Beach Bum 101

We're heading to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Every summer Meg's family and two other families rent a big ass house for a week and relax their brains out. To give you an idea of what we're in for, everyone is required to bring a case of beer (and it can't be crap) and a half gallon of liquor. These people do not mess around.

Meanwhile, Steve has volunteered his services while we're gone so that everything around here runs smoothly (yes we know how incredibly lucky we are). The house where we'll be staying has internet access, so we will be able to keep up with the blog. Hopefully Meg and I will be able to get some camping in at Cape Henlopen. I've personally gone camping at Henlopen at least once every summer for the past few years. There's nothing really special about the place, but I always feel rejuvenated after every visit. Keep your fingers crossed for favorable weather.

So, hang tight, grab your sun screen, and hopefully we'll see you tomorrow. Cheers.

This squash is awesome.

It's a variety of summer squash called "Lemon Squash" because, as you can see, the fruit looks like lemons. We got the seeds from Baker Creek, where they were advertised as tasty, prolific, and bug-resistant. So far they haven't disappointed.

There are four up on the scale, so they average about a half a pound each—the perfect single-serving size to eat for lunch or to throw in with dinner.

New Toy

This baby's got a flywheel, height adjusters, and a three-spool roller. Yep, all that and it was free (props to Meg's mom).

We mentioned a while back that the grass around here doesn't get cut that often. To be a bit more accurate, it's only been cut three times so far this year. I've got to admit that it is quite nice. We really don't have to worry about neighborhood ordinances and what not that would force our landlord to cut more often, so he'll let it grow over a foot before he gives Steve the okay to cut it. That's when we follow with rakes and use the clippings like the straw it is to mulch anything that needs it. Like I said, it is quite nice. The only drag is that the tall grass along the perimeters of our gardens usually trends towards encroaching and being thoroughly bothersome.

Our solution is this new-to-us kick ass mower. A few passes around each garden and we will be good to go.

Side note:
Does anyone know if there is such a thing as a non-electric chainsaw with low emmissions? If no, where would we go for a good timber saw and what would we ask for? If you have any input to these queries, please include your response as a side answer. Thanks a ton.

Purple Podded Capucijner Peas

We didn't plant a ton (just one short row) and they are moving slooooowly, so whatever we get will most likely be saved for next year's seed. The flowers are pretty fantastic, though—much brighter and bolder than the typical pastel colors that pea flowers tend towards.

Another One Bites the Dust

This is the pupae of a tobacco hornworm. We found (and squashed) a handful of these in May.


This is a tobacco hornworm that apparently escaped being squashed in May. He didn't have the same luck tonight.

Blame it on the rain. Or the magnesium. Whichever.

Wow, you guys are good. After Kelly posted about our potential tomato and squash problems, you all responded with a million helpful and interesting suggestions—we even got the advice of a plant pathologist and a biologist (thanks, Taylor and Miriam!). Alan even put up a post about similar problems in his garden, along with photos that illustrate the curly leaf problem better than ours did.

After reading all your comments, and based on the weather so far this year and the general condition of the yard and garden, we're rooting for either a water issue or a magnesium deficiency. Whichever. Maybe both.

Lots of you suggested that the curly tomato leaves could be the result of irregular water, which makes sense because as I'm typing this the tomatoes are getting rained on for only the third time this year. Our rain barrels haven't been able to keep up with the drought, and so the garden has been running on minimal water. Vegmonkey probably said it best: "the tomatoes look like they need a damn good watering." Bloody right, VM.

The magnesium issue that many of you mentioned also seems about right—aside from eggshells and compost, we didn't add any amendments to the beds this year. The yellowing leaves seem to match with the photos we've found of magnesium-deficient plants, and even the basil (around the tomatoes) and the nasturtiums (around the squash) have some splotchy yellow leaves, which is definitely not typical for them in our garden.

Of course, we could still have an unfortunate disease—both of the consulted scientists mentioned mosaic virus, among others—but since there's nothing we can really do about that we decided to cross our fingers, buy some epsom salt, and give everything a damn good watering.

We didn't even know where to find epsom salt, so we wandered around the store for a while until we found this surprisingly large and cheap carton of the stuff:

We sprinkled about two tablespoons of it around the base of every tomato, squash, and pepper plant:

And we watered it in a bit:


We watered just enough to get all of the salt dissolved into the ground because a big storm was rolling in as we were outside. Tomorrow we'll give all the plants some fresh compost and prune some more, and hopefully within the next week or so we'll see some signs of recovery. We'll keep you posted.

Produce Department

Finally, we are at the point where we can go grocery shopping in the garden for dinner every day. We are getting lots of food, and soon we'll need to start canning and freezing to keep up with it all.

I've been trying to stay on the ball with our harvest tally this year. I even got a ledger book to record the weight of everything, which is the kind of OCD activity I normally would really be into. However, one thing I forgot to take into account is that it's kind of annoying to meticulously record weights and quantities into a ledger when you're starving and ready to bite into a raw zucchini. So instead, the weight of everything we've picked so far this year is written on the back of an envelope on the kitchen table.

