GroHappy

A teddy becomes a grizzly

One of the nicest (and sometimes the most frustrating) things about gardening is the unexpected. In the garden, one of the more pleasant experiences that can manifest itself is an opportunistic crop or plant. For instance, this year an ornamental squash started in my bed where I planted Swiss chard in the spring. So far it has delivered 15 squash with at least another 6 on the way in the next few days. At Green Chimneys this year our opportunistic plant is not squash but sunflowers.

Three years ago we planted three different types of sunflowers: Moulin Rogue (all red), Gigantuous (big and yellow) and Ring of Fire (red in the center, yellow on the edges.) But since then we have not planted a single sunflower but we keep getting more and more sunflowers in the garden with each year. This year they were as thick as chickweed and we needed to pull out a lot more than we would have liked to.

But the interesting thing about these sunflowers is that only a few bear any resemblance to their elderly relatives. We have many different shades and configurations of red and yellow sunflowers in the garden because they have been cross-pollinated with a different cultivars for three years running. So a wild variety of flowers has bloomed with different heights, colors and flower configurations.

We have a couple of sunflowers in the garden that are over 12 feet high with a single defiant spike daring the squirrels to climb and eat (like the one to the right). Others have formed big clumps with small, but tall flowers.

But perhaps the strangest was the mutant Teddy Bear sunflower that appeared a few weeks ago. At the top of one of the large clumps, about 8 feet in the air was a Teddy Bear sunflower blossom about the size of a small seedless watermelon.  Teddy Bear sunflowers grow to a maximum height of two feet, with a smallish flower. This was not your typical teddy bear: it’s a grizzly.

“This must have cross pollinated with a Teddy Bear that was planted in the barrels down by the administration building [about a half mile away],” said Tracy. “It’s pretty cool looking.” Tracy and I agreed to try and save the seed of this big flower so that we could see what its offspring will look like next year.

 

The old bamboo

At Green Chimneys I have a pretty packed day: eight sessions with 11 students between 9 am and 3 pm once a week. Though Tracy thought I was mad to agree to such a schedule, I had a simple reason: I rarely ever get to deliver all the sessions. Between absences, doctor appointments, special events, etc. someone is always dropping out.

Last week I found myself with some time on my hands and I didn’t feel like weeding (I had spent the previous day doing that in my garden.) Next to the barn there was a pile of bamboo that Tracy had ordered to build some trellises for squash and frames to net the corn. A few scraps were on the side. I picked a scrap up and for some reason wondered if I could build a flute.

So I took out my Swiss Army knife and started the process. I opened the saw and cut off an end so that the stick was about a foot long with one end open and the other end plugged. I brushed off the end against the ground and opened up an awl that was on the knife. I picked a random spot near the plugged end of the bamboo and started to apply pressure. By turning the awl back and forth, a hole started to form. Soon I had a hole that was large enough to blow across.

I put on my best flautist face and blew. Nothing. Perhaps a few fingering holes would help. After I bore in a few holes I took another shot at it. Nothing. As I had no idea what I was doing, I wasn’t too bothered. I then looked up.

One of the boys in Tracy’s class had quietly walked over to me and was staring at me and my “flute.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m attempting to make a flute.”

“Does it work?”

“Let’s see.”

I then gave the flute my biggest blow and best sour-lemon face. Out of the end a loud, ear-splitting shrill noise emerged. I had built a flute. I then plugged the far end with my finger and a different sound emerged.

“That is so cool,” said Ted. “Can I make one?”

By that time the other boys in Tracy’s class had defected over to my patch of the garden and were also interested. “How about me? “And me,” said two other boys. I looked over to Tracy and she shrugged her shoulders. So I told the boys we could all make a flute but we would have to do it one at a time as I had only a single knife. I then told them to select a piece of bamboo.

“But think about what you want because the larger the piece of bamboo you choose, the lower the sound will be for the flute you make.”

One student asked, “Why is that?” So I then started to talk to them about the physics of sound and why some noises have a high pitch while others do not. I worked with each of them to build a flute while I explained the principle of how a flute worked. They were careful as I showed them how to use a knife and were quiet and patient as we built different flutes. By the end of class everyone had a flute in hand and smile on their face. No one cared that the sound was that good, but they were all able to get a tweet out of their homemade flutes.

