Battling the Birds

I'm still tearing out the old perennial border to create the new Kitchen Garden, but today I battled the birds.

Monday afternoon found Skye and me cruising the gardens before taking off for her clarinet lesson and finding the first nearly red strawberries of the spring. She dove for the first one she saw, and I was right behind her, telling her not to pick it, that it wasn't really ripe yet. And then I spotted a second nearly ripe one -- with a bird peck in it. "Go ahead and eat it," I told her, "before the birds get it."

Now, I had no plans to battle the birds this year. The strawberries are supposed to be in a keeping year -- just biding their time until the Kitchen Garden is ready for them. I have two beds planned, one for production and one for growing young plants. I did take the time to set the strawberries into a grid so that I could put down landscaping fabric and mulch in my efforts to get the Berry Patch into good shape for the summer. And now I have these beautiful plants with huge berries on them -- totally unplanned, totally unexpected.

I've never done well with strawberries. Weeds. Birds. Bird netting that has a mind of its own. And now I have these beautiful berries that I'm simply not willing to share with the birds.

I came home from work this afternoon, unloaded the groceries, left Skye in the kitchen baking chocolate chip cookies and Love in his shop working on the lawn mower, and began building strawberry cages. The first one was about 4' by 4' of PVC pipe (from Skye's wonderful stash of various PVC lengths and connections that Love created to allow her to build life-sized projects) and covered with bird netting taped down (and patched) with duct tape. I realized I had created the perfect Redneck (which I can say because of my Redneck heritage) strawberry cage -- PVC AND duct tape in the same creation! Then I took apart two tomato cages that aren't in use, created a mountain-shaped cage, and covered it in more netting. I also made a wire and netting cage for the strawberry plant in Skye's garden (where the sunflowers and cornflowers are beginning to emerge).

Now all my pinking berries are safe in their little cages, and I have plans to create more as the crop continues to ripen. The Berry Patch looks great: as well as the strawberries, the blueberry bushes are loaded and just beginning to purple, and the blackberries are covered with blooms. I had to dig out two small blackberry bushes last week -- orange rust had struck and I wanted to prevent it from spreading. Still, I think we will get our first blackberry cobbler -- made in Mother's cobbler pan that I hauled home from Louisiana last year -- this summer. The raspberries are beginning to set berries on the floricanes of our existing crop. The new crop of red Heritage and gold Anne have sprouted new growth and are looking great. 2008 looks like the Year of the Berry around here! Take a look at Skye's pictures from the Berry Patch a couple of weeks ago.

2 Bad Days

Donna Schaper says a day without gardening is a bad day. I've had two bad days in a row.

Breaking Promises to Myself

I'm breaking promises to myself, again. Somehow, the plants always seem to lead me astray. Didn't I promise myself: "No new plants until I take care of the ones I have"? I was so earnest. No new plants until the Kitchen Garden was established. All my gardening energy was to focus on that project. And of course, there is the Berry Patch to get in order, and the Cottage Garden to fine tune, and the little trees and bushes from last spring and fall in the Woodlot that need weeding and mulching.

I was doing really good until about three weeks ago. I had been working diligently on the Berry Patch. The work toward the Kitchen Garden was at a standstill for the time, and I really wanted to get the Berry Patch squared off and mulched to make Love's mowing work easier. And that project was coming along very nicely. Landscape fabric was laid and mulched with pine straw around the blueberries, straw around the blackberries and blueberries. The grape vine was pruned to the single stem the berry books advocate for the first year. Posts were driven at four corners of the raspberry bushes and twine installed to keep them corraled. And then a small hole formed in the dike -- I realized that I had never replaced the blueberry bush I ripped out last year after five years of pitiful production. I began to haunt local nurseries, looking for the perfect blueberry bush. I didn't find it.

The hole began to grow. As I worked in the raspberries and strawberries, I began to think about the golden raspberries Skye's best friend had described to me two summers ago. Her aunt's golden raspberries, she declared, were the most wonderful things she had ever eaten. This remark tossed off by a 9-year-old had stayed with me. Then a catalog arrived from Miller's Nursery, advertising a FRUIT SALE. They had great prices on blueberry bushes, and they also featured a golden raspberry called 'Fall Gold.' I was lost. I suddenly had to have golden raspberries. I searched the web for information about golden raspberries recommended for the Ozarks, but found nothing. I called the county extension service (yes, I really do that), and the Master Gardener on duty recommended 'Kiwi Gold.' I decided to look for a local berry plant supplier, and found on a few miles away that carried 'Anne.' The dike burst. I ordered six plants. And six Heritage raspberries. And an Ozark Blue blueberry.