For the record, that cabbage weighed 2 pounds.

Future Farm Hand

After weeks of intense training, Lego (thanks for the great name, CeeCee) is now ready for yard duty.


Meg and I took the little lady out to the garden today to see how she'd fare. If judgment were made solely on this photo, I would think that she did rather well. However, her first great garden adventure was consumed with a whole lot of sniffing and fidgeting. We plan to continue these little outings and hopefully one day she will learn to murder chipmunks or weed the bean beds.

Because we eat a lot of peanut butter sandwiches.

Four quarts of berries:


Waiting to be cleaned up, frozen, and turned into jam on a day when it's not 500 degrees in the kitchen.

Stairway to Heaven

The landlord had some work done to the roof and bought a few sun tunnels while he was at it. We'll have the full post in a few days.

Oh Hell

Disasters in our garden are never minor. Never. The first year it was groundhogs, drought, and incompetence. The second year it was squash bugs and black walnut poison. This year, well, we're not sure what it is but we don't like it. Below are some shots of a squash plant and tomato plant that are looking terribly suspect. We have a list of possibilities and what their causes are, but no solutions. Meg believes it may be some kind of mosaic virus on both plants, but can't say for sure.

If any of you know what the hell is going on and maybe know of a solution that doesn't require moving, we'd greatly appreciate it.



The squash leaves that look like this feel brittle and dry. The stems leading to the leaves look okay, and there is no insect damage on them.



The worst looking tomato leaves are towards the bottoms of the plants, and they feel tough and kind of leathery. No bugs on them, either.

The Scrap Sack

Meg and I are preparing for soup. As we bring in the grub from the garden, we are saving the scraps from the cleaning and chopping in a one-gallon freezer bag. Our intention (oh what a safe word that is) is to eventually boil the bits down as part of a vegetable broth or stock.

I've done it before and it worked out great but, understandably, no two batches ever taste alike. Just think of it as less waste and more taste (Yep, that seals it, I'm the biggest fucking dork alive. And what's with all these parentheticals? Dag.).

The Plan

The trees on our rented property seriously handicap our ability to properly rotate crops. Our garlic is one crop that has to be planted in the same area until we can fence the garden in. Right now the area is pretty open and we need to provide safety for our more vulnerable plants. So, in order to keep up the organic matter we developed a plan.

For the next week or two we will be running the chicken tractor* over the beds. This will help reduce the weeds and nasties in soil and also give it a nitrogen boost from their crap. Afterwards we will plant a cover crop and then turn it in when we plant more garlic in the Fall. A combination of the green manure and chicken shit should keep everything in check.

*Reduce, Reuse, Renew leaves little tolerance for those who are aesthetically driven. However, even with that said, please excuse the comedy of our fitted sheet.

Nagel's Double Image Photography

For those of you who get into limited series, be it on the television or the radio, you may enjoy this. My Aunt Terri and Uncle Rich are posting what, for the time being, will only be a one-month blog titled Nagel's Double Image Photography. If I have my information straight, the blog is a photo journal of sorts of their trip following the glacier path from Glacier NP to Olympic NP. The Journal is part of a grant my aunt applied for and I’m not to sure what they have to do with the information once the trip is complete. But here is what info I did get from her in a recent email:

I applied for a teacher creativity grant from Eli Lilly Corp here in Indiana- they review and approve 150 or so grants every year from the 500+ applications received. You know I love photography so it was easy to write a mission statement with passion. Anyway it was approved first try! I was fortunate since so many people I know say they were not approved until after several tries if at all. The grant was for $8,000 and I submitted a budget with the proposal that covered the costs estimated. It bought photography equipment and materials but we have used a large portion of it for diesel fuel which has gone up about 25-30% since I wrote the grant. Such is life but we are having such a wonderful time that we wondered if we won't do this at least 50% of our time when we retire! Such an awesome country we have full of beauty that soothes the soul indeed! Anyway we are having a great time learning new things like blogging and using this upgraded digital equipment, and of course sharing our experiences with good friends and family.

This blog will go on until somewhere near the end of July. Like I said, this is a limited series. They both have a fantastic eye for photography and their hearts are genuine. The combination really shows in the shots they take. It’s inspirational for sure. Cheers.

The Great Garlic Harvest

Here's what our garlic patch looked like yesterday morning:


Between the dying garlic plants and the weeds threatening to eat everything, it was pretty obvious that our garlic was ready to be harvested. We planted a lot of garlic (about three pounds) last fall and were prepared for a massive harvest.

We did pretty good! Aside from a corner that the gross outdoor cats had taken to peeing on (nice, right?), from which we didn't get anything and wouldn't have eaten if we had, everything we planted grew just fine. Here's the harvest, spread out to cure, on the picnic table and benches.


All together we got about 350 cloves which weighed in at just over 25 pounds. We'll put aside about five pounds of that to replant in the fall, and the rest will be eaten--by the end of the week, if we don't restrain ourselves.

