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Flowers in the cellar

Sunday, January 22nd, 2012

In 2011 I grew several varieties of chrysanthemums from King’s Mums in Oregon. They were absolutely beautiful – and next year I’ll pay more attention to de-budding and have even larger (if fewer) blooms. We have a short season here so I grew the plants in large flower pots and moved them down cellar at first frost. I assumed that the plants would winter over but did not have high hopes for the flowers and the buds yet to open. As it turned out, the flowers did very well under the florescent lights. I made multiple bouquets for the office and had lots of still life material right through November. Highly recommended!

Today’s chrysanthemum drawing, 10 x 15 inches, charcoal on rag paper

Tags: garden, winter
Posted in art, flowers, gardening, horticulture, still life | No Comments »

Fedco Seed Order 2012

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

Just finished my order over at Fedco Seeds, Maine’s agricultural co-op seed house specializing in cold hardy varieties for the unforgiving climate of the New England growing season. Fedco has five orders: Seeds, Moose Tubers, Organic Growers Supply, Trees, and Bulbs, and sends out three catalogs. The seed division alone does about $3mm annually.

Completing the seed order is the way I mark my own personal start of the new year. Yes, the canning cupboard is full of glass jars of produce, the Rubbermaid boxes of potatoes and carrots sit ready to eat on the cold cellar floor, the garden is still holding parsnips, kale, and leeks, but all of that is just so 2011. Selecting seed varieties is my first foray into the new year and a snapshot of Garden 2012. Here’s the list (in no particular order) and some highlights of my favorites from the catalog:

225 – Royal Burgundy Bush Bean OG ( A=2oz) 1 x $1.90 = $1.90
297 – Multicolored Pole Bean Mix ( A=1/2oz) 1 x $1.50 = $1.50
338 – Marfax Bean ( A=2oz) 1 x $1.50 = $1.50
658 – Silver Queen White Sweet Corn ( B=8oz) 1 x $7.50 = $7.50
678 – Dakota Black Popcorn OG ( A=2oz) 1 x $2.60 = $2.60
818 – Oregon Giant Snow Pea ( A=2oz) 1 x $1.50 = $1.50
842 – Mammoth Melting Sugar Snow Pea ( A=2oz) 1 x $1.50 = $1.50
1035 – Halona Muskmelon ( A=1g) 1 x $1.90 = $1.90
1311 – Boothbys Blonde Slicing Cucumber OG ( A=0.5g) 1 x $1.00 = $1.00
1409 – Raven Zucchini ( A=1/8oz) 1 x $1.90 = $1.90
1457 – Costata Romanesca Zucchini OG ( A=1/8oz) 1 x $1.40 = $1.40
1635 – Sunshine Winter Squash ( A=1/8oz) 1 x $2.50 = $2.50
1718 – Winter Luxury Pumpkin OG ( A=1/8oz) 1 x $1.60 = $1.60
2058 – Red Cored Chantenay Carrot ( A=1/8oz) 1 x $0.80 = $0.80
2068 – Atomic Red Carrot OG ( A=1g) 1 x $1.80 = $1.80
2073 – Shin Kuroda 5" Carrot ( A=1/8oz) 1 x $0.80 = $0.80
2099 – Over the Rainbow Carrot Mix ( A=1g) 1 x $2.40 = $2.40
2186 – Bulls Blood Beet ( A=1/8oz) 1 x $1.00 = $1.00
2267 – Green Meat Radish ( A=1/8oz) 1 x $1.50 = $1.50
2306 – Andover Parsnip OG ( A=1/8oz) 1 x $1.60 = $1.60
2376 – Gold Ball Turnip ( B=1/2oz) 1 x $1.50 = $1.50
2425 – Bleu de Solaize Leek ( A=1/16oz) 1 x $1.70 = $1.70
2504 – Bordeaux Spinach ( A=1/4oz) 1 x $1.20 = $1.20
2555 – Giant Winter Spinach ( A=1/4oz) 1 x $1.30 = $1.30
2738 – Antares Lettuce OG ( A=1g) 1 x $1.50 = $1.50
2983 – DeLuxe Lettuce Mix OG ( A=1g) 1 x $1.60 = $1.60
2984 – Freedom Lettuce Mix OG ( A=1g) 1 x $2.20 = $2.20
2992 – Mesclun ( A=1g) 1 x $1.10 = $1.10
2993 – Greens Mix OG ( A=1g) 1 x $1.20 = $1.20
3034 – Perpetual Spinach or Leaf Beet ( A=1/16oz) 1 x $0.90 = $0.90
3075 – Speckled Friz Chickendive OG ( A=1/16oz) 1 x $2.30 = $2.30
3122 – Minutina ( A=1/16oz) 1 x $1.30 = $1.30
3740 – Sweet Pimiento Sweet Pepper ECO ( A=0.2g) 1 x $1.20 = $1.20
5210 – Tanagra Lavatera ( A=1g) 1 x $1.10 = $1.10
5263 – Mignonette ( A=1g) 1 x $1.00 = $1.00
5280 – Alaska Nasturtium Mix ( A=2g) 1 x $1.00 = $1.00
5320 – Ziar Breadseed Poppy OG ( B=0.3g) 1 x $3.00 = $3.00
5331 – Flemish Antique Poppy OG ( A=0.2g) 1 x $1.10 = $1.10
5421 – Selma Suns Mix Sunflower OG ( A=1g) 1 x $1.10 = $1.10
5441 – April in Paris Sweet Pea OG ( A=2g) 1 x $1.20 = $1.20
5455 – Mrs. Collier Sweet Pea ( A=2g) 1 x $1.00 = $1.00
5506 – Hopi Dye Sunflower OG ( A=1g) 1 x $1.10 = $1.10
5960 – Purple Majesty Millet ( A=0.05g) 1 x $2.30 = $2.30
5970 – Duborskian Rice OG ( A=1g) 1 x $1.60 = $1.60
6333 – Beneficials Mix ( B=7g) 1 x $7.50 = $7.50

