Category Archives: gardening

Spring Herbs

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I’ve written before about the egg-scallion-tortilla thing I love for breakfast — all winter I have to make do with store scallions. They’re fine. Sometimes I add my own frozen blanched greens. But it’s hard — one of the things I hate most about winter.

But now it’s spring! And although it’s been a long time coming, there are finally things coming up in the garden. This morning, my breakfast omelette/tortilla contained a green onion (from the garden), a handful of wild arugula, a big sprig of lovage, some parsley and a handful of chives.

This is the thing about having a garden that I love — this isn’t one of those recipes that would make any sense if you found it in a cookbook — who would buy that collection of things? And lovage? where does one even get lovage if you aren’t growing it yourself? I’d never had lovage before — it’s slightly odd, kind of like a leafy celery. The wild arugula is another surprise — it’s terrific as a ground cover — grows like wild and self sows.

It’s my favorite thing about the garden — wandering outside with my scissors, looking to see what might be yummy …

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Scarecrow!

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So, ever since my ancient calico cat, Patsy, went off to the great beyond I’ve been plagued by neighborhood cats who think my nicely turned and raked raised beds are big litter boxes. Ugh.

Last year I tried cayenne sprinkled on the beds, and finally resorted to draping them all in tree netting. Which was fine, but as the plants grew up through it, it became a pain in the neck.

So this year, I went for more drastic measures. I ordered this fabulous sprinkler scarecrow from Amazon. You hook it up to the hose, and set the sensitivity level, and if anything comes near it it explodes with a blast of tat-tat-tat water and noise. The first night, clearly, I set it up facing the wrong direction and didn’t make it sensitive enough, because the next morning there was a gross horrible disgusting pile of catshit in one of the beds. So I moved it to face the back of the property, toward the alley from which the cat clearly enters my yard, and yesterday morning there were tracks, then a divot where the cat fled, but no cat crap. And this morning — nothing! Pristine garden beds with tiny seedlings growing in them. I love my sprinkler scarecrow!(Apparently they’re also pretty successful for folks who have deer issues.)

The next use for this fabulous device is going to be as a dog training aid — Raymond and George next door have an annoying game they play where they indulge in Very Fierce Barking through the gap in the fence. I think little motion-detector water should solve that, as well as the issue we have when I’m having a peaceful glass of wine on my front porch in the evening, and Raymond thinks he needs to rush back and forth along the picket fence barking at anyone who passes by — like I said. I love my sprinkler scarecrow.

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The Milk Lady Returns …

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My Milk Lady has returned! The cows calved and had a nice rest, and once again I’m getting my recycled gallon jar of milk every week. She had to raise her prices because the price of hay and fuel have gone up so much, and although I assured her it was fine, I understood, I still found a surprise present of a dozen duck eggs in my box last week.

I don’t know if all the health claims for raw milk are true, but I do know that it’s worth what I pay for a real food product, produced and delivered by someone whose animal husbandry and food preparation protocols I can trust. There’s a specific pleasure in helping to support a local farmer and knowing that by doing so we’re helping to keep that land in farming and not subdivided or turned into a gravel pit (as her neighbor is doing). And I know the milk tastes great, that the yoghurt I make from it is not like any yoghurt I’ve ever bought in a store, and that my allergies and digestive system do seem a little better when I’m eating a local food product that comes with all it’s original bacteria. Same goes for my own sourdough bread.

As for the duck eggs — I used them in the funeral cupcakes earlier this week. I’m not wild about duck eggs — even for me, a dedicated egg lover, they’re just a little too eggy — but they’re fabulous for baking. They whip up unbelievably, and they’re very rich. So, now I have a nice little stash of duck eggs as well.

I’ve also got half a local lamb on order … spring is here … there’s local food again. And it’s been raining, that’s rain, NOT snow (knock on wood) for two days now. A nice, soft, soaking spring rain which is encouraging the arugula, spinach, broccoli rabe, mustard and turnip greens, and peas that I planted last week to start poking up out of the raised beds. Teeny little green sprouts.

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King Corn in My Garden

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A big weekend of gardening — I dug the crabgrass and feral mint (I love my mint, but it was taking over everything) from the perennial beds. It was hard. There was digging, and pulling, and tugging, and sprays of dirt. I have an entire trash receptacle full of roots out there on the parkway waiting for the first yard waste pickup of the year.

My perennial beds have moments of gorgeousness, followed by long periods of bedragglement, caused in part by the weeds. My lawn too, is plagued by weeds — not dandelions so much, I don’t mind dandelions, but by big patches of black medic, which because it does not remain green (or green-ish) falls outside of my very large list of lawn weeds that are okay.