DJ of our blogosphere

A short while ago Meg and I started reading a blog that has added a whole new element to our blogging experience. Cold Splinters is a new blog (shit, who am I to say a blog is new, we've only been around a year) that provides a unique and challenging lens with which to view the everyday.

Wait.

What do I mean?

Hell, I don't know. I've been trying to formulate a reason why I like this blog so damn much, but I really haven't found the vocabulary. How about this:

If it grabs you, it will grab you good. Meg and I read a lot and we appreciate good writing. Cold Splinters is very smart writing equipped with fantastic music. Just last week I was humming Belle and Sebastian tunes for days. This is the first blog I've read that amalgamates songs as part to the message of the post. The photo above was matched with Paul Simon's "Obvious Child." Enjoy.

Pharaoh Would be Green with Envy

I believe it's safe to say that Meg and I tend to think in bamboo. The stuff is like Tinker Toys for gardeners. Our latest bit of backyard construction is a three poled obelisk (you may call it a tripod, but when you crest twenty feet, it becomes so much more). We have morning glories started at the bottom of this thing and by mid August it will be covered. I still need to attach another level of cross supports about mid-way up to reduce the risk of collapse. But for now, she's good.

At this height we'll be attracting beneficial insects from Ohio. Just think of all the resources and manpower Pharaoh could have saved with one of these.

Top o' the Coop

June 9:
July 9:

Notice anything different? The neighbors painted the fence!

Also, the garden grew. It is nice to see everything filling out, especially after a straight month with no rain at all. I would bet that most of this stuff has doubled in size over just the last week.

Trellis Update

The trellis we fashioned on to the flag pole is working quite well. It is staggering to see how much a poling bean will grow when it has something to latch onto. The variety we've got going here is Cherokee Trail of Tears. As you can imagine there is a reason they are named such and we are very proud to have them in our garden.


This is on of the many flowers it started to put out the other day. We'll be looking forward to when the trellis fills out and is speckled with these things.

Time to Pull the Garlic

Our garlic crop is looking pretty sad these days, and as soon as the ground dries out we'll pull it all. However, we couldn't resist yanking up a bulb for dinner last night, and we were definitely pleased with how big it got. This is a variety we picked up at the Emmaus farmers market last year because we liked its color. We don't know what it is, but it tastes good.

This bug died

These photos are of a squash bug and its eggs. These little shits destroyed our entire crop last year. What they do is suck out liquid from the squash's stem and at the same time release a poison that will eventually kill the plant. There is a 10-14 day window between when the eggs are laid and their unfortunate hatch. Last year we didn't know what to look for, but now we do and we are addressing them early. Our approach to containing these things is simple, but kind of labor intensive.

When we direct seeded earlier in the spring, we also planted nasturtiums, because apparently they work as a deterrent. As the photos indicate, so far, not so effing good. We don't have a lot of squash bugs (last year was awful), so maybe there is some proof in the pudding. The meticulous bit of our control mission is to check under the leaves (oh yeah, that's where they do business) twice a week and smash them when we find them. Now granted, we have a decent sized garden, but anything larger than this and I would have to say, "eff this," to the hand to bug combat.

If you're not down with smashing them or pollinating the plants by hand (that's another alternative that requires the use of row covers), the best thing to do is practice preventative maintenance during fall clean up and mulch heavily in the spring. We did both, but our infestation was really bad last year so it may take a while before we can convince them all to pack up and go. If you've got them, good luck.

Perennial Attraction

When in the garden we're never really alone. With a few hamlets of flowers, Meg and I have attracted civilizations of insects. Soon we hope to increase this magnetism with creative trellising that will shape up to bring obelisks of morning glories and a wall of cardinal climbers.

Knee High?

Yeah, we got that.

Dumber than a Bag of Hammers

Ever since we got a pet that's actually quite clever, the chickens have seemed more stupid than ever.

That's why I really appreciate this New Yorker piece by Simon Rich, which features a conversation between two free-range chickens. I think all you chicken aficionados might enjoy it.

...

“Hey, someone refilled the grain bucket!”
“Is it the same stuff as yesterday?”
“I hope so.”
“Oh, man, it’s the same stuff, all right.”
“It’s so good.”
“I can’t stop eating it.”
“Hey, you know what would go perfectly with this grain? Water.”
“Dude. Look inside the other bucket.”
“This . . . is the greatest day of my life.”

...

Not bad, eh?

We (prematurely) yanked this from the onion patch tonight. All of the onions look promising and we were pretty curious as to what was going on under the dirt and grass mulch, so we picked a big-looking one for dinner. This guy was about 2.5 inches in diameter, and delicious.

Louder Than Bombs

One of our cabbages actually exploded. Hold on a bit, this is still settling in.



Okay, I'm better.

So I lifted the row cover earlier today to check on things in brassica land and as you can see, one of our cabbages literally burst at the seams. At first I thought an animal got in there and had themselves a picnic, but upon closer inspection I could see that there were no chew marks and both sides of the split matched up like you could almost squeeze it back together (kind of like continental drift, but without South America and Africa spooning).

We're guessing that it had to do something with the amount of water it's been receiving, but we're really not sure. Either way, we ate it and it was delicious.