To Plant or Not to Plant

The other day I went for a walk in a nice neighborhood downtown. There were signs of spring everywhere - crimson buds on the rhubarb plants in the alleys; small green shoots in garden beds that will soon be blooming crocuses and narcissus; red alder catkins dangling from the branches like caterpillars. And, in many yards, evidence of industrious people preparing for early planting season. 

I took a picture of these beautiful cold frames. They are just old windows attached with hinges to raised wooden beds. They can be kept closed or propped open. Inside, I could see fresh greens. It’s too early for these to be new spring greens, they looked like overwintered chard and kale. But they were gorgeous, bright green, tender and delicious-looking. 

I got excited. I have long wanted cold frames just like this. If I had such nice cold frames, I could plant radishes and spinach ANY DAY NOW. I could start slow-to-mature vegetables in April instead of direct sowing in late May. I could grow CUCUMBERS. I could grow EGGPLANTS. 

I even remembered that we have four or five good-sized windows just sitting on a trailer in the yard near the shop, doing nothing. 

Then I remembered that I am one of the world’s worst gardeners and there are many reasons for my failure besides my lack of cold frames. Mostly a lack of will or energy to spend hours and hours a week pulling weeds and picking slugs and bugs off of my plants. My aching knees and creaky back. My inability to remember where I put the trowel and the gardening fork for the life of me. 

I remembered that “I fought the weeds and the weeds won” is pretty much our farm-anthem around here. I remembered that I have consciously cultivated tough perennials like raspberries and rhubarb just so I don’t have to prepare garden beds every year. I remembered that I belong to the gleaner’s pantry and have pretty much unlimited access to organic vegetables year-round, even if they aren’t quite as fresh as they would be if I were picking them from my own garden. 

I always plant a few things, and I’m sure I will this year as well. Maybe this will be the year I actually get some asparagus crowns into the dirt. Maybe I can convince Paloma to help me lay down all the cardboard I keep intending to bring home from Gleaner’s and so get a jump start on weed suppression. Maybe Homero will finally put the wheel back on the wheel barrow so I can move compost in quantities larger than a five gallon bucket. 

Maybe. 

Monster Squash 2021 (Count on Cucurbits)

My mother used to say there were only two things for certain in this world - death and taxes. But I know there is another - that every year volunteer squash will grow out of the compost pile. 

It’s so funny, I don’t usually have much luck trying to grow winter squash on purpose. The plants get powdery mildew, or they are poorly pollinated, or they get blossom end rot. But lo and behold the vigorous vines that sprouted this year from our discarded supermarket squash seeds:

There are actually three separate volunteer plants in that picture, and together they cover a good 500 square feet. All of them bore copious fruit, but unfortunately since supermarket squash are mostly hybrids, none of the three distinct varieties of fruit they bore was good to eat. 

As varied as squash fruits are - that is to say, infinitely - squash blossoms are uniform. All squash plants, be they winter or summer or of unknown provenance, produce lovely yellow trumpet shaped flowers that are delicious. 

We like to tuck the fresh raw flowers into quesadillas, but they can be prepared in any number of different ways - one Italian preparation is stuffed with goat cheese, battered and fried. They can be added to soups or just sautéed in butter. 

Since we didn’t care about the inedible fruit of these particular plants, we picked both the male and female flowers, but if you are growing squash to eat just pick the male flowers. They are easy to tell apart because the male flowers grow in tall stems and the female flowers stay stuck close to the vine. Remove the pistils; they can be bitter. And always check for bugs! Our vines were still producing flowers last week, in chilly late October. 

Although inedible, this year’s gourds do make a fine halloween porch display. There are many more that are not pictured here. One gargantuan vine produced more than a dozen of the huge warty gourds - probably well over 100 pounds of squash. 

I am not certain if the seeds of all these squashes are edible or not. I believe they are - I never heard of a poison pumpkin seed - but I should probably look it up to be safe before I decide to roast all the seeds after Halloween. 

Mercy is in the window. 

DQ6 - Visit From Rowan

Our oldest daughter Rowan came by today. She’s been in isolation for ten days already, because she had a cough and a sore throat. No fever though. Chances are it’s her regular seasonal allergies and post-nasal drip, but nobody’s taking any chances these days. 

She and her roommates are also putting in a bigger garden this year, and she called to ask if we had any fencing lying around she could use to keep the dogs out of the garden beds. As does any good farmstead, we have a few rolls of chicken wire kicking around, and I said she was welcome to come get some. 

When she arrived, Hope and I were in the garden laying down cardboard and anchoring it with rocks that Hope and Papa gathered in the pig pasture. That’s where all the rocks are, but we were afraid of the pigs and thought they would bite us if we went in there to gather the rocks. Papa said “I’ll go” and it turned out the pigs weren’t interested in trying to bite anybody. Ten minutes yielded enough rocks to hold down all the cardboard I had brought home from gleaners. Gleaners is a basically unlimited source of cardboard, and I ought to bring home a lot more. 

Rowan looked at the old strawberry bed, which is pretty much just lawn at this point, and suggested we dig up any strawberries we could find and transplant them into the second of the old claw foot bathtubs. We have two, and the first one was planted with spicy salad mix yesterday by Paloma and me. 

Eight clumps of strawberries were rescued and transplanted. There is room in the bathtub for another four or so; I may pick some up at the farm store tomorrow. We also cleaned up another raised bed and prepared it for transplanting our snap peas in a few days. The snap peas are currently germinating on the kitchen table in five egg cartons. As soon as we can prepare enough space, I have radish seeds and beet seeds ready to go. 

Today I also sent out a message over Facebook that if anyone was in need of eggs - I hear they are scarce in the grocery stores - I have five dozen I am happy to donate to families in need. We have thirteen laying hens and this time of year we are drowning in eggs. Three people messaged me and we made arrangement to meet up. 

It’s very odd to go to the grocery store and see empty shelves. That’s never happened in my lifetime. I’m so used to abundance and variety that it seems almost to be a natural American right. Shortages? Long lines? That only happens 

in other places - poor places, “socialist” places - not here. 

Not in AMERICA.  I was at Fred Meyer yesterday. The produce section looked unchanged, thank God, but there were long stretches of bare shelving in the toilet paper aisle, the cleaning products aisle, the pet food aisle, and the liquor aisle. American priorities, amiright? 

DQ4 - Garden Notes

I haven’t bothered with a garden in years - beyond my perennials; rhubarb, raspberries, fruit trees - because I can get unlimited free produce from the gleaner’s pantry. This year, however, things are so very uncertain that it seems like it can’t be a bad idea to try to plant a few things. So far, gleaner’s is carrying on, but if the governor issues a shelter in place order, as so many others have, then I assume it will have to come to a halt. 

Our old garden space is a mess. The beds are entirely gone - just grass. Homero took a weed eater to the canary grass and Paloma clipped the blackberries. I hauled a few buckets full of compost and topped up one of the bathtubs. Then we planted a couple packs of spicy salad mix. 

A few days ago Paloma and I planted five egg cartons worth of snap peas, and they are germinating in the kitchen table. I’ll have to prepare a bed for them soon. Also sorted through some drawers and found seed packets of years past - most of the seeds will still sprout. I have cylindrical beets, radishes, and green beans. Also nasturtiums. No place to plant those though, until we do a lot more work. 

We have the time. Nothing but time.