GroHappy

The Day of the Dandelion

With more rain in the last two weeks than we had received in the prior three months, the weeds have decided to make a mad dash to maturity. Small and stunted garlic mustards shot up overnight. Dandelions that had been hugging the soil decide to flower and then seed in a matter of days. And don’t even get me started on the thousands of maple trees that are now growing on my lawn.

So this year, weeding has taken on more urgency as I hope to curtail next year’s crop by removing this year’s crop of flowers and seeds. For me it seems that the dominant weeds rotate over the years. In the beginning, the focus was on poison ivy where some vines were like adjunct limbs on my neighboring ashes and maples. But after cutting and pulling and spraying, I was able to rid most of the property of this undesirable ivy.

Next on the list was garlic mustard. On Long Island where I used to live, I never saw garlic mustard and when I encountered it here I thought it quite pretty, particularly in the first year where its large heart-shaped leaves provided a nice ground cover in my more barren areas. Not realizing it was a biennial, I did not know that its year-two form of a spike with small white flowers would multiply ad infinitum. So I have spent the last decade coming to an acceptable coexistence with this European native.

The same has been true of plantain, chickweed, dock, and other opportunistic refugees that have invaded my space. And the dandelion has maintained a balance not requiring me to care too much about its place in my gardens. Until now.

For the first 10 years of so, dandelions were the food stuffs of our rabbit collection so when food was collected, a bit of simple weeding and feeding worked hand in hand. After our rabbits died, the dandelion population held constant appearing to know that if they popped up, they would be dug up and fed to the bunnies.

This year, however, they have emerged from the lawn and gardens with unrestrained vigor and brazenness. They are in the blueberry and strawberry patches. They cover the lawn. They grow in cracks in the stone walls, They grow in the gravel parking space. In short, they are everywhere.

Now when you weed these bad boys, you have to focus on the flowers that have been pollinated and about to or have already gone to seed.  Each flower can have nearly 200 seeds so you can see what you are up against. So over the course of a week, I am scurrying like a bee from one about-to-disperse-seeds dandelion to another. I sometimes think that they are conspiring against me practicing floral camouflage. As I sweep through a patch of flowers I could swear that some decide to seed and scatter the minute I am no longer facing them. Are they somehow communicating with each other?

It may not be so far-fetched as an article in the May 2012 issue of Scientific American suggests. Plants apparently send biochemical markers out when threatened. Could plants that are being pulled out by their roots be sending smelling screams to their peers? I don’t know but I’m just going to keep pulling.

Vacation from gardening, sort of

When it is February in Connecticut, there are few gardening tasks at hand as the soil is cold and the only thing that warms the soul is the prospect of new growth pushing through the ground in the next month or so. In the next week I will be starting flats of early greens and other vegetables. Flowers and warm-weather vegetables a few weeks later. As my horticultural activities are in stasis, I thought it was a good time to head down south where I can get a jump on a farmer’s tan and enjoy the already green landscape.

If we were having a spring-like winter up north, the south was experiencing a summer-like winter with temperatures in the mid-80s. The grass was a lush green, trees in full bloom and sun lovers in all manners of undress. The wind off the ocean felt warm with the slightest smell of seaweed.

So like a long dormant perennial I soaked up the sun. I was a plant, not a gardener. This would not last as eventually the siren song of working in a garden would prove to be too enticing.

One morning at my friend Brian’s house in the Florida Key’s, he mentioned that he needed some help cleaning out and cutting down vegetation around his fish pond, which had been depleted of fish by a resident frog and crab.  This sounded like a nice way to spend the morning so naturally I volunteered. At first I thought just a few small trees and bushes would need to be removed. When my friend got out the chain saw I realized that the job would become much larger.

When you live in the north you don’t realize that potentially invasive nature of a Southern garden. Like the ruins of Tikal or Chichén-Itzá if you stop cutting down foliage, it will quickly overrun your space. That is kind of what happened in my friend’s fish pond. He planted a couple of papyrus plants in his pond and within a few years, it had spread and taken over. An agave plant that was taken from a tiny houseplant was now the size of a small elephant with porcupine sharp spikes. Trees that started as sticks a few years back, shot up 10 feet high with tuffs of leaves on their tops shading everything below. And finally a neighbor's tree with spiked bark hung over the fence completing the darkening of this area.

