This bed is in the “upper” garden, hard by the house. In “Gaia’s Garden“, Toby Hemenway talks about siting often-used vegetables close to the house. He suggests going out to snip a few herbs for an omelet and a side-dish of greens in the early morning in your bedroom slippers and robe. If you come in wet around the edges, the herbs are too far from the house. I can definitely snip greens from this bed without getting damp in the morning. Made of three layers of cinderblock, this bed is fairly deep. Even on the south side of the house it stores enough moisture for mustard, lettuces, radishes, and a few sorrel plants. Around the edges, in the cells of the blocks, grow anise hyssop, Thai basil, forget-me-nots (they’re everywhere), and alpine poppies. All the beds in the upper garden are ringed with strawberry plants, so that they benefit from the moisture and shade.

More in the upper garden: three beds of tomatoes surrounded by calendula and interplanted with bulls blood beets and white globe turnips. One of the tomato choices I made this season was Fedco’s Heirloom Tomato Mix.  I’m looking forward to seeing what comes out of that over the course of the season and possibly picking out some new favorites for next year.

Down in the lower garden this bed contains Provider green beans, haricot verts, and started out with a lot of radishes that provided quick shade for the sensitive bean sprouts. I’ve since picked the radishes and the Carpet of Snow alyssum has grown up enough to provide a living mulch. I sow the alyssum at the same time as the radishes in the very early spring. Purple bread poppies grow wherever they like and provide full seedheads for bread and pastry and resowing in the fall.

This is one of the squash beds, set on the hillside for ease of walking around fragile trailing vines. The deer don’t bother the stouter vines, so these pumpkins and Hubbard squash can clamber up the hill and outside the electric fence. They are interplanted with nasturtiums (just for color – I don’t think these hybrids protect against bugs or nematodes) and green beans. These green beans are planted about two weeks after the beans in the bed mentioned above so that the harvest is staggered.

Corn! Two rows of Silver Queen white sweet corn, potentially growing to 9 feet and producing 3 or 4 ears per stalk in a good year. These are not interplanted with anything. I’d love to try the Three-Sisters method of corn stalks in mounds surrounded by pole beans and squash, but I have yet to convince my partner-gardener of that. This year he allowed mulch, so maybe there’s hope. That said, it’s wonderful corn.

Potato boxes with varieties Ratte, German Butterball, Green Mountain, and All Blue. The potatoes are planted in about a foot of dirt at the bottom of the box and boards and hay are added as the plants grow taller. I had a very poor yield in the 2010 boxes due, I think, to droughty weather and too much hay/too little soil to start. The vines are much healthier as we get into the really hot part of summer this year, so I have hopes for a good harvest. This is certainly a space-effective way to grow potatoes. In the late fall I dump the boxes over and use the soil, mulch and old plants to make a new bed.

Lilies and apple trees seem to go together well. The lilies provide a nice living mulch to cool the roots,  retain moisture, and shade out weeds. These are very old Tiger lilies from my grandmother’s garden in Connecticut growing under “Westfield Seek-no-Further”, which is covered in little green apples this year.

I have another whole group of close-ups for a post this weekend. We’ve had some rain so if I can stop picking green beans for a minute  I’ll make another post this weekend!

Yesterday was a beautiful day. I’m not going to bother comparing it to today, because I’m at work and my narrow view of the railroad tracks isn’t that informative. Yesterday, though, yesterday rocked.

I worked on the seed beds first. The far corner cinderblock plot had produced wonderful tomatoes last year, so this year I planted beets, lettuce, and my new favorite green, Maruba Santos.  I have been reading Gaia’s Garden, 2nd Edition: A Guide to Homescale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway on Kindle and learning quite a bit that is directly applicable to this garden. I’m employing the very basic ideas of the book, such as planting three varieties of “depth” together so that nutrients are rotated through the soil structure. Lettuce (surface), a substantial “cabbagey” green (mid-level), and beets (deep), are a standard combination. Some ideas are new to me: Mr. Hemenway mentions cardoon as a good plant for root depth as well as using its huge leaves as mulch. My season is far too short for cardoon to mature, but using it to improve soil vitality would be a good opportunity to have this interesting plant in my garden (without having to eat it).

I put out the leeks in the next bed to the left (Brussels sprouts and cabbage in 2010) and  interplanted it with more lettuce: Pablo, Majestic Red, and Tom Thumb bibb, which is a house favorite. The next bed to the left was squash last year. I’ve planted it with haricot vert and Provider bush beans (mid-level), white alyssum (surface), and daikon radish (deep). I’m probably getting ahead of schedule by planting beans; we’ll see if the row cover mitigates the temperature enough for them to progress. It was 28 F at 5:30 a.m. but predicted to be warmer overnight as we go through the week.

