Flowers in June

During our wonderful five-day adventure with our granddaughter, the temperatures at home soared into the 90′s. After several days of these extreme temps, some welcome rain arrived.

Turning into the driveway, we were amazed at the growth in the gardens and the flowers in bloom. We literally stopped the car in the middle of the drive to try and take it all in.

On the veggie side, lettuce, beans, peas and spinach are all up while tomatoes, cukes, and squash are trying to cope with the temperature extremes. The raspberries love the heat and are loaded with blooms, and the blueberries and cherries are coming along as well.

As all gardeners know, everything doesn’t grow as you plan. Our flats of zinnias and marigolds that I nurtured from seeds have almost all been eaten by bugs. Disappointing – we do love these annuals because they remind us of someone very special.

Overall, the gardens are looking good – food for the body and flowers for the soul. Love it.

Happy gardening, and if you don’t garden, happy shopping at your local farmers’ market.

What’s blooming in the garden?

After a long winter, it is nice to finally see green and color everywhere I look.

Last week, we had an entire week of cold temps, gray skys, and rain on and off. We now have bright sunshine and our temps are moving towards the mid 90′s at the end of the week. Can you say Mother Nature is conflicted?

You can also say rain plus sun equals everything is growing – grass, veggies, fruits, trees, shrubs, and perennials.

In a walk around yesterday morning after chores, I just smiled at all the color.

And as I headed back out, I was thinking about the color red – as in tomato red.

Concord grape arbor

Lady’s Mantle

Bleeding Heart

Dwarf Korean Lilac

Ferns

Clematis

Solomon’s Seal

Cambridge Cranesbill Geranium

Veggies under slitted plastic

Bloody Cranesbill Geranium

I’ll be taking a little break from gardening this week because we’re heading out on our yearly historical tour with our granddaughter.

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What will we have to talk about when we get back? How about witches, presidents, white picket fences, equality, horse racing, polo, and Clydesdales?

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It should be fun.  :-)  Have a great week.

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Spring has sprung

It has been about two weeks since the last of the snow melted, and I finished raking the leaves off the beds last week.

Life is slowly coming back to the gardens in New Hampshire resulting in happy gardeners with dirt under their nails, grit in their socks and stains on their knees.

It’s gardening season finally – life is good.  

Pink Poppies

Day Lilies

Dwarf Purple Korean Lilac

Pink Bleeding Heart

Autumn Joy Sedum

Primrose

Daffodils

Catmint

Hosta – one of several hundred

European Ginger

Red Raspberries

Black Raspberries

High Bush Blueberries

NH Flower – Purple Lilac

Pulmonaria/Lungwort

Purple Dwarf Iris – we have several varieties

Heuchera/Coral Bells

Raspberries

Love them or hate them?

We love raspberries, and even when there is a bumper crop we consume them all – thirty-one pounds this past summer. That equated to 496 ounces or  86 – 6 oz boxes selling for $4 each or a total approximate value of $344. Not bad!

Raspberry plants are easy keepers. The weeds don’t grow very much between the plants because the sun doesn’t get to them. They send out runners, so you always have plenty of new plants.

Raspberries are hardy and can survive the spring rains, warm summers, and cold snowy winters here in New England.

Because we garden organically, we do not treat the raspberries with any commercial products but care for them with good gardening practices.

Picking raspberries is the fun part. Let’s face it you have to eat a few even before they reach the house.

But, once a year someone has the chore of cutting the brown branches out that fruited that year. That is usually my job, and it is not a fun gardening chore. But, it is one of those tasks that when you are done you can stand back and acknowledge what you accomplished.

Outfitted in long pants, long sleeve shirt, hat, gloves, Wellies, and my Fiscars in hand, I was off to do the dirty deed. It took me a couple hours to get everything trimmed out, remaining plant tops trimmed and contained, and the cut branches piled in the utility trailer for a trip to the recycling center.

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Thank you raspberry row – job well done – again.

This year we also traded some raspberry bushes with friends who had blackberry bushes so now we have both varieties.