It started simply enough with a few small trees being removed with little problem. It didn’t appear to be too hot and the prospect to work outside was appealing to me with my exposed snow-colored legs reflecting the sun like the White Sands in New Mexico. Soon I was up on a ladder cutting down limbs with a chain saw with sawdust falling in my eyes and beginning to coat my increasingly sweaty shirt. Within an hour my skin was covered with creamy, yellow dust that I hoped that I was not allergic to as it became pasty on my epidermis. You never know in the topics.

With each toppled branch came the opportunity to cut another. And another, And another. Little thorns were sticking in my arm like severed stingers from a swarm of angry bumblebees. Razor-like leaves etched fine lines in my legs and arms: the work of Nature’s tattooist.   I was a stinky, sweaty, bloody mess. It was great! Soon we had cleared out enough brush to fill half of Brian’s back patio area and opened the pond to sun it hadn’t seen in years. Brian was happy with the results and said that he could easily muck out the pond, evicting it of its unwelcome tenants.

Fine by me. I was happy to finish a morning’s gardening. Time for a shower and beer.

Recalling a blackout and October snow

Writing by candlelight and fire evokes images of Abe Lincoln or Ben Franklin recording their thoughts at the end of a long day. But there is little else I was able to do after days without power finding myself alone tending a fire to keep the house warm and the pets fed. This trip back to an off- (or non-existent) grid New England was caused by a freak October snow storm that dumped nearly 18 inches of snow on my back yard. Only now, have I had the chance to post after more than a week of cleaning and catching up.

Initially pretty with large fluffy flecks covering the ground and plants, the snow became more and more menacing as the trees and bushes started to groan and sag against the weight of the snow. By 4:30 in the afternoon nearly 10 inches had dropped in a little over 4 hours and with it many a branch. The progression was fairly consistent: a slow and constant drop of a limb until it stopped moving downward. Nothing save more snow. It then became a waiting game. Could or would the tree be able to hold its own against the snow? Would the snow stop soon? How much would break or crack off?

Sometimes the branch released its cargo with a whoosh and thump like flour from a bag. It then shot upward to catch more snow and start its slow, downward movement again. Other times the snow was liberated only after a branch snapped with a large crack followed by a thud. This spectacle was repeated all evening until the morning when all was white and silent. Everything was broken and we were without power for nearly an entire week.

The butterfly bushes were crushed and laid over on their sides. The hydrangea snapped into pieces with their dried flowers smashed and spread all over. The Montauk daisies were crushed. The ornamentals fared the worse, particularly the Japanese maples.

All of the maples save one lost large chunks of their upper canopies. Like so many toothpicks the branches were scattered with jagged edges some hanging by a thin sliver of bark or wood. One of the trees split into three parts; one for each main leader that rose near the ground from a common base. It was splayed helpless among the pachysandra resting between a concrete Buddha and a crescent of azaleas. It seemed hopeless.

But the next week brought rapidly melting snow (though there is still a small pile in my yard) and progress. The damage forced me to cut back bushes and trees much sooner than I would have. Remarkably I was able to cable the trisected maple together with the base fitting neatly and cleanly together.  I started to split wood every day as I burned through 1/3rd a cord in just a week. With each exhausting day came repair and the a view that this natural pruning process was not as bad as it could have been.

 

One surprise was how well my fall greens held up. Covered with Agribon and glass, my cold frames withheld the weight of the snow and saved the lettuces as well as the Swiss chard. My carrots emerged from the snow with tops still green and looking well. Even the herb garden suffered little damage save a few burnt leaves.

Last week I harvested a salad to have with my dinner. It was delicious.

Building a program—Part 2: Finishing the back

Putting up a deer fence was both an end and starting point. It was the end of the carnage by the deer. If the snow didn’t save them from deer last winter, any remaining plants got chewed up in the spring or died during the rainless July this summer. But now we can start anew. Out of the 70 or so plants we put in last year, 45 were gone and needed to be replaced. Then another 40 needed to be put in around the building and walls now that work was finished.

