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Seasonal Notes from the ManyTracks Garden by Sue Robishaw Gardening in 2004 was Wet, wet, and more wet — and then there were the frosts ... Another "interesting" year! If nothing else, I’ve come to a new awe and appreciation for the adaptability and persistence of plants. I thought we’d seen some pretty good extremes already, but this year set records for rain, topped off by frosts every month and ending with a good freeze the end of September. Ah, the joys of gardening in the north. At the end of August the garden looked very lush -- most of the plants themselves loved the cool and wet, and I had managed to cover the tender crops for the frequent frosts (about every three weeks). Of course, fruiting and maturity was another matter! The cold frames hadn’t come off the cucumbers until the end of July, and the peppers never did come out of their boxes. I just figured it was going to be "one of those years" when the only harvest would be roots and greens, which were doing very well. The lettuce couldn’t have been happier. But one should never underestimate the power of all those gardeners wishing for "just one ripe tomato". September gave us an unexpected gift of beautiful, warm, sunny weather -- what a treat! And the garden crops responded with unprecedented ripening. You could stand in the garden and hear it. The snap beans had been great all summer, but now the dry beans came into their own with one of the best harvests ever. Not bad for a year I thought was going to be a complete failure dry bean wise. It wasn’t a great TOMATO year, but I was able to put up a modest amount of sauce and juice. My tomato challenges started in the greenhouse where the entire flat of my main Earlirouge tomato gave up. Seed problem? Soil problem? Unknown disease problem? Maybe they knew what the summer was going to be like and just didn’t want to. It was too late to start a new batch, so I stopped by a small, homestead greenhouse and bought some hybrid Flora America, which the women told me in a "no nonsense I have no time to chat this is what you want" way. OK, who can argue with that. They turned out to be OK. Semi-determinate and not exactly exciting taste wise, they put out a decent supply of medium large globes, many of which actually ripened. If you have to go hybrid, this isn’t a bad tomato. But the highlight of the tomato patch this year was the old Minnesota Large Yellow. A tomato I grow quite often, I really appreciated it this year with the demise of my Earlirouge’s. It’s a variable medium size yellow semi-determinate tomato that grows well, matures well and is good flavor. I’ve decided to give up on the old, indeterminate Yellow Paste. I love the flavor of the small fruits, and I keep trying, but they take up a lot of space (prolific vines) and only mature well in the best years. They simply need a little longer season than I usually have. Same for the large fruited, meaty Acme. But there are so many more varieties to play with, it’s not the worst loss. One that showed promise this year was Wedekind. It’s also a tall, lush growing vine, but it had more fruit which was large and juicy. A later tomato (as I’ve found all of the large fruited tomatoes to be), it still matured some fruit this year. I’ll try this one again. Most years are better for tomatoes than this one. I let one volunteer tomato grow this year, as it came up early and was in a convenient spot. A small plant with small red globes which matured early and had good flavor, this was a wonderful surprise. I can’t wait to plant the saved seed next year to see if it continues to be such a great plant. I haven’t any idea what the parentage might be as I haven’t grown any tomato like it, and there were no tomatoes growing in this plot last year. Of course, tomato seed is notorious for surviving compost piles and I had put some compost on this plot. Maybe a sport of small fruited but long vined Victorio? Or of the determinate but larger fruited Early Chatham? I again had trouble with cutworms, in spite of taller collars. So I cut apart a stack of plastic yoghurt containers I had and placed them (with some difficulty) around the growing tomato, pepper and broccoli plants, securing them with large paper clips. This worked fairly well, except for the one cutworm I found INSIDE the slightly loosened plastic collar on one plant. Persistent little buggers. But then, they aren’t doing anything we aren’t doing so I guess I can’t complain too much. I also tried tin cans, having read about that idea but that didn’t work either, the cutworms just crawled up and over. My solution for next year is tall, sturdy, tight (relatively speaking) collars with a ring of wood ashes around the stems. But then, I’ve found all insect problems to ebb and tide over the years, so maybe I won’t have any problem at all with cutworms next year. One can always hope. I again had a good amount of stem borer activity and damage in my SWEET CORN, and handled it the same as last year (Dipel and wood ashes). In addition, I planted two seeds per spot and let them grow later than I usually do without thinning. Quite often one had damage but not the other, so I pulled up the damaged plants and composted them. This worked quite well and I ended up with somewhat fewer plants but a decent crop. Next year I’m going to pull the mulch off the plot when I plant then leave it bare for a time to give the birds a better chance at the worms, putting the mulch back when the plants are up and growing well. The corn made it through the many frosts with surprisingly little damage, though maturity of ears was widely variable, I assume because of the less than ideal continual wet weather. We had many summer meals of corn and I dried an adequate supply of green corn (which is never quite enough when winter comes!). A friend had carefully harvested and saved ASPARAGUS seed from his plot for several years and gave me a packet of the seed, so I planted some this year. They grew well and I transplanted them the end of July into the many bare spots in my asparagus patch (due to losses from the hard, cold winter year before last). Young asparagus plants are so cute! If you are one who allows cute in your garden. They did well but I realized it would be best to plant the seed directly where they are to grow, as even the small plants had a pretty good long tap root. In the past, I’ve simply spread seeded fronds over the patch and let them grow where they fall, thinning later. Works well, too, and is pretty easy. Thankfully, our snow came early enough this winter (I’m writing this mid-December), before the cold (in the single digits right now) so these new plants should have no problem making it through the winter. Had an interesting lesson in MULCHING this year. As you may have noticed, I’m an enthusiastic proponent of mulch gardening. But, as I was reminded this year, there is a time to mulch as well as a time not to mulch. I had pulled the old mulch off the bean plots for planting as usual and had put the seed in a bit early, the first week in June. The seed loved the wet weather and the plots were soon full of sprouted and growing bean plants. With the cool, wet weather the fields also thrived and we were cutting mulch hay earlier than usual. I was happy to be able to get the mulch on the garden and worked on it row by row, plot by plot. I had gotten to the path next to the top bean plot, pulling the fluffy mulch up to the top row of beans. That was as far as I got, and that night we were hit with an unexpected frost. It had been a cold, wet week and I didn’t cover. That morning I got up early and sprinkled the tender crops ((though an oft repeated recommendation, and one I participate in because one has to do SOMETHING, I often wonder if it does anything for the plants at all or just for the gardener)). Later I went out to find that, except for a leaf here and there, all three plots of beans (which were bare of mulch) were just fine, the bare moist ground keeping the plants warm. Except for that top row which was nestled up to the mulch, and was badly damaged by the frost. So, in the future, unless we’re having a drought year, I’ll pull the mulch off the corn and bean plots and not put it back until the weather has warmed. This usually happens naturally because we don’t normally have mulch until later in the season. There are some things one just shouldn’t hurry. All in all, another good year. Even the grapes matured, though barely, with the best harvest ever. The strawberries LOVED the weather (and the Cedar Waxwings loved the strawberries!). But the wet was a challenge for many trees and we lost one plum to a blight which was also prevalent in the wild cherry trees and many bushes. And it was definitely a down year for apples, though I managed to harvest enough fruit from the many wild trees to supplement our sparse orchard harvest for a good batch of delicious cider. # # # For more gardening and homesteading information
see . . . Updated 10/19/2006 Copyright © 2004 by Sue Robishaw Comments or Questions? Contact Information
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