On Thursday, I flushed a huge frog out of the Swiss Chard when I was watering. My guess from his size is that it would be a Bull Frog. I do live near wetlands but seeing a frog this far away from water is rare. Toads used to be common but not frogs. Worried about him, I moved a container of water that I keep, hoping that if the chipmunks are thirsty they will drink water instead of eat on a tomato — don’t ask how that’s working, and topped it off from the hose.
On Friday, when I went out to try to water the chard, again, I heard a splash coming from the vicinity of the waterbowl. Expecting to see Swamp Thang, I looked around for the source and found this sweet young thing, about a third of his size. I also saw some black threads wiggling around in the water and got excited about the possibility of tadpoles. But the timing worried me; how long to go from eggs to tadpoles?
The Mrs
I googled a bit and was becoming more and more convinced that they probably weren’t tadpoles, but mosquito larvae. But that night after work she was suspended in the water, nose and eyes sticking out, along with a number of the small black things. Would she really hang about with mosquito larvae? But the next morning, I didn’t like the way she looked, now resting at the bottom of the container in water that was now pretty yucky. She had turned a dark black, too. I tipped her out to see if she was living and decided to clean out the bowl. By the time I went to work she was back in the clean water and had returned to a more normal froggy color.
So now I have a frog living in my garden bed in less than three cups of water. Finally watering the Swiss Chard, I also flushed out a toad, who seems to be hanging about, so I put down a couple more containers of water that I’m cleaning and filling with the hose when I water the garden.
I think what has happened is that our warm and dry summer has dried out the vernal pools nearby and these wetlands creatures are under preassure to find water.
The colors of this collarette dahlia remind me of when I was a child and dad bought home color chips to pick out colors for his potentially two-toned Cadilac. We were actually dirt poor at the time as we lived on a farm so dirt was most of what we owned. Dad’s day job was for Cadilac Motors in Detroit. At that time the employee discounts were so good that he could buy one from the new models and sell it a year later at a profit.
Yellow and red, about these shades of yellow and red, were my favorites and I couldn’t see why the rest of my family couldn’t see it. At my insistence, I do think someone tried to explain the meaning of “resale value” to me but I was pretty young and these two colors were the very best!
I may never have seen a car in these colors, and with my well-trained adult tastes I would probably think it ugly, but I do have dahlia “Pooh” to remind me what it is to be a child.
I promise the next post will be pretty pictures but I’d like suggestions.
Seven Sisters Rose after blooming
I am not sure how to prune Seven Sisters. I will be deadheading this, which was magnificent, and I’ll have to do some serious thinning, too. This rose is not prone to black spot but you wouldn’t know it from looking at these shots. Summer pruning will help. Here is my problem. I know that next years blossoms will grow off laterals from those new shoots but what about the old canes and laterals, do they produce blossoms again on the old laterals? Do old laterals produce new laterals with blossoms?
I mentioned my problems with chipmunks and watching them eat almost all of last year’s tomato crop. They seem to have an uncanny ability to know when a tomato is going to turn color and demolish it the same day. When I stopped at one of our local farm stands for some 4th of July raspberries, the woman who took my cash suggested mesh bags, like the ones that onions are sold in, to protect my crop. It’s not really feasible for all of my crop, like the sprawling bunches of cherry tomatoes, but for some of my prized, large heirlooms, it may be.
I don’t honestly know if mesh will work. The woman who made the suggestion had actually used brown paper bags. She said that they’d worked well, even ripening the tomatoes more quickly, but she quickly learned that they had to be emptied and reset after every rain or they’d hold the water and rot the tomatoes.
The problem with mesh is that I know my little chipmunk friends can eat suet through the suet cage and I’ve seen them use their sharp little claws. They may be able to eat the suet through the mesh. Or maybe, the strangness of the stuff will deter, on its own. Although I doubt that. These are very tame chipmunks.
Black Krim in mesh bag
If a coarse mesh will work, the easiest to apply is the plastic mesh “jackets” that they use to separate bottles of wine when they are packed two to a bag. They don’t need to be tied, just slipped on. And their natural stretch settles in around the tomato and can easily expand as it grows.