After they left I apologized to Tracy for Shanghaiing her class. “Oh no. What you did was great. You were teaching them to be careful. Giving them math lessons as well as music. It was great. Anyway there was lots of male bonding going on and I can’t compete with that. So why try?”

I thanked Tracy for her understanding and looked at the pile of bamboo next to the table. I picked out a nice piece for myself and thought I would have another go at it during the week. Perhaps I will be able to make something that humans, rather than dogs can hear.

Blowing (away) your own horn (worm)

One of nature’s paradoxes is the inherent beauty of things that are deadly. Wild white berries on shrubs or trees should rarely (if ever) be eaten. The lush almost tropical leaves of New England poison ivy should never be touched.  Never look directly into the sun during an eclipse.

So the other day when I was looking through my tomatoes I noticed that the top leaves were all gone. Too high for the groundhog, whose population I have eliminated (I believe based on the lack of recent damage.) What could it be? Looking more closely, I discovered little brown mounds on the lower leaves. Must be some type of creature but what?

As I fingered through the plants I nearly touched this long green, brightly colored caterpillar. It was beautiful. It had a neon green body with white and yellow stripes and dots on the side the looked liked a series of eyes. But what was it? I showed it to my wife, who quickly perused one of our many bug books and identified it as a tomato hornworm, which is one of the few bugs that will eat tomato leaves.

Now I had just about enough of things trying to attack my garden (see prior groundhog posts) and upon reading up on these bugs I quickly figured out that they are not my friends as they can devour a tomato plant fairly fast. After showing this bad boy to my wife and daughter I trashed it (literally) sending it onto its afterlife. Coming from the school that there is never just one pest in the garden, I went back and looked for any other brothers and sisters. I found a few. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that they were all carrying dozens of braconidae parasitoid wasps. Excitingly I brought a sample to show both my wife and daughter and they were horrified. “That is so gross,” said Sarah. “I’m getting nauseous.” My wife Juana was not too far behind not wanting to see the hornworm and its rice-lice-like passengers. “Get that out of my house!”

So I did retiring them to a patch of ground. In this case you want to keep the tomato hornworm alive as a farm for the wasp larvae, which will kill the worm and then hatch forming a natural, native colony that will keep future worms in check.

I thought about these worms yesterday at Green Chimneys  cutting tomato stalks that were infected with bacterial speck. As I was removing infected leaves with one of my students I noticed that the top of one tomato plant was missing all its leaves. And sure enough, right under the missing leaves was a tomato hornworm full of parasitoid wasps.

“That is sooo cool,” said Beth, who was helping me prune the plants. She had been a bit withdrawn so far and this new discovery brought her out of her shell and put a big smile on her face. Tracy was nearby with a class collecting tomatoes to make her homemade salsa (which is quite delicious.) Never one to waste a garden pest, Tracy sat down and gave her class and my student a quick lesson on tomato hornworms, natural insect controls, and the circle of life for the parasitoid wasp. “It’s kind of like Alien vs. Predator,” said Tracy. “Except that it is for real.”  I found a few more pairings, which I gave to Tracy who was becoming a kind of tomato hornworm earth mother. The kids loved it.

Continuing to no-mow a low-grow lawn, part 5

It has been nearly 11 months since the installation of a new septic field “altered” my yard necessitating a rethinking and landscaping of a good chunk of our property. Remarkably it has emerged more lovely than we could have expected. New beds now holding blueberry and blackberry bushes are maturing, the asters and flowering quinces have filled in nicely and with the exception of one butterfly bush, everything made it through the winter, spring and summer intact. And I have mowed my new lawn fewer times than I have fingers on one hand.

