Farm & Garden - Backyard Gardener

Dappled Light

Mon, 21 May 2007 03:00:13 -0600

For a professional landscape designer -- say that guy on PBS, P. Allen Smith -- choosing the site for a vegetable garden on a small property or urban lot is a carefully calculated decision. Enough sunlight is weighed against traffic patterns, buildings and existing trees, water and utility lines, drainage and other aspects of the landscape. We took a different route.

Here in northeastern Pennsylvania in 1987 – long before every outdoorsman owned a personal GPS, we calculated latitude, longitude and elevation to find sun angle, but not for a garden plot. Using this information blueprints were drawn for the optimum location of a passive solar home.

On the Table

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 03:00:07 -0600

Most gardeners will tell you that N, P and K are the initials of three plant nutrients or simply, “fertilizer.” They are much more than that; they are three elements on the periodic table (PT). How many can list the rest?

For those like me, who may have passed his tenth-grade PT pop-quiz but would now fail miserably, you can find hundreds of examples on the internet. I downloaded a small free program from Custom Fit Software. Find one if your memory is as bad as mine.

Sage Advice

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 04:00:43 -0600

Henry James Byron was a prolific author of drama, burlesque and pantomime at Cambridge Theatre in the late 1800s. He wrote, “When young sow wild oats but when old, grow sage.”

As I get older and perhaps a bit wiser, I look for plants that can take care of themselves occasionally. Sage is such a plant.

I enjoy passing by the herb beds during my spring gardening chores. Along with other kitchen herbs, three velvety, grayish sage plants are just growing there, not demanding a thing from me until the vegetable plots are prepared and planted.

Small Town Farmers

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 03:00:12 -0700

Our small homestead is between two small towns -- one where I grew up next door to the last working farm in the borough, the other where my wife went to school. In the heart of ‘her town’ was also a dairy farm. Both farmers had the same last name -- though according to one, “We may be related, so far back nobody recalls.”

I was too young to really get to know my neighbor. My family did buy milk from him and I remember when it was my turn to walk over with an empty jug and fifty cents I would enter the milk house and stand on tip-toes to peer through the window into the parlor. I would see the farmer busy with the cows and rather than bother him I’d fill my jug and leave the money on the bulk tank.

Wildlife Prevention

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 03:00:31 -0700

Attitudes toward wildlife vary greatly. I enjoy watching Mother Nature's pets and try to keep my bird feeders and suet sacks full. I grow enough extra vegetables to fatten an occasional rabbit lucky enough to slip through my defense -- 'da fence' is an eight-foot high, chain-link barricade resting on a short stone wall with a strip of chicken wire along the bottom, installed the year I lost everything to a family of hungry whitetails.

There are of course, cheaper, easier ways to deter uninvited guests from helping themselves to your homegrown food. A hunter may say, "Bullets are cheap," but it doesn't have to be a deadly game.

Fantasy Gardening

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 03:00:41 -0700

As backyard gardeners we try to get our families interested in our pastime but how do you compete with video games?

I asked a nephew what he wanted for Christmas and the list was long, starting with the latest game console and several video games -- none with titles relating to plants and animals unless you count dragons and dark forests.

I can somewhat understand the attraction; many years ago I followed Bilbo Baggins as the hobbit wandered middle earth. When our neighbors bought their kids an Atari with PONG my brothers and sisters would be at their house more often than ours, arguing over who gets to play next.

Preserving Your Roots

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 03:00:44 -0700

“Bundle up real good and go with Grandpa. You can carry the basket for him.”

It was the middle of January and although suppertime was still hours away, darkness had already fallen. Grandma wrapped a hand-knitted scarf around my neck and passed me a wicker basket. I followed Grandpa out into the night.

My grandfather shuffled his feet to break through the drifted snow and I stepped high, trying to stay in his tracks. A dim view of a rustic door soon appeared; I watched as the old man tugged it open and disappeared inside. “Come on in lad, let’s find us some grub.”