Subtotal: = $80.20
Maine Sales Tax: + $4.01
Adjusted Total: = $84.21
Shipping: + $0.00
Grand Total: = $84.21

I did not include the prices last year and had to field a lot of budget questions later. My biggest costs in the garden are seeds and trees, and the seed portion averages right around $80.00. Trees/shrubs/perennials go about twice as much (in a good year when I can afford that), and equipment costs are another $50.00. This year I have to replace my 20 year-old shovel for instance, and in 2010 I replaced my sprayer.

Two items that I think will be fascinating additions to Garden 2012:

3075CO Speckled Friz Chickendive OG (70-90 days) Open-pollinated. Chicorium intybus x C. endivia Unique, chic greens from master breeder Frank Morton who crossed Wild Garden chicories with frisée, curly endive and escarole to develop this colorful flock of individuals, more tender than chicory, more cold hardy and ornamental than endive, with a mixture and flavor range that goes well beyond either and the sweet bitterness of a good endive. This gene-pool has variation, some plants open, others semi-headed, others with full heads. Has overwintered and been permutating at the MOFGA garden for the past six years.

2984FO Freedom Lettuce Mix OG An inspiring mix with plenty of surprises, this gene pool was created by Morton in what he called the “Hell’s Half-Acre lettuce trial” identifying those varieties most disease resistant and crossing them with his best-tasting varieties to select and recombine for excellent traits. Contains exceptional material including some experimental forms that would stand on their own as named varieties. Morton invites growers and breeders to work with this mix to create new varieties for their farms or for the general public, while stipulating that nothing derived from it may be patented or protected from others’ use in any way. This strategy, originated by software developers, is now known as copyleft (as opposed to traditional copyright). Morton has adopted it to keep his varieties and their derivatives in the public domain as a protected commons. Seeds as nature’s software! See wwwgnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html. for more information on copyleft. These days freedom is a rather slippery concept and many things are being done in its name that I don’t approve, but copyleft has the potential to return to free use such shared resources as our plant heritage that rightfully belong to all of us. As Morton proclaims, “Adaptive breeding cannot occur under a system of restrictive ownership.” Open-pollinated.

