Gardening Dilemma

This year I have decided to skip planting a vegetable garden. By this time, mid-February, I would normally be moving my seedlings out of the back bedroom, where they have been under a grow light since December, and into the greenhouse in the back yard. But the garden was so bountiful last year, all the way into late October, that I am weary from harvesting, watering, fertilizing, and then trying to find a home for my overage. I gave so many peppers away last year, my neighbors began to ran inside when they saw me coming with a grocery sack in my hands. I still have frozen tomatoes in the freezer, Ziplocks full of frozen chopped peppers, and jars of canned peppers and salsa in the pantry. Last year, so many of my seedlings made plants that I took the extras to the feed store. The owner sold them in all within a week and gave me free bird seed and fertilizer in exchange. So this year, I need a break. However, it's kind of bothering me.

In six more weeks, we will be gone on our long-anticipated river cruise up the Danube. I don't want to leave a ready-to-harvest garden for the pet-sitter. And it will be one less thing for me to worry over on our vacation. Instead of wondering if there's been rain or if the weather has turned off hot, or if the auto watering system is still functioning, I can walk the streets of Vienna carefree. Last year while we were in Italy we had some of the hottest weather of the summer in Texas. It was over 100 several days, and when that happens, our west-facing backyard becomes a sauna. I think I can survive one year without a garden.

Besides, the garden also puts a damper on us heading down to the coast house whenever we want. Usually I feel compelled to rush back home after two or three days to check on the garden, to make sure some bug infestation hasn't begun, or that the wind hasn't blown over, or some other disaster hasn't befallen my plants. A garden can really be a pain in the neck to maintain.

But what fun to watch okra seeds sprout and push through the soil, or to spray each delicate tomato blossom in the quiet, dewy morning to help set fruit, and coming inside with a basket full of beans, peas, okra, peppers, and tomatoes really gives my mood a lift. We hardly need any store-bought vegetables when my garden is coming in. Does anything taste better than really fresh vegetables you picked just that morning.

Inevitably, though, no matter how few plants you grow, there comes a time when the harvest overpowers you, when two people cannot possibly eat all the bounty, and there you go, bagging up your overage, trying to find someone willing to do the clean-up required on homegrown produce. Maybe the first time or two, they're appreciative, but all my neighbors are just like us, couples with no kids. We have one bachelor who lives behind us. He never wants more than a handful of any one thing, and by the time I'm in give-away mode I want to get rid of sacks full.

Weeds are growing in my garden, big tall thistles that seem to be Round-up resistant. I pulled up a few this morning, and had to control the urge to toss in a handful of beans seeds. While I was weeding, I found an overlooked onion from the Fall and brought that inside to wash. I have some seed onions left from last year still. Onions are all but bulletproof. I could maybe just stick a few of them in the garden and forget them -- they will grow despite neglect.

It's going to be hard on me not to have a garden this year. I can tell already. I'm already wondering which boring tomato varieties the local garden center will have this year -- nothing like the heirloom varieties I nurse along on my heat mats in the back bedroom. It would be a last resort to buy plants from the garden center, but I might not be able to stand the gloom of looking out onto an empty garden all spring and summer. It's just the 21st of February. Maybe it's not too late!!!

Onward....

THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF A GARDEN…OH, AND ALSO THE JOY

When we lived in the mountains, I kept trying to grow tomatoes. I grew them in two rolling planters that had cages mounted inside them. I tried that old standby Early Girl, for fast tomatoes, and a slower cherry tomato variety. I had limited luck. For one thing, the growing season begins there around May 20^th and ends about August 31^st – way too short of a season for most tomato varieties. The other problem was the cool (make that cold) nights spanning all the way through the summer. And finally, the air was thin, which made it hard for the plants (and me) to breathe. All of these conditions were not conducive to gardening, and how I missed it.

I have a gardening gene. Maybe it comes from my farmer ancestors. Daddy gardened until the day he died. And I believe that his mother did as well. The crepe myrtles and althea that grew around the house where I lived during my childhood were planted by Daddy’s mother. She had grown them from cuttings she started in coffee cans. She cut out the bottoms of the cans, and planted them, can and all, between the windows in our house. The coffee cans eventually rusted away, giving the plants a good foundation of iron, something most flowering bushes need to flouish. I wonder if she knew this when she planted them that way or if it was a happy accident resulting from her economical, old-fashioned ways. At any rate, those crepe myrtles and the althea were huge by the time we moved away.

When I was a child, I planted a handful of radish seeds in the flower bed next to Granny’s bushes. Daddy had tomatoes, Swiss chard, and banana peppers growing there, too. Every day I went out to check the radish seeds. To my child’s mind, it seemed like forever before they finally sprouted. I took great joy in pulling up the mature radishes. I don’t remember eating them, just growing them, watering them, and scolding my dog when he tried to dig near where they were planted.