 

As I have mentioned in prior posts, I decided to install a lawn that would require little water, little fertilizer and even less care. Overall it has worked beautifully. Today we have a lush, full and green lawn where mounds of soil, sand and gravel have been replaced with fescue grass and Dutch white clover. Now I have to admit that I perhaps went a bit overboard on the clover. I bought a 1 pound bag for about $8 dollars, mixed it with 40 pounds of play sand and spread it over approximately 6000 square feet of lawn in March. I figured that it would fill in some of the fescue gaps nicely, By the end of May, however, it had taken over a good chunk of my lawn. Ironically I used about 40 pounds of grass seed, costing around $100, to cover the same amount of land.

But I don’t mind. White clover grows to a height of between four and six inches and stops. There is little need to mow it; so far I haven’t. And there have been lots of unexpected benefits and pleasures.

Between our flowers and the clover, we always have bees flying around, pollinating their brains out. While much has been written about colony collapse disorder I have seen little evidence of it on my property as large numbers of bee workers commute in and out of my yard every day. As I walk across the lawn, I notice that I leave a trace footprint much like you would in a freshly fallen snow. You get a fluffy walk that unlike snow will spring back in a short while. And within the clover there is all types of life. You can see the leaves quiver ahead of your movement as some toad, snake or mouse gets out of your way. There is lots of life just beyond where your eye can perceive.

Now clover by itself is probably not a good lawn if you have lots of young children who would pound away on it. It is not supposed to wear well. But I have to admit our lawn held up pretty well at our annual 4th of July Wiffle ball tournament. Only the pitching mound and home plate got worn out and both have nearly recovered.

The fescue has been able to hold its own over the new septic fields, especially where the effluents enter each field. The grass there is thick and lush. After an initial invasion (and removal) of tall grasses that would laugh at my Scotts reel mower, the lawn is well established with few weeds (or at least ones I care about.)

Now we have had a hot and dry summer leaving most lawns looking scorched and brown. My lawn, though hardly trimmed within an inch of its life, is thick, green and indifferent to the heat.

Harvest and sniff

Herbs are not usually ready for harvest in the early spring but a few weeks ago, one of my students and I needed to do a bit of cleaning in the garden and found ourselves in the middle of a smell-a-thon. It was early in the morning with the sun beginning to rise in the garden and melt the light frost, which hung off the plants and Agribon tube tunnels. It was brisk and windless. Selma and I needed to ready a bed for planting that had a patch of wintered-over coriander. Last November we had built a hoop house around the patch as it had self-seeded and looked too good to just let die. Amazingly even after the snow-laded winter, it bounced back in March and was ready for harvest a few weeks ago.

We opened the small hoop next to our Food Pantry row and a giant waft of coriander greeted us. Though chilly outside, within the blanket of the Agribon the coriander was warm and moist.

“How is this possible,” said Selma. “It was just winter a few weeks ago.”

One of the things that has pleased me about our garden at Green Chimneys is how we have been able to turn common wisdom on its head by extending the seasons and times we have been able to work in the garden. From harvesting lettuce in December, to carrots in January, to turnip greens in March, we have been able to show how the earth (and garden) is continuously alive.

With our pruners we cut the bottom of the herb and placed it into a bucket. Selma kept huddled on one side of the hoop as the heat rising from the soil kept her warm. She initially wanted to put on gloves but I told her that it would be more fun to use her bare hands as she would better be able to smell the herbs. She didn’t understand until I told her to smell her hands after a few cuttings. She did and a big smile erupted on her face. I told her that we would be giving the coriander to the kitchen, which would use it for future meals. Our progress was somewhat slow as she kept putting her hands to her nose to take in the fragrance. We were able to harvest a pound of the herb.

After finishing that task, we went to the herb row where we have our perennials including thyme, sage, oregano, mint and lavender. The sun had yet to fully warm this area and a blanket of frost still covered many of the herbs. We needed to trim the thyme, which had escaped its bed and was beginning to enter the walking path.

I told Selma to cut a line with her pruners straight across the bed so that the thyme would appear as a fuzzy line on top of the bed’s rail. The thyme had gotten thick and woody so it was hard for her to get a straight line and she became frustrated quickly. I told her to relax, not worry and to smell some of the different herbs that were in the garden; I gave her some of the thyme she was trying to cut as well as lavender and mint.