Up closer to the house is a large, old bed that has been peas two years running. This year it will be 3 varieties of carrots in lengths from 5″ – 8″ and heliopsis.

Tomorrow is forecast to be solid rain with 20 knot winds. Maybe sometime next week I can spray dormant oil on the fruit trees and burn last year’s brush, but there’s no telling with the Maine spring.

I planted “Pablo” batavian lettuce, Zlata radishes, Maruba Santoh, broad-leaved sorrel and Fedco’s greens mix. This raised bed is quite close to the house and was thawed out to about 6″ deep. I threw a bucket of compost on top as I was closing down the garden last fall and had to fork that in and found a dozen or so rotted packets of loose dirt, about and inch square and perfectly uniform. It took a few minutes to recognize them as PG Tips tea bags. . .compost is such an interesting record of one’s life.

I put down a sheet of Agribon (spun row cover) and scattered some corn snow over the top to keep the top layer from drying out in the sun tomorrow. Some of these seeds are tiny.

It’s going to be a while until the pea bed (the one with the shingles, beyond the apples trees) is thawed enough to plant anything.

I held off long enough that Fedco was already out of Hopi Dye Sunflowers, which sound fascinating and will perhaps inspire me to get this done earlier in 2012. Here is the complete list with sporadic descriptions lifted from the Fedco online catalog:

204 – Provider Bush Green Bean ( A=2 oz)
247 – Masai Bush Haricots Verts ( A=1/2oz)
297 – Multicolored Pole Bean Mix ( A=1/2oz)
337 – Maine Sunset Bean ( A=2oz)
658 – Silver Queen White Sweet Corn ( A=2oz)
818 – Oregon Giant Snow Pea ( A=2oz)
916 – Oka Muskmelon ( A=1/16oz)
1059 – Arava Cantaloupe OG ( A=1g)
1388 – Painted Serpent Cucumber ( A=1/16oz)
Cucumis melo var. flexuosus Bite into the snake that doesn’t bite back. Also known as Armenian Cucumber or Snake Melon, native to Armenia and brought to Italy in the fifteenth century. William Woys Weaver says “this is one of the oldest of our heirlooms, yet one of the most neglected by our gardeners,” often relegated to exhibition rather than esculentus. Yet its flavor surpasses that of cucumbers, excelling in salads and stir fries without bitterness or burps. Slender slightly fuzzy flexuous fruits delicately coil like a serpent with alternate light and dark green stripes. Culture like the melon it is, starting indoors in individual pots and transplanting into a low tunnel. Will grow up to 30″ but best eaten at 8–18″. Straighter if trellised. I could never get it to grow well on my Central Maine clay, but it loved my sandy Colrain, MA, soil and was a prolific producer in the hot dry summer. First ripe fruit was July 26.