Now, that we are back in Texas, with the long, warm growing seasons, I plant my seeds inside in December. I take great pleasure in thumbing through all the seed catalogs that fill up the mailbox every Fall. The first year we were back, I bought way too many seeds, and nearly every one sprouted and grew into a plants. I mostly wanted tomatoes and they came up generously in the egg carton halves I use to hold my seedling mix. I was so delighted with this success, I could barely bring myself to thin the baby plants. I nursed them inside until they were big enough to re-pot and plant in the greenhouse outside. Finally in March, I moved them into the raised garden beds Wayne built for me in the sunshine.

They thrived through the nice wet spring, bloomed and dropped blooms, until I started spraying them with blossom set, tending to each fragile yellow bloom that appeared. It worked. I had a bumper crop of tomatoes that first year. And then the birds discovered that ripening tomatoes tasted like candy. The mockingbirds were the worst of the bunch, and the sneakiest. We put up bird netting, which worked until the plants began to grow through the tiny holes, then mattied underneath it. Pretty soon my tomato patch was a hopelessly tangled mess. But by then, I had okra to tend, and those plants soon became trees, towering over the garden. I needed a ladder to harvest all the okra hidden in the branches.

Year Two brought more of the same, except I chose to pick the tomatoes at first blush and ripen them inside, rather than fight with the birds. However,  Mother Nature sent me something new to contend with, a Tropical Storm named Bob. He blew over most of the tomatoes and broke the pepper plants in half. This year we are dealing with insufferable heat, indices in the 105 to 115 degree range. We’ve had so many tomatoes, we’re plain sick of eating them. I have given bags and bags away, and now they’re rotting in the fridge. I have peas and blackberries and figs in the freezer. And so many green beans, we turned green ourselves just thinking about them. Last night I microwaved a bag of Brussel sprouts from the grocery store, the first time we haven’t eaten from this garden since March. I miss the mountain summers.

When it’s 100 degrees outside, the garden is too much work. Yesterday I found myself looking out the den windows with binoculars to see if the okra really needs to be picked, or if it can stand one more brutal day. Stepping out the door is like entering a sauna. Watering every day is drudgery. I think I’m done with gardening. But of course when Fall arrives, I know I'll once again thumb through catalogs and buy too many seeds for next year. I can’t help myself. It’s in my blood.

Onward….

Deep Winter Blues

So far, it has been a long winter and I'm tired of it. One of the reasons I wanted to move back to Texas was because the winters were so endless and dreary in Northern New Mexico. I was tired of having to stay bundled up in layers of clothes for months on end, and so what happens? The first winter we're back in Texas is one of the coldest on record. Of course. And I've been bundled in layers for weeks and weeks now.

I have packets of seeds waiting to be planted. I want to set up my potting bench and get started. I want to do a raised bed garden in the backyard, and I have the plots all planned and drawn out. I am ready to start buying garden soil and ready to get my hands dirty. I have missed gardening so so much.

When I was a kid working in the yard was drudgery. Punishment. I hated everything about it, and thought my parents were cruel slave-drivers when they made me and my brother do anything out there. All through my twenties I had the same opinion about it. So when did that change?

We had a nursery in the 1980s, my ex and I, and maybe that was when I started to realize how soothing garden work could be. It occupies my body but it quiets my mind. Luckily for me, there's almost always something to do in a garden, even if it's just watering and watching my creations grow. There is a true miracle inside a seed or a bulb. The snowdrops I planted back in October, when the workers were here laying flooring and carpet, when I just needed to get out of their way and out of the noise, those bulbs have already begun to come up, little shoots braving the world like green arrows shooting out of the ground. Probably not this year, but maybe next, they will flower and hopefully spread along the edge of a future planting bed. I put them there with that in mind.

There is something hopeful about gardening, trusting in nature, in the inevitability of a seed or a bulb. I like doing it from scratch, but I also sometimes know when to accept defeat and go to the garden center for 6-packs of ready-made plants. I never have had much luck with growing peppers from seed, but I have three packets and am about to try again. There's the hope I was talking about, that this time I will find success in a prosperous little pepper seed.