So many of the plants we had installed last year had been reduced to dead twigs. Because hay instead of straw had been put down to control erosion, we had a big crop of rye grass and associated weeds, which was not the fescue we needed to plant for the back yard.

A backhoe was brought in to remove the sod and grade the area so that water would run away from the building and into a trench leading to the wetlands. Two knee walls were constructed earlier to ensure that the run off would not drain into a patio area.

Mark, the operator, had a wonderfully light touch as he delicately scraped the old sod away and replaced it with new topsoil. He was able to just pull away the right amount of soil with a huge steel arm as a child would run her fingers through the sand. Within a few hours, the area was ready for seeding.

While Mark was working on getting the back ready for a lawn, I with a bunch of landscapers started to plant all the different trees and bushes: American Cranberry, Inkberry, Winterberry, Swamp Azalea, Mountain Laurel, High and Low Bush blueberry, Elderberry, Gray and Red-Osier Dogwood and Spirea were just the beginning. Planting was bittersweet as for almost every plant I positioned another needed to be yanked and discarded. I now understand why professional landscapers around here choose such large specimens: more survival chances against man and beast. In a few cases, I needed to direct the laborers not to step on Witch Hazel saplings, indicating that they were not sticks but rather living plants.

Soon the lawn was ready for seeding. I have had 100 pounds of fescue seed in my basement for 5 months waiting for this moment. Ironically this was the last possible day (October 12) that I could plant: the next week or so looked warm so that the seeds would have the needed sun and temperatures for germination. Rain looked imminent so we worked quickly smoothing out the soil, broadcasting the seed and then spreading shredded straw over the area to hold the seed and erosion. We had just enough seed and straw to finish the job.

As we started to put away the tools it began to rain. Not heavy, but a steady soft rain that would moisten the soil and give the grass, transplanted trees and bushes a good start. I thanked all the people who helped me, loaded my shovels, pick ax and rakes into the car happy that we had finally finished the back area before the bad weather hits. 

The sweet smell of students

 

A new semester recently started at Green Chimneys and with that a new group of students. Coming back after a month’s absence (a two week vacation and two hurricanes) its time to get into the fall chores and get to learn about a new group of students. This fall’s group will be bittersweet, like the season, as I will only be working with them through Thanksgiving. After that I will be taking a break until the spring and then hopefully back with the kids.

But until then there is lots to do in the garden. Today should be spent taking down the tomato plants, which have given up the ghost to leaf spot and weather conditions that vacillated between desert and flood. One of my new charges, Ben, was happy to have gotten the job and wanted to be a good worker.

“I will be a good worker for you, Mr. Keller. That way I can earn my money.”

So we started slow, cutting the stalks off the diseased plants. I showed Ben two different examples of tomatoes: one that had a healthy vine and the other with one that was diseased. At first he couldn’t articulate the differences but a bit of prodding got him on the right track.

My next student, Bill, was more observant but he told me he had never eaten a tomato before. “Bill you must have eaten tomatoes before in some form. Do you like Italian food?”

“I love spaghetti,” he replied. “Well tomatoes are often used in the sauce,” I said. I then picked up a basil leaf that we plant in between the tomato plants and rubbed the basil under his nose. “Do you know this smell?”

“I think so but I don’t know from where,” he said. “How about pizza?” I then told him to rub the basil under his nose and eat a cherry tomato at the same time. He looked at me strangely but then ate the fruit. He started to smile and agreed that it tasted like pizza and the tomatoes were really good. (I felt as if I was having a “Green Eggs and Ham,” moment with him.") I told Bill that he could eat as many of the cherry tomatoes that he wanted to. With that incentive he started to prune with greater urgency, taking a tomato every time he cut off a stalk and placed it into a garbage bag (we throw out all diseased plants rather than put them into the compost heap.)

My next student was off at a special meeting so I walked back to the garden. When I got there a pack of pre-schoolers were walking around with their teachers looking at the garden. I asked them if they would like to do something special and they all said yes.

I walked them around one of the corners of the herb garden by our large patch of wooly thyme. I then told them to take both of their hands, rub the thyme and then smell their fingers. They first couldn’t get enough of rubbing as the soft, wool-like plant tickled their fingers. Then they smelled their fingers and started to giggle.