And finally, today’s garden photo: Fedco Harris Model parsnips still green on January second.

Tags: Bar Harbor, garden, harvest, winter
Posted in gardening, horticulture, Maine, putting food by, vegetable garden | No Comments »

Cozy bonsai

Sunday, December 18th, 2011

It’s time to put the bonsai to bed for the Maine winter. Possibly past time; they’ve endured at least one snowstorm on the outdoor work table and while they look wonderfully romantic with snow-covered branches, all that freezing and thawing is hard on roots and ceramic pots.

In past years I’ve stored our hardy bonsai specimens in the bulkhead, but they are prone to damage from extremes of heat and cold, dry air and rodents. I’ve been reading about methods to winter the trees outdoors and the idea of burying them in the garden, as they do in Northern Japan, might solve those problems. We don’t have many non-hardy trees left in our collection because space by a window in our 20′ x 30′ cape is at a premium over the long winter.

For the trees that can spend the season outside, I dug the soil out of a bed close by the house and piled it on a tarp.

According to my very old and tattered Japanese paperback, the next step is to carefully place the pots in the bed. At least this is what I think is going on in the rather sketchy illustrations – I can’t read the text. Then dig out or fill in so that small pots are at the same level as the taller trees and point branches inward, rather than overhanging the outer edges of the bed where they might be broken or tripped over in deep snow.

I sprinkled Plantskydd rabbit and “small critter” repellent in and around the pots, and followed that with sprigs of tansy, lavender and garlic chive. I’ll put another layer on top when the bed is filled in. We have field mice, shrews, voles and red squirrels and, even though none of these bonsai are particularly edible, even the critter exploration can be damaging. Then I filled the bed back in to the level of the pots with the reserved soil and tamped it gently into crevices to insulate against rapid changes in temperature. Watering the soil in helped, too.

Now the trees are overed over with a layer of insulating pine needles, another layer of rodent repellent, and waiting patiently for spring. If this works it will be how I store them going forward – it was a lot easier than carting the pots down cellar and making room.

Prettier, too.

Tags: bonsai, garden, winter
Posted in bonsai, gardening, horticulture | No Comments »

Sparky

Monday, November 21st, 2011

I dug a hole in the lower garden this weekend, and this is what I got.

We moved here twenty years ago and started gardening as soon as we could fell some trees, but we have neighbors who have been at it almost twice as long. When I asked R.A.T. (who has beautiful gardens and fruit trees with C., his wife) what kind of soil I could expect to find on my lot he thought for a minute and said, “Sparky”. I had no idea what he meant but later that summer when I boot-heeled a spading fork into a future raised bed and nearly started a forest fire scraping the metal against the granite, I got it. We don’t have dirt here, we have flint and tinder.

I’ve hauled a lot of seaweed in the last twenty years – pickup truck loads of the stuff, first loose in the back of the truck and later packed into recycled contractor bags as I realized what the salt and sand did to my truck. Also leaves, sand, gravel, horse manure, bales and bales of hay, piles of pine needles, composted bio-soils, wood chips and lately, other people’s yard waste and branches as I’ve adapted to the practices of permaculture. I can actually grow things now but that doesn’t mean there’s any fewer rocks, large or small.

Rocks can occasionally be a positive element in the garden, especially in poor soil. I was weeding the strawberries during this last gasp of summer-in-November and found the plants had spread furiously under and around the rocks holding down the landscape fabric meant to suppress weeds. I stood there for a while and considered the situation. The strawberry plants loved those rocks, perhaps because they conserved moisture and regulated temperature changes? The landscape fabric certainly wasn’t doing anything to suppress weeds, and I have a lot of rocks. Why not make the plants happy? The strawberry bed went from this:

to this:

If nothing else, it will be easier to step into the middle of the bed to pick the fruit, and it can’t be any worse at weed suppression than the landscape fabric. Prettier too, and I find that counts for a lot in the garden.

