June 2011
Planting Tomatoes
June 8, 2011
I’m back in my garden again – thanks to hard work that’s making me strong, no matter how gruesome, and coffee.
The entrance to the dog pen is enclosed with another gate. I had to bushwhack my way in through weeds tall as me plus a six-foot Rose of Sharon entwined in chain link. Inside, the weeds were higher than my waist: burdock, grasses and dock – and the usual Gill-over-the-ground, plantains, a few nice violets… A grass with delicate, dangling, yellow flowers lined one side. I think it’s a pioneer species because I have only seen it in recently disturbed areas such my garage slope where it no longer lives.
But where are the veggie beds? I have a "no till" garden. now it’s a “no find” garden.
Burdock skyscrapers alternate with swaths of grass. I think burdock is in the beds and grass is in the paths, so I rip out the burdock and everything around it in a three-foot wide strip down the row. My goal is to resurrect just one bed. But I clear just enough to plant two heirloom tomatoes: Striped German and Pineapple.
I put cages made from rebar around them, cages my father made for his tomatoes that he grew every year no matter what. He grew them from seed in egg cartons and other house hold castaways on windowsills. And when they fruited he gave away tons and made sauce and pickled tomatoes. Somehow he always had a bumper crop even though his garden became partly shady under tall black cherry trees and he always planted in the same place.
I remember him in his last tomato/pepper/rose/gooseberry garden when he was 82, staking tomatoes with stakes he made that looked like old-fashioned telephone poles along railroad tracks. Nothing pleased him more. One of my regrets? Not taking that picture.
The Next Morning
They’re gone. Somebody ate my tomatoes. Only two yellow leaves remain on the ground, one from each plant.
My next step is to weed the perimeter to uncover and fix the hole(s) where the thief gets in.
by Mary Jasch
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December 2010
The Gift of a Good day
Thank God for glacial till, so easy to dig. The ground’s been frozen for over a week now, even with daytime temps in the 40s-50s. I stick a shovel in the ground today and it slices through like it's chocolate mousse.
A warm, happy feeling comes over me as I dig in my garden again. Good soil, a balmy 50 degrees or so, and feeling toasty while tiny snowflakes fall around as I plant my long-waiting bulbs. I am happy in my own garden again.
Happy planting 184 bulbs in a couple hours on this December day: 100 Narcissus ‘Sound,’ 10 Allium ‘Purple Sensation,’, 60
Fritillaria bulgarica and 14 lily-shaped tulips. I planted perennials: Rodgersia ‘Chocolate Wing,’ bee balm, ligularia, Echinacea, Rudbeckia, aster, cardinal flower, chives. (I figure they’re deer-resistant and might help protect those that are not.)
There is reason for this late madness. When I began gardening for other people this summer, my own garden – dog pen-turned-veggie garden and the new garden down my hillside – took to the rumble seat. Too tired for thinking or doing anything after work (gardening all day is amazingly - to me - hard work and great exercise!), I often didn’t set foot outside.
Months have a way of creeping by and I became anxious about my own neglected landscape, but client projects beckoned.
I must confess right here that before my gardening biz, I knew very little about perennials and shrubs. My horticultural expertise lay in veggie gardens, tropicals (from 24-year stint as owner/operator of an indoor plantscaping company), and wild landscapes. Cultivated ornamentals is a new adventure that I embrace with my entire being. What an education this summer! I was exalted in the heat – at my best!
Then fall came with the rush of planting for clients. And so did my new bulbs, perennials and shrubs. My little hillside already contained the beginnings of a planted garden: one monster wisteria roughly 15 feet wide by 10 tall; one monster forsythia of the same dimensions (birds loved it) that sprouted new plants around the edges downslope where its arching branches touched the ground; my already begun terraced “memory garden” to those I’ve loved and lost (the only civilized piece of the slope); and an almost-monster mock-orange, which I must decide how to handle. Although the mock orange is a rangy shrub, I love its fragrance.
In mid-November, I brutally pruned the two giant gumdrops to skinnier fountain-like shrubs. It brought peace to the land.
It seemed best to plant the big (most important) stuff first so as not to work backwards. So I planted a few small shrubs that I couldn’t resist and a few deer-resistant perennials that I want to be the basis of the slope: hellebore, epimedium and ferns.
