Squash Mystery

I wasn’t really using the long bed, so I let the vines and weeds have their way.  They aggressively took over the bed and tried to infiltrate into adjoining beds but I ruthlessly pruned any who strayed too far.

Then, one day I noticed this monster beginning to swell.  I had never seen anything like it before (it is even bigger than this picture now).  I sent a photo to my fellow-gardener, Gibby Gilbert, and he did a little research and pronounced it a “Banana Squash.”  It is supposed to be good to eat so I am letting it mature on the vine.

The mystery is: where did it come from?  It must have grown out of the compost as do other kinds of squash that we consume.  But, to my knowledge, we have never partaken of one of these.  How did the seed or seeds get into my compost bin?  It’s a safe bet we’ll never know.

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

The Asparagus Lesson

Most of what one needs to know to grow the luscious, luxurious spears of Asparagus in Texas can be found here. I agree with nearly everything except the use of chemical fertilizers and the advice to contact your county agent about insects and diseases since that person will probably recommend some chemical pesticide. We organic hippie-types believe that healthy vegetables are resistant to insects and diseases.

Growing Asparagus in West Texas (or anywhere else, really) is not easy (especially initially) for several reasons.

First, as you will notice from the site I gave you and the pictures that I graciously provided that one has to do a lot of digging. Do it now, because the older one gets, the more challenging it is to dig the trenches and descend into their depths to plant the crowns. It is, however, excellent exercise.

Second, one needs to properly amend the soil. I used my trusty cement mixer to add compost, Texas Greensand, a few handfuls of bone meal, and some blood meal (some sweat got in there as well). Expend the time and trouble because those plants will be around for the next fifteen to twenty years (unless you fail them in some way…more about that later).

Third, it apparently likes soil that is a little more acid than my alkaline soil and water. I deduced that from the chlorosis (yellowing of the fern-like leaves) that characterized my first planting. So, I work pretty hard (you’ll just have to trust me here) to increase acidity using cottonseed meal and adding Texas Greensand every other year or so. I also inoculate the roots with mychorrizae. We’ve had pretty good results at Charamon Garden but we have also learned some hard lessons.

Fourth: Asparagus likes frequent, deep watering. Our area is semi-arid so having a reliable source of water is crucial because, friends, it don’t rain much here. And here is where I failed last year. Part of the bed didn’t get enough water and the Asparagus, predictably, bit the dust…literally. I had to dig a new trench (short furrow in the picture) and replant.

Fifth: Asparagus requires an investment in time. If you are planning on moving frequently, don’t bother because it takes three years before the first harvest. So, for my new plantings, another three years to full harvesting capacity. I guess I deserve it.

Sixth: Our winters here tend to be on the mild side, but Asparagus likes them cold. My plants don’t die back naturally until winter is nearly over. So, they must be snipped off at ground level by the end of November. This allows one to begin adding compost and other amendments to insure health by March when new sprouts make their appearance.

Seventh: Bermuda grass is the enemy. Don’t let it get into your Asparagus! After it does, it is nearly impossible to control. It stealthily weaves its despicable and evil rhizomes and tendrils through the Asparagus and slooowly begins to CHOKE it! Aauugh! I know because it has tried to infest and possess my Asparagus bed. But I shall PREVAIL by dutifully pulling and digging out all of this foul demon contagion I can during the winter. Be vigilant my friends…be vigilant.

We savor tender, flavorful, fresh Asparagus sufficiently to suffer. The long trench in the picture is to fill the bed which the first planting didn’t quite accomplish. We may be gluttons for punishment, but we are also gluttons for Asparagus.

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

(top photo: Asparagus in the garden at Dirtpatch)

The Berries are Coming!

Digging the Holes

Charamon Garden constantly evolves.  I give natural selection an assist by saving the seeds of several vegetables from plants which seem to do well (productive, tasty, nutritious) and, I am assured, become better adapted to our West Texas conditions with each generation.

The Amendments

Take my tomatoes (a neighbor actually took that too seriously while we were absent).  I have lost track of the original strain now and I try to add more genetic diversity each year.  To my mixed-up heirlooms, I am adding genetic material from a Russian variety called Black Krim this summer.  We will enjoy those delicious Russians and save the seed from those and the original strain which “do well.”  By the time I pass on, I hope to pass on a delectable tomato that grows especially well in our little corner of the world.

Mixing the Soil

Charamon garden also changes in composition.  This year I am adding berries.  Any day now I am expecting a shipment of Blackberries (especially suited for the South), Raspberries and Strawberries.  In regard to the former, once planted they are supposed to last for fifteen years or more.

