Monday, January 15, 2024

Garden Report 2021, Part 5

Some of the dry beans bunched and hanging in the loft; see the previous entry in this blog.

Every year I make some notes about the progress of the vegetable garden and how the varieties turn out. I thought I'd share my notes (abridged for readability) here, in case they're of interest. There are also some notes on the apple tree crop. Many blog posts from earlier years were about the apples and the cider wine that I made from them, but it's been several years since I've done that.

Garden and orchard notes, 2021

            Spring and early summer thru July had many days with significant amounts of rain. Late July/early August was the wettest period here on record. As a result, vegetables grew well till the end of July when some of the plants started to show mold and mildew. August continued very wet, and as a result yields on everything were below average. Every year I save some bean seeds for the following year.

            Sugar Ann peas—a fair emergence and yield, some mildew, overall not worth the trouble. Snak Hero peas—a new variety, very tasty, but poor emergence.

            Natascha potatoes—good emergence, good taste, fair yield, some scab. Red Maria potatoes—good emergence, fairly good taste, good yield, a lot of scab. Carola potatoes—good emergence, good taste, good yield, little scab.

            Lettuce did very well, including the New Fire red.

            Space spinach grew slowly, fair yield.

            Beet greens grew fast, became tough after a couple of weeks; best to plant in 2-week successions.

            Snap beans:

            Provider beans – good emergence, but very susceptible to mold, poor to fair yield. Good fresh or frozen.

            Big Kahuna beans-- good emergence, but very susceptible to mold, poor yield, best taste.

            Top Crop beans—good emergence, in season with Provider, mold resistant, very good yield, decent taste.

            Tendercrop beans—good emergence, later than the others by a week or so, mold resistant, good yield, decent taste.

            Accelerate beans—good emergence, moderate resistance to mold, fair yield, good taste.

            Dry beans:

            Dry beans did fine thru July. The rain plumped them up. Japanese beetles ate some leaves though. Kenearly seems to be the earliest, drying on the vine ahead of the others now. But continued rain diminished yield and made them moldy. Overall a poor to fair year. Light Red Kidney beans were most susceptible to mold, Kenearly next, Black Coco least susceptible. Flash shell beans even less susceptible.

            Better Boy bush tomatoes smaller and later than the indeterminate varieties. But the one indeterminate Better Boy didn’t do even as well this year. Lower leaves yellowed. Sungold did all right, but staking them cuts down on yield. Best to put them in cages.

            Kale did well so far (i.e., by late September), though bottom leaves are yellowing and dying.

            Cabbage is not doing well. Only three out of six will make decent heads. One succumbed to rot, the other never headed up properly.

            Summer squash: the Delta variety is a shy bearer, compared with Gentry which is about 1/3 to ½ again more productive, although compared with last year not as productive. General Lee cucumbers the same, and they don’t like so much water as the leaves start to yellow out. Altogether they stood up better to the rains than I thought they would, although yields were down some.

            Apples: in the orchard the browntail moth caterpillars ate the emerging leaves from many trees, but they put out a second batch of leaves. Liberty had a good stand of apples but the porcupines are eating them now. Planted three new varieties: Zestar, Williams Pride, and Pristine. Had to get the browntail moth caterpillars off them and keep them off till they turned to butterflies in July. Most of the leaves dropped early in October. Trees by and large are not healthy. Did not get any apples to speak of in the orchard, but I did get some from the trees down the road to the neighbors; in fact, the third and last of the planted trees (Summer Scarlet) was the most productive it’s ever been, while the Shiawassee or Fameuse (not sure which of the two varieties this is) that I grafted in the blueberry/now sweet fern field across from the house was also productive. Apples are very tasty, skin is tart in that Shiawassee/Fameuse tree. Must do more trunk painting with diluted latex white paint for the new young trees in orchard in the fall if possible, and in the spring if not; and shore up the fences and stakes around them.



Saturday, January 13, 2024

Garden Report for 2021, part 4

 August was, again unusually, a very wet month, with the result that some of the vegetables became moldy, especially the dry beans which had grown so close to each other, despite thinning in July, from the continuing rain. Yet in early September some of the vegetables were still doing pretty well. 


Above is a cluster of bush (determinate) Better Boy, with a couple nearly read for picking. 


The red onions (Red Wing Variety) also grew large on account of the excess rains. You can see the tops of the onions drying in the soil. The small rocks don't seem to bother them.

 Kale also did well. This year the moths left it alone, and it continued throughout the fall. Kale over-winters with protection (sometimes also without), but the following year it will flower and go to seed in the summertime.