Tags: autumn, Bar Harbor, construction, garden, mulch, neighbors, weather
Posted in gardening, horticulture, Infrastructure, permaculture, the backyard, the neighborhood, vegetable garden | No Comments »

Still green

Sunday, November 13th, 2011

Today I worked on the perennial/alpine/small stuff garden on the north side of the house. This section of our yard is over the septic field, so I chose non-edibles with small, uncomplicated root systems for that location. I flunked the “root” test by planting a ground sand cherry here almost a decade ago and by the time I got wise to its evil, septic-tank-clogging ways the trunk caliper was 4″ and its root system was immense. Digging it out was a nightmare.

After that I thought I was being very conservative with my plant choices for this garden: daylilies, heaths and heathers, varieties of sedum and geraniums, candytuft and anise hyssop. Today while cutting stalks and mulching for the winter I noticed that the Sweet Cecily (Myrrhis odorata) had spread to a dozen new plants – it’s easy to see this time of year because it’s still green and ferny after the frost. I dug some out to transplant and surprise! A very impressive root system.

Cecily, or Sweet Cecily, is a member of the family Apiaceae and the only species of the genus Myrrhis. There is a North American relative, but my plant is the variety native to Central Europe. The leaves stay green and fresh almost all year round and the whole plant is highly fragrant of annis. The unripe seeds can be offered as an after-dinner mint, the dried leaves make an excellent mothproofing sachet, the root – along with dill and caraway, is used to flavor akvavit. It would probably make a nicely flavored vodka, too, if it wasn’t growing over the septic tank.

I’ve transplanted six “daughter” plants around the yard, and next year I may try flavoring vodka for Christmas lunch, when the Swedes say the herb “helps the lutefisk swim down to the stomach”. Skål!

Tags: autumn, garden
Posted in alpines, gardening, horticulture, perrenial, the backyard | No Comments »

October gardening

Friday, October 28th, 2011

The late October to-do list includes:

Rake neighbor’s driveway: for the dual purpose of making her steep slope less slippery and harvesting wheelbarrows full of mulch for the blueberries, hydrangea, and current bushes. Every year I’m amazed what a soft, abundant cushion falls from the white pines that still look fully clothed in green needles.

Move the chrysanthemums from the yard to the hoop house and then eventually down cellar under the grow lights. Mums are one of my favorite plants to draw – their structure is so loud and on display – but they are the last flowers to bloom in my garden. That means nursing them through waning day length and falling temperatures, but it’s worth it for the source material. I indulge myself every year and buy two or three varieties from King’s Mums in Oregon, in search of my very own Mondrian.

Plant red garlic in the beds by the house where tomatoes grew this summer. A virus blew up the coast with Hurricane Irene and shut the tomato production down in August, so I should give these beds a rest from anything in the nightshade family for three years. I loosened the soil a bit with a hoe and planted a pound of cloves about 6″ on center all over the beds, while admiring the creepy-crawlies (baby pill bugs – very cute) and weeding out the tiny tomato seedlings (not this year, sorry). This spring I’ll interplant the garlic shoots with lettuce, spinach and beet greens, and then harvest the bulbs in late fall, 2012.

Prepare fruit trees for winter: rake up the leaves and compost them somewhere away from the trees to keep the pest population down, check the trunks for borers (apple borer is very common here) and rodent damage, put down a layer of seaweed mulch, then a layer of hay, and wrap the lower portion of each tree in wire screening to keep out the mice and shrews. Eventually I’ll also stamp the snow down in a big circle at the drip line to discourage tunneling. A friend of mine stopped by as I was kneeling on the cold wet ground and messing with string and mesh, and asked me why I bother, since none of my trees ever showed any damage? Ayuh.

