June - and Companion planting

So....for me, the art of urban gardening is doing a lot with a little space.    Or rather, cramming in lots, and lots and lots of vegetables (often too many, really) into my backyard.  (and my front yard). There's a part of me that loves the engineering challenge of how to squeeze everything in, and get a full season's harvest out of a very small plot.  One way to "double up" your space is to think seasonally - many plants that love the cold can share space with warmer-weather plants.  Here are some of my tips n' hints for packin' it in in the transition-season of June.   (PS: check out the June 1 post to see how each of these plots looked when I started them in May - its pretty cool how lush they look now compared).                                               

Spinach, with eggplant and onions around the side.

  

Bugs in my garden!

 Well, it's June and I've got BUGS in my garden - yeah!   For our *one* warm day this month, I got to chill outside doing garden chores (like weeding, feeding n transplanting) - and finally my perennial garden is in full swing.   Now that the salvia (left) and yarrow are blooming - along with the neighbor's cilantro (herbs flower - who knew?) - there are a delicious number of things flying around the front garden.   When I first started gardening, I kinda feared bugs - because I worried that they all were pests  coming to infest my plants.   And true, some are (I'll put up some pictures of my poor cabbage soon- I hate you, cabbage loopers).   But for me to have abundant creepy, crawly flying things is a sign of health and balance.   The bees (can you see it, left?) pollinate the squash, peas and tomatoes.   Spiders, ladybugs and lacewings (which I've seen in past  years) snack on aphids and other pests - but need the yarrow and blooming cilantro to tank up between insect meals.   And a lot of those little, tiny flying things are (I hope) parasitic wasps.   They lay their eggs in caterpillars (including cabbage loopers), who get EATEN when they hatch.   (ha ha!)  Pretty cool, huh?   Free pest control, and all I have to do is plant flowers.

 I'm slowly coming to terms with the idea that balance is a thing we work towards in the garden...even slugs, who I hate for all the holes (and slime) they leave in my lettuce, are key in chewing up dead plants in the compost.   Migrating chickadees, who try their best to munch on our strawberries, eat caterpillars all spring long.  I put out suet and water, which they seem to like.  So far I've never had a major outbreak of aphids or other pests ( knock on wood).   I also try to grow stuff with a ton of compost, plus good sun and water to build up their natural resistance to pests and diseases.  (Plants, just like us, are more likely to get sick if they are malnourished or overstressed.   In a good soil they can produce their own defenses and recover fast from infection).   So far, they seem to have been able to balance themselves out without major interventions from me.   (except for one major round of slug killing...If slugs ever take over the world, I'll be tried for war crimes for sure). 

Some kind of crazy wasp/fly on the cilantro...I think this one had a blue back.  Blown away by the number of weird insects living in the garden!

This year I'm tempted to try a round of Bt, a biological agent, on my cabbages for the loopers - this is the first year I've had so many cabbages, but I've noticed the little white butterflies for years - and now I definitely have caterpillars happily dining on my future sauerkraut.   Sometimes the chickadees don't work fast enough.

Garden Diary - frustration, salad days

Well, here it is June, for real now. Finally hot - classic New England non-spring: straight rainy cold into boiling heat.   So, conditions not so perfect.   But as David Mas Masumoto writes in his farming memoir "Epitaph for a Peach"  - we can't control the weather.   And we can't control the garden.   In fact, organic gardening, and growing food in general, is in a big way about letting go of control.   Of course, its way different to grow food for the table than for income - I don't have a season's worth of work on the line.   But still, after putting in work into a home garden, I wish I could guarantee that everything turns out perfect.

The good: despite the weather we have big, beautiful heads of lettuce that taste delicious with a little homemade vinaigrette - if we can eat them before they bolt.   There are herbs and green onions to sprinkle on food.

And the peas out front are finally flowering, but no pods yet.   Spinach, kale and bok choi still growing, but small.  carrots tiny.   Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, potatoes and beans all growing, but none even close to producing fruit or roots: the bigger ones are just starting to flower.