Here, on the other hand, is summer squash (variety is Gentry) that didn't like the excess rain. You can see the mildew on the leaves.

The dry bean plants must be pulled and the pods dried further, hung upside down on twine outdoors, for a week or so in early September before being gathered up in bunches and the bunches tied and hung upside down to dry completely in the barn loft. This year on account of the rain yields were less than normal. In the spring I thresh them, using a simple technique that I learned from a Johnny's Selected Seeds catalog in the 1980s, before the company grew so large and when the catalog was filled with suggestions such as this. Here's a very pleasant way to thresh and winnow your dry beans. Wait for a day with a decent but not strong wind. Than gather up the bunches of bean plants from where you hung them to dry, and go outdoors and take a clean, standard sized garbage can and, clutching a few bean plants by the base near the roots and holding them upside down, you knock them against the insides of the can. The bean seeds will fall out into the bottom of the can, and afterwards you can toss the plants aside. Repeat for as many plants as you have. After you get the hang of it, you can thresh a lot of dry beans in a fairly short time this way. There is one more step, though. There will be some soil, and fragments of dried leaves (chaff), at the bottom of the can along with the seeds, so you'll need the separate them from the seeds. The way to do this is to winnow them by pouring the seeds and the soil and leaf fragments into the turned-up top of the garbage can, and then wait for a bit of wind and, holding the top of the can above the can, gradually pour the seeds and the chaff back into the can. The chaff and soil will float away on the wind, and if you do winnow this way about three or four times your beans will be clean. Then you can pick them out of the upside down top of the can and put them into jars to store for whenever you want to soak them for chili, baked beans, soups, or other recipes. 

I usually fill about 8 one-quart jars, more than enough for a year. The three bush dry bean varieties that I grow these days are the light red kidney beans, black coco beans, and kenearly. Some years I've also grown Jacob's cattle and king of the early, which also do very well for me but the others seem to taste a little better. I've also been keeping a rare heirloom variety of shell bean going for about 30 years, named flash.




Garden Report for 2021, part 3

   It is well past time that I updated this blog! So, I continue with the vegetable garden report. July was an unusually wet month, and so the plants grew more than usual. Here are some photos from July 25.


  The above photo shows the edges of the bean rows at the bottom; above can be seen cabbage at right, tomatoes at left, and kale in the center. Behind the cabbage are onions, and behind them are broccoli. At the top of the photo are potatoes. 


  Here we have at the right a row of cucumbers at the bottom, and summer squash above that. You can see some blossoms. Just to the left is a row tomatoes, while further to the left are cabbages (top) and kale (below). The next row to the left has onions, while to the left of them at the top is broccoli. Usually I grow a half dozen Sungold tomatoes, a superb tasting variety, and then a slicing tomato. Unfortunately late blight usually takes the slicers out by the end of August, and in nearly 40 years of gardening I've not settled on a single slicing variety. One year when I was a lot younger I grew about 20 different varieties, sourced from seed swaps via the Seed Saver Exchange, after I scoured old Maine agricultural books and catalogs to see what varieties were grown 100 and 150 years ago. I came up with several dozen, but most of them had been lost. The results, I'm sorry to say, were disappointing and I didn't continue with any of those varieties the following year.


  Above, we have two rows of potatoes, with the tops (especially the variety at lower right) beginning to yellow and die off. These are Red Gold and quite delicious. If you've not tasted a fresh dug and then freshly cooked Red Gold potato, you don't know what you're missing. They don't store very well, though. The row at the right contains mainly storage potatoes, but by early September they should also be ready for digging.

Thursday, March 3, 2022

Garden Report for 2021, part 2

    As June turned to July, the vegetable roots began to take hold and the tops started to grow a bit more. The beans were doing quite well. Below, the dry bean rows are at the left, starting to bloom, while four snap bean rows, planted a couple of weeks before the dry beans, are much fuller, with bean pods beginning to grow out.

Eleven bean rows, July 16.

The upper part of the vegetable garden was also doing quite well. Two rows of potatoes are at left, followed (L-R) by a row of kohlrabi and broccoli, a row of red onions, a row of kale and cabbage, and a row of tomatoes, only one of which was staked at that time.

Upper garden, July 16.          




Finally, a view of the row of Asian greens (flea beetle damage is visible) at left, and a row of lettuce and parsley at the right. Typical stony soil in New England here; each year a fresh crop comes up!