1457 – Costata Romanesca Zucchini OG ( A=1/8oz)
1605 – Carnival Acorn Winter Squash ( A=1/8oz)
1719 – New England Pie Pumpkin ( A=1/4oz)
2073 – Shin Kuroda 5" Carrot ( A=1/8oz)
2092 – Nelson Carrot ( A=1g)
2093 – Yaya Carrot OG ( A=1g)
2186 – Bulls Blood Beet ( A=1/8oz)
2257 – Zlata Radish ( A=1g) A new color in summer radishes! These shimmery yellow medium-sized beauties from Poland starred in our MA trial. Crunchy and crispy white interiors, spicy but not overwhelming, good fresh and even better braised. Did not bolt or split and held quality even in all the June 2009 rains. Perfect for bunching.
2376 – Gold Ball Turnip ( A=1/8oz)
2411 – King Sieg Leek OG ( A=1/16oz)
2512 – Olympia Spinach ( A=1/4oz)
2803 – Tom Thumb Lettuce ( A=2g)
2805 – Bronze Mignonette Lettuce ( A=2g)
2859 – Majestic Red Lettuce ( A=1g)
2919 – Pablo Lettuce ( A=1g) Open-pollinated. Pablo bears a superficial resemblance to a red iceberg with much the same allure, but is a batavian, not a crisphead. Its larger plants form loose heads of beautiful upright rosettes surrounded by wide wavy-edged flat leaves. Bronze coloration on the outside leaves contrasts strongly with the green interiors lending a striking metallic sheen. Very sweet and mild with some bitterness in the ribs, slow-growing and extremely heat resistant.
2983 – DeLuxe Lettuce Mix ( A=1g)
2992 – Mesclun ( A=1g)
2993 – Greens Mix OG ( A=1g)
3192 – Broad-Leaved Sorrel ( A=1/16 oz)
3209 – Maruba Santoh ( A=1/16oz) Open-pollinated. Brassica rapa (pekinensis group) With Maruba you get four vegetables in one. The loose round vibrant chartreuse leaves provide a mild piquant mustardy flavor while the flat white stems impart a juicy crisp pac choy taste. High-end chefs like to use the blossoms. Market grower Scott Howell finds the flavor more subtle and complex than that of other greens and cuts Maruba small for his mesclun. Fairly bolt tolerant, so plant after the early spring flea beetle invasion subsides.
3221 – Tatsoi ( A=1/16oz)
3326 – Broccoli Blend ( A=0.5g)
3327 – Piracicaba ( A=2g)
3380 – Frigga Savoy Cabbage
3466 – Rainbow Lacinato Kale OG
4060 – Paul Robeson Tomato OG ( A=0.2g) Open-pollinated. Ind. This Russian heirloom was named in honor of Paul Robeson (1898-1976) who befriended the Soviet Union. Athlete (15 varsity letters at Rutgers!), actor (played Othello in the longest-running Shakespearian production in Broadway history!), singer (world famous for his vibrant baritone renditions of Negro spirituals), orator, cultural scholar and linguist (fluent in at least 15 languages!), Robeson was an outspoken crusader for racial equality and social justice. Revered by the left, reviled by the right, he was blacklisted during the McCarthy Era and beyond, harassed by the FBI, his passport revoked for eight years, his career stifled. He died broken and almost forgotten, his life a testament to lost opportunities in twentieth-century American history. His namesake tomato has developed almost a cult following among seed savers, 12 of whom are listed in the Yearbook. The maroon-brick 6–12 oz. oblate often bi-lobed fruits with dark green shoulders come closest in flavor to Black Krim, but can claim their own distinctive sweet smoky taste. A sandwich tomato with a tang, an extraordinary tomato for an extraordinary man.
4119 – Peacevine Cherry Tomato OG ( A=0.2g)
4149 – Heirloom Tomato Mix OG ( A=0.2g) You’d love to be adventurous and try them all but you haven’t space for that many tomato plants? Or can’t make up your mind which ones to select? Here’s the solution: Skip the fuss and leave the choosing to us! We’ll mix together a bunch of varieties (all organically grown seed) in one packet. You’ll get different colors, sizes, shapes and flavors. All you’ll need is an open mind, a good sense of observation, unjaded taste buds and acute deductive faculties. Then you can figure out which ones you like and order them by name next year.
4207 – Juliet Tomato ( A=0.2g)
4418 – Genovese Basil ( A=2g)
4470 – Thai Basil ( A=0.5g)
5005 – Carpet of Snow Alyssum ( A=0.5g)
5141 – Sensation Mix Cosmos ( A=1.4g)
5460 – Torch Mexican Sunflower ( A=0.2g)
5467 – Benarys Giants Scarlet Coated Zinnia ( A=0.2g)
5470 – Cactus Bright Jewel Mix Zinnia ( A=1g)
5491 – State Fair Mix Zinnia ( A=0.5g)
5502 – Dyers Broom ( A=0.2g)
5504 – Dyers Coreopsis Mix ( A=0.3g)
6137 – Summer Sun Heliopsis ( A=1g)
6333 – Beneficials Mix ( B=7g)

It is snowing, sleeting and occasionally pouring rain with thunder and lightening out there right now, but soon, this -

Soon!

Most years I’ve started seeds by early February. This year I’m only half-way through my order to Fedco and I don’t know whether to lay the blame on laziness or acquired knowledge. Mid February is actually too early to start anything but artichokes this far north – you’re not going to be planting anything but greens outdoors until the middle of May – but that never stopped me. I’ll look through the scrapbooks later for some photos of the tomato hedges growing under shop lights in the basement of our house in South Portland.

Every year there’s one item in the catalog that combines a wonderful variety name and a stunning description. For 2011 it’s this one:

337MS Maine Sunset Bean (85 days) Open-pollinated. Heirloom dating back to at least the 1930s, Sunset returns to our catalog after a 4-year hiatus. Maintained for many years by the late Pearl Smith, farmer and longtime Unity Coop member. An ever-bearing variation of the Soldier type featuring beautiful plump round-oval ivory-white beans irregularly splotched with brownish-maroon and blood-orange splashes around the hilum. A wonderful baking bean, with a creamy texture and rich flavor when cooked, comparable to Maine Yellow Eye. Good yielder.

