my plot - planning for planting peas

Still nothing going on in my plot. But on the next dry day I am planning to plant my peas! This will probably be next Tuesday or Wednesday.

Plan: I will find my dogs a nice spot to rest and then I will lime the pea bed (where squash grew last year). Since my soil was very acidic (5.5) on the last soil test I'll use the maximum rate of 20 lbs per 100 sq ft. I'll work this in with a cultivator. I am not planning to turn or otherwise amend the soil. Peas are my soil builders and will grow fine in depleted soil. I'll plant a short row of each of my varieties leaving room for one or two later plantings. I plan to plant snap peas, snow peas, green shell peas and crimson flowered fava beans.

birds in the woods

I think these are a Cooper's Hawk and a male Hairy Woodpecker. There is so much bird activity in the woods and fields now. It is very exciting. Breeding is starting in earnest.

buddies

Here are more photos of Skippy playing with his buddy Bannor. They have such fun! A lot of running and playing - but SO much sniffing. What DO they smell??!

march marsh

A beautiful blue sky today. The same color is reflected in the water. Our weather is getting into the 50's now. If you look close there are small sprouts of grasses and leaves everywhere. I've been meaning to compare this date with my records form previous years. It seems like an early Spring here. (Marion was saying Spring is 4 weeks late in the UK this year.)

Skippy's friend Bannor is visiting this week. This is our first walk together. I'll add more photos of the two buddies.

Fragmentary Blue by Robert Frost

Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)--
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

planting seeds - 8 weeks BLF

Pepper, Numex Joe E Parker (Johnny's)
Pepper, Thai hot (Botanical Interests)
Pepper, cayenne, Amelia's (hand collected)
Marigold, Petit mix (Johnny's)
Marigold, Fireball (Johnny's)
Canterbury Bells, Cup and Saucer mix (Burpee)
Gaillardia, Sundance bicolor (Burpee)
Cosmos, Sensation mix (Burpee) 2 flats
Aster, Purple burst (Burpee) 2 flats

March aerial

A garden full of plans! Soon it will look alive and new!

cheers to the March larder

After checking on the produce left from last years garden, I enjoyed a martini with a thin slice of crisp white celeriac and winter radish. Ahhh....

what's left in my larder?

The other day I went down to check....

Let's see. I have a small refrigerator in the basement that I filled last fall with fresh garden beets, celeriac, winter radish and cabbage. I've been grabbing a few from the top as I need them, but it was time for checking the bottom of the bags. The cabbage was in need of composting. But the rest has stored great. I took everything out of the baggies, washed, removed spots that didn't so look good, and repacked in fresh baggies. I amazed at how well beets, celeriac and winter radish store.

Also, I have a basket full of potatoes and butternut squash. The potatoes are sprouting like crazy in the basket. The reds and fingerlings are way shriveled. But the Green Mountain and Russets are OK. Actually, grilled, they are much better than OK. They're delicious. I love "good keeper" potatoes come March.

And I found about 6 heads of garden garlic I didn't realize I had. Most were thrown right into the compost bucket, but a few cloves were still crisp and yummy.

And the last thing is the bag of baby carrots in the fridge. The only reason they're still there is I didn't want to put the time into scrubbing such tiny ones. Tonight I did that - on our first grill event of the year. Very yummy to eat the first and last carrots of the year.

And I still have one BEAUTIFUL ORANGE Jarrahdale pumpkin. Its like the saying about "have cake and eat it too" - I love having it on the counter, but would love to eat it before it too late. I think I'll wait a bit more. Once I see a little sign of it starting to go bad, I'll make pumpkin bread.

I think all-in-all, the garden has feed us well this winter.

Next year, lets see:

Less: non-keeper potatoes, little fat carrots
Same: Beets, celeriac, pumpkins, butternut squash
More: Keeper potatoes, big carrots, garlic
And much more: Popcorn

Photos:

fences: what works best for garden plots?

I like the looks of all the different fences in our community garden, though many are worse for the wear after the winter. Since we will be adding a bunch of new plots, the question comes up of how to fence these.

- Leave it to each gardener
- Town fences the plots with standard fencing
- Town provides fence materials to gardeners

A fence to surround a 20 x 20 ft plot gets to be expensive. Five ft tall fencing costs at least $50 for a 50 ft roll at Home Depot. Posts and gate materials add a lot more $$. This cost can make large plots very expensive for new gardeners. And installing a fence is heavy work - too heavy for many would be gardeners.

We have about every vegetable eating critter you can imagine. Hundreds of rabbits, chipmunks, woodchucks. Moles and mice. Deer, wild turkeys, etc. Some critters dig, others climb, baby rabbits can fit through incredibly small holes in fences. I've seen gardeners get very disappointed and leave when their entire pea crop is eaten to the ground and they don't have the resources to erect a good fence.

