Devshirme

The Wednesday before Memorial Day I planted our garden (you can see how behind I am in blogging, since it is almost mid-June) and things are going well.  I still need to get more herbs but for now here is what I have:

-Pickling cucumbers – this is usually a high-yield crop.

-Cayenne, habanero and bell peppers.  The cayennes are usually high yield well into the fall.  This is my first year growing habaneros.

-Buttercrunch lettuce and escarole.  The lettuce grows like crazy and I will probably plant and reap several harvests – they have a quick turn-around time.

-Tomato plants with basil planted in between to keep pests away.

-Pumpkin.

-Spinach and kale.

-Rosemary, parsley, thyme and Greek oregano.

-Strawberries.  Last year our plant grew all over the ground on the side of the house but with no yield.  I cut the branches off and took the pot indoors for the winter.  All of the branches took in the ground and we have been getting strawberries every day.

-The usual blueberry bushes and apple tree.  I didn’t plant musk melons this year – the experiment is over, and was a disaster.

-Some mystery plants.  I thought they were chives, which seem to just pop up here and there.  But they got huge and are getting ready to flower.  What are they?  Decorative onions?  Mutant garlic?  We will see.

That is it for now.  I will update with pictures when the rain stops.

The other day I blogged about creativity and acting in the image of God, and I mentioned gardening as one of the ways to be creative.  Even though it is early-mid December it got me thinking about my garden and how much I miss waking up every day in the spring, summer and early fall and working on the garden.  Whether it is watering, planting, picking crops, or just messing around and doing a whole lotta nothing out there, my time spent in the garden is truly rejuvenating to the spirit.  I realized I had not done my traditional wrap-up article on how things went, so here goes:

I had several tomato plants, including one in a topsy-turvy upside down thing.  I started from seed outside rather than from seedlings, so they never really got to be huge, but I did get a steady stream of small, rather ugly but organic tomatoes.  Next year seedlings.  We had several pumpkin plants stretching across the yard and over a thicket of plants, and we got three jack-o-lanter pumpkins (interestingly, this kind of pumpkin is yellow rather than the deep orange you associate with the name) of various sizes.  Definitely a success.  The blueberry bushes were disasters.  Last year we had endless, delicious blueberries.  This year we had about five and they were tart.  My gardening guru Karen says that it is probably because I never pruned the bushes; therefore, one of my late fall activities has been pruning them for next year.

The apple tree, on the other hand, yielded like the blueberry bushes did last year.  We had apples all summer long, and they were delicious.  The same with cayenne peppers – I was harvesting these all summer, and as winter approached I still had 30 or so green ones going.  I took them in, put them in a plastic bag so they could ripe, dried them out, and ground them into crushed red pepper, just like what you put on pizza or pasta.  I also had a steady flow of pickling cukes all summer.  They grew like crazy, and I harvested them when they got to a certain size so they wouldn’t get too seedy.  Eventually they all died out due to some thing that gets to the plants, but definitely a success.

I tried yet again to grow musk melons (similar to cantaloupe, which is not actually grown in the US) and had little luck – three small, rather bland ones that broke off early.  Apparently these guys need constant sunlight, and that just isn’t happening here in New England.  Garlic was a disaster because I didn’t cut off the flower and the stalk ended up breaking from the weight.  I planted a few potatoes that had eyes all over them, and this too didn’t really work out.  They were almost an afterthought – next year I will try harder.  The strawberry plant grew like crazy but no fruit – my understanding is it has to do this and then next year it will yield.

Later in the season I got two packets of lettuce seeds and planted buttercrunch and romaine lettuce.  Unbelievable – I had heads popping up within a week, and each day we were able to harvest a fresh head.  The buttercrunch worked out better than the romaine, and they both grew well into the fall, just like the peppers.  Next year I am definitely expanding the lettuce section.

What am I leaving out?  Let’s see…we had many potted herbs and spices, and they all did well – mint, chamomile, basil, Greek basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, and…I forget the others, although I recall that there were two different kinds of mint.  And we had our usual harvest from the crabapple tree.  No surprise chives this year – last year some grew late in the season in an abandoned pot.