I can’t wait to bake those beans. Here’s the rest of the order so far:

Masai Bush Haricots Verts

Multicolored Pole Bean Mix

Maine Sunset Bean

Silver Queen White Sweet Corn

Oregon Giant Snow Pea

Oka Muskmelon

Arava Cantaloupe OG

Painted Serpent Cucumber

Costata Romanesca Zucchini OG

Carnival Acorn Winter Squash

New England Pie Pumpkin

Shin Kuroda 5″ Carrot

Nelson Carrot

Yaya Carrot OG

Bull’s Blood Beet

Zlata Radish

Gold Ball Turnip

King Sieg Leek OG

Olympia Spinach

Tom Thumb Lettuce

Bronze Mignonette Lettuce

Majestic Red Lettuce

Pablo Lettuce

DeLuxe Lettuce Mix

Mesclun

Greens Mix OG

Broad-Leaved Sorrel

Maruba Santoh

Tatsoi

Broccoli Blend

Piracicaba

Frigga Savoy Cabbage

Rainbow Lacinato Kale OG

This year I bought a pole bean selection from Fedco. The packet contained yellow, speckled, purple and brown beans and they’re all delicious. They are over-growing their 12′ stakes, but I can’t complain, really.

Perhaps the best part of this season is the longevity of many of our more fragile crops. We’ve had very hot days, but also cool nights and more rainfall than I’ve seen in July. The lettuce is still coming in and the second crop of turnips is off to a rousing start. My April planting of “Bull’s Blood” beet greens  is still viable, and the mesclun that started in late March is just this week too far gone to make another salad. Now we’ll just have to wait and see about the first frost.

Last Tuesday I stayed home from work to bring my mother to her doctor for a complicated consultation. After the bad news and instructions we had soup at the Morninglory Bakery to strategize and get a little closure. Then I brought her to her house for a much-needed nap and took myself home for an unscheduled afternoon.

The weather was lovely Tuesday afternoon. A side effect of the long February stretch of rain is that the temperature has held steady at around 38 degrees, night and day, for a week. On my way in to the house I noticed that the garden beds by the front door had thawed, and that a few parsley and lettuce plants from last fall were green and sprouting. It wasn’t much of a stretch to consider planting out some of those seedlings from down cellar, so I raced upstairs, changed into garden-ready-wear and had at it.

I roughed the soil with a hand fork, removed dead foliage, protected a few surviving lettuce seedlings (they look pretty good!) with straw and planted:

Here’s a list of the packages in the box. I have new acreage to plant this year, but not a lot of soil to be distributed. I went heavy on greens and other categories that won’t mind dirt on the poor and skimpy side, not a lot of things with taproots or a need for deep humus.

Every year I plant out at least 50 seedlings of a particular perennial (or generously self-seeding annual). My original thought was that, at a projected 50 more years of gardening (that was 10 years ago), I would have an abundance of a few beautiful plants that I otherwise would not be able to purchase in such quantity. Some years the experiment is a success and the Elecampne is a striking and vigorous presence in the garden every year. Sometimes not so much, and the boneset – a lovely plant much favored by the bees – disappears completely after a few years. The “100 specimen” plant for 2010 is Blue Vervain:

Blue Vervain OG Verbena hastata This 5–6′ perennial grows naturally in the moist soils of thickets and meadows and will do well in similar garden conditions, sending up many terminal spikes of bristly blue-violet flower clusters the entire season. Although scraggly, it blends very well with many kinds of flowers by stretching its spikes amongst them. Herbalist Gail Edwards finds it “a powerful spiritual presence” and nervous system tonic. Similar to V. officinalis, but more alterative, vervain acts mainly on the liver and lungs. Also used for menstrual disorders. Its roots are more active than its leaves. Likes light well-drained moist soil. Zone 3. OT-certified. ~2,500 seeds/g.

Wish me luck!