Asian greens, lettuce and parsley, July 11


Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Forever chemicals in sewage sludge: a danger for organic gardens and people

Back in the early 1980s when I began my organic vegetable garden I was regularly reading up on various soil amendments to help improve the tilth and fertility of the soil. I also asked neighbors what they used for those purposes. I didn't want to add synthetic chemicals. Eventually I settled on hauling up seaweed from the shore, for nitrogen fertilizer, and adding limestone and wood ashes from the woodstove, as well as phosphorus that I got from a local nursery. When I could find chicken manure and other nitrogen sources I added these as well. And throughout the year I made compost which also helped. 

Sewage sludge being spread as fertilizer on a farm in California

 

At that time, one of the things that the university extension office discussed as a possible fertilizer was sewage sludge. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) promoted it. There was a good deal of it available, in truckloads that could be ordered from suppliers; it may also have been available in fifty pound bags for a dollar or two per bag. It was plentiful and inexpensive, in other words, and many a farm took advantage of the opportunity. I did not, thinking that there may have been sewage treatment chemicals in the mix that were harmful. The extension office, as I recall, hedged its bets on that score, saying that it was claimed that sewage sludge was all organic, but that farmers should make up their own minds. I decided seaweed was better, even though it was a lot of work hauling it into my pickup truck in wheelbarrow loads and then dumping it either into compost piles or the garden directly where it would serve either as a mulch or sheet compost or both. 

Now, forty years later, it turns out that the sewage sludge was indeed harmful. It contained "forever chemicals," perfluoroalkyl substances that are poisonous and that stay in the soil forever. Many an organic farmer in the state of Maine used these on their soils in the last century, and who knows how many people absorbed them from the supposedly organic vegetables they ate, as well as the livestock that was fed on fields fertilized with sewage sludge, and the water that the chemicals leached into. As far as I know, there was no sewage sludge used anywhere on this island; however, on a neighboring island at least one site has already been identified. Time will probably reveal more. 

Now the state will be spending millions of dollars per year to identify areas where the sludge was dumped and then take whatever mitigation measures may work. Meanwhile the farms that used the sludge have got to stop using those fields, which in most cases means the end of those farms. It would not be a good idea to remain living on them on account of the chemical pollution in the drinking water. And the water poses a danger to people living nearby as well. It is a very sad story. 

One of the farms that closed was an organic farming operation in Unity, Maine, Songbird Farm. Unity, home of Unity College, is close to the headquarters of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, in neighboring Thorndike. Songbird Farm is typical of organic farms in the state, supplying wholesale organic foods to food co-ops and grocery stores and operating a regional CSA with more than 100 subscribers. It turned out that decades before the current owners purchased the farm, previous owners had spread the sewage sludge on the fields, contaminating them and the water supply. The couple that own the farm have been drinking this PFAS-contaminated water for years. They also have a 3-year-old son who has been drinking it since birth. They have stopped delivery of foods and advised their customers to throw away their unsold and unconsumed products until more information based on further testing of soils and water is available. For now, and perhaps forever, the farm will be closed; and if it has to close, the farmers will become bankrupt and a community resource for good will disappear.


Garden Report for 2021, part 1

2021 was an unusually wet gardening year. I can remember only one other as wet, about twenty years ago, when the rains came in mid-May and the soil was wet through June, making it virtually impossible to plant most vegetables on time to harvest before frost in the fall. 2021 was not wet during planting time, but the rains came in late June after the plants had gotten a good start, and after several more weeks with a lot of rain, many of the plants became moldy and by the end of the year yields were quite a bit lower than normal. These photos show the promising early June beginning of the gardening year, though:

Dry beans beans just starting to emerge, c. June 8th

4 rows snap beans, 2 rows of lettuce and Asian greens, 2 rows of peas (L-R), c. June 8

2 rows potatoes, row kohlrabi + broccoli , row red onions, row kale + cabbage, c. June 8





Sunday, October 3, 2021

Grafted apple tree 35 years later

     In the last century I top-grafted a number of good-quality apple scions onto volunteer trees that I found elsewhere on the property where the birds or squirrels had some years earlier deposited apple seeds after eating the fruits. The volunteers were young and most had not yet come into bearing, or if they had their wild apples were either too tart, too bland, or poor in another way. About 1987 I top-grafted what I then thought was a Shiawassee scion onto a small fruit-less volunteer in a small blueberry field across from the house. It took well, and as the years went by it came into bearing, true to the Shiawassee, with red stripes gradually overtaking a green background, the flesh sweet and pear-like with occasional red blush in the interior, while the skin was flavorful and somewhat tart until it was dead ripe in mid to late October. 

Shiawassee, Dutchess, or Fameuse?

