Carrots in Love

One of the cool things about growing your own garden is finding things you will never see in the produce section of your local supermarket. I speak of double tomatoes, potatoes resembling certain profiles of religious icons, okra growing in spirals, Jerusalem Artichokes reminiscent of ancient aerial views of that city and, among many other oddities, these entwined carrots dug up this evening right in time for Valentine’s Day.

Now what would cause such physical intimacy among vegetables except love? I know for a fact that, even though they grow in the dirt, lust (as opposed to “dust”) is unknown among vegetables. Furthermore, since they must stay together until harvest, “one-night-stands” are impossible to arrange (even if the place they grow is referred to as a “bed”).  Talk about Botany of Desire! (apologies to Michael Pollan.)

No, this is love “rooted” in its purest form. And, since I garden organically, this is ardor “unsoiled” by artificial additives (Don’t you love alliteration?).

Anyway, I think this picture is hard to beet. So how far can we carrot? Lettuce see.

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

What’s In The Garden?

Plant Tally for today:

• Blue Hubbard Squash
• Butternut Squash
• Figs
• Sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes)
• Onions (red and white)
• Eggplant (heirlooms)
• Okra
• Green Peppers (Capsicums)
• Jalapeño Peppers
• Potatoes (4 varieties)
• Tomatoes (heirloom)
• Yellow Squash
• Zucchini
• Swiss Chard (Silverbeet)
• Asparagus
• Peaches
• Cucumbers

In the next couple of weeks we hope to get in (we’re a bit late but blessed with a long growing season):

• Sweet Corn
• Green Beans
• Southern Peas (Zipper Cream)

Thanks for visiting In The Charamon Garden!

Latest Dirt

Recent activities in the Charamon Garden:

• Planting onion sets
• Planting hard squash seeds (Blue Hubbard and Butternut)
• Mulching potatoes and tomatoes
• Replacing the filtering mechanism on the water well
• Placing drip irrigation lines and replacing broken emitters
• Installing weedblock in Bermuda grass infested beds

Is the Tomato a Fruit?

One of my sons (Number 2) was touring the Charamon Garden yesterday and I asked him what his favorite vegetable was.  Among those he mentioned was the tomato.  “But,” he added, “I guess tomatoes are technically a fruit.”  So what is a fruit and what is a vegetable?  Well, if you’ve played “20 Questions” on long trips you know that the first question is “Animal, vegetable or mineral?”  So a vegetable really is anything that uses photosynthesis to grow…plants.

When we say, at the end of most posts, “Eat your veggies…Nonnie and Pop say so!” we are talking about plants and fruits that you can eat.  Wickipedia agrees:

Normally, any herbaceous plant or plant part which is regularly eaten as food by humans would be considered to be a vegetable. Mushrooms, though belonging to the biological kingdom Fungi, are also generally considered vegetables in the retail industry.

Using that definition, all fruits are vegetables, but all vegetables are not necessarily fruits.

The term fruit has many different meanings depending on context. In botany, a fruit is the ripened ovary—together with seeds—of a flowering plant. In many species, the fruit incorporates the ripened ovary and the surrounding tissues. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants disseminate seeds (Wickipedia).

So, botanically speaking, the tomato is a fruit.  But, continuing to speak botanically, so are peppers, eggplants, okra pods, peas, beans, squash, cucumbers…to name a few we don’t generally consider fruit.  When we eat broccoli, cauliflower, and figs, we are eating the buds of blossoms.  Lettuce, collards, cabbage, spinach and chard are leaves.  Potatoes, carrots, parsnips, sun chokes and sweet potatoes are roots.  Garlic and onions are bulbs.  Asparagus, rhubarb and celery are stems.

So, eat your fruits, leaves, stems, bulbs and roots…Nonnie and Pop said so!

Slowly but Surely

I finally got all our potatoes in the ground yesterday. With so much going on in my work, I have had to steal time to do it. We have four varieties planted not only for the fun of it, but to see which ones we like best and grow the best.

We also got the tomato seedlings planted and caged. You could hardly call them seedlings…they were long and lanky and nearing two feet tall! We have nine set out and another back up group of eight in pots in case we get a late freeze.

Wow! There is so much more to be done! Bermuda grass infestation (you’ve heard of the Bermuda Triangle, have you not?) is slowing everything down. We are dealing with that monstrous weed as we go. Since we are not even trying for organic certification, we use one chemical, glysophate, to control the Bermuda. All the rest of our practices are strictly organic. I have nothing but sympathy for those who must control this introduced monster by hand in order to remain strictly and purely organic.

We still have many beds to prepare which involves cutting down the winter grass, amending the soil (cottonseed meal and Texas Greensand) and getting the seeds and sets in the ground. Vegetables and herbs yet to be planted are, squash (soft and hard), southern peas, okra, onions, leeks, corn, green beans, eggplant, basil, thyme, cilantro (coriander in Australia) and cucumbers. The broccoli, collards, kale and mustard greens are finished. The garlic is nearing harvest. The swiss chard (silverbeet in Australia) is going crazy. We are cutting increasing amounts of asparagus shoots as Spring progresses.

Fortunately, my son and daughter-in-law are able to help occasionally. Can we “git ‘er done?” Stay tuned.

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

We are thinking about selling our overflow veggies…especially winter ones. If you are in the Abilene, Texas area and would like to get on our mailing list so we can notify you about availability, send your name and email address to: dwight.whitsett@gmail.com

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.