238BB-Bush Blue Lake 274 Green Bean (A=2oz) 1 x $1.30= $1.30
297MP-Multicolored Pole Bean Mix (A=1/2oz) 1 x $1.30= $1.30
658SQ-Silver Queen White Sweet Corn (A=2oz) 2 x $2.00= $4.00
798LG-Legume Inoculant (A=treats 8lb) 1 x $4.00= $4.00
818GT-Oregon Giant Snow Pea (A=2oz) 1 x $1.30= $1.30
974DO-Sweet Dakota Rose Watermelon OG (A=1/16oz) 1 x $1.80= $1.80
1311BO-Boothbys Blonde Slicing Cucumber OG (A=0.5g) 1 x $0.80= $0.80
1409RV-Raven Zucchini (A=1/8oz) 1 x $1.70= $1.70
1504SF-Saffron Summer Squash (A=1/8oz) 1 x $0.90= $0.90
1655BH-Blue Hubbard New England strain Winter Squash (A=1/4oz) 1 x $1.10= $1.10
1719NE-New England Pie Pumpkin (A=1/4oz) 1 x $0.80= $0.80
2018TP-Tonda di Parigi Carrot (A=1/8oz) 1 x $1.20= $1.20
2073SK-Shin Kuroda 5" Carrot (A=1/8oz) 1 x $0.80= $0.80
2079KO-Scarlet Keeper Carrot OG (A=1g) 1 x $1.10= $1.10
2186BB-Bulls Blood Beet (A=1/8oz) 1 x $1.00= $1.00
2376GB-Gold Ball Turnip (A=1/8oz) 1 x $0.70= $0.70
2411SO-King Sieg Leek OG (A=1/16oz) 1 x $1.60= $1.60
2510SP-Space Spinach (A=1/4oz) 1 x $1.00= $1.00
2775FO-New Red Fire Lettuce OG (A=1g) 1 x $1.10= $1.10
2784FO-Flashy Green Butter Oak Lettuce OG (A=1g) 1 x $1.30= $1.30
2859MR-Majestic Red Lettuce (A=1g) 1 x $1.00= $1.00
2992ME-Mesclun (A=1g) 1 x $1.00= $1.00
3158GI-Gigante dItalia Parsley (A=1/16oz) 1 x $0.70= $0.70
3218SP-Senposai (A=1/16oz) 1 x $1.20= $1.20
3221TS-Tatsoi (A=1/16oz) 1 x $1.10= $1.10
3223YN-Yokatta-Na (A=1/16oz) 1 x $1.20= $1.20
3252TZ-Toraziroh (A=1/16oz) 1 x $1.20= $1.20
3326BB-Broccoli Blend (A=0.5g) 1 x $1.50= $1.50
3339GU-Gustus Brussels Sprouts (A=0.5g) 1 x $2.50= $2.50
3469KM-Kale Mix (A=2g) 1 x $1.50= $1.50
3885KS-Krimson Spice Hot Pepper (A=0.1g) 1 x $1.90= $1.90
4117PO-Principe Borghese Cherry Tomato OG (A=0.2g) 1 x $1.20= $1.20
4207JT-Juliet Tomato (A=0.2g) 1 x $1.80= $1.80
4233JS-Jet Star Tomato (A=0.2g) 1 x $1.90= $1.90
4418GB-Genovese Basil (A=2g) 1 x $0.90= $0.90
4517RO-Caribe Cilantro OG (A=1g) 1 x $1.00= $1.00
4542MM-Mammoth Dill (A=4g) 1 x $0.90= $0.90
4692BO-Blue Vervain OG (A=0.1g) 1 x $1.30= $1.30
4698SW-Sweet Woodruff (A=0.2g) 1 x $1.20= $1.20
5094CC-Canary Creeper (A=1g) 1 x $1.10= $1.10
5141SM-Sensation Mix Cosmos (A=1.4g) 1 x $0.90= $0.90
5224HM-Mauritanean Malva (A=0.15g) 1 x $0.90= $0.90
5275KO-Kniolas Purple Morning Glory OG (A=0.25g) 1 x $2.30= $2.30
5282EI-Empress of India Nasturtium (A=3g) 1 x $1.00= $1.00
5296TC-Tall Climbing Mix Nasturtium (A=4g) 1 x $0.90= $0.90
5357GD-Gloriosa Daisy (A=2g) 1 x $1.00= $1.00
5442CU-Cupani Sweet Pea (A=2g) 1 x $0.90= $0.90
5500WD-Weld (A=0.2g) 1 x $1.20= $1.20
5774JO-Jobs Tears OG (A=2g) 1 x $1.10= $1.10
5963SO-Northern Sea Oats OG (A=0.2g) 1 x $1.20= $1.20
6120BF-Blue Flax (A=1g) 1 x $0.90= $0.90
6266QO-Queen of the Meadow OG (A=0.02g) 1 x $1.20= $1.20
6322VH-Southern Charm Verbascum (A=0.02g) 1 x $2.50= $2.50
6333BM-Beneficials Mix (B=7g) 1 x $7.50= $7.50

Today’s seeds are: Cracoviensis Lettuce (47 days), Space Hybrid Spinach (37 days) and Bull’s Blood beet, grown for its lustrous red leaves (60 days).

The soil should warm up quickly under the row cover. Below, heath, heather, ground sand cherry and sedum as the alpine garden emerges  from the snow.