It was a Maine pomologist named Herbert Wave who in the early 1980s identified the original tree as Shiawassee, when he walked the property back in the days when it was possible to contact the state agricultural station and arrange for an expert to come take a look at your fruit trees, free of charge. The original tree was at least fifty years old then, Wave said, and as the century came to a close it grew larger and bore annually a good crop that I made use of most years in a blend for cider wine along with other apples. I myself wondered if the variety wasn't Dutchess of Oldenberg. In October 2014, however, an early blizzard fell with wet snow and howling wind that toppled many trees and branches, and among those that were damaged were the original tree, which has not been the same since. Early in the current century I took a few of the Shiawassee/Dutchess apples to the Common Ground Country Fair, where John Bunker, the fruit explorer, rescuer of heirloom Maine apple varieties, and Fedco apple guru volunteered to identify old varieties that fair-growers brought for him to view and taste. He did not hesitate and named it Fameuse. This identification made more sense than the others, but I'm still harboring some doubt about its true name.

Fameuse, Dutchess, or Shiawassee?

 

The top-grafted tree, in the meantime, remained in some ways like most of the volunteers in this area, not especially well favored but with a will to live. An interesting development was that it grew a strong branch below the graft, which I hadn't noticed at first. When I did, I decided to let it grow and see whether it would bear any wild apples on that side of the tree, while I hoped that the graft would work out well and bear Shiawassee, or Dutchess, or most likely, Fameuse. Sure enough, it did. And so the tree had in effect two main trunks. The wild apple was green and good-sized, and from its looks seemed to me to be an offspring of a Rhode Island Greening that was growing about 100 yards away, but because apple trees don't come true from seed it would have had to be part Rhode Island Greening and part something else. It came ripe at about the same time as the Greening, and was a decent cooking apple (whereas the Greening is an excellent cooker). 

The grafted trunk is at the right

This year the apple crop was unusual, partly on account of the weather and partly due to the plague of brown tail moth caterpillars, which in June decimated the leaves and newly budded apples on most trees in the main orchard, including the Fameuse and also the Liberty which usually supplies good apples for eating; but somehow left trees elsewhere mostly alone, including this double-tree. The weather was unusually wet, which helped size up the apples on those trees that were unaffected by the caterpillars. Today I went out to this double-tree and harvested a basket full of the wild green apples. I'll make applesauce with them. In a week or two I'll harvest a couple of baskets of the Fameuse, some for eating and some for a most delicious applesauce. There aren't enough apples on the property this year for cider wine, but plenty for eating, cooking, and sauce.   

The double tree

 

Friday, May 28, 2021

Garden Report for 2020, part 4

Dry bean rows, mid-August

By mid-August very little rain had fallen. The leaves on the dry bean plants were starting to yellow and it looked like the harvest was going to come in a couple of weeks earlier than the usual mid-September. That was a good sign in the sense that mid-September is usually rainy, which isn't good for drying beans, as it can start mildew and will also beat them down to the soil where they may start to rot. Still, I set up the ropes to dry the beans outside in a week or two before bringing them, tying them in bunches, and hanging the bunches in the loft to dry completely before threshing the following spring.

Cucumbers and squash, mid-Aug.

Squash and cucumber harvest was just getting underway. I usually plant these a little later than others do--that is, at the same time as the dry beans, in the first week of June--which is why the harvest is late; but in the first week of June the weather has usually settled into summer and the soil is warm. (I'm writing this on Memorial Day weekend in 2021 and the high temperatures are only in the 50s. No frost though.) The squash leaves are subject to mildew in September, but the variety--Gentry--is very prolific, and I was able to put up a couple of dozen quarts for the fall and winter. Tomatoes had been ripening as well, with the earliest Sungolds coming in at the end of July. 

I also planted some Cherokee Purple and was harvesting those in mid-August, but yield was small. The Better Boys were a little later, but they came in during the third week of August and didn't stop till frost in early November. Unlike the Cherokee Purple they were prolific and the perfect size for salads and grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches. Their taste was good but lacking in acidity/tang.  I also grew Roma tomatoes which came ripe in September but were also touched by late blight, so I only got a few quarts of tomato paste out of them. 
Sungold tomatoes, mid-August








Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Garden Report for 2020, part 3

As I start to get the vegetable garden space ready for 2021, my thoughts return to last year's crop. By the end of July, although it hadn't rained much for a couple of weeks, there was enough residual moisture in the soil to enable the vegetables to grow a lot since July 6 when the last photos were shot.

Bean rows, July 28, 2020

The beans look very healthy as they fill out between the rows, shading the weeds that have been growing there. The weeds between the plants still need pulling, of course. A little every day except when they're wet. Weekly cultivation also helps. At the bottom of the picture are the dry beans: rows of Black Coco, Light Red Kidney, and Kenearly. Black Coco often are grown as shell beans, but I like them in stews and chili. The kidney beans are strictly for chili, while the Kenearly, a selection of Maine Yellow Eye, do well for traditional oven-baked beans. 