When Good Tools Go Bad

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 03:00:26 -0600

Keith's Tools
Photo Credit: Keith Bellinger

Homesteaders (those with small farms or large gardens) rely on tools more than anyone but professional tradesmen. Like the pros, we buy the best we can afford, maybe not top of the line but good solid tools built to last. Unlike the pros we can’t afford to throw them away and buy replacements when they break; we usually fix them ourselves. It is rare to find a tool in the trash of a homesteader; “It just needs a new handle/bolt and nut/wrap of duct tape.”

Row Covers

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 03:00:43 -0600

Floating row covers serve several purposes. They’re an important tool for the family gardener. Row Cover Technology explains the different kinds of row covers and how to use them. Gardeners have a lot of options available. We can purchase row covers or raid the linen closet. Row covers will keep heat in and insects out. They protect soil and our plants and give us extra time at the beginning and end of the growing season.

Seeds for Spears

Sun, 20 Aug 2006 23:58:39 -0600

Bob is in his eighties and planted a small patch of asparagus, “… over twenty years ago.” Earlier this year he asked if I wanted some spears. I told him that I didn’t care for the vegetable but admitted I was a third grader when it was forced on me. He laughed and proceeded to tell me how delicious it is. I accepted a handful of spears reluctantly, “Maybe they can be pickled. Anything is good pickled.”

Being a poor country boy, I didn’t know that pickled asparagus is gourmet food and a spear is often used as a swizzle stick in a Bloody Mary. I learned that I liked them (asparagus, not vodka in tomato juice) enough to want a patch of my own and asked my friend for some seeds. Bob said, “Please, take them all!”

Tobacco

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 23:04:56 -0600

Photo credit: Scott Bellinger

An ancient Native American myth contends that when the land was barren and the people were starving the Great Spirit sent forth a woman to save humanity. As she traveled over the world, everywhere her right hand touched the soil there grew potatoes, where her left hand touched grew corn. When the world was rich and fertile, she sat down and rested. When she arose, there grew tobacco.

Among all indigenous people of the Americas tobacco was considered one of the most holy of plants. The sacred uses of tobacco were many; it was used for prayer, protection, respect and healings. Tobacco was medicine.

Knee High

Mon, 17 Jul 2006 02:00:13 -0600

Every country boy knows that corn should be knee high by the Fourth of July. But a wet spring and early summer flood has reminded those of us in the northeast that you can’t plant in mud and corn just doesn’t grow well under water. None of our local fields measure up.

Wanton Mint

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 03:00:11 -0600

Minthe was a sexy water nymph in Greek mythology. Hades was ruler of the underworld and not a very nice god. Quite the devil actually, he enjoyed watching young girls bathe.

Persephone was Hades’ wife and wasn’t too happy with her guy anyways, having been kidnapped by him as a child and forced to spend a third of the year in his dark, humorless kingdom. She was, after all, daughter to the original Mother Nature.

Purple Coneflowers

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 03:00:04 -0600

A couple of years ago, a friend gave me a plant as a birthday gift. He said, “It’s called purple coneflower. It will really draw the pollinators to your garden in the summer and during the winter the snowbirds love the seeds in the cone-heads.” We shared a good laugh about the old Saturday Night Live skit.

Spinach Power

Mon, 15 May 2006 01:00:35 -0600

I was six years old in 1963. Popeye was already 34 and became one of many cartoons my generation absorbed every Saturday morning. We sang along as Popeye crushed open a can of spinach and gulped it down, “I’m strong to the finich ‘cause I eats me spinach, I’m Popeye the sailor man.”

While kids like me were singing that ditty, farmers collected on the popularity, praising the strong-armed sailor for saving the spinach industry in the 1930’s. Popeye’s creator had learned what nutritionists discovered only a few years earlier, that spinach contains iron, a central part of hemoglobin which carries oxygen in the blood.