Clear out the peas: One of my favorite garden tools is hemp twine. I used to spend time and energy ripping the vines out of nylon netting; now I cut the string from the poles and compost the whole heap together. Brilliant!

Return to the house cold and damp all over. Build a fire, make dinner, work on a painting, and go to sleep under two quilts; repeat until April.

Tags: autumn, garden, orchard fruit, wildlife
Posted in art, gardening, horticulture, Maine, orchard, still life, the backyard, vegetable garden | 2 Comments »

Willow garden basket

Monday, September 26th, 2011

Willow has become my favorite garden construction material. The willow retaining wall, or “withy”, that I put in 10 years ago has become a lush green wall that provides erosion control, shelter from drying wind and cold air flow, and bird and insect habitat on the abrupt slope by the side of the house. I keep it pruned to 3′ – 4′ and what was originally a single file of uprights is now a twisted mass more branch than space with a caliper of 4″ on some of the foundation trunks. I came home too late to take photos tonight, but tomorrow is a day off and I’ll repost.

The withy is wonderful where it has enough space but I’ve been leery of starting one in the main garden. I need room around it to easily prune it back (I’m pretty wild with the big shears), and it gets big fast even in Maine. Then a few weeks back a friend showed me an old woodcut illustration of a garden with what looked like large baskets overflowing with herbs. The “pots” had been started as baskets made of green willow with the uprights staked into the dirt, and allowed to grow in place. It seemed like a great idea!

I cut enough basket willow to form the uprights for a semicircular “basket” backed up to a tree trunk. I try to cut the branches at an angle for ease of pushing them into the ground, and remember to orient them the way they were growing.

Then I wove the uprights into themselves to form the basket. I used string to tie them in place at first but as the weave gets thicker the ends stay where you put them. Then I lined it inside and out with mulch hay to cut down on weed competition.

I filled the inside of the basket with a layer of rotten firewood, bark, then hay, then soil, and planted my new flowering (and fruiting) quince. I hope the recumbent form of the shrub isn’t as overwhelmed as it might be by starting 2′ above ground level.

Now to wait for Spring, and “Crimson and Gold”.

Tags: autumn, construction, garden
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Crepuscular

Friday, September 16th, 2011

The light is fading fast in the garden as we approach the equinox. I have a day job, so gardening is relegated to the hours around 9 – 5 and very soon there won’t be any of those. Tonight I stayed out long enough that I needed to come back to the house for a flashlight to find where I’d put my Felcos – normally very visible with their bright red plastic handles.

Twilight is sacred to Hindus. The part of the day when the sun is below the horizon and objects are still visible is considered prime time for study and contemplation and is known as the “Cow Dust Time”.

Crespecular is the collective adjective for who are most active in the early evening, such as red pandas, deer, moose, and myself. I might be further described as “vespertine” with the woodcock and coyotes. We’re all out there together, avoiding predation and thermal stress by doing our best work just after sunset and before moonrise.

Now that I’m back in the house with my electric noon I’ll put up grape juice and peach nectar for the long time ahead, when twilight and dawn are only six hours apart.

Peach Nectar, or, The Easiest Way to Put Up Lots of Peaches

Wash and pit peaches. If they’re ripe and you trust your source, don’t bother peeling them. Pit them directly over the bowl of the food processor so all the juices go in, too. Sprinkle 1 tsp lemon juice and 1/2 C sugar over the full bowl and puree. I have a 6 Cup capacity Cuisinart, so adjust for the size of your processor.

Dump the contents into a large pot and repeat until you’ve almost filled the pot. Heat just to simmer and add sugar, a little salt, and a little vanilla to taste. Ladle into sterilized canning jars and process for 15 minutes in a steam canner.

This is great stuff for your breakfast smoothie.

Posted in gardening, horticulture, orchard, recipe | No Comments »

It’s summer and. . .

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

the traffic is terrible. U turns in traffic, K turns downtown on one-way streets, and I think I saw an “M” turn (hint – it involved a boat trailer) down at the town dock on Saturday. On the up side, the Boy is home on holiday and brought the Girl with him and we are having a wonderful time.