More beans, with chard, kale, cabbage, broccoli, and greens


The beans at the left in the photo just above are bush snap beans, which I've begun harvesting, mainly for freezing. Mostly Provider beans, but I was also trialing some Burpee "Big Kahuna" beans. Swiss chard is next, with kale behind it; in the next row is red cabbage, with parsley and lettuce (going to seed) behind it; the next row has broccoli, which I've already been harvesting for meals and also the freezer; behind it is a row of Asian greens; and behind it at the upper right are the beans shown in the last picture, but from a different angle. 

Cucumbers, tomatoes and beans, July 28, 2020

And here is the last of the photos from July 28. At the bottom are some tomatoes, in cages or attached to stakes; in the picture are Sungolds, Cherokee Purple, and Better Boy. The cuke variety is General Lee, the slicing cucumber that does the best in this soil and climate, as I learned after many trials and errors over the past forty years. And behind them are the beans that were shown in the first picture. This was my first year with Better Boy. Usually I've stayed away from the Burpee tomatoes because I found, during the first ten years of gardening (1980-1990) that although Burpee tomatoes usually grew well, they didn't have much taste. Heirlooms are much tastier, but they produce fewer tomatoes per plant and are more susceptible to diseases like early and late blight. In fact, growing tomatoes here is difficult: as a rule summers are cool and damp, and of course tomatoes like heat and low humidity. But I was unable to grow tomatoes out from seed this year, so I had to make do with what was available at a nursery; and by the time I got there in mid-May, about all they had left were Better Boy. As usual, they grew strongly, produced many tomatoes per plant, and their taste was bland. I guess some people like bland tomatoes, but not I. Anyway, I ate a fair number of grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches last summer, and even made some sauce with them, anyway. The Sungolds have been a staple of this garden for thirty years. They are deliciously tart cherry tomatoes best eaten as snacks, either right off the vine or from a bowl of them indoors for a few days. Very prolific, disease resistant, they have only two drawbacks: they have tough skins, and yet they're prone to cracking after a good rainstorm. 

At this time of the year the rains are apt to hold off, so I had my fingers crossed and kept an eye on the water level in my rain barrels, which I'd been using for the past two weeks to make up for the low rainfall. Using well water for the garden isn't a good idea at this time of year; all of it is needed in the house. So I depend on rain barrels in mid-summer.

Friday, December 18, 2020

Garden Report for 2020, part 2

 During the couple of weeks that followed the garden pics taken on June 18-20 there was just enough rain to keep the vegetables growing. Later in the season it would become very dry, but in early July the vegetables were off to a decent start. Compare these pics with those from the previous entry to see.

Looking south, tomatoes in foreground, then dry beans, July 6

Broccoli, lettuce, lettuce, kale, Provider snap beans, July 6

Light Red Kidney beans, Kenearly beans, Provider snap beans, July 6

Redwing onions, Asian greens, broccoli, lettuce, parsley, cabbage, July 6

 

 

Sunday, December 13, 2020

Garden Report for 2020, part 1

Looking east in the vegetable garden, June 20

     On account of the pandemic, this was far more of a stay-at-home year for many older folks, myself among them. As a result I was able to spend more time taking care of my vegetable garden than in past years. On the other hand, I wasn't able to grow some of the usual vegetables, such as potatoes, because I couldn't procure the seed. Normally I get seed potatoes at Fedco during their annual sale in late April but they were not open to the public and I opted not to buy seed potatoes and have them shipped by mail. I was, also, too late to get them at a local nursery where occasionally I've bought Kennebecs. Also, after many years of starting tomato seedlings, I stopped that practice a few years ago and have depended on plant sales, swaps with gardening friends, and nurseries--but this year the selections were limited. I did experiment with some new varieties, especially Asian greens, as well as a couple of new bush bean varieties and one new tomato variety. In this and the next few blog entries I'll be describing the gardening year as it went along.

