Mulish & Co.

She's Beautiful And I Love Her

Our first tomato of the season.

Purple Cherokee, 7.35oz

Hazel Takes Her Medicine And The Tomatoes Taunt Me

Hazy has had her third dose of cherry flavor SMZ-TMP antibiotic. I'm no chicken but I can imagine that my little hen doesn't associate plump red cherries with the syringe full of pink yuck coming her way. She fights it, turning her head left and right, up and down. I manage to get her beak open (no small feat) and squirt a bit in at a time, being careful not to drown her with the stuff. I have yet to see any improvement but we only started it yesterday. Time will tell.

 

When we're done, I put her down to stretch her legs and peck at strands of grass. She's unsure on her feet, wobbly. She takes slow and deliberate steps through the grass. I let her be and turn to survey the garden. The tomatoes are unruly. They make me want to abandon them but I can't. I imagine selling the house with this tangle of tomato vines. Would it bring down the property value or would the new owner reap the reward of my efforts? Both probably. The Cherokee Purple has taken to using a cane and a walker just to stand upright! If I could only stop myself from checking on the clusters of green tomatoes I'm sure I would be rewarded with a surprise of purple tomatoes one day.

 

The love the beans shower me with makes up for the spiteful sunflowers and hollyhocks and the ever stubborn tomatoes. Beans love me and I love beans. We will be friends forever. The longshot at the end of the movie about my life won't be of me walking across a prairie into the sunset, no, it will be me walking through a field of bush beans with an overflowing basket of the things slung over one arm. It will be a poignant end, maybe a chicken or two will dash across the frame. But hey, it's not over yet! I'm not going anywhere until I get at least one tomato from at least one of the 8 plants that are taking over the backyard.

 

Hush, Now

It would seem that the garden has come to a resting point but the truth is that the changes that are taking place now are slow coming. The excitement of a seed emerging from the soil, a blossom fixing its lovely self to a hardy stem, the formation of an okra pod - all of that is behind us. Now we wait. We wait for the tomato clusters to color, we wait for watermelon and cucumber blossoms to magically transform into fruit. I go out to see if I can detect the changes but they only happen when I turn away.

Maturity, it would seem, takes its sweet time with vegetables as well as with humankind. So I wait. Some days I'll turn a spadeful of compost and wonder at the life I've turned up, all scrambling to take cover. Other days I'll brush my fingers over the herbs and bring their fragrant oils close, inhaling the sweetness of mint, of savory of thyme.

I play the part of sentry, of protector. Sometimes I get to play the part of a small child entranced by the orderliness of ants. My imagination gets to explode with all of the possibilities of what lay beneath the soil - of what tiny lives thrive in the soil cities complete with super-highways and waterways. Where do you take cover when it storms, little friends? It's a mystery, the garden, slowly evolving and thriving  under the late spring sun. I just want to be near you. That's enough for right now.

The Wild Dance of The Nematodes

Last week I told you about my skepticism regarding the small jar of beneficial nematodes that I purchased. Nematodes are invisible to the naked eye, mind you, so I had my doubts. I hate being duped and I don't trust anything entirely unless I can see it. So, to that end, I put a snuff-sized pinch of the nematode medium into a small glass jar and packed it with ice on Friday. It rode shotgun with me to work where it was fixed to a slide and put under a microscope. When the vet focused the lens she announced, "You got your moneys worth. There's a bunch of them."

I peered in next and I will tell you, that slide had wiggling, writhing nematodes all over it! It reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where we all learn that Elaine cannot, for the life of her, dance. The little S's were making herky-jerky movements, whipping their tiny 'tode heads left and right.There were plenty of nematodes and I had only brought in a small pinch. My weekend was off to a great start.

In other gardening news, I planted the pumpkins this weekend. I sowed them directly into the soil and watered deeply.

I planted cotton and okra seeds last week and both of those have emerged from the soil. I think we've hit that sweet spring warm weather and everything, everybody wants to spend as much time outside as possible. There isn't much for me to do in the garden right now. I keep my basil and chive seedlings moist but everything else seems to be able to go for a day or two on its own without watering. My little garden is growing up.