I had a couple of different bags; the one that I purchased with limes in it had the smallest mesh. It’s all an experiment. I’ll let you know how it goes.
It’s the time of year when most garden chores change from starting things to maintaining them. Mundane tasks like mowing and weeding have taken the place of dramatic decisions about what and when to plant.
And some harvesting. I’ve let the first year asparagus go weeks ago, to get more next year and I’m picking snow peas at the rate of a pound every few days. The tomatoes are at least a couple of weeks early, which is pretty much how this season has been going. Picking even a cherry tomato in June is almost unheard of and if you look carefully at the top, left of the picture above, you can see my second ripe tomato getting redder. The first one was picked slightly green and ripened inside.
I’m playing chicken with the chipmunks, who ate most of my crop last year. The sight of this one turning red untouched had me a little hopeful that the family who likes tomatoes moved on, but I see a quarter of a ripening Black Krim has been eaten, just as it was turning color. Last year I tried Coyote urine around the perimeter of the beds and all I got out of that was ruined shoes.
Green Brandywine
Teasing Georgia and a foxglove
Focusing on happier things, a pretty shot at about eyesight where the last, slightly chewed, small Teasing Georgia blossoms made friends with the last few blossoms on a lavender foxglove stalk; making for a beautiful relationship.
This really goes with my last post but WordPress’s graphics editor is so yucky that I can’t integrate it, it overwrites one of the other pictures. This, like the shots with the clematis, was taken of the arbor in front of my front door.
Seven Sisters is the latest of my once-blooming spring roses.
Once-blooming roses are often ignored in favor of the many ever blooming roses on the market. But when I visited gardens where they were properly used, I realized that they make up for their short season with their extravagance of blossoms.
This weekend, I’ve trimmed a few bushels of spent blossoms from roses that I’ve featured in earlier posts. And I have a few more bushels to go.
The fact that clematis Jackmanii blossoms at the same time as Seven Sisters rose was pure luck, although I can take some credit for combining the colors.
Yes, there are other things happening in my garden besides roses, but can you blame me for being obsessed?
The gallery below starts with shots of the front walkway. The pink rose near the door is Gertrude Jekyll (yes, again) with a shot of City of York (white) and clematis Ramona on the walk light. More shots as it’s so pretty and it smells so good.
The gallery goes on with more flowers, the peonies that I thought I planted in front of the roses (oops), more Gertrude, golden-colored Austin rose Evelyn, rose Tropicana and two mountain laurels. No names for the peonies and white mountain laurel as I inherited them with the house, although I had to find the mountain laurel under overgrown forsythia. The red laurel is one that my neighbor planted on a strip between our houses that I think of as friendship alley.
While not the first to open, she is the first to put out a display in my garden.
Gertrude relaxing in the Columbines
When I was checking the spelling, I noticed her descrbed as a climber. I don’t think so. Like many Austin roses, she puts out long canes and does best with support. But she’s growing into seven sisters, the rose over the arbor with still tight buds and that’s a true climber.
(Dear State of Massachusetts, If I had to post these cheesy paper plate signs in order to avoid getting sprayed, you really didn’t think that I’d stop at just “no spray”, did you?)
I miss toads. When I moved here, and for years afterwards, they were so plentiful that when I mowed the lawn, I had to mow slowly and carefully, looking for the small brown flick of a toad moving out of the way at the last minute. I was always worried about the ones that I didn’t see and worried that I might have reduced the population just by mowing.
By midsummer, they would have matured and staked out their territory in one flower bed or the other. As I worked, I’d learn which beds were their homes for the season. I’d keep a sheltered place and a source of water handy to encourage them.
But something has happened and it happened in the same timeframe that the town joined the mosquito spraying program that Massachusetts sponsors. As soon as I heard about it, I put myself on the no-spray list because people who have asthma are at some risk when they are spraying. But I also did some web searches on the pesticides that they use and found they will kill bees, birds and amphibians, among others. The logic seems to be that the risk to human lives from mosquito born diseases is worth the cost. And they try to minimize the benefit/cost ratio by spraying right at sundown, when mosquitos are most active and maybe those victim species are not.