The flood continues. Sunday I ordered a peony to be delivered in October. Today I accepted two irises, a daisy, orange chocolate mint, and a sage new to my garden. So much for no new plants. If it's any consolation, I have given away more plants than I've taken in this spring, so maybe, just maybe, I'll keep my head above water.

Gardening 'Til Dark

I usually start putting the gardening tools away and cleaning up when the vapor light outside Love's workshop clicks on. But tonight, I gardened well past the hum and thump of the light. You see, today I bought tomato and pepper plants for the newly tilled Holding Garden, and tomorrow the rains come. So today, I was gardening when I could hardly see. I've yet to garden by truck lights, but I figure that day is coming.

I took a new turn at the Farmer's Coop as I was choosing plants today. First of all, they had no Arkansas Traveler's, no Rutgers, none of my old standbys, unless you count the Sweet 100s. Bought out by the folks who got their acts together on time, I suppose. (Although it was 40F when we awoke this morning, so I'm not that far behind the pack.) And they did have some of the most appealing names. So, I got one pack of Sweet 100s, because Skye thinks that a garden without "squirt" tomatoes is not worth having, and I pretty much agree. And then I chose a half-dozen different vareties to try: Burgundy Traveler, Purple Cherokee, Early Girl, Beefsteak, Mortgage Lifter, and Heatwave. Adventures in tomatoes!

Skye got first choice and chose the Early Girl for her mini-garden, plus her must-have Sweet 100. I put in a second Sweet 100 plus the remaining plants. Mentoring the young gardener slowed things down, but it is absolutely worth it! We had time to mulch hers with newpaper and straw before she went inside to start homework, but mine got the quick treatment -- just a cage, a plant marker, a cup of Miracle Grow for Tomatoes, and a shower of water. I'll have lots more weeds than she will, but I wield a mean hoe!

As this is a rebuilding year for me, with all my plans for creating the Kitchen Garden, the Holding Garden will be mostly perennials and bulbs on hold with vegetables along the edge. Thus, this is a mininum garden for me: the 3 absolutely must-haves: tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. In between and beside the tomatoes went the peppers: 6 jalepenos, 2 orange bells, 1 chocolate bell, and 1 fajita bell -- whatever that is. The cucumbers didn't make it tonight. Those I will plant from seed. After my last experience with cucumber bedding plants, I vowed never to do that again!

Mother's Day

It's late in the evening on Mother's Day, and I am a contented sort of tired. Again this year, I asked for no material gifts, but rather time from my family. I had originally requested a day (beginning after church) of family gardening. As the only gardener in the family, it's a real treat for me to have the companionship and help of my husband and daughter. But alas, yesterday's 1/2" of rain and this morning's chilly wind were not promising. So, I came up with an alternate plan: a visit to Chotkowski Peony Farm. Just outside our hometown, Chotkowski's has an incredible array of peonies, and Henry Chotkowski has a great Mother's Day open house each year. We had not been to the Mother's Day open house before. I expected the people, but not the food and the live music and the pleasant turn in the weather. It was a fabulous treat! And buying a lovely and sweet-smelling peony doesn't count as a material gift, does it? Especially if I don't get it until proper peony planting time, in October?

As it turned out, we can home to a garden dry enough to work. I'm still struggling to make the Kitchen Garden a reality. The fence that was coming down last fall is still standing and the beds I had hoped to plant in vegetables have not yet materialized. But, Love has tilled me a temporary holding bed for the perennials that must be moved out before the Bermuda grass can be annihilated and the new beds built. I've moved some of the perennials to the Cottage Garden, but little room is left there. Skye (my daughter, the food snob) and I are sharing the temporary bed -- she has a corner for her own garden. At eleven, this is her first garden. My plan is to hold the plants in my section (with a little room set aside for tomatoes and peppers) until the Kitchen Garden is ready to receive them again. For the first couple of years, the Kitchen Garden will be heavy with flowers until I can enlarge the Cottage Garden to hold them. Then the Kitchen Garden can switch to primarily foodstuffs. And once the perennials are moved out of the temporary holding bed, we will prepare it for an expansion space for the Berry Patch next year (or in two years, if progress is slow).