Next to the wooly thyme is our mint patch so I broke off a stem and gave a leaf to each child and told them to smell it. “It smells like gum,” said one. “Yeah, can we eat it?” asked another.

I told them that they could and then I broke off a small branch and started to tickle each of their noses. “Tickle my nose again!” insisted a small, bespeckled girl.  I have never had such a receptive audience. I then showed them sunflowers, one that was pollinated and the other that was not, and explained how seeds were make. I cut open each flower showing them the difference between the two.

“You see each of these holes? Each used to hold a seed as was a little bed. Each seed could grow into a plant that was this tall, “ I said pointing as some of our sunflowers that were 10 feet high. The children were amazed that such a tiny seed could grow into a much larger plant. I gave each child a seed and told them to put it into the ground next spring. Each held out a tiny hand wanting a seed. I placed one in each hand and hoped that it was not the only seed that would bear fruit in the future.

Food for harvest

 

Things are looking up at Green Chimneys. The greenhouse should be reopened soon and first harvest is upon us. At home, we have been harvesting nine different greens (mizuna, romaine, VIT, miner's lettuce, dandelions, red leaf, spinach, arugula, sorrel) for salads every day. Most of these greens were planted last fall and somehow survived the tough winter. The same can be said of the mustard greens we planted in the Row for the Hungry last fall. We put a small hoop house over the row and it held off the snows of last season. We we peeled off the Agribon last month, the greens had just come out of their dormancy. Now a month later, they have started to bolt.

Jeff and I started to remove the leaves from the stems so Tracy could deliver them to the food pantry later today. Jeff was attentive though a bit melancholy. His uncle had died yesterday and he spent much of the time talking about all the things he and his father had found in the house. "He has a 2002 Chevy that we are going to take home," he said. "We are going to store it in the back yard and I will be getting kit when I turn 18." Jeff is all but 11 today.

Jeff carefully picked each leaf off and asked how the leaves were used to make mustard, which he favors on hot dogs. I told him that the leaves are used for salads while the seeds are ground into mustard. "See the little yellow flower. That will form a seed, which can then be made into mustard."

In the place of the greens we will plant some rows of lettuce and perhaps radishes if we have room. The other plants we had put in three weeks ago are doing well some of which will be ready for harvest in a couple of weeks.

Jeff slowly and methodically pulled the leaves from the stems. “Can I eat one,” he asks. No problem, I reply. As he bites into the leaf he makes a face and spits out the leaf. Too bitter.  He goes back to the harvest. We collect a large pile of mustard greens that weighs two pounds and put it in the refrigerator so it can be delivered later to the food pantry in Brewster.

Flower power

As most aspects of the garden wind down, cleaning old beds and pulling dead or soon to die plants takes priority this time of year. It has always seemed bittersweet to liberate plants from the soil right after or even during their peak. That was the case a little over a month ago at Green Chimneys when we needed to pull cosmos from one of the beds near the administration building.

Surprisingly there seemed to be something forbidden about pulling these tall sentinels as many were still in full bloom and had buds to match. I told a couple of co-workers that I would be pulling the plants and they were more than welcome to make a bouquet from the flowers. “That’s great,” said one. “It’s my favorite flower.” She had been a little morose before but the prospect of a colorful bunch of flowers perked her right up.

My charges were also unexpectedly enthusiastic about the chore. They were excited that they would be able to pull these plants from the soil. Kid after kid grabbed a bunch of stems and planted one foot so they could get better leverage to pull the clumps of flowers from the ground. Some of the root masses were huge so they needed a bit of help though the frustration and the resistance given by these soon-to-be-composted plants didn’t bother them.

“By the way Paul, after you finish pulling plants, you can make a bouquet of flowers if you would like,” I said to one of day’s first weeders. Paul loved that idea and worked even harder than he had been before. After he pulled the cosmos he placed them carefully so it would be easy to cull flowers from the newly liberated plants.

But the weeding was not only influencing the children but passers by as well. People were giving us looks while we were weeding so I started to offer them a flower or two. I thought it was a simple gesture as all of these flowers would be returning to the ground. Nearly every time I got a big smile and thanks from those who took a flower.  One social worker with whom I had worked with previously said to us, “This is wonderful. You have made my day.”

