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

 

 

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

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.