From all the community gardens I've been to it appears there's most often a standardized, town-provided fence. Waltham Fields has chicken wire around each plot, Cambridge puts an external sturdy fence around the perimeter with a limited access gate then lets gardeners erect small internal fencing of their own choice. I've also heard of gardens where all fencing must be temporary and is removed each fall so the entire garden area can be tilled by large machinery in the spring.



Town provided options gives a consistent and organized appearance. But they have their disadvantages. By allowing each gardener to erect their own fencing, we have all sorts of variety. From 3 foot to 6 foot structures. Rusty to polished. Barricades that exclude any critter remotely considering theft to open posts that line the edges.

Our gardens have grass paths between each plot. These provide buffer zones between personalities. They remind me of some poem of Frost's. "Good wide paths make good plot neighbors." If someone grows 6 ft tall corn, sunflowers or tomatoes, who would want to be adjacent at the north side? But those grassy paths require maintenance. And the more fences, the more potential structures for invasives to grow on.

With these thoughts in mind, our Community Garden is planning to add a few additional garden plots. A few more spaces, a few more happy gardeners....

Bill Gates on agricultural biotechnology

Bill Gates has been doing some reading on farming. On his blog, he's recommending the book "Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food" by Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak.

"By the year 2050, Earth's population will double. If we continue with current farming practices, vast amounts of wilderness will be lost, millions of birds and billions of insects will die, and the public will lose billions of dollars as a consequence of environmental degradation. Clearly, there must be a better way to meet the need for increased food production.

Written as part memoir, part instruction, and part contemplation, Tomorrow's Table argues that a judicious blend of two important strands of agriculture--genetic engineering and organic farming--is key to helping feed the world's growing population in an ecologically balanced manner. Pamela Ronald, a geneticist, and her husband, Raoul Adamchak, an organic farmer, take the reader inside their lives for roughly a year, allowing us to look over their shoulders so that we can see what geneticists and organic farmers actually do."

Is it true that we cannot afford to feed ourselves with natural, sustainable methods? What if we all grew at least part of our own food in our plots and yards? It really is as simple as sticking a seed in the ground and waiting for good stuff - if you learn some basic principles of growing food from your parents, friends and fellow gardeners. Do we really need to choose between eating engineered crops and environmental degradation? Is everyone just too busy to have time to water a garden plot? I don't have any idea of what the real answers are. I'm just wondering....

community garden planning

Our Community Garden Planning is starting up. It looks like our Work and Plot Assignment Day will be April 10th. Mark your calender if you have a plot at the BVG!

We have an enormous waiting list this year - 80 so far. Too bad there isn't space for everyone who wants to grow their own food. The good news is we likely will have at least several additional new pots this year in an area the town has newly cleared.

more sweet potato info

Donald and CJ have great advice on growing sweet slips, so I am posting their comments here so I can find them more easily.

I grew these for a few years at my Community Garden Plot in Hamilton Ont. Its a bit cooler here than Boston. To grow the slips, I put three tooth picks in the sweet potato and suspend them in a canning jar full of water. 1 ft slips are ideal. After the slips are 1 ft, put them in the canning jar to root. Space them 2 ft per slip and space the rows 3 ft and use Garden cover to heat the soil. They grow slow and then they they take off and the green leaves spread out. Near the end of summer leave them in until the night time temps are above 10c. Near the end of Summer the tubers will double in size every two weeks. From Donald January 24, 2010 8:55 PM

When the slips get about a foot long. Put them in water to start the roots. If the bare root slips are hardened off properly they won't suffer much stress when planted. Row covers to heat up the ground will increase the size of your tubers.
From Donald March 03, 2010 2:29 AM

I started my sprouts the day after you did. I took the sprouts off when they were about 4 inches high. I put them to root in water like Donald suggested. Once the roots were about an inch and half long, I planted them in soil. One plant is now about 8 inches tall and the other 3 are about 5. I put 4 sweet potatoes to sprout and as you can see, one did quite well, it has about 15 leaves on it. Two potatoes had no sprouts and in fact started to rot. The other produced the other 3 smaller plants. Can't wait to see the outcome this year. Sweet potatoes and artichokes are my experiments this year. From CJ March 03, 2010

It sounds like my little sprouts shouldn't be in water yet. When they are 4 inches or 1 ft long, then I should put them in water to root. The rooting part seems to go very fast when they're in water. The sprouting part starts slow.

sweet potato sprouts

I'm using my Christmas martini picks to support sweet potatoes in water glasses. They're sprouting well. They grow slowly, so I'm glad I've started early. They are supposed to be a foot tall before planting out in May.

I started up 4 more milk bottles with perennial flowers: Rudbeckia Trilobia, Rudbeckia Goldsturm, Prairie Aster, and Lavender Dwarf Hidcote.

spring flowers!

A yard down the street from me has a front yard that fills with early spring flowers every year. These are always the first bulbs to bloom. Crocuses and snowdrops on a south facing slope. How wonderful!