I took a few days and traveled to East Tennessee over the weekend for a wedding. It was gorgeous there, beautiful cool weather, perfect for some lake time. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, Memphis was under a deluge: rain thunderstorms, flash-floods, the works. I arrived home wondering what the house, rabbits, chickens and plants would look like on my return. Imagine my (pleasant) surprise to find everything lush, green, and blooming.
You may complain about the rain this year, but don’t be surprised if I suddenly punch you in the throat. My garden, and beautiful, thick sunflower, corn and soybean fields across the state would argue that this year, finally, Memphis has had some perfect weather.
If you’re connected to this blog, then like me, you probably like fresh, great-tasting food, gardening, nutrition, and the (natural) science of where your food comes from. Part of the reason I blog is to keep a running journal of what I’m doing, but also to let people know how easy it is to grow your own food, especially in a small space. We need to spread the word!
So in the spread-the-word department, a couple of things that might be of interest to you.
First, I’ve found that a great way to get people started gardening is to lower the barriers of entry. One of those barriers is knowing what kind of plants to buy, where to buy them, and how to get them cheaply. So many people just don’t know what to buy, and they’re intimidated by their lack of knowledge and the price of good plants at their local big box hardware store. To the rescue! This is now the third year I’ve had a plant giveaway at my church. Yesterday I gave away close to 80 tomato and pepper plants. I start the seedlings for myself each year, and honestly it’s so cheap and easy to do that there’s no reason not to produce a surplus. For each of the last three years I’ve added to the number of seedlings I’ve planted. I pick what I want for myself then take boxes of plants to church with a “Please Take Me Home” sign taped on. People are thrilled to get them, even folks who have never gardened before, and it opens up all kinds of opportunities for conversation. I get to tell them why I plant heirlooms, the organic methods I use, what kind of care their plants need at home, etc. If you’re handy with seed-saving or seed-planting, let me encourage you to plant for surplus, and give away as many as you can.
Second, over the weekend I received an unsolicited email with a link to a great infographic about micro-farming. I love infographics. It saves me from having to do any serious reading <grin>. But seriously, give it a look at http://www.superscholar.org/backyard-micro-farming/, and share it with your friends. Oh – and do the reading. If you scroll below the (long) graphic, there’s some good background to the numbers and concepts.
Better late than never? I hope so. I’m only today getting my garlic planted. We’ve got a warm spell this week, so the weather is nice enough to get some things done.
This year’s plot is a little different than last year’s. I planted another 60 cloves (like last year). But if you notice the picture above, I have markers placed for divided sections of twenty cloves each. Last year I bought a big bag of garlic from Costco, divided the cloves, and planted. This year, I bought another bag, but I also bought a small bag of organic garlic, and took three heads of garlic that I grew last year, and divided those. So, I have three different types of garlic planted, to compare with each other. I’ve marked them above with “O” for organic, “S” for Scott garlic, and “R” for regular, or conventional, store-bought garlic. Eventually, I’d like to only grow garlic that I’ve cultivated, but we just didn’t have enough left from last year’s crop to plant a full bed. Read that last statement carefully; we probably pulled in 55 heads of garlic of the 60 we planted. But just like a raise in your paycheck, any extra you have gets consumed quickly. We have burned through an enormous amount of garlic since July when we harvested.
For those of you who haven’t planted garlic before, you should. It’s incredibly easy, and it’s so rewarding to have long braids of fresh garlic hanging in your kitchen, ready to pull anytime you need to add a little spice to a meal.
Filed under: Gardening | Tags: Autumn, Butternut Squash, gardening, Memphis, Urban Agriculture, vegetables
It’s a bit of a sad day here today. It’s the last harvest of the summer veggies. Although the last few days have been perfect, mid-60’s kind-of-days, tonight it’s going to plummet to 26 degrees. I went out today and cleaned the plants of tomatoes, peppers, okra, and the last few butternut squash. This is a full 11 days earlier than last year – in fact, the last couple of years I’ve been able to hold off until a day or two before Thanksgiving.
I ended up with a huge bowl of green tomatoes, which are hidden away in newspaper now, hopefully to ripen and extend our summer pleasure just a little while longer.
The rabbits are nestled in beds of hay, the plants are bowed to the ground, their wooden skeletons pulled. And I’m already dreaming of what I’ll start in the attic come February.
