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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August 2009
Disaster in the Garden and Magical Pumpkin
Please click on the August link to the right to read this and see photos.
8/4
Disaster in the garden!
- Heirloom Spanish Musica pole beans are wilting fast and it’s not due to lack of soil moisture.
- On the back of a pumpkin leaf, there is a cluster of tiny copper-colored bumps. That plant is getting yellow-edged leaves. If anyone knows what this is, please email me at:
mary@dig-itmag.com
- Low fruit to flower ratio on the tomatoes
- Tomato plants croaking from the bottom up
- Never laid eyes on Cerinthe: Pride of Gibraltar that I planted months ago. If anyone has a photo of the seedlings of this plant, please send to:
mary@dig-itmag.com so I can post it. I know what most garden weed seedlings look like, and I have not seen anything different.
- Pepper and chile plants are wilted and spotted.
Good things:
- Lots of Supersette crookneck squash
- Zinnia transplants from seed sown in the garden grow easily.
- Pumpkins, even when trained to grow vertically, need more than 1 square-foot to grow. Their big leaves shade out everything in front of them, such as the cayenne plants. It may be fine to plant greens in their shade in summer.
- Potatoes are sprouting.
- And the corn is as high as a human’s eye.
8/1
Does a plant have a “brain”? Even a pea-size brain? What triggers their every action? Imagining a vegetable brain is not hard; after all, they have ovaries – and we eat them (vegetarians, take note). I wonder.
The tendrils on a climbing pumpkin plant are one of the most amazing plant structures I have ever seen – intricate, functional, effective and beautiful. I think they will grow to whatever length they need to in order to accomplish their task: plant stability. Long, delicate and wavy in search, they become wound tight as coils on a spring when they reach their destination.
Lance says the coils allow spring action in wind so the stem doesn’t break. Mother nature’s springs.
One tendril fastener per location is not enough for pumpkins. They seem to arrange for the future increase in plant size and weight by sending out fasteners in all directions to grab hold of horizontal and vertical structures – much like a map view of highway intersections and jughandles.
Their immense leaves are gearing up for super production. What will the plants bring? If never a fruit, their leaves, tendrils and stems are entertaining enough. If my son were small again, pumpkin is the plant I would grow for him.
by Mary Jasch
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July 2009
Growing Cherry Tomatoes
Be sure to click the last July entry on the right for photos. You can read the blog there, too.
July 22
Pumpkins over-run cayenne; cherry tomatoes on top of basil; German tomatoes swiftly approach chard – all because I didn’t tie up the tomatoes and pumpkins asap. (I was busy. I had a band date to keep and work to do.)
Growing Sun Gold cherry tomatoes is a challenge. They seem to sucker from the bottom and, after waiting too long to remove them, it’s hard to tell which is the main stem. I should have taken heed of a photo I took summers ago of cherry tomatoes neatly espaliered at The Frelinghuysen Arboretum. (Click on July on the right to see nice photo.)
And how can I trash suckers that already have fruit and blossoms (the SFG way)? Can’t. I remove a few and stick them in the soil along the fence toward the road where sunflowers and melons didn’t germinate. Maybe birds ate those seeds. The birds seem to like hanging out on the fence. I need a screen from the road there and if the tomatoes will do it, why not. I won’t remove their suckers.
Flashback: My father used to tell my mother he removed the suckers from the tomato plants in his German accent. My devout Catholic mother would say to him: “Stanley! Please don’t use that word!”
The garden is full of compromises. What to do about work and band commitments (like practicing every day)? Answer: do the best I can. The plants are gung ho and the band is gung ho. The only one keeping work gung ho is me.
What will I do about having just one stem on each tomato plant neatly trained up the fence instead of sprawling suckers? I tied everything the best I could and broke a bunch off. In the future they must be planted 3 to 5 inches from the fence so they can be tied at a young age and guided.
Perhaps gardens teach about life – of fruiting plants and their life cycles, of insects that eat and pollinate them, of people learning that they cannot control something and that life goes on despite visions of perfection.
July 23
I thinned the chard today and have it for dinner. I suppose I’ll let the tomatoes crawl among the chard as it grows. Turns out, I have two Pink German Jonathan and two Striped German.
Planted some sprouted Idaho spuds today, took out the sagging tomato suckers and planted Anasazi beans instead. My friend Kathy gave them to me. a friend from New Mexico sent them to her.
by Mary Jasch
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