“What do they remind you of?” I asked. She could not recall exactly. “This [the lavender] reminds me of home,” she said. “Perhaps your mother or grandmother used to have a perfume that they would wear,” I suggested. “Or maybe a soap that you use or they had at home.” She perked up. “Yes that is it. Could I smell it a bit more?”

I agreed and then we got back to work to cut back the thyme. When her hands became tired, she went back to the lavender for a sniff and remembrance of things past. With this bit of help, Selma was able to work steadily and well. As a reward I gave her a little sprig of lavender to keep. After we finished, we took our buckets of thyme and coriander to the kitchen to be used in a future meal for the school. Selma kept the lavender near her nose for most of the walk.

Developing skills when planting peas and hanging string

In late March it was pea planting time at Green Chimneys as Spring had come early to the garden.  One of the day’s tasks was to plant two rows of peas, each row about 60 feet long. Eventually I would need to hang strings on poles so the peas could climb. One of the challenges when working with children in this area is getting them to plant either seedlings or seeds at a consistent space and depth. While some may believe that this type of rigor is unneeded, I believe that part of horticultural therapy is to persuade the child to tap into his or her intelligence and skill. I have found that when you have high expectations in the garden, they will often be met.

This turned out to be the case when I worked with Sheila to plant peas. When you plant a pea, you need to plant it between 1/2- and 1-inch deep and around 2 inches apart so they do not crowd each other. As I have discovered over the years, most children do not have a good concept of inches and a ruler or tape measure is not a good alternative to use. So what I do is to fabricate a template or tool to help the child.

Looking around the ground I found the perfect tool—A stick, which would serve three purposes.

1) Make a hole.

2) Measure the depth of the hole.

3) Measure the space needed to plant the seeds.

I first cut the stick so that a branch nub was 1/2 inch from the end. By pushing the stick into the ground, Sheila could make a hole for a pea as well as understand how deep to push the stick. I also cut a notch into the stick that was two inches from its other end. I told Sheila that she needed to space the peas far enough apart so that one pea would touch the end of the stick and the other touch the notch.  She nodded and we started to plant.

With jobs like these, I let the child define the work and run the project. I become the helper and she the leader. What has been unusual when the traditional roles are reversed is that the child often wants to redefine the job to become more productive. For instance, when Sheila and I planted peas, I held the peas, she poked a hole in the soil, dropped a pea and then let me cover the pea up with soil.

She soon tired of this and decided instead to poke 10 holes at the same time, fill each with a pea and then move on. She also wanted to hold the peas, leaving me with nothing to do save put soil on top of each pea. With each 10 feet of row, she made subtle but time-saving changes in the job. By the end of our planting time together, I could barely keep up with her as she flew threw the effort and was ecstatic with her progress. We had planted 120 feet of peas in 40 minutes.

“I can’t believe we did all that work in such a short amount of time. That was fun,” said Sheila. 

The same was true a few weeks later. The peas had poked their shoots through the soil and would be ready to grab a string in the next few weeks.  It was time to build a trellis for the peas to latch onto. This exercise was a bit more time consuming as we had to lay out a line, wrap it and attach it to each pole and move on to the next one. Progress was compounded by the fact that the poles were 6 feet high and it was cumbersome to keep the string high and level.

Sheila didn’t make as much progress on this job as she was too short to do it by herself. Thus she depended on me much more than when she was planting peas and was not as inventive in discovering a better and faster way to lay out the lines. We only got lines done for half of one row. I needed to work with other children to finish the job.

One of the other children, Mike, threw himself into the job and discovered a better and faster way to lay out the lines. He formed loops and twisted the twine around the pole with a single deft motion. It was impressive to see him so motivated.

“This is the best thing we have ever done in the garden!” Mike exclaimed.

Ironically, Mike was shorter than Sheila but was able to come up with a more effective method of working. He turned his disadvantage into something he wanted to overcome rather than conquer him. Our time together flew by and before we realized, it was time to return to class.

Mike had done such a good job I rewarded him with a stalk of asparagus and a lemon leaf (sorrel.) He munched on them as we walked back to class happy in his success and looking forward to working in the garden next week.