A Bloodgood-type Japanese maple given to me by
Ken Druse is the rising star of the little memorial garden. Its almost-black trunk and dark leaves are exquisite. Fed with lots of bone meal, its trunk has thickened noticeably since June. This summer, dark basil, heliotrope and thyme grew around it and protected it from deer.
Nearby, Hydrangea ‘Pink Diamond’ has grown berserk. Covered in flowers this summer, its strong branches have spread about five feet wide. Maybe I better turn it into a standard before it becomes another big gumdrop. Must think about that.
Below the Japanese maple, is Rosa glauca, the red-leafed rose – the most beautiful rose plant I have ever seen. And next to that I gave a wonderful little daphne a try. It bloomed for several months during the summer’s drought, then one day after a rain storm it died – very sad. I will someday master the art of growing daphne –perhaps they like drier land. It was near the bottom of the slope – maybe higher up is best. Now a tiny jewel of a mini spirea takes the daphne’s place, with thyme and epimedium, hellebore and ferns around it.
I have so much more to do, but I am happy to have done this. Someone watched out for me and gave me this last chance the day before the snow fell and the ground freezes again.
Tonight, the light outside my front door shows the first snow of the season. It gives me joy to see it, for all is well in my garden.
by Mary Jasch
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August 2010
Garden Ignored
My garden has been grossly ignored this summer. Seeds have gone unplanted for flowers that will never bloom this year and veggies I will never eat. Heavenly blue morning glories, cardinal vine, Joseph’s Coat amaranth, Love-Lies-Bleeding… moon flower...
But the good news is my heirloom Pompeii plum tomatoes that I planted from seeds from Renee’s Garden are ripening like mad, despite not having the volcanic ash to go with them as my organic farmer friend mentioned. And just to prove it, here is how I cooked the first batch harvested.
Ingredients:
A colander full of tomatoes
3 sweet red peppers
1 green pepper
2 fresh cayenne peppers from my garden
1 big onion
5 or so garlic cloves
Extra virgin olive oil
A handful of fresh basil leaves
A handful of Italian flat leaf parsley
A couple shakes of dried oregano
A little salt
1 teaspoon sugar
Sauté the peppers, onion and garlic in the olive oil until soft. Add tomatoes, herbs, salt and sugar and cook for 1 hour. Puree in a blender. Done. Enjoy with whole wheat spaghetti, turkey meatballs and Parmigiana Reggiano.
I leave the skin and seeds in the sauce. An ecology/ wildlife professor friend who frequently cooked outdoors as part of student rapport and education once said about eating an apple: “If you peel it you may as well throw it away.” And don’t seeds contain all that is necessary to create plant life?
My Van Gogh sunflowers (also Renee’s Garden seed) are thrilling.
There is still season left. All I need do is gain better organization and discipline. We’ll see in September.
**All photos by Mary Jasch
by Mary Jasch
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July 2010
Work and Pleasure
The conversion of my old dog pen to vegetable garden is slow. Looks like it will gain the same progress as last year when it was begun in July.
Spanish Musica beans and golden pole filet beans are up, as are Van Gogh sunflowers and Tithonia, yellow crookneck squash (my favorite), two carrots, heirloom climbing Trombetta squash and an heirloom pumpkin or melon that sprouted from last year. The seeds are all from Renee’s Garden.
My Italian Pompeii tomatoes that I started from seed are bearing fruit. They were scraggly but as soon as they went into the ground – Voila! As did the heliotrope. The transformation of seedlings when planted in earth is astounding.
I must admit the reason I am delinquent. From dire need I started a gardening business which took off like wildfire. People tell me that good gardeners are in demand – and I am! I also admit it has taken me TWO MONTHS to be able to come home at the end of the day and have energy left to think and work on my own garden. (My clients live on shale hillsides.) I had begun wondering if I were physically capable, but now I am certain I am and in better shape than maybe ever.
Working in other people’s gardens is wonderful. I am learning tons and want to learn it all. I feel less intimidated about my one acre of rolling terrain and old shrubs. I can’t wait to get at the shrubs, my land and veggie garden at the end of the day and weekends.
Taking classes and workshops when able is also exciting. A recent lilac-pruning workshop at New Jersey Botanical Garden was fun and valuable. I want more. As I work and learn, I am developing new plans for my little piece of heaven. I’ll keep you posted.
by Mary Jasch
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May 2010
Inspiration
May 31 and I am behind in the veggie garden. Plans to build a slate herb & fragrant flower area within the dog pen garden await.