Even more frustrating, the backyard peas are small and will probably need to get pulled to make room for the cucumbers.   Only a few radishes balled up, and the beets are still teensy.   (Also, Trouble dug half of them up.  Sometimes she thinks the garden is her litter box, little jerk).  The carrots are patchy and it will take at least another month to see how they do.   Caterpillars are chowing down on the cabbages, and barely any of my beneficial-insect plants have flowered yet. Nothing in the broccoli department, and each green onion means one less big, full season onion.

Strawberries have come ripe almost all at once - delicious, but a time-limited proposition - we have to eat them before they go squishy.

In other words, despite lots of hard work, the garden produces some frustration along with produce.   But I've been thinking about this - about how working on this garden project is a lesson in humility.  A certain kind of manic energy, of perfectionism, will always be thwarted in a living project like this one.  And I have those qualities in spades, always rushing around, trying to plant something and fill in blank spaces where something failed, trying to cram another plant in, trying to prevent any kind of failure.  But another way of thinking might help us prepare better for reality - prepare for imperfection.  Yes, squash vine borers will inevitably seek a home in our zukes - yes, some tomatoes will rot on the vine because I run out of time or energy to preserve them.  Yes, some things will not grow or grow poorly, weeds will come up, and sometimes I'll forget or won't have time to weed, prune, water or feed.   These things could (and do) cause a little anxiety in a home gardener, especially for me, this season when I'm feeling so on top of my game and have put some much time into making things healthy and productive.   But a garden is good for teaching me a lesson about control - that we are not, in fact, in control.  There is the weather, there are insects, there are the plants themselves, and there is life, which sometimes switches up our priorities without warning.   We do our best, and then all we can do is wait and hope and appreciate what comes - and forgive ourselves if it doesn't.

Right now, I'm trying to exist in the here and now, in the salad days.  I could stress about how the beets aren't doing that well, or how maybe my decision to plant carrots between the spinach will make it hard for me to plant fall crops in that section.   Or I could eat lettuce.  Lots and lots of lettuce.  Truth be told, with a chopped green onion, a tiny radish, Boston Organic carrots, a head of our lettuce and bbq'd chicken on top, its something I made almost from start to finish.   And its lunch.  And just about the best damn salad I think I've ever eaten.

Recipe for vinaigrette, courtesy of Alice Water's Simple Foods:

Mix together 1 Tablespoon red wine vinegar,
pepper and salt
to taste.

Whisk in 3-4 Tablespoons olive oil.

pour over your salad and eat it.

Starting to Garden?

Thinking about starting a garden of your own?   Last year I tried to write up some of the information I'd gathered, read and discovered by gardening on my own and put it in a website for beginning gardeners.  It's got free resources for Boston-area gardeners, plant-by-plant growing tips and how-to's on starting your own plot.  Check it out.

https://sites.google.com/site/abbymachsoncarter/home/boston-backyard-gardener

Memorial Day, Redux, 2011

 It's funny, I thought this year was much colder and wetter than other years... (we just had our first stretch of warm, sunny weather in the last few days of May)...but looking back one year in the blog, I noticed a post with the same title as this one....apparently, last year memorial day was also the first time it got warm enough to put everything in the ground (especially tender stuff, like the tomatoes and eggplants.)   And I thought I was slacking.  Nope, turns out we just live pretty far north, in the scheme of things.   Reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (my annual re-reading), she talks about putting in tomatoes and harvesting lettuce in the first week of May.  I feel only pissy envy ("Well, if we all lived in Virginia, maybe we could all have an extra two months growing season, and maybe I could grow melons and okra and peppers that needed their own cages!).  

"upstairs" back garden: shade-tolerant

As it is, weather is a huge part of our limitations as gardeners up here, and getting to know, and possibly accept, the growing cycle, is a part of it.   I know I shouldn't be shocked by looking back to last year's May pictures, but when I remember last year's garden, I remember the July version - five foot tall tomato plants and every possible growing space filled with plants, or, less happily, weeds.   Its a big surprise to see how much last year's Memorial Day pictures look like this year's.  I guess I feel like I should be starting earlier, or the weather should be warmer - I should be ready to eat things by now.   But its just not time yet. 