Onions, Asian greens, broccoli, June 20


    Spring weather was a little cool, and fairly dry, although not dry enough to plant peas in time. I've learned that the stony soil here usually doesn't dry out sufficiently in April, which is pea-planting time, so this is another crop that I've largely given up. It's inefficient to devote space in the garden to peas when 2/3 of the time the result is unsatisfying. I planted out Redwing onions on May 10. The last frost occurred around May 23. A week earlier, I was able to get greens in the ground--the usual Red Sails lettuce, curly kale, chard, and parsley, basil, and arugula. I tried some Asian greens: Yokatta-na, Senposai, and Joi Choi. Planted out from seed in mid-May, they bolted in late June but I kept them in the ground and eventually in the fall they grew new leaves and gave a good harvest then. Next year I should plant them earlier. The kale got off to a good start but didn't flourish as in past years. Broccoli and cabbage transplants went into the garden in mid-May, chard in early June, and an early row of Provider snap beans in late May. The rest of the snap beans--more Provider, as well as three new varieties: Heavy Harvest, Big Kahuna, and Concador. The first two of the new varieties were from Burpee. Germination was only fair. Concador, from Fedco, was disappointing--very small, and late in the season. Provider, as usual, was the best by far and gave me many quarts to put up for the fall and winter, as well as much for fresh eating. Also on June 5 I planted out Kenearly dry beans, and on June 7 Light Red Kidney dry beans and Black Coco dry beans, all from seed I'd saved from the previous year. On June 10 I transplanted out four tomato varieties: Sungold, Cherokee Purple, Roma paste tomatoes, and Burpee's Better Boy. Sungold is a perennial favorite; Cherokee Purple doesn't yield many tomatoes per plant but they're delicious; Roma is another standby although I've had better luck with a few other paste tomatoes in the past; and Better Boy was a variety I'd never grown before. I wouldn't have grown it this year either, but it was the only slicing tomato variety available at the nursery this year--the selections were limited on account of the pandemic. On June 13 I planted summer squash seeds (the varieties were Gentry and Slik Pik) and the cucumber variety that does best here, General Lee--altogether four hills of cukes and four hills of summer squash. And that was it. I was growing chiefly for food for myself, both in the summertime and to put up for fall and winter. Efficiency was the watchword in the garden this year. In May and June there was just about the right amount of rain and as a result the vegetables got off to a good start. I'll end with some photos of the vegetables, taken on June 18 and 20. In the next blog entry I'll write about the garden in July.



General Lee cucumbers emerging June 20

Gentry summer squash emerging June 20



Thursday, October 8, 2020

The black fly on the white hair

 When a housefly landed on Vice President Pence's head during his vide-presidential debate with Sen. Kamala Harris last night, and remained there for a little over two whole minutes, I was reminded of Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man, in which the unnamed protagonist gets a job working in a paint factory where his task is to insert one drop of black paint into an otherwise all-white paint mixture. He's told that this makes the white paint whiter. I was skeptical that this symbolism in the novel was anything other than a fantasy in real life until I learned that in the manufacture of paint, a tiny amount of black is indeed injected into the white. And so the same symbolism was injected into the debate last night. A further irony was also evident. While the black fly made itself at home atop Pence's close-cropped white hair, Pence was denying that systemic racism existed in US society in general and police departments in particular. Evidently he did not even notice the black fly that was perched atop his white head.

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Plants Emerge in Island Woods and Fields, mid-May

In the spring if you walk outdoors you can notice a wonderland of rapid, new plant growth. Even in cities with a lot of asphalt and concrete you can watch the trees leaf out and look at the weeds as they emerge in a vacant lot. The same patch of land, the same plant, it turns out that from day to day they aren't the same after all. Besides, their timetables are changing. I've observed on this island during the last 40 years that new growth now emerges a week or so earlier than it did in the 1980s and 1990s. This is true of apple tree blossoms, for example, but it's also true of the uncultivated plants one finds while walking in the spruce forest and the mown fields and natural clearings less than a half-mile upland from the ocean. One of those most striking in their emergence is the ferns. On this island are about a half-dozen different species of ferns, some favoring one habitat, others another. Here is a photo of Oak Ferns, emerging in a small, dry field on May 12, followed later by another photo of the ferns a week afterward. Walking about on that date you might also see iris emerging where it has naturalized, and bluets, and bay plans in the leaf bud stage. The earlier emergence is due to global warming from increased carbon in the atmosphere which combines with oxygen to make CO2 that is trapped in the atmosphere, warms the Earth, and causes habitat change gradually, but not so gradually that it's beyond notice. 


Oak ferns emerging May 12, 2018

Bay leaf shrub in bud stage, May 19
Bluets, May 19
Naturalized iris, May 19
Oak ferns unfolding May 19


Natural historians have compared the dates of emergence so painstakingly recorded in Thoreau's journals for the 1850s with the dates of emergence of various plant species emergence today in Concord, Massachusetts and its environs where Thoreau made his observations. To my knowledge no one has made a similar record for plant emergence on this island, but I imagine there must be records of emergence on nearby Mt. Desert Island, especially in connection with Acadia National Park--though these most likely don't go back further than some time in the 1900s. Guides to birds and wildflowers that can be found there also exist, over a period of several decades. For this island, there is a book of bird sightings that was compiled late in the last century, but this isn't the entry to discuss what I know of the changing bird populations here.

