When your dear Aunty was very young, I got into the habit (as some comic in years past put it) of ‘sending away’. Now, of course, this was years before the internet was a glimmer in Al Gore’s eye, and even years before true mail order as it became known became a huge industry. It was the sort of thing where you saw an advertisement in a magazine or a newspaper and you sent in your postcard or a letter (with a self-addressed stamped envelope!) and you got stuff in the mail back to you. Addressed right to you. (more…)
Raising It
Getting a box
Garden Planning: Where is the shade going to fall?
Something which, even after 35 years plus of gardening together, the DH and I are still fine tuning is the issue of where to put stuff to grow, keeping in mind the path of the sun versus the orientation of our garden beds. In the picture above, taken this morning at about 11:30, you see your dear Aunty, standing outside (in the rather windy 16 degrees F, I might add – the things I do for you guys..) in one of the garden beds, in the snow, holding up a door. (more…)
Ginger: Did it work?
Well, your Aunt Toby has been out and about and across the big pond and back again and I have absolutely no excuses for no postings but that is the way it goes. Lots to cover. In an early May episode, I decided to do a little experiment to see if I could, in chilly, short-season Upstate New York grow ginger. Make Friends With Ginger
I bought a ‘hand’ at the grocery store, cut off several likely looking pieces, (more…)
Garlic: Music wins again
Last year, at just about this time, I dug up the garlic and we discussed how to pick which garlic and which cloves to save to plant in the fall for the next year. How to choose garlic for seed
And I remarked in that post about how fantastically the variety called ‘Music’ is. And you can get it here: Music
Music
Garlic varieties
Music
Not that I don’t think there are other great garlic varieties out there. What grows well for someone in Missouri might not grow well for us here. But I can tell you that after another horrific summer (and this time it was not wet, dry, hot, wet. We had a horrible dry winter), this variety came out like a champ. As a matter of fact, we had very little snow this winter, so even though the cloves had a bit of growth in the fall, (and we actually had plenty of rain in the fall), they were uncovered all winter long and then went into the spring with no moisture in the soil. The spring was dry too and then we went into June and July up here with practically no rain at all and super high temperatures – the hottest July on record.
So, the garlic was stressed in a major way. And I could certainly tell the difference when I compared the other garlic that I grew in the same bed. Same bed, same soil, same growing conditions, same amount of moisture. Music won again. Big juicy bulbs with huge cloves. Very impressive performance given the heat and drought stress. The photo at the top is a “Music” bulb that I partially uncovered to take a photo so that you can see just how big and robust it is. That bulb was about 3″ across at the bottom. I can’t recommend this variety enough.
You wouldn’t happen to have a snath on you, would you?
In the average American homeowner’s garage, there are all sorts of tools and machines. Some are pretty simple, like shovels or rakes (one step up from a stick, actually); others are more complex and usually run on some sort of motor or engine. They many times are used to cut something – grass, brush, weeds.
Most of them are merely powered versions of that thing in the picture at the top of the page, in pieces, awaiting the DH’s ministrations with glue and a screwdriver: A scythe.
Invented before the birth of Christ, this more advanced (and advantaged) version of a sickle allowed mowers and reapers to work standing up. Using a sickle is real ‘stoop labor’ and you can’t really get any speed with it as the motion is: Bend down, grasp a bunch of grain plants in one hand, cut it with the sickle and lay it down. With a scythe, a mower or reaper can walk and swing the scythe with every step. The advance of putting a long handle and a blade at one end enabled workers to literally cover far more ground. It also enabled workers to organize the work so that mowers and reapers would line up in a field with space in between them and work their way down the field and the whole field would be finished at pretty much the same time. OH – just as a note: Mowing refers to cutting grass; cutting grain is referred to as reaping – so “The Grim Reaper”, that is, Death represented as carrying a scythe, is obviously meant as a being associated with harvesting grains. I guess he can’t be bothered mowing the lawn. (more…)
Bee Report
Well, the weather straightened out enough that the DH could go out and check on the bees. Usually, he’d have gone out in the beginning of May but it was cold and rainy and this is not only not good for bees but everyone would have been home, so to speak, so it makes it much more dangerous for the beekeeper in terms of getting stung. On a day like today – bright, sunny, warm, a little breezy, everyone who is supposed to be out and at work… is out and at work. Everyone else is basically busy raising baby bees and doing storage work. (more…)
Catching up
OK, Peoples! In our last episode Honey, I broke the tomato we discussed how to use ‘rooting hormone’ (in this case, the powder form) to try to save the broken-off tops of two tomato plants. That was (ordinarily I don’t bother with dates, but in this case, I think it’s illustrative) June 6th. Today is June 16th and see the photo above. That little white thing coming out of the bottom of that plastic pot is… a root. So, there you have it – 10 days from “broke” to “ready to go into the garden. (more…)
Honey, I broke the tomato
There are certain facts of gardening life that are right up there with ‘this won’t hurt a bit’ and ‘the check is in the mail.” You can absolutely count on the fact that if you have not gotten the plants into the garden at the optimal time, a massive weather system will choose to route itself through your backyard and right through the area where you have your tender little tomatoes and pepper plants and wreak havoc on them.
And snap a couple of them right off where they are just starting to branch off. If you are truly doomed, they will also have flowers on them.
So, what are you going to do with THAT? (more…)
Gardening Weird Science Forever — it’s a jungle out there
Last year, as readers might recall, I planted seeds I had gotten when I ‘married’ some daylillies out in my garden. I got little plants, which I put into pots for the summer last year and then toward the end of the summer, I planted them out into their own little nursery bed. Saving and Growing Your Own The photo at the top is of them, this morning – and boy, how THEY have grown. They are probably three times the size of what they were when I planted them out. Last summer, while the little daylilly plants were busy growing, I did some more ‘marrying’ on the daylillies in my garden and saved those seeds in a dry paper towel inside a plastic bag in my fridge. Earlier this spring, I again put them into one of my handy-dandy ‘plastic box with a snap on lid that I got some salad mix in from the grocery store’ and those, too, have come up. I will plant those into pots with grow mix and at the end of this summer, I will put those into the nursery bed. I will also transplant the daylillies that you see in the photo above into more permanent spots at the front of our house. They are probably a good two years away from flowering but part of the fun of this is the waiting part. (more…)
Make Friends With Ginger
Gingerbread. Ginger Snaps. Ginger Tea. Asian dishes with ginger. Candied Ginger as a confection. A thousand and one uses of this member of the Zingeberaceae family (which also includes turmeric, cardamom, and Galangal, which is also referred to as ‘Thai Ginger’). It smells good and tastes…well, until you put in enough to make the dish ‘hot’, it tastes amazing. (more…)