Thanks to Skye for the pictures she took while we were moving plants yesterday.

Next Year's Kitchen Garden

It's been my plan for some time to revamp the garden that surrounds our pool to create a Kitchen Garden. The flower beds have gotten away from from me -- year by year, the Bermuda grass has gotten more ingrained until I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle every time I set foot in that garden.

This spring, we tore out a small deck and added our new beautiful back porch, which was finished in July. To complete the project we are ripping out the wooden fence that is 6" from the concrete pool decking and replacing it with hurricane fencing set back about 12'. We've never liked the fact that there is no room to grow anything inside the pool fence, and we're about to change that.

I'm the gardener in the family, and my husband is the engineer and builder. So, he's designing the fence and the water flow, and I'm designing the new garden. My basic plan is to move the plants I want to save and then Round-up the area repeatedly until every sprig of Bermuda has been eliminated. Then we'll lay out beds that I can reach across to weed and put in paths between them. There will be room for my garden bench and flowers to attract my beloved hummingbirds. We'll have mostly vegetables, but two beds will be for strawberries. I'm moving those out of The Berry Patch so that they can be easily covered with netting while they're bearing. We'll also have a few flowers and herbs mixed in, and I'm planning to put hardy kiwi on part of the fence. I can hardly wait.

And I have begun preliminary work. Love says the old fence will be coming down in about three weeks, so it's time to start moving plants. Thankfully, the weather has cooled enough to make working long weekend hours in the gardens pleasant and to be kinder to the plants that are uprooted from their longtime homes. So, yesterday I moved a stand of Siberian irises to The Cottage Garden beneath our bedroom window. Today I moved 24 volunteer maples out of the vegetable patch and into The Woodlot. Right now, I'm pretty tired. Tomorrow, it's back to work at my second home (the library), but I plan to get in an hour or so in the garden after hours. Next spring, The Kitchen Garden will exist in the backyard, not just in my mind!

Working the Woodlot

First of all, The Woodlot is not a true woodlot, i.e. a few acres devoted to growing a sustainable source of firewood for a home. The Woodlot is what we call the section (1/2 acre?) of our place that we are naturalizing -- trying to return what has been a yard for the last 25 years to a small slice of woods with trees, an understory, and small woodland plants. We'd like to see it become a refuge for small wild animals, although we know that it is pretty small for that purpose and that its location next to a country road probably doesn't make it an ideal candidate.

We started this project 2 1/2 years ago. My husband and I had talked almost from the day we bought the place in 1994 about establishing woods between us and the road, but there always seemed to be another project that was more pressing. Then, the couple that owned the 7 acres across the road from us decided to build a mini-storage facility, complete with lights, traffic, and ugly buildings. Because we had no county zoning laws at the time, our phone calls and visits to planning commission meetings were to no avail. So we decided it was time to start those woods.

Fortunately, we were not starting completely from scratch. In 1995, I had set out 2 maples and 2 oaks directly in front of our house, set back enough from the road to avoid the right-of-way. Those trees are pretty tall now and help block the ugly view from the front of our house. At the same time, I had set out a cypress in the southwest corner of the yard, 4 sawtooth oaks along the south fenceline, and a wild pecan between the house and the sawtooth oaks. Those trees, along with 4 maples along the drive that were established young trees when we arrived here form the backbone of The Woodlot.

The first thing we did was to stop mowing the area we designated to naturalize. We marked off an L-shaped area that parallels the country road in front of our place and our south fenceline. We also began setting out young trees -- mostly maples, sawtooth oaks, pecans, and cedars -- that volunteered in our gardens and under our existing trees. The first summer we placed those trees primarily along the inner perimeter of The Woodlot. We watered and weeded around the trees and probably got 3/4's of the trees through the first hot and very dry summer.

That fall, we gathered acorns and tree and bush seeds whenever we went for walks. We planted them. Some came up, but not many.