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

End of Year Garden Wrap


First plantings, potatoes upper 2 rows, a row of brassica, some lettuce
This was a year (2018) for only a little experimentation in the vegetable garden. About half of it was planted to beans, mostly dry beans, and by now I know the varieties I want to plant: Black Coco, Light Red Kidney, and Kenearly. The Earthway planter with the bean plate makes the planting go along easily and quickly after tilling over the soil. No-till wouldn't work; there are too many weed seeds still in the bed, perhaps a given with organic gardening and a reluctance to mulch heavily lest the slugs feast on the plants. Which means weekly cultivation next to the rows, using a wheel hoe and a long-handled hoe closest to the plants. After 90 days, they dry on the vine and on cords hung across the garden, then further in bunches of plants upside down in the barn.
Beans drying on a cord above and on the plants below, early September
     A few rows of each dry bean variety, and then a row and a half of Provider bush beans, whose combination of reliability, yield, and ability to hold their flavor after a few months in the freezer is unmatched. I did experiment with a new variety: half a row of Burpee Heavy Harvest bush beans, which was indeed as advertised, plentiful in its yield and tasty when eaten fresh; but it didn't freeze nearly as well as Provider. I planted out some Brandywine and Sungold tomatoes, not doing any paste tomatoes this year; as usual the Brandywine were delicious though not early nor plentiful, while the Sungold were delicious, early, and plentiful. Both varieties continued through till frost. In some years late blight gets the Brandywines but the Sungolds seem immune to it.
Brandywines are few and far between, late August
I planted some Detroit Dark Red beets, and the usual red and green lettuces--no spinach this year--and a row of Red Gold potatoes (by far the tastiest variety, though it doesn't store long) and another row of Satina potatoes (exquisite for boiling and mashing). Normally Satinas store well, but not this year--I may have left them in the ground too long. General Lee cukes as usual were very tasty, as were Gentry summer squash--and very plentiful (the squash).
Cabbage at left, dying potato vines at right; August
Broccoli and red and green cabbage as usual. The last experiment was dinosaur kale, which I transplanted out from plants bought at a nursery. In the past when planting kale from seed it hasn't done well here--it gets badly eaten by flea beetles, and it's not been worth the effort to put it under Reemay or some other covering. But the transplants did extremely well and I had kale to eat all summer, which I favor as a green over lettuce and most everything else. The kale held up right thru the fall frosts and into the winter freeze, also, but it lost its taste in the freeze. After harvesting all the beans I planted out oats mixed with red clover to hold the soil over the winter and by springtime this area of the garden will have had a bit of nitrogen from the cover crop and the beans that preceded it. Altogether this was an efficient garden, one that I didn't spend a lot of time working in, just enough, and although there was a period of about six weeks with almost no rain in the middle of summer, I was able to ration water from the rain barrels over the period into the garden to keep what needed water wet enough to keep going to a decent and in some cases good harvest.
       I've read with pleasure the diaries of Newell Cotton, who lived in northern New Hampshire and grew a much larger garden than I do, some of which he took to market in nearby Lancaster. Much of the diary is taken up with entries from spring thru fall that have to do with planting, weeding, and harvesting. I'd guess he spent a couple of hours on average every day in his garden. I suppose I spent a few hours each week on average, in total. Of course, I could buy vegetables at the grocery store and spend a lot less time and labor in doing so, but I find so many benefits to growing much of my own vegetables that make it worth the expenditure of my effort. Knowing that the food is organic and more healthful makes me feel better (as does the food itself); I don't begrudge the labor for its repetition frees my mind to think, while at other times it is challenging and requires thought and decisions. There is, finally, satisfaction in being able to go out to the garden at any time to look at the way the vegetables are growing and progressing, to assess what else they may need (water? a side-dressing of compost? cultivation?), and to harvest snacks and meals throughout the summer and fall--a more direct connection between me and the food I eat than would obtain if I drove a truck or car to the grocery store to pick over vegetables that had been sprayed with pesticides and harvested before they were ripe, then doused with water or put on ice in shipment, to be freshened up at the grocery store so as to appear as if they were fresh-picked. How many more years I will be able to do this in retirement I don't know, but I do savor it all the more knowing that after nearly 40 years of growing vegetables in this garden I've gotten a lot more out of it than the vegetables themselves.