We are certainly looking forward to the 2013 berry season, but in the meantime we’ll continue to enjoy the bounty we have in the freezer all winter long.

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“The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway.”     Michael Pollan

Wordless Wednesday – 10/09/12

Shhh, the garden has been put to bed for a long winter’s night.

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Gardening Award

If you need a good laugh, take a moment and read the recognition of our winning the Ugly Tomato Award sponsored by Steve Bender, the Grumpy Gardener. Steve is on Facebook regularly and writes a gardening blog for Southern Living.

I’ll stop laughing eventually, but it is going to take me a few more minutes.

http://thedailysouth.southernliving.com/2012/10/07/ugliest-tomato-honored/

The tale of two tomatoes

Here at 1840 Farm, we have had a banner year for heirloom tomatoes.

My husband and I grew some Heirloom Beefsteak and Brandywine slicing tomatoes, and an assortment of cherry tomatoes including Black Cherry, Gardener’s Delight, and Blondkopfchen.

Our daughter, husband and grandkids grew a long list of different and delicious Heirloom tomatoes including two of their favorites, Purple Calabash and German Johnson.

Between us there have been pounds of tomatoes eaten and pounds processed for the coming winter months. We do love our tomatoes.

But, we have had a good chuckle because in one growing season, we won a ‘biggest’ and an ‘ugliest’ tomato contest.

The biggest tomato contest was sponsored by Jennifer Sartell, Iron Oak Farm. They have a great farming/gardening blog and sell some wonderful, unique gifts in their Etsy shop including roving and hand forged items by her husband.

The ugliest tomato contest was held by Steve Bender, the Grumpy Gardener. Steve is on Facebook regularly and writes a gardening blog for Southern Living.

We’re also in the running for the ugliest tomato contest on Soulsby Farm’s Blog. If you want to check out some really ugly tomatoes and hopefully vote for our entry, #11, head on over to their Ugly Tomato Contest.

Interestingly enough, both tomatoes were Heirloom Brandywines.

Biggest

Ugliest

This gardening season we have battled tomato horn worms, beetles a plenty, and now late blight. I love organic gardening, but a good sense of humor is required because laughing is better than crying when you choose not to use pesticides.

However, in just one of our 4′x16′ double high raised beds, we have grown 46 lbs. 5 and 7/8 oz. of tomatoes so far.  Hope your gardens have done well and provided you with lots of fresh produce.

We’re still harvesting but have to acknowledge we are moving into the fall and winter seasons – temps are dropping and leaves are changing.

It will become time to read all the seed catalogs so we can plan for the 2013 gardening season. Let’s face it – a gardener’s job is never done.

Wordless Wednesday – 08/22/12

My grandson’s Sunflower growing inside a hoop house.

Beekeeping

Beekeeping is hot right now. The only other thing close to it is chicken keeping. Chicken keeping I’m very familiar with, but beekeeping I wanted to learn more about.

On a recent Saturday morning, my granddaughter and I went to our local Blue Seal in Rochester, NH, to hear Wendy Booth, President of the NH Beekeeping Association, give an overview of beekeeping.

Wendy Booth

Blue Seal was packed – chairs were full, some folks stood the whole time, while others just picked a spot on the floor and sat down.

Wendy’s first suggestion for those who think they want to be a beekeeper is to attend a beekeeping class. There are fall classes by local NH beekeeping organizations and spring classes by Wendy. The cost in some cases is $100 per person while others charge $100 per family – check the details.

The youngest beekeeper she knows is 6 while the oldest is 94 – true definition of age diversity.

Her suggestion for reading material was Beekeeping for Dummies which is a good, practical outline of what beekeeping involves.

Bees are truly fascinating. Did you know that a honey bee has three night eyes between their two regular eyes or that they have hooks and eyes on their wings? Who knew?

Within the hive, some bees clean, others nurse, while still others perform the job of undertaker. These bees don’t need a jobs program, they have it all worked out.

