagine what it must be like to work the fields for the nine months it takes to grow this tuberous crop. Or in the south passing by the fields of Kauai Coffee with ripening beans. Or in a small backyard garden filled with tomatoes and squash with banana trees in the front lawn.

Ironically Kauai’s best crop seems to be chickens and roosters, which know not any difference between dawn and any other hour as they crow whenever they feel like it. Like any invasive species, they have created a strong foothold creating entrepreneurial opportunities for some. 

Just when I am beginning to feel as if I am going through severe gardening withdrawal, I see a slug cross my path on the way to the pool. Wow! I can’t wait to get home.