Saturday, October 26, 2013

A pileated woodpecker

Pileated woodpecker holes in spruce trunk
Out walking at noon, I was down looking at the skunk cabbages, which, at this time of year, are of the variety that sends up stalks that will stay thru the winter. I heard a knocking behind me, and looked into the spruce trees. Soon I saw chips of wood falling to the ground, so I traced the source high up around 50 feet or so and saw what was making the sound: a pileated woodpecker, making holes and looking for bugs and such to eat. The large woodpecker didn't notice me, so I crept around to get a better look and then observed it for about two or three minutes before heading on. The chips kept falling to the forest floor as the woodpecker worked away at the hole. Possibly it's the same bird that pecked the large holes in a dead tree (see pic) not far from that one, a bird that I saw there two years ago at about this time of the year.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Fall Vegetable and Apple Harvest Report

    One of the better garden years in this island spot is ending, with only some greens, cabbages, and brussels sprouts left to harvest. Rains at just the right time, and in just the right amount, combined with the sturdy new tall fence to keep out the deer, resulted in better yields of most vegetables. It was, also, a good year for apples.
   
The bean field, 2013. Close rows fill intervening spaces.
Among the successes were the General Lee cucumbers, and the Yellow Crookneck summer squash, a newer and an older variety. These cukes are never bitter, and sized up to the standard American slicing shape. A longer harvest season—more than six weeks—would have been welcome for these. The bush snap beans did well; Black Valentine are surely the tastiest green beans and freeze well, although the second harvest is not nearly as plentiful as the first. I have yet to find an outstanding wax bean. This year I planted Golden Rocky, which are vigorous with heavy yields; but unless picked young, the texture turns rubbery in cooking, and they don’t freeze well. The dry beans also did well; the best were the Light Red Kidney variety. Others included Black Coco, Jacobs Cattle Gasless, and Kenearly Yellow Eye, along with Tongue of Fire for shell beans (and dryu) and Black Jet Soybeans. The Black Jet are a dry soybean and something of an experiment. All the dry beans are hanging in bunches in the barn loft, waiting for more complete drying. This year, because I could dry them inside the garden fence, I strung twine between posts and dried the plants off there after picking them; I think this will speed the drying overall, never easy in this coastal climate.
    Tomatoes were better or worse depending on earliness and susceptibility to early and late blight. Tomato hornworms also were a problem. Celebrity, usually a reliable variety, was hit by hornworms and blight; Sungold came in early enough to escape both. Juliet was too small, and Mountain Magic has lasted till now, immune to late blight—although small in size, very tasty and worth replanting. I wasn’t able to get paste tomatoes to grow from seed this year, so they were absent in the garden. The Ace peppers did better than they usually do.
   

Broccoli was fair, troubled as usual by mid-summer heat; red cabbage has done very well. In the photo to the left, the green growth between the rows is tilled in to add organic matter to the soil. Beets, spinach, radish, arugula, and lettuce all did well as expected. Onions were smaller than I thought they would be, given the rains. Of the potatoes, the Dark Red Norland’s tops died in August but the potatoes had already sized up; yield was smaller than expected. On the other hand, Satina did very well, the plants lasting well into September, and the yield larger than in previous years. It’s hard to beat Satina for taste. I had to pick off the potato beetles almost daily during some parts of the summer.
    This year’s apple crop was good. The old tree in the orchard that at various times I’ve thought was a variety called Duchess, and at other times Shiawassee, is—I am now convinced—Fameuse; and it did well, supplying many apples for cider wine. The Liberty tree is not as vigorous or bearing as well as it did ten years ago; it has suffered some damage to the trunk over the years. The Winesap, as usual, bore well but the apples were very mild (aka tasteless). An old tree which for years I thought was Gravenstein has turned out on further consideration to be a variety much planted in these parts called Milding; it is indeed mild but not too mild and in fact is quite delicious, particularly to those whose taste buds, like Marta’s, don’t like tartness in an apple. The Prima yielded very few apples, but the Sheepnose did well. The Baldwins in the orchard also did well, and in a week or two they will be ripe for picking. I had grafted Fameuse onto two other trees in various parts of the property and they, also, did well this year. The Greening behind the house, like the Prima, was on its off-year during the biennial cycle. Next year I expect they will both be full. Fred, along with Nathan and Clara and their family, came over and helped Marta and me pick and press the apples over Columbus Day weekend, and afterwards we played old-time string band music as we do whenever we get a chance and not as often as we’d like, these days. Cider is in one carboy now, fermenting, and this afternoon I added sugar to bring up the alcohol content which will help to preserve it in the bottle, as well as sweeten it a little to the taste.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Garden Update, early summer 2013