When students damp off

The idea for this blog and GroHappy are founded on three main principles:

• Happy people are more important than perfect plants
• All gardening/nature activities should be joyful
• There are no failures in the garden

This last point is very important as students (and teachers) can learn and grow from observing the complex interactions between plants and nature. If you are honest with your self, you come to accept that the garden is full of unanticipated surprises, both good and bad. While this point has never been lost on me after playing in the garden for decades, it has been harder to accept as a fledgling horticultural therapist.

My success stories, which have been written about on this blog, are also counterbalanced by those with less uplifting conclusions. I’m not discussing random incidents when a child becomes recalcitrant or willful. Nor events in the garden when a student decides they don’t want to work in the garden in a given day. Or when a crop fails (see GroHappy rule three.) Such happenings are part of the ebb and flow of the mentor/student relationship that comes with the territory. But there are a few times when students will damp off, much like some of the spinach I planted less than a month ago.

One of my favorite students is Seymour, whom I wrote about in a prior post. Seymour is an unusually bright child with a variety of challenges that Green Chimney’s is addressing. We had hit it off from the start as he was in love with carnivorous plants and I have pretty good knowledge of them as I propagate them. This joint interest formed an initial bond and intense working relationship unlike that I had had with other children. Seymour was driven: it seems that nothing was too challenging for him as we worked through the garden with a variety of chores. His end goal: a carnivorous plant that he could call his own.

This hard work and good behavior culminated in his receiving a South African sundew plant after working successfully with me for three months. I remember his pride and happiness when I gave him the plant and built a shelf for him in his room so he could place it near a window. Seymour was doing really well and appeared responsible enough to take care of an exotic plant. It pleased me to be able to give Seymour this reward.

Then something happened. Seymour changed.

After the New Year, I couldn’t work with Seymour anymore as he had become a discipline problem. I would go to pick him up in class and he would not be there. “Seymour is having some problems,” I was told. “He can’t garden today.”

This continued for the rest of January until I was ready to leave for vacation. When I came back, Seymour was worse and had been transferred to a class for students with more intense challenges. No more jobs for Seymour. No more gardening.

I see Seymour on campus and every time he comes up to me asking, “Mr. Keller, when are you coming to pick me up for my garden job?”

“You don’t have a garden job anymore Seymour.”

“Why not?”

“You tell me. A gardening job is a privilege. Have you been behaving in school, staying out of trouble so you can be rewarded with a job?” Silence. “And what happened to the sundew I gave you? That was your baby.”

“They took it away from me.”

“Well there must have been a good reason Seymour. But I’ll make a deal with you, if you can turn things around, do your schoolwork, take care of your room and get along with your fellow students, I will then see if you can get back your old job.”

We have this conversation every week. For now, Seymour is not getting any better.

While this is the most extreme example, there are other smaller ones reminding me of the children’s fragility. A few weeks ago, George and I had been planting peas. Everything seemed fine; he worked well in the garden and was happy to be doing such a great job. A few hours later I found him curled up leaning against a wall crying inconsolably while two adults were trying to bring him out of it. Another student I recently started with missed his last two sessions; I discovered that he needed to be taken to an acute-care facility.

One of the wonderful aspects of horticultural therapy is that it takes its participants to very different places. The garden is a healing place that gives children a different and positive place to learn and grow.  Every so often, however, I am reminded that life is no garden for all of my children. 

Unexpected consequences

There are days when you work with children in the garden that the garden presents itself with few good projects. Harvesting is over, weeds are in abeyance, planting is not an issue, clean up is finished for now. That’s when you need to be innovative in horticultural therapy and come up with projects that will both teach and excite. I came to such a place a few weeks back when the weather was temperate and the sun was shining.

As the weather was nice I thought it would be a good opportunity to take my charges out for a walk of the grounds and go on a scavenger hunt. I have done this in the past and it has been a big success. In this exercise, I give each child a clipboard with a piece of paper having the heading, “Finding Flora: Things in the Garden,” and the letters of the alphabet split into two columns; 26 possibilities in total.