Now what? What is a gardener to do during this lull? My shrubs are jarred, my garden is growing, my 'todes are thriving. What do I do now? The easy answer to myself is "Write Like The Devil!" But did I? No. I sat and sat and thought quite a lot about writing but nothing was wrought.

I've been reading "What They Carried" by Tim O'Brien and Michael just finished "Creativity" by Jonah Lehrer. I am so blown away by O'Brien's writing. It's the best writing I've read in a long while. Breathlessly poignant. Michael shares bits from his book and tells me that no amount of thinking is going to help me with writing. Creativity comes from a nearly dreamlike meditative state. I can believe that after reading O'Brien. I need some pot, he says. Or a better meditation practice. We laugh because neither is likely. I'm too herky-jerky like the nematodes. Completely unstructured, wild and undisciplined. It would do a lot for me to work on this but I am also the master procrastinator and I always think I'll have time later.

Waiting

Slow Food Season

It struck me today, while slowly cruising the backyard, that my vegetable garden had done switched its bad self over to automatic pilot while I wasn't looking. I don't know when that might have been because I feel like I am always looking at something or other in those gloriously blue periwinkle beds. I'm sure it's nothing more than reaching a seasonal plateau. Things just need to progress on their own for awhile.

I did find a comically large fuzzy caterpillar clinging to one of the stout leaves of what was (just a few days ago) my best collard green. I could have given that thing a poodle cut is was so fuzzy but I didn't. Instead I found a twig and flicked it off into the nether regions of the yard hoping that a bird will chance upon it. The hens refuse to eat the fuzzinnis anymore. They look at me in disbelief, like they've gone to the fanciest restaurant in town only to find a Big Mac sitting on their dinner plate. I take my humble offering away and hear them grumbling amongst themselves.

The sweet potatoes may need another beneficial nematode spray. I bought my first nematodes last weekend. Now you can't see the nematodes mind you but they come with a lot of instructions and are very sensitive and they need a certain amount of care and they are very expensive. Part of me felt like I was buying Sea Monkeys. They could have sold me anything. That's why I am going to take a pinch of what is in their little refrigerated jar to work with me today so I can check it out under a microscope. What if nothing shows up, I asked the vet? Do I return it and say, "My veterinarian checked this shit out under her magnolamp and it's as sterile as Auntie Patsy's sister-in-law?" I don't think I have it in me. Michael might do it. He'll return anything for the slightest imperfection. Hell, he calls the phone company to get ten cents credit if he ever receives a text message. That's my boy.

The watermelons need to be thinned so there's a little Sophies Choice playing out in that bed. I hardly have the heart to thin the little trio and am thinking that I might just take the orphan melon to the neighbors to see if they can plant him. I'll take all the extra potato slips too.

There are baby tomatoes growing on the Purple Cherokee. Can't rush that.

The beans are beautiful and strong. The beets are like toddlers taking their first steps. Some slump over but mostly they are standing upright.

My little garden is growing up. All that's left for me to do is stand back and watch it grow. This may be the first weekend that I can just sit and read in the shade. I've never had everything done so early in the year before. I'll have to remember how satisfying this feeling is for next year. It's wonderful.

 

 

How (Not) To Grow Sweet Potatoes

A few days ago, maybe it was Friday, I opened an email from The Natural Gardener and read, to my delight, that sweet potato slips were in. I had been regretting my lack of ambition to get my long anticipated potato tower constructed and ready for irish spuds and the plant date came and went. The potato tower was to serve two purposes: contain potatoes in a small area while adding an intense splash of color to the garden.

For those of you that aren't familiar with a potato tower, it is a method of growing potatoes in a container, starting them at the bottom, then as they grow you add another board and cover their leafy greens with more soil. When the new green growth emerges you cover it again with soil forcing the potatoes to reach, reach, reach for the sky blue sky, continually sending out roots which in turn developed lots of little spuds. It's sort of an artifical method of hilling them and the yields can be remarkable. I think it's something you have to play around with for a season or two. Some varieties probably stack better than others.

I purchased my lumber a year ago but did not have the energy or focus or whatever it takes to get the things put together. Instead we picked at our little wood pile using the  cut lumber for other projects and before we knew it all of our tower material had been gone through. The tower was slowly becoming the garden monkey on my back. When I read that the sweet potato slips were in I jumped at the opportunity to get my act together.

