Gardening

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Power Gardening Before The Rain

This is the garden after a power gardening session that got as much as possible in the ground before the rain hit.  We knew we didn’t have much time on Saturday morning to garden as the weather channels predicted a downpour of rain at some point in the afternoon.  Mother Nature at her finest.  We were actually able to get a lot accomplished before the first raindrops came down.  Our garden probably doesn’t look any different to you than when you first saw our raised bed garden earlier this Spring.  However, this time it is filled with seeds.  There are zucchini and cucumber seeds planted around the wire trellis in the back of the bed, followed by green beans, turnips, golden beets and red beets.  All of these seeds got planted and covered and then the rain started.  We’ll be honest.  We didn’t exactly meet our goal.  We had also wanted to get some live plants into the ground that were scheduled for planting this weekend.  These were some of the plants that are growing under our grow light in the basement.  Our eggplant, cabbage, cauliflower and brussels sprouts will have to wait.  Darn rain…good for the newly seeded lawn; bad for the backyard vegetable garden.  Take a few minutes to see our vegetable garden work this weekend and also see our gorgeous azalea bushes in full bloom.

So we didn’t get all of our gardening chores completed this weekend due to the weather.  Good Old Mother Nature is the hardest part of gardening.  You never know if she will be too cold, too hot, too wet.  The odds are sometimes better in Las Vegas.  Did the weather get in your way of a full weekend of gardening?

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What’s Blooming On Glen Road?

 

 This is Spring in full bloom.  It doesn’t take long to go from snow to full throttle Spring in the garden.  There is so much going on in the garden right now it is hard to keep up.  Look at the beauty (above) of an allium almost ready to explode into full bloom.  Soon, this bud will be a total sphere of purple blooms.  There are so many plants and flowers blooming and growing in the garden right now, here is a little tour for you to see the progress.  Come take a look with us.  Feel free to click on any picture in the gallery to get a better view.

Things change so fast in the garden.  I wish there was something that you could invent that would make these beautiful flowers and plants last longer.  What plants and flowers are blooming in your garden right now?

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You’re Bugging Me!

This is the downside of gardening.  Bugs, varmints, predators, insects.  They eat your hard work faster than you can hit the back button on your browser.  Squirrels, chipmunks, slugs when it’s wet…they can be fierce at times.  Each Spring, however, this is the first one we deal with….the Japanese beetle.  We’ll start off by giving the beetle some credit.  It’s a pretty bug with its red top.  When we traveled for work, United Airlines used to offer a Japanese bento box for lunch when you sat in business class.  Bento is a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine.  The bento box on United contained Asian-inspired foods and could be delivered to you whenever you were ready to eat.  Every time we see the beetle, we think of the bento box and its pretty color.  A pretty Asian lacquered red…a beautiful color….just like the color of the Japanese beetle.  The bento box on United Airlines was a good thing.  These Japanese beetles are a menace and must be destroyed.

Every year our lilies come up proud and strong.  We look at them and think that they are fine for another day or two.  They are good enough until we have time to come out and clean them of these beetles and their eggs that can mow our lilies down in a heartbeat.  We should know better.  The next day after we say or think this, we come outside and the lilies have holes all over them.  Guess what did it?  The beetles…these Japanese beetles.  So Sunday was beetle killing day.  We know this sounds rough, but they have to go for our lilies to live.  So we pick them off and squeeze them between a cloth and we also brush their eggs off on the underside of the lily leaf.  What a wonderful way to spend a Sunday.  So we sit there saving our lilies and then remember the fact that these beetles are quite frisky.  Porno beetles!  Get a room!

The only thing more distressing than watching nature porn is discovering the big chunk this couple took out of the lily right below them.  Sorry to all of you who have religion!

Speaking of the eggs the Japanese beetles lay, we sat there for two hours on Sunday brushing them off with a small brush.  Not a great way to spend the day and also one that requires bifocals.  These eggs are small and hard to see!

So this is the start of the crazy fight against the creatures that try to make our garden their meal.  It’s a fight between them and us.  We will tell you this….we’re determined to win.  So, hopefully you are reading this before lunch because it is sort of disgusting, but the fight is on.  It’s Acorns versus the critters.  We will win.  We are determined.  We are armed.  Hopefully, they will get tired before us.  Because WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS….of the world garden.  Are you dealing with bugs and varmints in your garden already this Spring?