I considered applying a commercial weed-and-feed type product, but every time I tried to buy one I found myself looking at the list of chemicals and well, I just couldn’t do it. The dogs were a worry, for one thing. It was no surprise to me when reports surfaced last week that our pets are picking up alarming amounts of toxins from our environment.

We have a terrific shop over in Bozeman, Planet Natural, and a couple of years ago I read about corn gluten as an organic emergent herbicide and fertilizer. It’s a by-product of the cornstarch production process. When applied to lawns and gardens it inhibits the germination of seeds, and because it’s also very high in nitrogen, it fertilizes as it breaks down. I went to the Planet Natural website but they’re out of corn gluten and said it was on order from the manufactuer. Because it inhibits germination, you want to get it applied before things start to germinate, so time was something of the essence. I stopped at Lowes when I was in Billings last week with the gimpy dog, and scored the last four bags they had. So yesterday, after the great crabgrass-and-mint purge, I used the handy shaker-bag to apply a generous dose of the yellow pellets to the perennial beds, and then dumped a couple of bags in my little push-spreader (which makes me feel like the most suburban person ever) and did the shrinking-but-extant patches of lawn. We’ll see how it works. Luckily it’s nontoxic, since the dogs seem to find it somewhat irresistable …

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. On the one hand, it is an organic substance, even if it is a byproduct of America’s love affair with Big Corn. On the other hand, my grandmother and aunt support our family farm by growning corn, so there’s a kind of completing the circle effect. Mostly though, I hope it helps — if it can do anything about the crabgrass problem in my front perennial bed, I will be a very happy girl.

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Hands in the Dirt

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Finally! A day of real progress in the garden. I was very surly yesterday morning — it was cold. Too cold and icy to get any garden work done. I was taking it personally — storming around doing my errands, grumping about the damp wind. Then, finally, about one, it warmed up and I managed to get my compost corner cleaned up.

My composting system has been a frustration for a couple of years. I had three different backyard composters — one square one that came apart in layers that the waste district in California sold me for cheap years ago, another square one with a little door at the bottom where you’re supposed to remove compost (with what? a trowel?) and another totally crappy round one where the top layer fell off if you just looked at it cross-eyed. Again, with a little door at the bottom where you were supposed to remove your compost. These might have been okay for someone who just wanted to use up kitchen scraps, and maybe fill a few flowerpots. But they were too small, and you couldn’t get in to turn the compost, and they were nearly impossible to get the compost out of when it was ready. Because they were so small, I have a ginormous pile of old leaves and sunflower stalks and garden waste piled up out there. Last year I had to send leaves and other stuff to the town compost heap.

My dream is a self-sufficient system in which I compost all my yard and garden waste and then return it to my many vegetable and perennial beds. So yesterday I dismantled the crappy composters, put all the compost I’d actually made into the vegetable beds, and started building the new compost system. A two-bin system that uses scavenged pallets. I need to go find one more pallet today, but it looks like it’s going to fit into the space really nicely, and it will solve several of my problems. I’ll be able to get in there to turn the compost. They’re big, there’s a lot of room for the volumes of stuff I’ve got. And since I kept the one plastic composter that worked well, and moved it closer to the house for kitchen waste, I won’t have to worry too much about keeping the dogs out of the new heaps. I need to drive out to my friend Joan’s house and get some manure, because one of my garden goals this year is to get a good hot compost heap going. And so I need something to start the cooking …

As for the compost I made — there was about six wheelbarrow loads of compost. Not all of it was entirely digested — there were some sticks, and some straw, and some chunks, but I turned them all in anyhow. What I wanted as much as anything was some vegetative matter to aerate and lighten the soil in my veggie beds. I spent the last couple of years enamoured of the no-dig theory, but last year I saw a real drop-off in productivity. My soil was hard, and there was a crust on top from watering, and my carrots were not a success. The dirt had gotten compacted. It was hard. So yesterday, I took all that compost I’ve made, and I turned over the dirt in each of my raised beds. I smacked apart clods with my turning fork. It was hard work, particularly if like me, you’ve spent all winter typing and knitting and sitting on the couch because you hate hate hate the gym. But spring is here and there’s some actual work to do. And after a nice warm afternoon of digging, I have eight raised beds full of fluffy beautiful soil. I think I’m going to plant carrots and spinach and early greens and fava beans today. Fava beans! Last year was the first time I grew them and they were so so so wonderful. Peas. Maybe I’ll put in some peas today as well.

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