I called the garden center to ask a few questions and learned a few things.

• The sweet potato is in the Morning Glory family.
• Their greens can be eaten, unlike their Irish spuddies.
• They are NOT related to yams.
• The enemy of the sweet potato are: wireworms, sweet potato weevils and bad nematodes
• They can withstand poor soil to some extent and should not be doused or dosed with excessive amounts of nitrogen.
• They cost $6.95 for 25 and two varieties were available: Beauregard & Vardaman

I chose the Beauregard. Why? Because the fellow I talked to on the phone said that one of the varieties was exceptionally heat tolerant and could withstand the Texas summer. That's saying something. Only  thing, I forgot to ask which variety it was. Once at the garden center, no one else seemed to be aware of this. The telephone guy was at lunch. I was on my own. I looked down at the two galvanized buckets of potatoes, Vardamans on my left, Beauregards on my right. I reached for the information sheet. There was none to be found. The Vardamans had a purple leaf. Very pretty. The Beauregards looked "eh" but the bucket was nearly empty. Clearly the choice of many gardeners probably better educated in potato growing than myself. I reached for the Beauregards. Hundreds of gardeners couldn't all be wrong.

I finally had my potatoes slips, I bought some beneficial nematodes to ward off evil and I purchased a couple of bags of manure. Off we went. I prepared the ground, digging and pulling rubbish from the soil. I only needed a 30" x 30" area and after an hour or so I felt the little spot was clear enough of weeds and debris to place the tower. In went the compost and soil, a little sprinkling of water. I unwrapped my slips but they were not at all what I had imagined. They were not pieces of potato but little spindly plantlets with roots.

I smelled a rat. Something was amiss. These weren't tower material at all. Michael had worked so hard I was afraid to tell him what my gut was telling me. I'll just keep mum, I told myself. I buried the rooty little things and watered them. I applied the beneficial nematodes. I stood back. Then I ran the magic box. 

Dear Mr. Google, Can sweet potatoes be grown in a tower?

Dear Overly Ambitious Gardener: No.

You can't believe everything you read on the internet so this morning I got back on the phone with the nursery. Evidentally, some things that you read on the internet are, in fact, true. Sweet potatoes can be grown in a container and the roots will travel downward but I was advised not to hill the beast lest I be left with a lengthy vine and no taters. They do not have the same growing habits as their Irish spuddies.

It's okay. A little adjustment will need to be made. We'll just have to build the tower as tall as we want it, fill it with soil and replant the slips so the roots can travel downward. It's all fine, it's copacetic, my friends. Live and learn. Live and learn.

State of The Garden Address

The cucumber, squash and basil have come late to the party but it was worth the wait. They are strong and lovely. I'm surprised at how long it took the white scalloped squash to come up. Her girlfriend, lemon squash, has been up and out for days now, soaking up the sun and stretching her arms out.

As for the basil, things did not go well early on. I planted seeds from my ever-growing collection of seed packets but nothing came up. Not a single cotyledon. I gave it 2 solid weeks before I went out and bought a new pack dated 2012 and re-seeded. Then they emerged approximately 5 days later. This is the first year that I've had to do that. It was the same with the sunflowers. I went out and purchased new seed and they emerged within the week.

The cucumbers, bless their little space saving hearts are finally waking up. I have two beatiful red cages for them. Soon enough they will fill out and cover the red supports.

I planted more red onions. I'll probably end up with more than I could ever give away. I was forced to plant them because I recently did a seed inventory and had so many seeds listed in my  garden notebook that I ran out of pages. There just wasn't anymore room to list that I had onion sets so I went out to the back and stuck them in the dirt. Problem solved.

This may just be the weekend that I get my potato towers started. There are sweet potato slips available at the nursery and I'd love to pull some for Thanksgiving this year. Michael is up for hammering the tower together for me and I'm up for painting it. Should be a quick weekend project, knock on wood.

So that is the state of the garden at the moment. The watermelon is getting it's first true set of leaves, all the tomato plants (7) have blossoms, I yanked a sickly pepper and replaced it with a healthy serrano. I filled in the bare spots in the bush bean bed, same with the golden beet bed.

Until next time, may your cotyledons grow strong!