Tonight we had La Piana squash ravioli with “everything” pesto. I picked handfuls of oregano, summer savory, Genovese basil, parsley, and a few carrot tops, processed them with garlic, sea salt, and olive oil and served topped with grated Parm. The tiny ravioli cook up soft and flavorful, and each box makes a huge amount. Fantastic.

I’ve also made brown butter rice crispie bars and blueberry boy bait from Smitten Kitchen, blueberry muffins, green curry, poverty cake, buttermilk waffles, and bog juice. I just can’t seem to help making all the family favorites, and I can’t regret it, either.

So I was out in the garden, watching the green hive (Pistachio) buzzing madly at their front entrance, no doubt screaming about the fantastic patch of goldenrod down the road at Triple Chick Farm. The buzzing seemed to be coming from two places at once, though, and I turned around to see a swarm of bees approaching from the swamp. They circled the big spruce tree a few times and then coalesced on a branch about 45′ above the hives. They stayed the night and were gone by 9 a.m. the next morning. Our current hives, Vanilla and Pistachio, seem unaffected by the visitors. The football shaped swarm is in the middle of this photo, right above our electrical wires.

Second plantings are in for kale, cabbage, broccoli, green beans (hedging my bets on a late frost), basil, lettuce, radishes, carrots, parsnips, and beet greens. We’ve had a respectable amount of rain for a Maine August and the garden is lush and productive at the moment.

While our son is here on break we tried out Eden, the new (or rather, resurrected) vegetarian restaurant in town. “Plant-based cuisine” for the win! I had a bento box of grilled baby bok choi, spring rolls, maple roasted tofu, steamed soy beans – it was fantastic. Bonus points for being right next door to Mount Desert Ice Cream (Fearless Flavor!), where we had incredible cones: blackstrap banana, chocolate wasabi, and pralines and cream. We found out too late from another local that the shop will combine two flavors, so we’re headed back there this weekend for a “Cherie Special”: pralines and cream with salt caramel.

This seems to be the perfect year for corn. Now if the 7′ tall Silver Queen can withstand whatever we get from Hurricane Irene, there will be another post about dinner.

Tags: Bar Harbor, bees, family, garden, summer
Posted in bees, Cooking, family, gardening, horticulture, Maine, Town Hill, vegetable garden | No Comments »

Wildlife – herpetology chapter

Friday, August 12th, 2011

We have a pesticide free garden. It’s difficult to use insect-killing preparations when you raise insects – the bees are just as susceptible to Safer Soap and tobacco solution as mites and aphids. I use Surround CP almost exclusively for spraying and after that I lean heavily on passive prevention techniques: sticky girdles around tree trunks, red balls for apple maggot fly, traps for Japanese beetles, etc. Surround is made with clay and forms a chalky barrier on leaves and fruit. It doesn’t seem to bother the bees at all. After a few years of keeping the grounds poison free, we have an abundance of amphibian and insect life.

I’ve been keeping a list of species observed since this spring and plan to continue recording for a few years. Our swamp provides a buffer of permanently damp soil, but summers on the island differ widely in temperature and rainfall and I’ll be interested to see how the populations changes over time.

Observed so far in 2011:

Green frog (above, sunning in the mulch hay near the pumpkins), spring peeper, gray tree frog, bull frog, pickerel, wood frog, mink, Northern leopard, American toad

Spotted turtle, box turtle, snapping turtle

Eastern and Maritime garter snake (very pretty), Ribbon snake (not sure if it’s an Eastern or a Northern, very shy), Smooth Green snake,Eastern milk snake

Eastern red-backed and spotted salamanders – I’m sure there are more salamanders out there I haven’t seen yet.

Next year we’ll start cataloging insects!

Tags: beekeeping, garden, summer, wildlife
Posted in gardening, horticulture, Maine, the backyard | 1 Comment »

Amy Pollien