I have been collecting egg cartons and grocery store pie containers. The pie containers make great little mini-greenhouses, the ones with the clear plastic lids. Poke a few holes in the bottom pie-shaped part with an ice pick, fill with seedling mix, water, plant a few seeds, put the clear lid on, and voila! Mini-greenhouse. In about 10 days the miracle begins. Egg carton bottoms, especially the Styrofoam kind, make nice cell packs. Use the trusty ice pick again to puncture the bottom of each egg cup, fill with the seedling mix, water, plant two to a cell, and in 10 days or so, voila! It's important to water before you plant so the seed won't wash away. And the seedling mix you can buy almost anywhere is fine enough for baby plants to push through. I have a greenhouse shelf unit I tried to use in the mountains. I never had much luck there, but maybe this spring, in South Texas, I can put it to work.

A Gardener's Edge catalog came in the mail the other day. I have pored over it for days now. There is a backyard greenhouse on the last page that looks exactly like the one I had at the Buffalo Wallow. The price of it is about the same as I paid five years ago, so that's not the issue. But do I want to go through all that assembly again? And here I don't have the concrete pad like I had there to set it on once it's assembled. I think I probably will have a greenhouse again, just maybe not this year. The weather has been abysmal. I believe I've been colder here than I was in 12 degrees with two feet of snow in the mountains. The thought of having to go through 50 pages of assembly instructions to build that greenhouse in a cold back yard makes me shiver.

I don't think a groundhog would have seen his shadow here yesterday. So doesn't that mean winter is nearly over? Or do we have to go by what happened up there in Pennsylvania where Punxsutawney Phil supposedly saw his shadow yesterday? What does Pennsylvania weather have to do with our weather down here? I can't remember what the Groundhog Day rules are, but I do know, I'm ready for Spring. More than ready. My fingernails need dirt under them!!

Gardening Day and In My Mind

My SO is home. What a relief! I felt like I didn't have a minute last week, didn't realize how much he does around here until he was gone. Yesterday I was able to spend three whole hours tinkering in the greenhouse and around the yard. It was glorious.

There are little seedlings in abundance out there. At this rate, I'm going to have to give away plants. We weeded and tilled the garden space, and put up the new composter. Previously, we had only a ring of wire he had banded together, but amazingly there was compost at the bottom, even being so neglected as that little pile has been. We spread the bit of compost out on the garden before he ran the tiller. Then he went in to shower and I continued to tinker. I think I need a shredder. I had to snip up the yard cuttings with my pruning shears. But it would all compost better if it were shredded. Plus, we're about to be awash in live oak leaves again. Oak leaves just don't break down quickly, so if I want to use any at all as compost, I'll need a shredder.

I guess it's a leftover from the nursery days in San Marcos, but I find piddling with plants calming, and just a really good way for me to relax my mind. There's such pleasure in watching inert seeds you've planted sprout into a living thing. Every Early Girl tomato seeds have come up. The scalloped squash seeds saved from last year's crop are stout and healthy. The new Burpee green and yellow squash seeds are beginning to break ground. So are Daddy's seedless tomatoes, planted just last Sunday! Pepper seed won't germinate until the soil warms up, or so I've been told. I don't like the seed mix I planted them in, though, and wish I could begin again with my latest discovery -- that African Violet Mix is an excellent seed starting mix. I sprinkled a teensy bit of the organic fertilizer for seedlings that Burpee sent along with my order. But I sure do wish I had been saving empty 6-pack planters all this time. I must've thrown away dozens since we've been here. I've been using egg cartons with the tops removed and a drain hole poked through the bottom with an ice pick. They seem to be working quite well. We'll see how they do once it's time to transplant into the garden.

My SO also dug a little circular garden around a dead peach tree stump. He wants a Four O'Clock bed because he's always had one in places he has lived. I understand. I am trying to recreate, in spirit, the daylily bed I had at my last house -- the transition, live-alone house. I planted daylillies right after I moved in there, and two and half years later, the bed was spectacular. I have a larger space for them here, and I keep adding more varieties. I think the lily is my favorite flower. Must've inherited that from my mother. She loved Easter Lillies, and every year when garden centers and grocery stores put them on sale after the holiday, she would buy them up by the dozen. The year she died was probably the most amazing bloom year she'd had with those Easter lilies. Sad that she wasn't alive to witness the fruits of her labor.

Got my Texas gardening magazine a few days ago. It struck me as I was reading it, that here is another venue for me to submit a freelance piece. I could write about having a backyard greenhouse. This is the second small greenhouse I've had, so I do have tips and experiences I could share. As I was reading the articles and checking the various writers' credentials, I realized I probably have enough, by accident, to qualify myself as a valid contributor, having co-owned a growing nursery, having worked as a salesman for a two wholesale nurseries, having managed a foilage greenhouse for a garden center. Don't have the fancy horticultural degree but do have the hands-on experience. I'm going to pursue this. I'll get their writing guidelines for a start.

Wish I could get as much writing done in reality as I do in my mind.

Onward ....