My response to that longevity is to make sure their soil is the best it can be.  Given my native soil, that’s quite a challenge!  That means I have to make certain amendments.  So, in preparation for the new arrivals I have dug seven holes spaced about three feet (0.91 meters) apart.  The dirt from each hole goes into the cement mixer.  To that I add Texas Greensand, bone meal, blood meal, charcoal and composted manure.  As it mixes, I try to break up all the clods before dumping the improved earth beside the hole.

When the plants arrive, I will sprinkle mychorrizae around the roots and fill in the holes.  I hope it makes them very happy and productive.

I told my wife I thought this post needed a little sex-appeal and asked her to take a picture of me to add to this blog.  When she finally quit laughing she obliged me while gently advising me not to expect too much.  So, please feel free to comment, but hold the offers of marriage…I’m very happily wedded to my high school sweetheart.

In the meantime, eat your veggies (and berries).  Nonnie and Pop said so.

“The Earth is Tired”

“Tè a fatige,” said 70 percent of Haitian farmers in a recent survey when asked about the major agricultural problems they faced. “The earth is tired.”

And no wonder. Virtually since 1492, when Columbus first set foot on the heavily forested island of Hispaniola, the mountainous nation has shed both topsoil and blood—first to the Spanish, who planted sugar, then to the French, who cut down the forests to make room for lucrative coffee, indigo, and tobacco. (National Geographic Magazine accessed January 8, 2009 at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/soil/bourne-text)

We have a dirt problem on planet Earth. We are covering up some good agricultural lands with subdivisions, factories, and shopping malls and damaging the rest in innumerable ways. But this is the dirt that will have to feed us in years to come. We are fouling our own nest, biting the hand that feeds us, cutting off our nose to spite our face. Such shameless and ignorant disregard for our own well being is the rotten fruit of greed and stupidity.

Problems such as this don’t persist because there are no answers. They persist when we are not interested in the solutions. Here’s the reason: the solutions are not as profitable as the present corporate gang-rape of our farmland. Sadly, the cost will be incredibly high. Simply put, we are setting the stage on which we will act in our own drama of destruction…and…we are doing it willingly. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

I feel qualified to speak here because, as a small gardener in a semi-arid patch of West Texas I started with nutrient-poor alkaline clay and now have several inches of productive topsoil. I grow most of the vegetables for our family of six. How did I do it? I read, studied and worked hard. I have loved my soil into productivity and sustainability. I figure if it can be done here then almost anyone can do it.

If you have access to a patch of dirt, you have a blessing from God given into your stewardship. The soil is a living community. Like any living thing it must be cared for. It must be fed and watered. Its needs must be met. It must be valued and cherished. In return, it will give us food to sustain us. If we neglect, exploit and mistreat our soil, it will grow tired and sick. Then, like the precious soils and souls of Haiti, we will grow tired and sick also.

You might not be able to change the world but you can change your world. Here are some things you can do on your own land.

Practice organic techniques. This is a vast subject but my top five principles are:

1. Use only organic soil amendments and fertilizers
2. Avoid the use of chemicals
3. Practice composting
4. Practice mulching

Practice sustainable techniques. Another huge area but some things you can do are:

1. Avoid plowing and tilling unless absolutely necessary
2. Grow cover crops
3. Conserve water using drip irrigation
4. Grow crops suitable for your climate
5. Rotate crops

Update for September

I realize that I haven’t posted for a while but other voices have been calling to me. Right or wrong, the absolutely urgent always trumps the pleasure of writing.

But, you might like to know what has been happening in the Charamon Garden. It is also a record for me when I ask myself, “When did I plant those fava beans last year?” So…here is what has been happening in September.

We have begun reclaiming beds that have not been used or cared for appropriately. We have begun this process with the help of my son, Justin. He has his father’s love of gardening and has been a strong and energetic help to his old man who gets tired too easily. He has tirelessly weeded, chopped, dug, hoed and hauled until things are once again in pretty good shape. He has dug out the trash trees, raked and tilled and mulched.

We have prepared the bed that will be used for tomatoes in the spring by planting a cover-crop of hairy vetch and a few broad (fava) beans. These will grow all winter and then be cut and left where they lie. We will cover all this with more mulch and then set out the tomato plants. We had a tomato crop failure this year because we took some wrong-headed advice and planted the tomatoes in the same bed for three years. Don’t do that.

We (Justin mostly) cleaned our largest bed and sowed more hairy vetch in it. At this point I am not sure what will be planted there in the spring/summer garden.