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News From The Garden

This is a garden update.  Just a little update on all the planting that we’ve done over the last few months or so, both outside and inside.  First off, the raised bed gardens are doing well.  Above, you can see the rows of seeds that are beginning to pop out of the ground.  From the lower right, the first four rows are the spinach rows that we planted on Thanksgiving 2010.  Two flat leaf rows and two savoy leaf rows.  Next is a row of round radishes, followed by a row of French radishes.  They are the long variety of radish.  Next is a row of arugula and then two rows of lettuce mix.  Starting now through the end of the month, we will continue to plant more seeds and plants into the garden.  Our last planting will be tomato plants given that they need to be put into the ground after the chance of frost has past.

Our tuberous begonias have shown their faces from the bulbs we planted.  ‘Picotee’ is a little less bashful than ‘John Smith’.  Remember him, the tuberous begonia with scent?

Here are the dwarf citrus trees.  They are blooming so let’s hope that this means fruit is on the way.  That is the Calamondin orange on the top and the Meyer Lemon on the bottom.

Flowers are popping out all over the yard.  Here are some shots of our Tulips, our Rhododendron bushes and some Muscari armeniacum.  All so pretty.  We wish they would last longer.

Lots of plants are also showing progress in the garden as well.  Here is a Hosta getting ready to spread its wings and the slow-growing Stewartia pseudocamellia timidly saying hello.

What is most interesting to us is how quickly plants that we’ve put into the ground for only a few weeks are already growing.  Remember the Rhubarb and our princess tree rose ‘Grace Kelly’?  They are already growing and budding.

The best sign that Spring is here is the Weeping Cherry trees that we have here on Glen Road.  When the blooms come out in full force, you know that the winter is most likely over.  Hurray!!  Here is a little glimpse of the blooms.  We should hold our own Cherry Blossom Festival here on Glen Road.

So we hoped you enjoyed our little garden stroll and update.  Things seem to be doing well.  We are back outside now to keep things growing on schedule.  From here on out, there will always be weeding, pruning, snipping, planting and picking to do to keep everything in order.  How is your Spring garden growing?

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Hot For Horseradish

This is a love story about all things hot.  Not hot like the sun, but hot to your taste.  We love foods that have a little heat to them here on Glen Road.  In fact, we are always taking recipes and putting a little heat into them.  We add cherry peppers into broccoli rabe, we put cayenne pepper into almost anything and there is nothing better than cold clams with tabasco sauce, to name a few.  However, our favorite is freshly roasted beef or a polish sausage with a little side of homemade horseradish.  Funny thing is, we don’t have any horseradish that grows in our garden.  When we want horseradish, we need to buy the root at our local organic produce market.  Well, this is about to change because we have planted a bed of five horseradish roots.  The five little brown stalks appear to be so innocent, but in a year they will produce thick roots that are filled with fire.  These roots were planted down from our newly planted rhubarb patch, right behind the espalier apple trees.  Let’s get the heat started with a little horseradish history from the internet:

Horseradish (Armoracia rusticana) is in the brassica family, which includes turnips, kale, mustard greens, broccoli rabe, daikon radish and many other plants with varying degrees of pungency and a similar taste.  Native to the temperate regions of Europe and Asia, it is an ancient herb.  The Romans carried horseradish to Europe as a medicinal herb and as a flavoring.  It was cultivated in Egypt before the exodus of the Hebrew slaves around 1500 B.C., and is often the symbolic bitter herb at the Passover Seder.

By the 16th century, the pungent root was spreading throughout England, where it was described for  its many uses, including as an aphrodisiac, a treatment for tuberculosis, a mustard plaster and a dewormer.  The common name probably evolved from the German “meerrettich,” which means sea-radish, which was misunderstood by the English, who associated “meer” with “mahre,” an old horse.

Undisturbed, the root doesn’t have a strong smell or flavor. But crushing or grinding it produces isothiocyanates, a kind of mustard oil, which is what gives horseradish its flavor and heat.  Adding vinegar stops the reaction because it’s an acid.  It also stabilizes the isothiocyanates, so you can still get that flavor a week later.  Tradition calls for grinding the root outside, because the chemical reaction triggered creates a gas that not only makes you weep, but can irritate lungs and nostrils.  This is actually a defense mechanism for the plant if it’s wounded.

