Rain, come again another day!

Rain, rain, go away,

Come again another day.

Rain, rain, go away.

Come again some other day.

Little Arthur wants to play,

In the meadow by the hay.

Rain, rain, go to Spain,

Never show your face again.

Rain, rain, pour down,

But not a drop on our town.

Rain on the green grass,

and rain on the tree,

And rain on the housetop,

but not on me.

Rain, rain, go away,

Come again on washing day.

Rain, rain, go to Germany,

And remain there permanently.

The rains came this week…over 2 inches – 5.08 centimeters! We really needed it. When you grow up in the desert, as my wife and I did, rain is a special thing. We enjoy the thunder and lightning and rejoice in the way rain freshens everything.

 

Our average annual rainfall in Abilene is 23.78 compared to 14.04 inches in our hometown of Odessa, Texas further to the west. Average rainfall in Texas tends to increase as one goes east. Texarkana on the Arkansas border gets a whopping 48.39 inches a year! In Adelaide, South Australia where we lived for over nine years the rainfall is a mere 520 mm a year (a little over 20 inches). It is very dry from November to April and then gets wet from May to October which is the winter season there. So you can see that I’m used to gardening in dry places.

Nevertheless, this is our monsoon season in Texas and the storms can be fierce. The typical spring storm can contain hail and produce high winds and the occasional tornado. We stay glued to the NOAA radio during stormy weather.

For gardeners, hail is especially dreaded. It can defoliate plants in nothing flat. We have a couple of wire mesh cages built by my son that we put over the more vulnerable plants when hail is predicted. So far so good in our two episodes of hail this year.

On another subject — the combination hairy vetch and winter grass cover crop has been cut down in the tomato bed. I use a very sharp hoe which I re-sharpened about three times during the process. I cut only the top parts of the plants leaving the roots to release their nutrients as they decompose. It was a good workout but now it’s done. In a few weeks we will set out the tomato plants which have become quite lanky.

In the meantime, eat your veggies! Nonnie and Pop said so.

Hairy Vetch and Other Stuff

My usual exercise (when I’m home) consists of getting out in the Charamon Garden and hoeing, lifting, digging, grinding, sifting compost, pulling weeds, etc. Yesterday it was preparing the tomato bed for planting in the next few weeks.

All winter the bed has been growing a cover crop consisting of hairy vetch and assorted winter grasses and a few other weeds. The vetch was the only intentional crop but the winter grass and weeds are inevitable. They grow together in happy confusion/profusion completely unaware that their days are numbered.

I cut them off at ground level (plus an inch or two to get the roots of the winter grass)

One Potato, Two Potato….

For the first time in 9 years of living at Charamon, we have decided to grow potatoes. We had, like most folks, been buying potatoes from the supermarket. Then I read The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan and will never knowingly eat another non-organic potato. Yes, organic potatoes are available in our town but your have to buy them. And, since we are Irish and Scots-Irish, the Irish genes want potatoes but the Scottish genes are reluctant to pay for them.

So, we have dedicated one of the long beds to potatoes this year. First, Tim (my oldest son) cleared the bed of the winter grass and weeds and did his best to pull out the dormant Bermudagrass roots. We know we didn’t get them all, but we’ll deal with the remnants when they begin growing. Then, we covered the entire bed with cottonseed meal topped-off with about six inches of compost. My job was to sift the compost out of a large pile of tree trimmings that has been sitting so long that much of it has decomposed into beautiful humus. I use a hardware cloth screen over a wheelbarrow (see picture). The good stuff falls in the wheelbarrow and the “unsiftables” go into another pile to be ground up later.

When the bed was ready, we began the first of several successive plantings. We made furrows through the compost down to the topsoil. We sprinkled mychorrizal inoculant in the bottom of the furrow and covered it with a thin layer of compost. Then we placed the potato pieces about 12 inches apart and covered them with more compost. We will fill in more compost as the sprouts grow.

We finished the planting by dinner-time and were blessed by a humongous rainstorm this evening that “watered in” the seed potatoes.

We planted what the feed-store guy called “plain, white potatoes.” However, we want to try several varieties to find the one that grows and tastes the best. We’ll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, eat your veggies! Nonnie and Pop said so.

GARLIC GROWING GREEN AND GOOD IN THE GARDEN

Good grief, my garlic is great! Having learned a lesson from past neglect, I have kept the bed well-weeded this winter. I prepared it by tilling it (something I rarely do and try to avoid) with a good dose of cottonseed meal and adding plenty of compost and mulch. Our winter and spring climate seems ideal with cool days, only five or six hard freezes (the garlic seems unfazed) and lots of sunshine. We have to supplement the moisture with well-water but that’s par for the course in our area.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I nearly caused a crop failure last season by not removing competing vegetation. The result of that was a lot of stunted cloves. I saved the best for “seed” and will save even more from this next harvest. Stay tuned for pictures of the harvest in a couple of months.

We have six eaters at Charamon and four of us can’t get enough garlic (the other two are my young grandchildren who are learning to like it). We will inevitably run out of home-grown and resort to store-bought, California-grown garlic before the year is out. My goal, however, is to eventually grow way more than we need and have enough to give away or maybe even sell. In fact, locally-grown winter vegetables are rare around here and I think we can make some good money selling stuff like broccoli, chard, collards, lettuce, etc., at the local farmer’s market.

We use it in salads, baked chicken, turkey and lamb. We roast it and spread it on bread. We mince it into soups and stews. We cook fish and shrimp in butter and minced garlic. We lavish it on quiches, chard pies and milkshakes (just kidding about that last one).

We are thankful to the Lord for garlic. He created the plant and when we are good stewards, we can expect good harvests. The picture was taken today and you can see why I am proud of it.

Until next blog…eat your veggies! Nonnie and Pop said so!