While maybe sound in theory, the practice is not so simple to apply. First, the trucks run for several hours a night and sundown is a very short window. Bees maybe inactive but I’ve got shots of them spending the night in flowers; any in flowers or shrubs by the road are goners? And then there are the cardinal nests in the multiflora rose that grows up along the street.
And what are the risks to humans, really? Ted Williams, writing for Audubon magazine, compares West Nile Virus to the flu, both can kill, but he goes on to talk about evaluating the program in Grafton, MA, and finding that the incidence of the problem was nill, zip, nothing. No one had evidenced the disease in the spraying area. His excellent article can be read here.
In Information Security we measure risk as impact times probability. The impact that someone could die from a mosquito bite if the mosquito were carrying one of the target diseases may be a fair assertion but if the probability is zero, or even very low, it’s still low risk.
In our community, a further issue is our wetlands. The rules say don’t spray in lakes but wetlands are evidently fair game. At least I’ve seen them spraying along the road in mine. However, the spraying programs only reach a strip along roadways, or people’s yards, if they are invited to spray there. If a person is concerned about the risk of a mosquito bite, this near to the wetlands, they should take other precautions, anyway. Spraying program or no, if you don’t dress right or spray your body, you’re gonna get a mosquito bite if you hang about in my yard, early morning, late at night or some times of year, just in the shade. So it doesn’t even substantially reduce the risk for some of us.
And one can argue how much, but it absolutely does reduce the predators of mosquitos, most of whom cannot repopulate as quickly as the mosquito. If we MUST do this, there should be before and after counts taken of non-target species that we know are sensitive to the pesticides when these programs are implemented so that we have real data about what we are doing to the natural controls in our environment.
toad in the hole 2005
There is strong anecdotal evidence, including my observations, that it upsets the balance that I rely upon to keep my use of chemical controls at a minimum. Mosquitos are not my only pests and I rely on the same predators to keep down ticks, aphids, flea beetles, japanese beetles, slugs and many other pests that would destroy my ornamentals and food garden. I have never had to treat for slugs before this year; while they are always about, they’ve never had the numbers to completely destroy crops before. As I was trying to figure what changed, I realized that it was probably the little brown friends of mine that kept the populations down. I haven’t seen a single toad this year.
I was evidently wrong when I opined that the dahlias wouldn’t take any harm if they waited for another week. I skipped out of the office on Friday night saying, “the dahlias are calling to me”; but when I got home and opened the box of tuber from Swan Dahlias, I saw a problem. The tubers were bagged together and had started growing. Many of them had long, ropey roots looping around the outside of the plastic bag. And the general rule is that dahlia roots don’t like to be disturbed.
I had planned on helping out at the Lancaster Garden Club Plant Sale Saturday (sorry friends) and maybe doing a little prep work, but most of the planting on Sunday. However, this was something that needed immediate attention.
dahlias placed
Up at five, I quickly worked in another barrow of composted wood chips and placed the tubers and plants on top of the beds before the sun hit them. Then worked as fast as I could digging in the tubers and then the plants.
The plants are from Corralitos Gardens and I had missed the fact that I was actually buying plants. They’d looked pretty ratty when I took them out of their shipping package. Probably my fault because I hadn’t opened them the day they arrived. I was able to nurse almost all of them back to health, losing only one Harvey Koop and one of the bonus plants. Sad about Harvey as he was one of the biggest reasons for that order. It was named by/for the father of the woman who owns Hamilton Dahlia Farm that I visited in Michigan last year. I’d ordered two and the second one is still alive, although the weakest of the remaining plants. Fingers crossed for Harvey.
It was a little awkward to work with the mix of tubers and plants. They had different requirements for planting. But it will be interesting to compare performance in my garden. Some things I did differently this year:
Didn’t start tubers in pots. There were just too many and the tubers I direct planted last year were only a week or two behind when they blossomed.
Didn’t water in– the tubers, anyway. Plants I treated like tomatoes. I’ve come to respect how little water they need as evidenced by the way they sprout vigorously, wrapped in newspaper; or plastic for that matter.
The holes for the tubers are deeper than last year, 4-5″ and I’ve filled them in only part way. I’ll add dirt as I see the sprouts peek through.