Meanwhile I enjoy southern mustard, spinach and lettuce while I admire the weeds and snap peas peek through the blossoms.
And though I didn’t mean to, I planted my home-grown transplants of Pompeii Italian tomatoes, plus farm-bought heirlooms: Striped German, Pineapple and Ramapo, and peppers: Peter Pepper (picked a peck?), two purple bells, Ancho, Cayenne (my favorite), and Anaheim.
Plus, I finally dug in mentally about what to do in my yard. I ripped up weeds, brambles, poison ivy, a few seedling rose of Sharon to plant two AARS rose bushes given by a friend: ‘Pink Home Run®’ and one so new it’s not to be found online. The garden is next to my garage, perched on a slope top. Several plants have been living on my deck for 12 years: two five-foot Alberta spruce, red-twig dogwood, purple ninebark, silver white pine, Japanese holly, and dare I? – a bush honeysuckle. I will plant them here and extend the garden to what they need and then some. This is one way to make a garden.
by Mary Jasch
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April 2010
Easter Sunday
Too many things happen on holidays to be simply coincidence. But then, what is coincidence?
Today, on a morning walk with Lance, I saw a small patch of the deepest blue scilla growing at the very edge of the road in dried up gravely soil. Later, in an online search, we found that Scilla is a town in Calabria, Italy, on the strait of Messina, the traditional site of the sea monster, Scylla, of Greek mythology. Calabria is where Lance’s deceased mother was from.
This afternoon, on my way down the hill to the enclosed dog pen-turned-potager, a big rabbit ran out from under the mountainous forsythia. It ran all the way beyond the grass and garden to the brush near the cornfield. Such is life on Easter at this residence.
On the last two Easter Sundays, Tanky, the “baby” of my 14-year-old dog litter, enjoyed baby bunny snacks – one nest a year before I could tear him away. He’d snatch up a bunny, chomp a few times, gulp and look at me with pleasure and gratitude. Among his blood pack of four, he was the most subordinate and sweet, a 115-pound lap dog, yet also the least civilized – closest to his wild brethren.
While the scilla was a remembrance of Lance’s mother, surely, like Nature’s clock, Easter Sunday was a remembrance of Tanky to the rabbit that ran for his life.
Down in the garden, beyond the old forsythia and philadelphus, the land wants to revert to its former self of two years ago: a grassy, weedy dog pen. Last year, the dog pen was rototilled but, this year it will be a “no till” garden. All it takes is a jab with a shovel tip and a shake of the weeds to shed the soil around their roots, thanks to not walking on the beds last year.
The war of the weeds begins. They are showing their forces. I must jump on them fast.
I plant Super Sugar snap peas; sweet peas; Sweet Greens & Reds Lettuce (mix of Little Gem, Tango, Outredgous, and Cimarron); Catalina Baby Leaf F1 spinach; Southern Curled mustard and Summer Perfection spinach. I start seeds in flats: heliotrope and last year’s Pompeii plum tomato seed, an F1 – all from Renee’s Garden.
by Mary Jasch
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March 2010
Seeds!
My new seeds just arrived from
Renee’s Garden:
Sweet peas ‘Perfume Delight’ – fragrant
Sunflower ‘Van Gogh’
Amaranth ‘Cinco de Mayo’ – a visual fiesta!
Nicotiana ‘Jasmine Alata’ – fragrant
Monarda ‘Bergamo Bouquet’ – fragrant
Nasturtium ‘Whirlybird Mix’
Morning Glory ‘Mailbox Mix’ – Heavenly Blue & Pearly Gates
Four O’Clocks ‘broken Colors’ – fragrant
Zinnia ‘Cut and Come Again’
Beets ‘Red Sangria,’ ‘Golden’ and ‘Striped Chioggia’
Spinach ‘Catalina’ Spinach – ‘Summer Perfection’
Celery ‘Amsterdam’ – of the ParCel type
Crookneck Squash ‘Sunny Supersette’
Pole Beans ‘Spanish Musica’
Pole Filet Beans ‘French Gold’
Pattypan Squash ‘Summer Scallop Trio’ – Sunburst, Starship, Peter Pan
French Baby Carrots ‘Babette’
This week I’ll dig into my seeds from last year and start transplants and plant peas. Meanwhile, I hack away at poison ivy, multiflora rose and wild grape that have formed a Sleeping Beauty-like impenetrable hedge on my garage. My plan? Renee’s Van Gogh sunflowers.
by Mary Jasch
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December 2009
Cold Tolerant Garden Annuals
Click on December link to the right to see photos.