I tell children that Flora is the goddess of flowers according to Roman mythology. And while she is more appropriately associated with spring, we can search around the garden for her influence. The goal is to find something, preferably a plant, for all letters A to Z.

I like to do this with the students as it hits all the different types of goals we have in horticultural therapy.  It is good exercise as we spend an hour walking around the campus and bending over to examine different aspects of nature; it also helps them manage small motor skills through writing on a clipboard. It facilitates social interaction as conversation flows freely and I find that with these types of exercises children can let down their guard and confide in you. It helps them emotionally as a walk in the garden often has a calming effect. And finally it forces them to use their mind: Once you find ‘grass’ for the letter G, finding ‘garlic’ or ‘goat’ doesn’t count; you also have to spell and examine nature with an open mind.

Because the community of children I work with is very diverse, I expect to get a range of responses. But in this case, I was thrown for a loop as my kids reacted in a very different way than I would have anticipated.

I didn’t expect much enthusiasm from my first child of the day. Adam (not his real name) is a quiet and reserved child with an inherent sadness about him. So as I put clipboard in hand and we started to find and account for different types of plants, he responded as I expected.

Within a few minutes, however, he asked if we could during our travels go to the wildlife area of Green Chimneys to see the birds of prey including owls, turkey vultures, bald eagles and a condor.

“Not a problem Adam. If fact I thought that we would need to go there to fill out our list.”

Adam immediately brightened up and became very focused on the task at hand and combed the garden and surrounding areas for different plants to fill in his sheet. At the end of the hour he got 24 out of the 26 letters, missing only Z and Q. I took him back to his class a happy child.

The next child, Ben (not his real name) is very bright and always enthusiastic about working in the garden regardless of task. He looks for praise constantly and will work hard to obtain it. I figured with him that this would be a great treat. But when I told him what we were doing, he gave me a hard look.

“Why am I doing this? This sounds stupid. This is not a job.”

I was taken back as this type of rebuke was not something I expected, particularly from Ben. “Ben this is a job. It’s an exercise that will help you better understand what is in the garden.”

“No it’s not. It’s not a job. You are making me do this because I suck,” he said becoming increasingly agitated.

“No, no that is not it at all. Think of this as training,” I said. “When you have a real job there are days that you have to go for training to learn a new skill or refresh an old one. You should think of this in the same way as it will help you remember and identify all the different plants we have in the garden and organize them in your mind.”

Ben thought for a moment and then said, “Well I understand but still don’t think it is a real job. I guess I will try.”

“Good Ben and next week we will be harvesting some of the Swiss chard and lettuce in the garden.”

He then brightened up a bit and in 30 minutes got 18 out of the 26 possible words.

My next child, Charles (not his real name) never got into the exercise. Like Ben he didn’t think it was a real job and was sullen our entire time together not paying attention or even trying. He only got 9 out of 26, though he could spell asparagus and strawberry correctly. In fact, after our exercise he complained to teachers and others about how I wasn’t doing a good job. It took me a couple of weeks of closely working with him to get his trust back.

The day’s experience puzzled me as I couldn’t figure out these kids. A prior batch in the spring had loved the exercise. This day I was successful with one child but others saw the task as a punishment (rather than a reward) or at least a change of venue. Perhaps it was the change of venue that was the issue; children in this facility don’t like to be surprised with an altered routine. When they go to work with me, it is typical to dig in the garden and pull weeds or transplant lettuce seedlings. It is not normal to hold a pen and pad and think about plants. Perhaps they associated it more with schoolwork, which they want to get away from when they are in the garden. I’m not sure but when I try this again, perhaps I will need to give the kids a heads up or think of some type of reward to properly motivate them.

I’ll have to take these things into account as I plan winter activities, which tend to be inside and are much less physical.

Final harvests

The harvests are getting leaner at Green Chimneys as the sun as well as the temperatures have dropped. Our Food Pantry Row continues to produce, but at a much slower rate than summer when we were able to deliver food at least every other week. We still have carrots, lettuce, radishes, chard and turnip greens in the plot that need to be harvested. We planted the row in late August and we are into our second harvest of the season. We were able to harvest an additional batch of lettuce and the radishes were ready. They are the French Breakfast variety, which has a shape that is unusual to most of the children. The child who pulled the radishes was amazed by the shape.