One thing that made the task go quickly was the uncharacteristic planning work that I had done. With this many colors and sizes, I needed to be organized. All of my orders were documented in a spreadsheet where I captured key characteristics: height, bloom type, color and more. Then I used Visio to create a rough map of where I would put the dahlias, using cut-and-pasted pictures from the sellers. I had to make a few adjustments while planting because of bonus plants and plants from last year that I wanted to use, but having this Visio made the job go much faster. And it’s sorta pretty.
Although it’s two weeks earlier than I would like due to risk of cold weather.
They are too big and top heavy to carry in and out without damage.
Every time I try, something flops and threatens to break.
The peat pots wick water unevenly, especially under the influence of sun and wind and I go to work thinking they are well watered and come home to a badly wilted plant or two. Wondering why only one or two?
They are probably not getting the food they need for this stage of their growth. Resulting in yellowing of bottom leaves. Fertilizer delivery mechanisms rely on the uptake of water; see # 3.
When I leave them out at night and temps drop, the small amount of soil in their pots probably gets cold, too. This morning it was 41 deg F. The earth has been consistently over 50 deg F for a month or so.
Forecasters are saying days in or near 70s and nights in or near 50s for the next 10 days.
I have remay and know how to use it if they are wrong.
The dahlia tubers that I was planning on working with this weekend won’t come to harm if it takes me another week to plant.
The tomato plants woke me up at 5:00 am saying plant me, plant me.
The formerly floppy SuperSweet 100 that I planted over a week ago looks like this!
All of the articles that I could find talked about growing things under LED lights were for just that purpose, growing things to maturity. There were also some cautions about how they could hurt seedlings. So I dithered about whether to use my old setup with shop lights or try the LED lights that I’d purchased for winter growing. I think the things that decided me are first, the shop lights are getting old and the recommendation is to use new bulbs. And second, the LED lights are cheap. My electric bills don’t show the use enough for me to know how much this lighting costs
I did hedge my bets and keep some of the seedlings under a single cool light fixture, but the ones that I put almost immediately under the LEDs did better. I did keep the LEDs a couple of feet away. I started lettuces and Piracicaba in the guest room under one light. When these cool weather plants were ready to go out, I moved the light down to the basement to enlarge the warm planting area where I can provide bottom heat, giving the tomatoes, basil and eggplants more time while the outside temps warm up.
The area over floweth. In addition to my seed starts, one of the dahlia companies sent me plants, not tubers, so I’m babying them on the heat mats that are no longer needed by the bigger seedlings.
My remaining worry is that the plants are so comfortable in the basement that they will sulk outside. I’ve been removing suckers and even blossoms, which tells me that they are too happy. Next year I move back the start date by at least two weeks (the seed went into the cubes on 3/25/2012.) It’s also a clue that I should probably be using a more limited spectrum of lights for seedlings. In addition, Supersweet 100 is the plant that wants to blossom so that also suggests a tomato I should try inside this winter, if I want to. Here’s a shot under normal light for those of us who can’t see through the lurid LED colors.
Hard to believe that these will ever grow again. I’ve always grown my own from seed and always had small (but yummy) onions. Ailsa Craig, a sweet, large (for others) onion is my favorite. When I saw that Johnny’s had them as plants for sale I decided to try them. They arrived on a Wednesday and instructions said do not water, leave in a cool dry place. They should be able to live for three weeks off the bulb. So this is what they looked like on Saturday.
planted onions
Cleaned off the dry stuff and trimmed the ends again. Planted in a staggered swath like little solders. Slightly drunken soldiers but that’s my fault. Johnny’s suggested an elaborate system of raised beds and a trough running through the middle with a couple of inches of fertilizer in it. I gave up on that plan when I read that the rows needed to be 36″ apart. It may grow prize winners but I don’t have that kind of space.
As I was harvesting compost from a sort-of pile around the sort-of wood pile; well decomposed for a wood pile at this time; I found another plant where it should not be. But what a pretty picture!
Bleeding Heart on the woodpile
As well as a large thistle hiding under the edge of the tarp in the purchased soil. I don’t have problems with thistle, so expect this is another hitchhiker with that exotic, strangely alkaline stuff. Notice the finely cut, deep green leaves. If it were embroidery, you’d have to pay a bundle. Nature is extravagant.