12/14
Cerinthe lives with snow and ice cover, although not well. Perhaps it is semi-evergreen here. It bears more thought on its usefulness. Its tiny purple flower is, as one grand dame put it, insipid, but maybe in the right place, wherever that is, it’s worth growing.
Rainbow Swiss chard is beautiful. For that I am grateful.
11/15
Cerinthe may be a hardy perennial or annual. Today it blooms in the garden despite being mid-November. Its pale aqua foliage appears in prime condition.
Swiss chard is happy after being released from the grip of pumpkins and tomatoes and Florence fennel bulbs appears firm and perhaps larger.
While pulling soggy thunbergia vines off the wrought iron fence and yanking the first “dead” plant out of the soil, I discover the plant has begun to send out new vines at soil level or just below. I cut top growth off the rest to see if the plants will make it through winter and send out new shoots next spring.
All this after several hard frosts and quite a few lesser ones.
by Mary Jasch
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October 2009
First Frost - Good-bye Garden
Today it snowed like crazy. Some global warming! I’m with physicist Freeman Dyson on that one.
For the past two days, while there has been no frost, everything is beginning to die. It makes me sad because I wanted more time to enjoy it and I didn’t accomplish all the things I wanted to. But at least the bones and hardscape of the garden are there so I can get a big early jump in the spring.
Zinnia blossoms turned brown while the leaves remained green for the past two day. But last night’s cold temps turned the leaves grayish brown. Tithonia is shriveling; cosmos is disappearing.
But Love-Lies-Bleeding is looking marvelous and beginning to cascade. I will definitely plant it again and again, plus more of the showy amaranths. I cut several long stalks and brought them inside to enjoy.
Dug the Florence fennel. Now I have to cut off the feathery tops and store both in the fridge to eat within a week. I’ll see if I can freeze it. As it turns out, I have a nice boneless pork roast waiting to be cooked and I just found a recipe online for roast pork and fennel. I’ll make it tomorrow.
The garden will die tonight. All that’s left to eat is the rainbow chard and one pumpkin. I’ll start to clean it up tomorrow.
by Mary Jasch
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September 2009
Breakfast
9/27
Yellow squash plants are dying – just one plant left with a few babies that probably won’t grow much larger. That delicious squash taught me how convenient and healthy it is to have fresh veggies for breakfast, so this morning I bake a cut up acorn squash given to me by the CT Ag Experiment Station, along with butternut, peaches (whitish yellow so sweet and juicy), and green apples – crisp, juicy and tart. This week – time to get back to the garden.
Grass clippings are great mulch for paths. Nothing grows through it, as opposed to bark or pulled weeds.
Take note: leaves of summer squash, pole bean leaves and tomato leaves have all been nipped off by the deer - but they didn't eat any squash, beans or tomatoes!
9/22
The black-eyed Susan vine forms a wall at least 5 feet tall. It could easily cover 7 feet. Next year, I will plant the seedlings about a foot apart for each plant growths thick. I’ll also plant blue browallia closer – maybe 8 inches apart. It grows well in partial shade.
The moonflower has many buds with blackened sepals. I must sneak down to the pen at night to check for blossoms and hope for no bears.
9/18
There’s something soul-satisfying about going out in my own yard, sleep-eyed and picking breakfast – yellow Supersette squash. As fresh as you can get, clean, no poisons or chemicals, and all I need to do is run it under water to get rain-splashed earth or petals from fruiting tomatoes above it. Ten minutes in the sauté pan with a sprinkle of cheese or just butter with a little hummus on the side.
In early summer, I picked raspberries that grew wild along the edge below my deck and, this year, next to the garage. Nature’s gift – what could be better? Breakfast didn’t even require dish or utensil. It is my favorite breakfast.
The garden has turned to flowers, though I still await the moon flower and more from the cardinal climber that has thrown out a blossom or two. Granted, everything was planted late.
Weeks ago: the garden is troubled. Pumpkin vines yellow; pepper plants look better but don’t produce; tomatoes rot. Their new growth looks promising but eventually the fruit rots, except for Sun Gold cherry tomatoes.
The weekend’s storm blew the corn down – must have swirled around in that corner of the pen. The corn stalks must be weak because the stockade blocks out two light exposures. I notice that nearby cornfields remain upright.
by Mary Jasch
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