We planted our horseradish in a long furrow about six inches deep.  Each root has a top and a bottom identified by the slicing made by the grower.  The top is identified by a straight slice and the bottom is identified by a diagonal slice.  When we placed them in the furrow, we put them in at an angle, with the straight sliced top pointing upwards.  Once in place, we covered the top of the roots with about four inches of soil, pressed the soil into place and watered.  While we won’t harvest any horseradish this year, the roots will produce beautiful green leaves that will make a nice complement to the equally as beautiful rhubarb leaves that we previously planted along the back side of the espaliers.  Next year, we will harvest and grind a few of the roots, add some white vinegar and salt and begin to enjoy some heat.  As my Grandmother used to say, we can only harvest the roots in months that contain an ‘R’ in them.  Months that don’t contain an ‘R’ are too hot and the root will not produce optimal flavor.

So here’s to horseradish, named “Herb of the Year 2011” by the International Herb Association.  We will look forward to your pretty leaves this year and then the addition of your hotness to our meats, mashed potatoes and seafood in 2012.  We can’t wait.  What hot foods do you and your family like to cook or eat?

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Grace Kelly Moves To Glen Road

This is Grace Kelly.  As you can see, it is not the actress/princess that you were thinking.  ‘Grace Kelly’ is a variety of tree rose that we planted in a container this weekend so it can begin growing in time to bloom this Summer.  We have had tree roses on the patio almost every year we have lived here on Glen Road.  They have always grown quickly from the dormant tree that we get shipped to us. 

In early Summer, the tree rose begins to bloom and if you are diligent about removing the spent roses, the tree will continue blooming up until the end of the season.  Tree roses are not actually a class of rose, but rather a way of growing them.  A bush or climbing rose is simply grafted onto a straight trunk, giving the desired appearance.  Here is the rose bush that is at the top of the tree we purchased.

Very similar in appearance to a rose bush that you would buy at a nursery, except it is attached to the top of a long trunk.  The roots are about five inches long and we have always just filled a container with organic potting soil and put the tree rose into the soil so that it is covered up to the base of the trunk.  They require very little care other than providing about an inch of water per week and fertilizer every so often.

At the beginning of June, our tree roses have always produced an array of beautiful, full-sized rose buds.  The variety ‘Grace Kelly’ appears as beautiful as the woman it is named after.  Pale pink roses tipped in a dark pink to red.  Here are some pictures of our desired end state.  Grow, girl, grow!

So now Glen Road has had its first celebrity (er, celebrity tree rose) come visit in 2011.  Again, we have always planted these beautiful plants every year on Glen Road.  Since they are a perennial, you can also winter them and bring them back year after year.  To winter in mild zones, you need only wrap in-ground plants in straw or burlap.  To winter in northern zones, you must bend the plants without breaking its roots and cover with soil.  Containerized plants can be moved to an unheated, protected area.  Give a tree rose a try to brighten up your patio this Summer.  They are readily available on the internet and aren’t that expensive.  When’s the last time a princess stayed in your backyard?  Tell us what plants you are planting on your patio and deck this season?

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Meet The Mantis

This is my new toy.  It is a Mantis 4-cycle rototiller.  I am going to use it in the raised bed garden to ready the rest of my soil for planting.  It will be great to turn my winter rye grass cover crop into the soil so that it can break down and release needed nutrients into the garden soil.  It will also cut down on my sore back and knees due to the fact that I won’t need to do these chores by hand anymore.  It will up to the Mantis (with a little help from me).

My Mantis weighs only 24 pounds and, given that it only have two tines attached, it is perfect for my small raised bed garden.  The tines can quickly cut through sod, clay, compacted soil or weeds.  It can also dig down 10 inches so my plants can establish themselves in soil that’s cool, deep and water retentive.  I’m hoping to use it all season–to dig my beds and plant my garden and then all the way to the end of the season when I will turn it all under and re-establish a new cover crop.

My Mantis is easy to start and there is no fuel mixing required.  It is 9 inches wide and has fold down handles.  It can run most of the day on one gallon of gas due to its powerful, Honda 4-cycle engine.  It even has a kickstand so I can “park” my rototiller anywhere and the kickstand flips up when I am tilling the soil.

The easy-grip handles include an on/off switch, a lock key that must be released before the rototiller can operate and an accelerator handle to start the tines working.  The tines are guaranteed for life, so I can only imagine how strong they work.  The tines can spin up to 240 rotations per minute, so that is plenty for the garden that I have here in Connecticut.

I can’t wait to get into the garden with my new toy and do some tilling.  I was so happy when I received the box containing my Mantis.  It reminded me of a little kid getting a bright, red wagon.  So watch out cover crop, your days are numbered.  My Mantis and I are coming to till until we drop…or run out of gas, whichever comes first.  What cool gardening tools are you using in your garden?