My second attempt at a perennial border, May '11

Here's what I try to remind myself: June is when we harvest lettuce, peas, bok choi, broccoli (if we're lucky) and maybe some tiny carrots.   Beans, cukes and zukes won't be until July, tomatoes and eggplants at the very end.   And then the season goes until mid-september. Be patient, I try to tell myself, but it feels unfair.  It's exciting to be eating fresh-grown stuff right from the backyard - nothing tastes quite like it - but if we want to try to eat garden-fresh all year long, its a lot to bank on basically eight weeks.   This year I opened up a new bed and planted it full of Roma tomatoes for canning - two hybrid romas, two heirloom "paste" tomatoes.   It feels like a luxury to devote a whole bed just for canning (and don't worry, I'm trying to squeeze out every inch of space from it before the tomates get big), but I think its something I want - its been fun to make sauce from our home "cans" this winter, and it would be easier with more Romas, even if they are more "meaty", less spicy-juicy than some of their heirloom cousins.

This year I am trying to be mindful about where my gardening energy goes - I'm trying to think about what I really want to eat, not just how I can cram in the maximum number of plants.   And so far, it feels good.  I know that we can never get enough carrots, peppers, cucumbers or tomatoes, and I love my pickled, canned beans, so I tried to make space (or give space) to a lot of those.

Onions, lettuce, and tiny peas along the fence. 

I loved my tiny golden beets from last year, and now there is a beet patch.   But gone are chard and zucchinis, big broccolis and a huge sunny spot devoted to herbs.   The broccoli takes up a lot of space and barely gets going.  The Zucchinis always get borers.   The herbs have been moved to shadier locations, freeing up space.  And nobody ever ate the chard.   The carrots were planted all at once, instead of the whole-summer labor of love that used to be devoted to getting a new crop every two weeks, like the package recommends, and always ends up confusing me about what to harvest when.   We're working here for maximum satisfaction, maximum yumminess, for the least amount of stress and worry.  I've been putting lots of time into the garden recently, but that's because I have the time, and the weather is beautiful.  Later, I hope to not feel guilty about not doing enough or not eating enough of the produce.   If I don't get a second crop of lettuce or peas, I'll try not to fret.  Sure, I'll work my butt off canning tomatoes and making bean pickles (and possibly sauerkraut, this year) - maybe I'll coerce Dawn into drying some herbs.   But I'm planning on harvesting the lettuce young (no more waiting for it to reach "full size" and have it bolt) and the carrots all at once.  I'm not trying to plant in marginal spaces anymore - I'm letting those go back to weeds and groundcover (and a violently virile oregano plant), and not wasting time planting anything where it won't thrive.   I planted only potatoes and onions in my community garden plot - the kinds of things that can make it through a few hot days without any water, much less TLC.  I'll give away what I can't plant or eat.  Or at least, that's my plan.   In May, this is my intention: to enjoy what I can, and not sweat the small stuff if I can't.  (Let you know how it goes.)

Peas...soon w/ peppers and tomates

Garden diary:  By now, the carrot seedlings have shown their heads as have the beets.  Both are a little patchy.  The spinach is hardly growing, as usual, but the lettuce is big enough for a baby harvest, radishes on their way.   This year I planted a bunch of cabbages (where the herbs used to be), and they are looking good.  Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant in the ground, bean teepee still needs to go up. (pics from May)   Tasted first strawberry today- tart but very good.  


Here's some pictures from the May garden, before the sun came out.  

I'll have more of  the June garden soon...

Monkey

Dawn's front Raised Bed...in May.   Compare with May 2010....

Peas in the back. Party in the front. (radishes in the middle).  Cucumbers coming later.

Schlubby potato buckets (by now they've just sprouted)

Spinaches planted, w space for eggplant (I call this my "no dirt left behind" policy).