The Garden Chronicles - July 25, 2009

Today's harvest features the ever-productive apricots, raspberries, and beets. These are cylinder beets, the first time we have grown this variety. The raspberries are plentiful for July, and more are coming.

The aerial shot of the garden shows everything doing remarkably well. Some small rainfalls in July helped, but we have been watering heavily for most of this season. We are still several inches below average in rain, and this after drought conditions during the last seven years. The harvest so far is a surprise, since our expectations are always low during drought years. We are very satisfied with all our produce this month.

The Garden Chronicles - July 23, 2009 - The Year of Apricots

We proclaim 2009 the year of apricots. The harvest continues without pause. Everyday we fill the counter with apricots that we eat, freeze, can, dehydrate, bake into breads, muffins, cobblers, cakes, add to salads... If there is a way to prepare apricots, we will try it. We have given away almost as many as we have eaten.

Curiously, when we offer apricots to people we know, about a third accepts them with eagerness, a third rejects them with a sour face, and a third have never tried them before. Apricots are my favorite fruit, so I never would have guessed that such strong feelings against apricots exist. Either you love them or hate them, it seems. As much as I love them, I fear that even I will discover my limit of apricots. For now, I look forward to apricots for breakfast everyday for this entire year, as they continue to fill my freezer and pantry.

I read an article today in the Dining section of the New York Times about currants and how unknown they are in the United States. A small market has started for them in just a few states where they are now permitted to grow. They were banned for many years because they harbored a parasite that killed pine trees. We have grown red and black currants in our backyard for years adjacent to an evergreen without any issues. The currants have been consistent performers in our garden, producing abundantly each summer regardless of drought or flood, or of bitterly cold or mild winters. We make jellies and sorbets from them. Red currants used to be used in bakery's fingerprint cookies: red currant jam made the red center of the cookie. The bushes are easy to grow, maintenance-free, and very easy to harvest. So no reason to avoid growing currants anywhere they are permitted to grow.

The Garden Chronicles - July 19, 2009 - The Harvest Begins

This week marks the beginning of the season's summer harvest, and the star this week is apricots! Our four apricot trees are producing like crazy, and we are dehydrating, canning, and preserving them as quickly as they are falling from the trees. Below is just one day's harvest of apricots, and the trees are still loaded with more. Our local food shelf may benefit from this bumper crop. And to think that just eight months ago, I asked our tree specialist to take down the apricot trees because they were too large and produced low-volume, poor quality, worm-infested fruit. He suggested pruning the trees instead, so I gave them another chance. What a difference the tree pruning made.

Just one tree would have been enough fruit for us, and we have three others that are as heavy with apricots as this one.


Other harvests this week included Swiss chard, beans, raspberries, black currants, and red currants. The red currants made a fine sorbet; the black currants yielded seven jars of jelly, and the raspberries are producing as heavily as the apricots. Perhaps an apricot-raspberry sorbet or smoothie is in our future.

The Garden Chronicles - July 11, 2009

Catching up on photos of the garden. We have been busy with weeding, watering, and general yard work during the last few weeks. This flower garden looks better this summer than it has in years.

The vegetable garden is thriving. We have kept up with weeding and watering, and our hard work has paid off.

Although the radishes produced lots of leaves and flowers, we harvested just one radish. But the lettuce, Swiss chard, and mixed greens are plentiful. The kohlrabi and beets are also growing nicely.

Tomatoes, peppers, squash, cabbage, and tomatillo are all flowering and forming fruit. A few weeks more, and this section of the garden will be ready to harvest. The yellow wax beans will be ready to harvest tomorrow!

The strawberry bed was surprisingly weak this spring. We planted them last fall during a drought, so they got a poor start. The continued drought this spring made it tough for them to thrive, despite our sprinkling. They are just starting to spread throughout the bed. We have ordered more strawberries to fill in the empty spots this fall.

The herb garden has done fairly well so far. Parsley, basil, thyme, tarragon, chives, sorrel, and oregano have been bonuses to our salads and soups.

This bed has a tall row of Moonwalker sunflowers that are expected to grow ten feet tall. The beans next to them did not fill in well and must be replanted. A few plants are producing flowers. The cucumbers now have flowers.

The raspberries are just a week away from a large summer harvest. They look better than they did the last few years.

The grape vine also has made a strong comeback this year. We have harvested the leaves and stuffed them with rice, beans, and herbs for two meals now.

We have high hopes this summer and fall for big harvests of pears. The fruit is thick on this tree, and the other is equally full.

Our one surviving apple tree has produced fruit for the first time in several years. We owe its plenitude this summer to a winter pruning of its branches, as well as of the apricot trees that were shading it.

And here are some of the apricots that are ripening.

The Garden Chronicles - May 30, 2009 - The Plot

By end of May the garden is fully planted with seeds, purchased plants, and plants started from seeds in the Bio-Dome. The plot below shows the layout of the vegetable garden.

Peppers and Tomatoes

Beans and Carrots

Lettuce, Kohlrabi, and Swiss Chard

A Showy Lilac Bush

Gallardia Daisies

Dutchman's Breeches and Ferns

A Showy Bridal Wreath

Tremendous Peony

Herb garden is thriving

Lucy and Ricky are close to full-grown now. Lucy is a very big girl!

Back in Wisconsin, the trillium were on display along the forest floor over Memorial Day weekend.

Over the holiday weekend, we took a hike/run along the Red Cedar State Trail.

This bend along the Red Cedar State Trail is the Dunville Wildlife Area where heron are often seen feeding on fish. We did not see herons, but the river was scenic nonetheless.

The Garden Chronicles - May 17, 2009

By mid-May, it feels like spring has come to stay for a while. The apricot and pear trees have finished blooming, and the apple tree is pollinating this week. The strawberries have flowers, too.

We planted seeds in the house in early March, which are now close to planting size. We started them in a Bio-Dome planter from Park Seed Company. After years of starting seeds in peat pots with starter mix, and having moderately good results, we decided to try this new system for starting seeds. The Bio-Dome comes with a tray and a clear lid that protects the plants from drafts and keeps the planting medium evenly moist. The planting medium is a set of little cone-shaped sponges of peat and other material that fit into a styrofoam mold. Our Bio-Dome holds sixty little sponges. We started hollyhocks, petunias, salvia, Savoy cabbage, tomatoes, and basil in the house, and all germinated! Most have survived to now, and we are beginning to harden them this week.




This is a better photo of one of the garden bunnies. We expect to see more of them in the weeks to come. The neighbor's cat got a baby bunny this week, and we suspect that there are more in our yard. We believe the rabbit's den is behind the compost heap next to the garage. Perhaps we have not seen the other bunny in a few days because she is caring for young ones. The garden is ready for them this this year: We have wrapped chicken wire fencing around everthing.

What's doing in the cold frames? The cold frame plantings are getting bigger each day. Radishes will be ready to harvest within another month, and the carrots will remain until almost the end of the summer.

Lettuce, Oriental mixed greens, beets, kohlrabi, and Swiss chard were among the early plantings in the cold frames.

We have had a lovely show of tulips throughout the neighborhood, including these in front of our house. The warm days and cool nights have kept them fresh for a couple of weeks now.

The Garden Chronicles - May 4, 2009

Some rains, some warmer weather, a little sunshine, and spring gardening has improved immensely. Under the watchful eye of a garden bunny, the apricot trees' profuse blossoms were last week's feature.

Another harbinger of spring is our early asparagus, so welcome after a winter of frozen vegetables.

There is more to come from spring, and perhaps more rain this week will help the cold frame seedlings grow large enough to photograph next weekend.