It’s been a good garden year. I haven’t posted much since spring because, frankly, summer is a busy time. The garden has done great. I’ve had some great successes (and some colossal failures). But by far, my most anticipated fruit of the year are almost ready. I give to you now…butternut squash.
These have been a long time coming, and are frankly a miracle for me this year. I’ll post more about the ordeal later. But they looked so beautiful this morning, I had to share.
Here’s our first braid of our first ever crop of garlic. And this is just one braid – we have more! We eat tons of garlic here, so this will be a money/life saver around here. Very excited – had to share.
Oh – and thanks to my wife for the beautiful braid. She took initial clues from Garden Nerd’s video here.
Front of Braid
Back of Braid
We are summer soldiers (though not in the way Payne meant the phrase).
Already in Memphis every day tops 90. The tomatoes, once so eager to set fruit, have begun slowing to conserve energy because of the heat.
The rains have stopped coming regularly and the rain barrel is empty. At early and late hours we carry 5 gallon buckets of water to dry, wilting plants. All the while, the irony exists that parched soil devastates gardens while weeds thrive.
The bugs have appeared. Mites, cucumber beetles, and other unidentified critters munch on leaves and suck the blood from our squash and okra. Under cover of darkness we don our headlamps and pick parasites from our precious cucumbers, while human parasites – mosquitoes – drain the lifeblood from us.
This is the time that separates the true summer soldiers from the sunshine patriots, those who are are in love with good food, from those in love with the idea of good food.
March on, soldiers, heads held high. Victory is sweet.
If you garden very long, you know that each year is a learning experience. I’m not a terrific record keeper, but I do take note of what is working, what isn’t, and tweak for the next year. In fact, this blog is one way that I detail my progress.
It seems like this year I’ve been able to take my past mistakes and turn them into gold. The garden this week is beautiful. Blooms abound on tomatoes, potatoes, squash, cucumber, and peppers. The tomato plants are packed with fruit. The newly planted herbs are thriving in their new sunny spot by the mailbox. The garden is virtually weed-free.
Marketmore 76 Cucumbers
Of course, I can’t take all the credit – God has provided ample water (and more!). Bucket loads of rain have come down in long, soaking intervals every four or five days. My workload has really been easy.
I still have some big-time learning to do: the grapes didn’t get pruned this winter, and so they’re a mess. They’re currently full of new fruit, but much of it will rot unless I open it up to sunlight. The garlic is falling over because it’s simply so tall and heavy. I’m really not sure what to do – do you stake garlic? I know it still has some growing to do, because I pulled a plant to inspect the bulb – almost there, but not quite. And the plants haven’t gone to flower yet, either.
Potatoes, squash and pepers reach for the light
This weekend’s “to do” list:
- Clean the rabbit cages
- Use the rabbit poo to fertilize the herb garden
- prune grapes
- pull weeds from strawberry beds
What’s going on in your garden? What successes and/or failures are you experiencing this year?
Filed under: Gardening | Tags: Dr. Heather Darby, gardening, Soil, Urban Agriculture, UVM, Webinar
I live in Tennessee, and I’ve been able to take advantage of some resources offered by my local extension office. I took the Master Gardener course a couple of years ago and it taught me an incredible amount about plants and gardening and soils and – too much to mention. But throughout the course and afterward, I’ve been less than satisfied with the research done and resources offered by the UT Extension regarding organic farming methods. Other states’ extension programs are doing great research in this area, including Cornell University and University of Vermont. UVM has some great resources for small farmers, including some terrific webinars. I’ve just finished watching “Basic Soil and Soil Testing” with Dr. Heather Darby for the second time and wanted to recommend it to those of you who are really serious about gardening and farming. You can find the webinar recording here.
Here are a few tidbits:
- Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC) – Who knew that being negative was such a good thing?
- The role of compost / organic matter in your soil (SPOILER: It’s not what you think!)
- The importance of micro organisms in your soil
- Different types of soil organic matter (SOM)
- Where to spend your money for the quickest production boost: “Lime is your cheapest form of fertilizer. The pH of your soil will highly influence how available many of the nutrients in your soil are.” “You can change pH rather quickly and for not much money and will have the biggest impact on your crop production.“
Pop some popcorn, send the kids outside, and set aside a block of time to watch the webinar. It’s an hour and a half long, but well worth it!
Memphis Backyard Farmer 