Saturday, January 12, 2019

End of Year Orchard Wrap

Apple blossoms, Prima, May 20, 2018

    Although the year started out well for the orchard, with enough cold and snow the previous winter to keep the trees happy, and enough rain in the spring, coupled with enough sun during the blossom period, for a good bloom, lack of rain--virtual drought--in July and August kept the apples from sizing up, and induced many to drop off the trees along the way. The only tree with a decent amount during the harvest period was the Prima, possibly because it's one of the earliest. I planted the Prima thirty years ago; it's full-grown and always seems to need more pruning despite yearly efforts.

Prima in full bloom, May 30
     The two young trees grew well in the spring but by the middle of September the Zestar had already dropped most of its leaves. The Garden Royal fared better, and grew taller, almost out of the reach of deer by now. I will need to re-paint the trunks of these two young trees next spring against the apple borers, and I will need to re-do the fencing around the Zestar then also. 
     Last spring I grafted three scions to rootstocks that I had growing in the vegetable garden--two Golden Russet scions and one Zestar. The Zestar and one of the Golden Russets were successful, for a 67% success rate. In the fall I dug holes in the orchard and filled them with seaweed and compost, and this coming spring I will dig up the two successful trees and plant them out, paint the trunks against the borers, and fence them against the deer. 

Friday, February 16, 2018

NRA Contributions: Bruce Poliquin comes in 8th out of 435

     In the wake of the killings at the Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, the New York Times published the amounts of campaign dollars plus direct contributions that members of Congress received from the National Rifle Association (NRA). It turns out that Maine's Congressional Representative from the 2nd District, Bruce Poliquin, receives slightly more than $200,000, which puts him in 8th place among all of the 435 members of the House. 
     
Bruce Poliquin (in red sweater) mingles with supporters in Bangor


Sunday, December 31, 2017

End of Year Wrap-Up

     The rains held off in September, for once, and the beans matured and then dried partly on the vines. Transported into the barn to complete drying, hanging on twine tied to the rafters, they will make good baked beans and chili. But the lack of rain and near-drought conditions made it difficult for the other crops in the garden, while the apples remained small--as was the harvest. September thru November was unusually warm, and the rains finally did come by mid-October. The first frost didn't occur until mid-November. We've been getting those first frosts a few weeks later, now, than in the previous century, probably the result of climate change. Another result, though, has been more bitter cold weather around the time of the winter solstice thru mid-January; and this year is no exception. For the past five days the temps haven't risen above ten degrees F.
     The cold weather in New England apparently prompted our nation's leader to a skeptical statement regarding climate change, directed to the "blue" states here that did not vote for him in 2016. In saying that the cold weather disproves global warming, he is in error: climate change intensifies the heat and the cold both--that is, weather extremes due to the current climate change regime are greater, as are storms, hurricanes, snowfall amounts, rainfall amounts, while ocean levels rise along shorelines. Global warming refers to the overall rise in the temperature of the planet, not to whether we have a cold spell in the winter. It is remarkable that our nation's leader withdrew the US from the Paris climate change agreement while he ignores climate science and on the basis of his recent statement, evidently misunderstands global warming. 
     Several years ago I was invited to write an essay for Antioch College's reflective environmental journal, Whole Terrain. I chose to write on the sound of climate change, something that I heard for myself in the terrible storm of 2014 that blew down and snapped off so many trees. With climate change, the habitat will change here and so will the populations of plant and animal species. Already some of the unwelcome insects from the southern parts of New England are on the march here, migrating to where they will find fresh food. The rise in deer ticks and Lyme disease in northern New England is one indicator. The changing bird population is another. This winter I've not seen juncos about, the way I normally do. Perhaps these cold-climate birds are just late in arriving. The white-throated sparrows, once abundant here in the previous century, are now largely absent. Weeks go by in the spring and summer without my hearing their songs in this place. 
A reminder of spring: Jack-in-the-pulpit, May, 2017
     I expect that I'll be able to grow more crops in the garden next spring, as my knee has gradually improved. And walk more often in the woods, seeing skunk cabbages, jack-in-the-pulpit, and other plants and wildflowers in season. But I'm also spending more time reading and writing now, working on various articles and book projects, not to mention preparation for lectures at conferences; and all of this leaves less time for gardening. Still, I was able to plant one new apple tree variety last May, Zestar, and it seems to have done all right despite the drought. The other recently-planted apple tree, Garden Royal, finally grew a good deal this past spring, and is now above deer height. If I have the time and inclination I'll do some grafting next spring, as I have a few spaces in the orchard yet to plant.
     Winter is always a good time to take stock of the previous year, and plan for the next!