Our sweet corn is tasseling and silking out and we hope to see some nice ears of corn in the next few weeks. We had an infestation of army cut worms which Justin took care of with a dusting of BT. It has a lot of aphids on it but the ladybird beetles have arrived and will hopefully make meals of them.

We have planted the most garlic ever and the harvest will keep us busy around the last of April 2009. We will dry it and braid it and use much more than the recipes call for.

We have planted more swiss chard and it is looking good. This needs thinning pretty soon. We covered the seeds with a mixture of compost and sand and all sorts of things are coming up with the new chard…mostly squash and tomatoes. Their seed have been residing in the compost waiting for their chance.

We have planted carrots and a row of lettuce and we’re waiting for them to germinate. We are hopefully optimistic.

We have set out kale, cauliflower, collards, broccoli and cabbage.

We are harvesting yellow squash, lovely purple eggplant, okra, swiss chard, green peppers (capsicums) and, if Justin had not eaten them right off the tree (he deserved them), quite a few figs.

The butternut squash is looking very good and we should have a good supply over the next few months.

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

Swiss Chard aka Silverbeet

We are in the midst of a weeding/planting semi-frenzy at Charamon. Since I can only devote time to the garden in the mornings, I get up before dawn and start work as soon as I can see things (and have a cup of strong coffee in me).

We are fortunate to live in a zone (7b) where some vegetables grow through autumn and winter (see previous post). One such plant that does very well here is swiss chard (silverbeet). We grow it instead of spinach and we eat loads of it. It is rumored to help stave-off dementia (I meant to mention this before but I kept forgetting).

So for the last two days, Justin (number 2 son) and I have been weeding a bed and preparing it for planting. This also required harvesting the compost from my concrete block bin. After weeding and smoothing the surface, we laid down a layer of compost and then topped it up with a couple inches of mulch. We made three furrows and laid a mixture of sand and compost in the bottom of the furrow. The seeds were sown on top of this and covered with a thin layer of more of the same. Then it is all watered well and…now we wait.

The compost/sand mixture is 4 compost to 1 sand (I use lava sand). The compost is from two sources — a conventional pile of decomposed leaves and grass clippings combined with compost from the bin mentioned above. This is mixed in my cement mixer and decanted into a wheelbarrow. I use this mixture because my soil is mostly clay and can form a hard surface that some seeds have trouble getting through.

Now we are looking forward to eating a lot of stir fried chard mixed with garlic and pine nuts, swiss chard tortes and other delicious preparations. In the meantime…eat your veggies…Nonnie and Pop said so!

Thanks to A Veggie Garden for the photo.

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!

A Rotten Idea

Compost is easy (well, sort of) if you use my method. Start by building a bin (as large as you like) from cinder (concrete) blocks. Fill that with the materials you wish to compost. Everything that will rot is a potential ingredient. To name a few: peelings, eggshells, bones, bits of meat, hair, pasta, bodies of irritating dogs, shells from shrimp and other crustaceans, coffee grounds from Starbucks (and other outrageously priced coffee places), stuff that’s already begun decomposing in the back of your refrigerator, animal manure, and if you are not too persnickety, your own manure (I don’ personally doo this).[1] All this plus weeds (before they seed) leaves, grass clippings, ground-up prunings, etc, are added to the bin (add composting worms if you wish). If conditions were right, you will open the bin a year later and be rewarded with rich, dark material of which little, except the eggshells, shells and bones, will be recognizable.

I begin my composting operations in April or May in my region of Texas and begin opening and sifting the compost a year later.

When you get ready to open the bin, use the blocks to build a new bin beside the old one. As you sift the compost from the old bin, throw what hasn’t decomposed (except for the plastic, foil, rocks and other junk that always somehow gets into the mix) into the second bin. This will “seed” the new compost bin with microbes from the old one. Forget about turning the compost[2] unless you are in a hurry (unwise), like to sweat (unnecessary), or don’t have enough work to do in the rest of your garden (unbelievable). So, fill your bin and allow the microbes and worms to do their job. You will probably never make enough compost for your needs, but it will be far richer than the compost you buy.

Pictures in order: 1. Opening the bin of finished compost 2. Stacking the new bin 3. Sifting the compost through a 1/2 inch screen into a wheelbarrow

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

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[1] I recommend the Humanure Handbook with certain reservations. It is very well researched and enlightening but the author takes a few shots at Christians and other religious groups which, for me, detracts from his main theme.

[2] You will have compost faster, but not necessarily better, if you just make a “compost pile” (I do this with collected leaves and grass clippings) and turn it at regular intervals. I will combine this with compost from the bin — good stuff!