I’ve been ignoring the wild strawberries that grow here and there in some of the wilder spots in my yard for years, but they are taking over. They love to leap across my mulch with their runners and establish whole new colonies in the flower beds. They attract birds; good news, who poop out the seeds and spread them even further, bad news. I probably will never be able to completely kill them off. This is about the benefits of losing the battle. It’s all about things that are out of their place. Most of us call them weeds. Some of us look the other way and hope the neighbors understand.
The next three pictures are from my lawn. Bugleweed is actually a bigger problem, if these things are a problem to you, but it’s not open yet. You can see a tight bud mixed in the shot of the blue violets.
violets in the lawn
white violets in the lawn
Chrysogonum, the garden friend who gave it to me admitted it was a little invasive.
Chrysogonum
Then I moved on to the neighbors.
I thought these were violets with an upright habit until I got close. Phlox? That’s my best guess because they were growing in the lawn near the pink phlox below
unknownunknown and violets in the grasspink phlox
weeds
out of place iris
This is not a weed but definately out of place. Friends suggest I can blame the gardener.
Good plan.
Canolli wishes she could work with me in the garden but I signed a contract that she and sister would be indoor cats. And we have coyotes.
Although we’ve had warm weather off and on, it only served to pack the snow tightly to make it harder to melt on warm days like yesterday.
mache
Dry steps from the deck let me get to the garden to see if the mache was showing any growth and it was not. Friend Margaret thinks it’s a problem with the variety and recommends “Vit”. I think I’ve tried it with the same results but may try it again next year to be sure.
Lifted the glass to remove the snow. A little more light can’t hurt. Not that there IS a lot of light. This time of year our warm days come from the south and are usually overcast.
letting in the sun
Inside, under the lights, I’m finding that the pea shoots, harvested as baby greens will put out a second growth. Probably not as robust as the first, but still another serving for me.
You can see a bit of my passive humidifier, water over glass stones. It doesn’t work terribly well in the cool basement but better than nothing.
I’ve purchased a new, larger light and I was hoping to have pictures of the new, more permanent basement setup. Between poor design and construction skills, it’s not ready yet. So here is a quick status, with pictures, instead. Click on the pictures for a bigger view.
root structure on old lettuce
The older lettuces are showing signs of stress with more tip burn on the outer leaves. I was not sure how long they would last in 2″ soil cubes. But there’s still plenty to harvest from them. I will probably harvest and throw away about half of the older plants to make room for the second planting which is approaching maturity.
picked lettuce tip burn after a week in the fridge
Some of the picked lettuces developed brown tips in the lettuce keeper after about a week in the fridge. This is not the bad stuff, which happens on the inner leaves of growing plants. However, it gives me something to improve upon. While the simple cause of tip burn is not enought calcium uptake, it seems that its not a problem that can usually be solved by making more calcium
old lettuce plants
available to the plant.
Low light sometimes contributes, but too much light will, too! I’ll try to compile a some of the resources that I’ve found or that friends have sent me in a different post, specifically about this issue in lettuces.
basil
The basil is getting two hours of low speed “wind” a day from a fan to, hopefully, strengthen the stems. This is in addition to being on a heat mat. And it’s still growing exceptionally slowly. Growing warm weather plants may not be worth the energy; hard to measure since I’ve mixed them in this temporary setup.
Also trying to get more variety by starting micro greens. It was a package of mixed greens and that may be a mistake.
micro greens
When you are working with such short development cycles, if one green is a few days behind another it creates problems. And you can tell these would like to have a bigger share of the light.
My goal is to blaze a trail (if feasible) for us northern gardners who have a spare bedroom or some unused basement space and who want to extend their growing season inside with LED lights. I don’t find many others in my research; the most help is coming from greenhouse growers. But here is yet another innovative business trying to grow under LEDs for commercial use: Podponics.
