Owned by Machines

Arrived from Providence a few days ago, and after unloading and doing some chores I've had a chance to get back into the gardens, chiefly observing and planning, although I did some rototilling today and spent yesterday morning re-potting tomato seedlings, and weeding with the wheel hoe. It's warm and dry, a nice window to get beans into the ground, earlier than usual. At this time of year the ground is usually wet, the rains keep it so, and planting is difficult; but the season is advanced by a week or ten days, most of the blossoms have fallen from the apple trees, and I plan to get edamame soybeans, dry beans, and snap beans into the ground over the next couple of days. The onions have broken the surface, as has some of the lettuce and the ever-reliable arugula. The beets and spinach and chard are slower, as are the potatoes I planted a few weeks ago. 


More people are growing vegetable gardens these days, partly in response to economic hard times. The idea is that home-grown food costs less, and that is true amortized over time, labor not counted in the dollar equation; but the startup and maintenance of a garden can be costly, particularly if you invest in soil improvements, fence, and various garden tools and machinery such as a rototiller. If the idea of rural living on some acreage becomes attractive, gardening is but one part of it; you'll likely wind up deciding you need a pickup truck, a snowplow or snow blower, a chainsaw, a sickle bar mower, a bush hog, and a tractor. The more machines you have to work with, the more your time is taken up with maintenance; the machines teach you a lot, but they also seem to own you rather than the reverse. In this way country life can become a full time job, if you let it; and when it does, the pleasures of a life close to nature recede.

Apple Trees in Bloom

The Rhode Island Greening tree behind the house is now in full bloom. Along with the Prima, and the Shiawassee, it will provide enough apples for a cider pressing this fall, even though the other trees aren't going to blossom very fully this year. The mild winter, with little snow, is probably as much of the reason for the worse than average bloom, but you wouldn't know it from this Greening, one of the stalwart 19th century varieties, used chiefly for baking as well as cider, as it would keep reasonably well in a root cellar for much of the winter and early spring. For comparison's sake here are a couple of photos of the blossoms from the buds that I showed a week ago. The unnamed tree behind the house, first, the same blossom cluster as before:

If you look closely you'll see an insect in the flower to the far left. And here is the Prima, a sea of blossoms, with the cluster pictured last week at the center:

I wasn't idle in the vegetable garden last weekend or this one, but the blossoms are much more spectacular than the routine of planting. Nonetheless, 3 varieties of potatoes, red and yellow onion sets, and various seeds: peas, spinach, lettuce, chard, arugula, pac choi, beets, and Chinese cabbage all are in the ground now and waiting for the warmer weather (as are the apple blossoms). Last week was warm but a front came through yesterday bringing rain and cooling things down by ten to fifteen degrees. Some spots on the mainland--the usual cold spots such as Penobscot--could see frost tonight or tomorrow night, but I think we'll be spared, and the blossoms should be all right. They can stand a bit of light frost anyway, but at temperatures of 28 and below they won't survive.

Leafing Out

Early spring on the Maine coast is one of my favorite times to go looking for early growth. At this time of year the ferns are springing up from the earth and unfurling. These are in the field across from the house. The ones pictured aren't the fiddlehead kind, which also are unfurling now for foragers. Fiddlehead ferns are such a delicacy lightly steamed and then tossed with butter and garlic, or with a bit of vinegar, that they can be found at the supermarkets now, and for about a couple of weeks until the supply runs out. Unlike garden vegetables whose growth in different lattitudes permits a more or less continuous supply in the markets, they are a wild crop, native to this region, and their season is short--and then it's over. They can be frozen and stored after blanching, but the fresh ones have the best flavor and by far the best texture. The taste is indescribable, really, but a bit like asparagus and a bit like spinach. Delicious.
You don't have to go far into the fields to find wild strawberry blossoms now, but you do have to look for them right on the ground. Although they're abundant, the berries usually get eaten by animals browsing in the fields, even before they're ripe, so if you want to enjoy them you need either to put a transparent row cover tent over them, or a little cage. Many's the time I would mark, in my mind, where one or another clump was in bloom, to return a few weeks later to find--nothing!

Of course, the most abundant ground fruit here is the low-bush blueberry. At this time of the year the flowers are showing but not yet blooming. When they do, the local bees will pollinate them. I hear that the bee population in North America is under great stress and that fully 1/3 of the colonies died over the winter. The farmers who grow blueberries commercially in large fields usually hire beekeepers to bring hives to their fields during blossom time, and you can see the supers at the edges of the fields by the road. On this property there are plenty of blueberry blossoms and they seem to attract bees without any problem each year, but I'll be on the lookout to see if the population seems smaller this year. The berries themselves ripen in July, and gradually they're eaten by browsing deer as well as by birds, but if I start gathering them when they just turn ripe I can usually get as many as I want.

This blog entry wouldn't be complete without a picture of two of the budding apple blossoms, now at the tip stage--ahead of their normal schedule. This first picture is of a blossom cluster on the Prima tree out in the orchard, which like most apple trees is biennial, blooming more heavily in alternate years. Last year was an off year for the Prima, so this year, despite the general lack of bloom, it will bear many apples. The Prima is one of the scab-resistant varieties bred and made available to growers in the late 1970s. It is a large apple, which ripens in September, one of the earliest of the apples around here. It stores for only a month or so, usually enough to bring it to the cider pressing where it is sweeter and less acidic than most, and therefore valuable in the blend. If you use too many sharp, tannic, acidic apples the result will be tasty but bitter.

The Prima is one of the earliest varieties here, and so its blossom buds are more advanced than most; but one of the unidentified varieties back of the house blossoms first always, and so we'll have a look at it, a few days advanced over the Prima. This is the same tree from which I showed a leaf whorl without blossoms in yesterday's entry. The cooperative extension service at the University of Maine issues an apple crop pest report every few weeks during the growing season, and this year looks like a tough one for the growers. The mild winter without much snow enabled many of the pests to survive in greater numbers than usual. I used to spray my trees with botanical organic compounds, but I've found that in recent years it's not necessary. Much of the fruit is good and some is perfect without spraying here. And so, taking the simpler way when possible, I leave off spraying and hope for the best. We'll see what happens this year.

Another Early Spring

Last year the growing season was about a week ahead of normal; this year it's about ten days to two weeks ahead at present. Because of the warm weather last month, the apple trees have been leafing out ahead of schedule, and blossoms will appear shortly--although this looks to be a poor blossom year thus far. The picture above is one of the buds is leafing out on an unidentified variety tree behind the house, usually the earliest to leaf out. It's plain that no blossoms are inside the whorl of leaves.

The week was fairly dry, and I arrived Thursday night. Friday was trip to Fedco day, which meant potatoes, onion sets, various soil improvements, and two Nanking Cherry bushes were brought back. Today, Saturday, was a gardening day. I'd tilled the garden by the store and the one by the barn two weekends ago, and I did it again this morning; in addition, I tilled the garden down toward the Scotts', and put a tarp over the vetch which is growing well down there in one of the sections with the poorest soil. I cut back the blackberries and removed the dead canes. Then in the afternoon I was able to plant three rows of onion sets (two Stuttgarter and one Red Baron) and four rows of peas (two Burpeanna Early and two Sugar Lace) in the garden by the store. Tomorrow if the weather holds I'll plant potatoes and/or some spinach, and possibly some lettuce and other greens.