We also listened to the pros and cons of the various types of hives available including 8 – 10 frame vertical hives or horizontal top bar hives. Vertical appears to trump horizontal, and this was documented by a research project. Thirty six experienced NH beekeepers maintained horizontal hives for two years. At the end of two years, there was only one horizontal hive alive.

There are also several predators that can affect the health of the colony, and we discussed two, including mites in the hive and bears trying to get the larvae from the hive. Here in NH, we have bears so an electric fence is required to protect the hive.

Did you know bears can smell bee larvae from a mile away or that they can smell sunflower seeds from a half a mile away? No wonder the State suggests taking down bird feeders the first of April.

She covered so much more – bee bites used as medical treatment, information on swarms, beeswax, grocery store honey versus real honey, used hives possibly holding disease, bee poop eating car paint, and there are no native bees only European bees. Whew! It truly was a great learning experience, and we barely scratched the surface of what is covered in a bee school.

Bee on Spiderwort

We’re on a waiting list for Wendy’s honey. Can you imagine – a waiting list for honey! I think it shows that people are continuing to be more interested in where their food is coming from, what it contains, and how it is handled.

If we decide down the road to pursue beekeeping, Wendy Booth will be the lady we turn to for bee school and guidance. She has a wealth of knowledge and an easy but informative way of sharing it.

She has two websites. Bee Buddy lists her classes, mentoring, inspections, and maintenance services. Hive Healthy covers the products she sells including her wonderful honey.

According to Wendy, to be a beekeeper you have to be comfortable with uncertainty, but that it is the most fun you can have with bugs in a box.

Oh, did I mention she keeps bees in her bedroom? I told you it was an interesting presentation.

Granddaughter (11) comments: It was a great presentation. I learned a lot of fascinating information about bee colonies, but I don’t want to have hives in our yard.

Linked to Katherine’s Corner.

Heirloom Tomatoes

We have tomatoes! And, if you could see us all, you’d see smiling faces. We love tomatoes. When the counters are covered with them, we’re ecstatic.

This year, we built 23 new raised beds – some single and some double in height. We have tomato plants in both.

In early May, we covered two double beds with clear slitted row plastic to get the seedlings started four weeks early while starting others a few weeks later and leaving them open. Some beds were mulched with grass clippings while others were covered with black plastic. We used soaker hoses in three and watered others.

What we have found so far:

- the clear slitted row plastic certainly gave the seedlings a head start and those plants are larger. We’ll purchase another roll and cover more beds next spring.

- the plants in the double beds are bigger and more robust than the ones in the singles or planted directly in the soil at ground level. We’ll have to give that issue some thought during the winter planning months.

- the black plastic mulch made for healthier plants laden with much larger fruits so we’ll try more black plastic mulch.

- 4′ bamboo stakes will not suffice when the plants are this big and the fruit so heavy - we will invest in some large tomato cages for next season.

- we assumed the soaker hoses would make a difference, and we were right. We’ll try to figure out how to enhance that type of watering system in other parts of the garden.

We choose to not apply dangerous chemicals on our gardens or lawn so we encounter some insects but deal with them as they arrive. For instance, we had a good crop of summer squashes but ended up having to pull them out because of squash vine borer. Succession planting will be researched and definitely on the agenda for next year.

After reading several blogs and looking online, I did try ‘Vegetable Thrive.’ According to the container, it is “an all natural soil drench that improves the rooting and requires less water.” I purchased it at my local Blue Seal store. It cost $10 for 16 ounces, and you mix 5 caps with one gallon of water.  I will certainly use this again next year.

We’ve eaten tomatoes in every type of sandwich and recipe you can imagine and are still relishing each and every tomato picked from the garden. I’ve frozen some for winter cooking, and my daughter has canned some for her winter recipes.

I guess you could say we have never met a home-grown heirloom tomato we didn’t love. Here’s hoping your garden is providing you with delicious produce for your dinner table.

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Ties are wrapped around the branch where it is breaking from the weight of the fruit. Just hoping the fruit will ripen before it totally breaks off.

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