The second summer, we mowed a path about ten feet from the yard along the county road leg of the Woodlot and a second path along the south fenceline. These grass paths allowed us to set out trees further into the lot and to water those during the dry summer months.

This spring break, my mother came to visit and I showed her the trees which had been coming up and growing throughout The Woodlot, promising a house-high stand of trees much sooner than we had anticipated. While I had been encouraged, I was beginning to become concerned about the large number of these trees and how fast they were growing. My mother was unable to identify the tree, but advised me to get rid of it while I still could. She said anything that grows that fast and spreads that easily is bound to be a weed tree. The next week, I cut down one of the small specimens and carried it to work, where I showed it to several biology teachers and agriculture teachers at a faculty meeting. They identified it as a Callery pear, the root stock for the ubiquitous Bradford pear and the result of the supposedly sterile Bradford pear producing seed from shoots from the original stock. I'm not sure I have that explanation completely right, but basically the Bradford pear is making seed that the birds are spreading and the resulting Callery pears are taking over in our region wherever they can gain a foothold.

So, I've been fighting the Callery pear ever since. I can't spend ALL my time snipping off trees and treating their stubs with Round-Up, but I've spent a lot of time doing it. I stopped counting at 150 trees. And I'll be doing it a lot more.

And I've declared war on the Johnson grass, but that's another story.

This spring, I created more mowed paths to allow further access for planting, watering, and weeding. The paths also provide a great place for my daughter to play. I then set out 2 named elderberry bushes, 2 Chinese Chestnuts, 1 white mulberry, and 1 highbush cranberry. I've watered those as needed this summer, and they have come through the heat well. I'd like The Woodlot to be multi-purpose, providing food for us and the animals, as well as creating a wonderful slice of woods for us to enjoy.

Today, I went to the farmer's market to buy tomatoes (but there were none), and I came home with a pawpaw tree and a French mulberry, which I set out this afternoon. (The weather was glorious for gardening.) The gentleman who sold me the pawpaw predicted 5 years before it will bear fruit. The French mulberry, which I learned is also called a beautybush here, won't produce edible berries, of course, but I look forward to the beautiful purple berries each fall.
I also set out a sweet bay magnolia that I bought on sale this summer and kept in the pot while I waited for cool weather.

I had more to set out, but the rains finally came and chased me indoors. So, right now, I'm writing, my daughter is reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for the 6th time, the cats are taking their much needed late-afternoon nap, the dog is waiting for someone to throw the tennis ball some more, and my husband is studying. It's a great Saturday!

The flowers on my desk

Today I have flowers on my desk at work -- zinnias clipped this morning from the cottage garden on the south end of my house. I don't often take flowers to work, but whenever I do, I see lots more smiles during the day. Even a simple daffodil in a glass jar can make a teenager or a history teacher smile. Somehow, that simple act of sharing my garden at my workplace makes it a better day. And the green glass vase: it's an old medicine bottle I dug out of my mother's "storeroom" in Louisiana last summer.

So, make tomorrow "take a flower to work day." I'm setting a goal right now to take fresh flowers to work once a week until winter comes.

My daughter, the food snob

I'm growing lots of things these days: canteloupe, okra, zinnias, tomatoes, basil, corn, gourds, watermelon, raspberries, cucumbers, and.... a food snob.

My sweet daughter has become a food snob. I got the first clue of her transformation back in June when our congregation had a reception to welcome our new priest. "Aren't you going to try the blueberries?" I asked her. "You love blueberries."

I caught a glimpse of the teenager-to-be as she all but rolled her eyes. "Momma, those blueberries didn't come from around here, and I'm not about to eat ones that were shipped in!"

She was right, of course. The Easter freeze wiped out the entire blueberry crop for our region. Caught in an early full bloom by a late 3-day freeze, not a berry escaped. I tasted the berries: the usual insipid taste of the grocery-store berry, nothing like the warm berry eaten while standing in the berry patch.

Inside, I cheered. My preteen daughter values the food I grow. She recognizes the taste and freshness of food straight from the back yard. Last week she glared at the canteloupes in the produce section of the local grocery store: "Yuk! Why would anyone want to buy a canteloupe when they could grow their own?" Way to go, Garden Gurl!!!

Laney