So how will I fill the gardening void over the winter?  By switching gears.  We plan to cook up another batch of homebrew soon – Russian Imperial Stout, a powerful beer that is very appropriate for a cold New England winter.  I have the mushroom log, which has been a disappointment, soaking, so we will see how that goes.  At some point we will make cheese and vinegar – I have kits for both – and I may try to make wine.  And, if Fr. Peter can convince me,  I will try to cook up a batch of mead.  I also plan to start the garden indoors in February by growing some seeds.  So all things considered, I should be kept well occupied with this stuff until I am back out there again in the dirt.

Things are starting to happen with the garden.  We enjoyed our first green bell pepper the other day, and we have been harvesting herbs – mint, parsley, basil, thyme – and using them in different stuff.  I plucked my first red cayenne pepper – yum – this morning and also noticed that we have some cucumbers growing.  I did a second watering session in the afternoon (I don’t normally do two waterings but am this week due to the extreme heat), peeled back a leaf from the cucumber plant, and found one ready to go!  Here it is:

I have been shamefully neglecting the blog.  A lot of things have happened recently – festival, laity award dinner, all kinds of stuff – so let’s start fresh.  Coincinding with the first day of sun after over a week of rain and overcast days, our garden is fully up and running, so how about we start with that.  I moved the location this year from the side of the house (where the soil would get washed away during the heavy rains we often have here in Worcester) to the peninsula next to the driveway and my neighbor (and gardening guru) Karen’s garden.  I picked up compost from Hope Cemetery (they have a mountain of it for the taking) and spent spare time the past few weeks getting things ready.  Here is what I planted:  Cucumbers, cantaloupe, cayenne peppers, pumpkin, garlic and tomato in the main garden.  Next to the house, in the old garden space, I have pots with basil, mint, strawberries, bell peppers, sunflowers, parsley, cilantro, and another tomato plant.  In addition we have a pot in the back with two garlic plants, a TopsyTurvy planter (As Seen On TV!) hanging in the front, a small pot with thyme, the blueberry bushes and the apple tree.  I also have the mushroom log inside the house. 
The first thing I harvested was pussy willow stalks in the earliest days of spring.  You can’t eat these, of course, but they make for a nice decoration in the house or a gift when visiting someone.  I also harvested thyme, which grows early and often, and dried it out for seasoning use.  I have a bell peppers that should be ready soon and cayenne peppers which should turn red in the next week.  Sadly, I think we will not get too many blueberries, for whatever reason (last year we had a seemingly endless supply) but there are tons of apples coming out on the tree, so hopefully that will pay out.  The tree  has five different varieties of apples, and the granny smiths always come out first.

The sun came out for a moment today – unbelievable after all this rain! – and I took advantage of the brief window to visit our composting barrel outside the house.  There was no way I was going out in the yard during the downpours so I could empty our kitchen scraps container.  So, mission accomplished.  If you are a Worcester resident you can buy a composter from the Dept. of Public Works for $35.   The idea is that, by composting, you cut down on trash output and garbage disposal usage and, eventually, you have some nice soil after the conqueror worm and the bugs have a chance to do their thing.  Here is a picture:

I just went down to the cellar to retrieve a book.  As soon as I hit the stairs I could smell a skunk.  Was there a skunk in the basement?  All was quiet.  I descended the stairs with hysterical thoughts of reaching for the book and having a skunk jump on my head.  Years ago at the law firm our supply closet was ravaged and there was a hole in the ceiling.  We patched the hole and the next day found the closet a mess again.  It turned out there was a possum to blame.  So when we were patching the hole the possum was probably hiding in the closet very close to us.   This too was running through my mind.  So…I grabbed the book and came upstairs without incident.  I opened the front door, smelled the strong scent of skunk and realized that the critter had probably made his statement outside.  It just goes to show how powerful the scent of a skunk is, since it seeped into the basement, and how powerful suggestion can be.