I picked some of my first batch of lettuces last night from under the LED lights. I had them tested by Everiss Labs and since this was the first time I’d ever seen tissue test results, I was a little concerned that the nitrogen levels were a little high and the calcium levels a bit low. Although I had no direct way to tie these percentages to the ppms that are used to measure the nitrates/nitrites when scientists talk about the issues of low light lettuces, I thought this might indicate that the plants had a problem with high nitrate/nitrite levels that would make them unhealthy to eat. However, when I asked for clarification from the lab, they said absolutely no problem, not to worry. The averages weren’t meant to delineate healthy ranges, just averages from plants over the years and my marginal variations weren’t significant.
Lettuce plant and sample
I had wanted a worst case analysis for the testing, too. I’d fertilized them 24 hours before the test (Scotts Miracle Grow again). I don’t think they really needed it; this was part of the test plan. And since I read that nitrogen levels go higher at night, picking my sample first thing in the morning would have helped make it worst case, too. From now on, I will not fertilize for a week or two before harvest and always, only the minimum necessary. The second batch, already under the lights, is made with a combination of ProMix and compost; I’m hoping that will have everything the plants need. And I’ll harvest in the evening, after a full day of light; the lettuces may be sweeter that way.
To the right is a shot of the sample that I sent to the lab (bottom), and remaining plant. Notice the strong root structure; air pruned because of the soil blocks. I expect these may bolt a little earlier than lettuces with all the root space they need but we’ll see. With a new flat started and a pot of basil to go under this same light, I am at or above the space limit so some of them have to go, anyway.
Marginal leaf tip burn on lettuce
Another possible, very low level symptom of high nitrogen stress, that I actually had to look for, is leaf tip burn. What I found was on a couple of the older leaves and when it’s really a problem, I read, it’s on the inner, newer growth. But it is related to low calcium in the tissue. Low calcium uptake is associated with the low light (high nitrate/nitrite) issues of lettuce, and while this is so marginal that it’s not really a problem, I thought I would post a picture. Since most of us are judging plant health from observations, it’s good to know what to look for.
So it’s harvest time! Although the lettuces are about as clean as lettuces can be, I soaked them in very cold water in the lettuce keeper as I normally do and rinsed and drained them. A taste test before I put them into the refridgerator revealed sweet and crunchy. Here is a picture of “the farm”, as sister (aka the backup LED light gardener) calls it.
The farm
From seed to the table in eight weeks is a happy outcome, in my opinion. I’ll stick with leaf lettuces for now but work on more variation in my harvests. And probably smaller batches so that I have a few plants ready at any point in time. For more information about timing and processes, see the category LED light growing or ask a question in your comments. Sharing is half the fun. The other half is eating! Fresh and healthy from “the farm” to the table.
The temps are forecasted in the teens, next town over to the west and north. I went out to see what I could get before it was frozen and came back with a couple of handfuls of good stuff. Small but brightly colored Swiss chard, Piracicaba and Parsley.
garden harvest 12’10’11
Here is where it came from.
Sad Piracicaba plants
But still producing edible Piracicaba blossomsSwiss chard
And here is the self seeded mache (corn salad). I left a few of the plants go this spring, hoping to get a fall crop. These will probably not grow very much until next spring.
self seeded mache
I picked this one, less than 2″ accross but I’ll add it to the salad bowl.
mache (corn salad)
And here is a shot of my indoor lettuce. Kicking myself, as I watered them today and then found the test kit in a soggy plastic bag on my door. I’d intended to give them a shot of fertilizer, 24 hours before sending off the sample as a worst case for high nitrogen but I don’t think I can wait much longer to start harvesting the bigger leaves.
The lettuces continue to put on mass. The red colors in Yogoslavian Red (heading lettuce) are showing up nicely but it’s also the slowest growing. And I cannot see a visible difference between Australian Yellow and Simpson Elite (with toothpicks).
I split the soil cubes between two flats to give them more room and now I do a littly dosie doe with the flats every day to move the outside lettuces closer to the light. Fertilized again; I will drop back to once a month now, I think.
Just to recap, for people who stumble accross this post first: Lettuces planted 10/23; sprouts show by 10/27; lights out and no heat 10/29-11/3; put under LED array on 11/8. See Week One and It Begins for more history.
I ordered some “Red Sails” from Pinetree Seeds, an easier red leaf lettuce and I’ll start my next batch as soon as they arrive. Hopefully, this weekend.