   A garden update is long overdue here. The first thing to note is that last fall I erected an 9-foot fence to keep out the deer. They had gotten increasingly bold over the past few years, to the point that despite my efforts to discourage them (noise, repellent, hair bags, and the 5-foot fence) they were jumping in and eating the vegetables, usually starting in early August. Their boldness was not limited to the garden, as they could be seen any morning or evening grazing in the fields, and when the house was not occupied for a few days they would graze on the bushes surrounding it, particularly the rhododendron. Last summer they chomped on the flowers in the window boxes right next to the house. 
   Why were they getting bolder? Some of my neighbors have been feeding them, and despite my efforts (and the efforts of some of the other neighbors) to convince them to stop, they have continued. Although feeding deer is illegal, it is not something that the game wardens feel is a serious enough offense to make much of an effort to stop; besides, the offending parties must be caught in the act (photographed, for instance) in order to provide sufficient evidence to fine them. I'm not going to stalk my neighbors with a camera. But deer are no longer afraid of people around here, and they have gone on a rampage in everyone's garden.
   Deer will not get into the vegetable garden now. After obtaining potato seed and onion sets from Fedco at the end of April, and cutting the potato seed and letting them harden back up a few days, on May 3 I planted them out: 2 rows of stuttgarter yellow onions, one row of Dark Red Norland potatoes, and one row of Satina potatoes. Each row is about 25 feet long. On May 6 I planted out one row with three varieties of beets: Detroit Dark Red, Early Talltop Wonder, and Red Ace, along with one row of Tyee spinach finished by Easter Egg Radish, and one row of lettuce (Red Sails, Anuenue, and Black Seeded Simpson). I transplanted out a row of broccoli and another one of cabbage on May 12. On June 5 I planted out several rows of beans: two rows of light red kidney beans, one row of Kenearly beans, and half rows each of Jacob's Cattle Gasless (an heirloom variety obtained from a seed saver a dozen or more years ago, who bred it for alleged gaslessness), Black Coco, Tongue of Fire shell beans, Black Jet soybeans, Black Valentine snap beans, and Golden Rocky wax beans. On June 6 I added a half-dozen brussels sprouts plants, and a dozen Ace peppers and a couple of dozen tomato plants (Celebrity, Sungold, Mountain Magic, and Juliet), as well as summer squash (Gentry and Saffron) and cucumbers (General Lee and Ministiro). I didn't plant paste tomatoes this year, as I thought to use Sungold for that, skins and all, as an experiment. The beans and squash survived the cool weather and heavy rains the following week, but the cucumbers washed out, so I replanted them on June 20, along with an additional half row of Black Valentine and Golden Rocky, and a quarter row of New Red Fire lettuce.
   Thus far the weather has been variably cool and hot, dry and rainy and foggy, but the moisture has come at the right times (if anything, too much of it) and as a result all the crops are doing fairly well, even though they are all a little slower than usual, except for the onions and greens. The broccoli heads will be ready any day now. Spinach was harvested and frozen last week, and a final harvest will occur in a few days. All the rest are coming along, with the first tomato and pepper blossoms showing now. Colorado potato beetles have been attacking the potatoes, but I pick them off once or twice a day and when I leave for a few days, I dust with an organic chemical that is supposed to kill them but doesn't seem to do the job. For some reason, the Norlands are more affected by the beetles than the Satina. 
     Last evening I heard an author on the NPR radio program, Fresh Air, who claimed that experiments have revealed that certain vegetables contain more phytochemicals than others, ones that are important for good health; and that except for root crops, they quickly lose these during the days after picking, so they should be eaten soon after harvest--preferably, right out of the garden. The leaf lettuce contains more of these good chemicals than head lettuce. Of course, we knew that vegetables were healthier the fresher they were, but the author's new book, Eating on the Wild Side, indicates that certain fresh vegetables are much better than others. The radio program may be heard at http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/07/10/195592468/Eating-On-The-Wild-Side-A-Field-Guide-To-Nutritious-Food

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Springing to life

Ferns emerging from the ground, May 2, 2013.
What a season! The skunk cabbages are leafing out, and the ferns are just beginning to emerge from the ground. Soon they will unfurl their fronds. The robins and bluejays were the first birds to arrive anew, joining the ubiquitous year-round chickadees and nuthatches. Soon followed the phoebes, and then the white-throated and song sparrows along with the hermit thrushes. Downy and hairy woodpeckers began making their hollow-sounding knocks on the dead trees, and I could hear the pileated ones in the distance. They have made great holes in the dead spruce trees, looking for bugs to eat.
Pileated woodpecker holes
The yellow-rump and magnolia warblers were next, and then the parula. Today I saw the purple finches for the first time. It's been warm and dry.  

To thwart the deer and keep them out of the garden this year, I extended my fence to more than eight feet high. Because some of my neighbors have been feeding the deer, they have become bold and relatively tame; and for the last few years around early August they have made it into the gardens--not only mine, but other neighbors who grow vegetables, some as extensively as I, eating up everything we can't protect. I clap my hands and the deer just stare at me as if I may have a morsel for them. I move toward them and they hold their ground. I shout, clap, and move, and they saunter toward the woods, turning at the edge to look at me again. Always it is the does and their children, very nice to look at even though they harbor the deer ticks with lyme disease and eat up most of the shrubs surrounding the houses, not to mention the vegetable gardens. Did I mention them? But not this year, not right here, I am hoping.

The neighbors are not near--I cannot see them--but within a mile there are about a dozen houses. Most of us have gardens and shrubs and although many of us have talked to the two families who feed deer, these families persist. Needless to say, it is against the law to feed them--it is unnecessary here, and it encourages their foraging, not to mention lyme disease. Did I mention lyme disease? Well, we shall see what happens in August. Right now the deer are very bold at dusk and dawn, grazing on the new-growing grass and so forth. We shall see what happens to the gardens come August. Meanwhile I am having to re-landscape around the buildings with rosa rugosa bushes (the deer leave these alone, possibly because of the thorns). 

Friday, March 29, 2013

Skunk Cabbages Melting the Snow

Skunk cabbages bring up the warmth from underground. Parts of them are as much as ten to fifteen degrees fahrenheit warmer than the surface earth. As a result, in early spring where they poke up from the ground they melt the snow, like this:

Skunk Cabbages Melting the Snow.
Photo by Jeff Todd Titon, 2013.