It was a big job so I spent most of the day in the beds pulling cosmos and giving flowers to strangers, young and old. Sometimes people asked what we were doing as we were broadcasting the seed heads into the bed so that next year’s flowers would grow. I stopped my pulling and got out my pocket knife  and cut a blossom, a blooming flower and a dried-up seed pod. Using these three examples I explained to them the life cycle of the cosmo and how it reproduces. Most were intrigued and thanked me after they picked a flower or two of their choice.

As I was giving flowers away I thought back to imaginary from the 1960s where “Love,” “Peace” and “Flower Power” represented some of the unifying thoughts of the era’s counter culture and youth as well as the 1980s when I worked in New York City. There I would be given flowers by followers of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who founded the Unification Church as I neared Penn Station to catch my train home. Unlike these givers, I had no agenda. I just wanted to give a flower to someone to make them happy.

Gathering garlic for frijoles negros

Even though it seemed early, the lower stalks of my garlic were turning brown with the tips in full shrivel. I shouldn’t have been surprised as a few weeks ago had we started to cut garlic scapes that would be added to salads and stir-fry dishes. With a very delicate flavor and texture, their inclusion in our food signaled to us that the spring crop of bountiful greens would soon be bolting away and the summer harvest of peas, squash and tomatoes would begin. It was also the time when I needed to think about planting the fall and winter garden, which would sit where the garlic now rested.

I knew I may have over planted as my 8-by-3-foot plot was thick with the green and white garlic stalks letting few weeds in. I had purchased some garlic heads last fall but also received a wide variety of spare cloves left over from our fall planting at Green Chimneys. There was a little bit of Foxy, Russian, German extra hardy and others all mixed together that I dropped into the garden and then mulched with straw. They all popped up by November and then were buried under a thick blanket of snow until the following March.

Growing up, I was never exposed much to garlic as it was not one of the flavorings my mother used for cooking. Perhaps my first real exposure to it was via cheesy black and white vampire movies where the protagonist protected him or herself with a ring of garlic around their necks. As I grew up and got married my wife bought bags of garlic like my mother used to buy potatoes for inclusion in many foods. Stuffed inside a chicken, sautéed in a stir fry, chopped up in a red sauce for pasta. Its uses were endless.

But its favorite use—particularly for my daughters—were in the seemingly endless pots of black beans that would be devoured by my girls. For every pot, went a head of garlic along with scallions and salt to give it the same flavor her mother had created years ago back in Guatemala. After an initial helping, the beans would be crushed and evaporated leaving a delightful paste that would be fought for. To get the right flavor, garlic was key.

So now it was time to yank the garlic and replenish the supply. When you pull garlic you need to be careful in the same way as when you pull carrots. It is best to wiggle the stalk first so the soil is loosened and then pull hard. This often ensures that the bulb will emerge with a satisfying pop of soil rather than a disappointing tear from the stalk separating from the garlic head.

Examining the field of heads I was about to pull, I started to wonder how mad I must have been to plant so many. I wasn’t sure if we would be able to consume all this garlic. Perhaps gifts at Christmas would be wrapped with a bow of garlic. A Halloween garlic could be included in a goody bag for some unsuspecting child. Tiny garlics could be placed in a plastic Easter eggs and scattered among their chocolate counterparts. But as I started to pull head after head my worries were assuaged as some of the heads were very tiny. Some no larger than a large garlic tooth. I had little to fear in our ability to use my harvest over the course of a year.

Some cultivars were a great success. My elephant garlic (really a leek) lived up to its name by producing massive heads for me. But the rest was a mixed bag. That was OK as I pulled over 120 heads from the ground and placed them in my greenhouse to dry out before I would braid or tie them together to dry.

Picking up one of the heads, I placed it near my nose and took a deep breath. It was the same smell that the Egyptians, Greens and Romans had experienced thousands of years ago as they used garlic for everything from an offering to the gods to miracle medical cures. It got me thinking. Perhaps my wife will make another pot of frijoles negros for my daughter Sarah and me if I bring in a few heads. You can never have enough.