“That can’t be a radish. Radishes are round and all red.”

“Some are Arthur (not his real name). But like people and animals they come in all different shapes and colors.”

“No way!”

“Way! Most radishes are red and round but there are white ones, purple ones and pink ones. Some are round and some are long like a carrot.”

Arthur hoped that we could grow some of these other varieties next year. I told him that I would try to get some purple radishes for next season.

At the same time we made a second cutting of the lettuce. Harvesting lettuce is more difficult than radishes as we want to preserve the roots to get additional growth and harvests. When we harvest lettuce I ask the children to cut the lettuce at least an inch above the ground. Many of the children have a difficult time being that precise and often either cut the plant too low or pull out an entire plant. One of my kids upon pulling out a couple of lettuce plants asked why does it matter.

“You may not realize it but lettuce is a type of grass,” I said. “Whenever you cut grass it grows back. The same it true of lettuce. If we pulled out the entire plant we would get only one harvest. This way we can get two or three, which will feed more people.”

The student understood, but it was still hard for him to control his motions so that the plants were undamaged. We moved to another activity.

The turnip greens as well as the Swiss chard will still need another month to reach harvest size. The lettuce should recover by mid-December for yet another cutting. I’m not sure if the carrots will be ready but if they aren’t I’ll just leave them in the ground to harvest in March or April. The Reemay hoop house we built over the row has really helped all of the vegetables grow and stay alive through the nightly frosts. Some of the kids are wondering what we are doing in the garden this late in the season. I can’t wait to bring them in December. Maybe there will even be snow.

Let there be light

As a gardener, there are many things that can be done to ensure that whatever we plant grows well. We can recondition the soil with compost, manure and other enhancements; we can plant items best suited to the environment; and we can tend to our gardens faithfully. But the one thing we can’t do is to get more light than our location delivers us. And for me that is my biggest challenge as my house is on a heavily wooded north-facing ridge.

What that means is that most of my property resides in shade throughout the growing season. In the summer the sun sets behind the trees around 5 pm even though it doesn’t get dark until 9 pm. The only saving grace I have for my vegetable plot is that it resides on raised beds on a greenhouse foundation that was built over 100 years ago when my house was a barn and the surrounding area a hunting estate; it gets the most sun on my property. When it was built, the hills were barren of trees and used for grazing.  But now, with 100 years of growth, maples, ashes, oaks, birches, and cherry trees have replaced the grasses of the past to cast deep, dark shade. For the rest of my gardens, my wife and I have resigned ourselves to planting shade-lovers like hostas, astilbes, bleeding hearts and the like; we have experimented with more sun-loving plants in the few spotty areas that get more sun than shade.

So in the summer time, the sun is high in the sky delivering lots of energy and light to my garden so the tomatoes can swell in the light of the day and the potatoes in the dark of the soil. But a funny thing happens around Labor Day: my vegetable garden goes dark. A small greenhouse I put up last year no longer needs to be covered with shade netting. I can’t sit among my plants and bathe in the sun. The beds don’t need to be watered nearly as frequently.

In prior years, this was not an issue (or even an observation) but last year I decided to start a 3/4 season vegetable garden. I planted all my seeds when I was supposed to but between the carnage of slugs and the lack of light, it was a bust. This year things have improved a bit so that I am getting reasonable yields, but my plants still lack the size of those in other plots such as those of Daphne’s Dandelions as well as the Children’s Garden where I work with children. I am hoping my observations of this year and some experiments I will try next year will improve my harvest yet again.

Now I have light as nearly all the leaves have dropped off the deciduous trees that cover my hill. This light is a wonderful strong light that pours not only into my garden but into our dining room where my wife and I often have lunch from now into late April when the leaves of spring come between us and the sun. I’m hoping the greens will react well to this new stimulus and grow enough to feed us for the remainder of the year. If not, I have a fall back: many of the varieties I have planted winter-over so I’ll just get a good start on next spring.