New England Gardener

Just when I was ready to throw in the towel and call it a season, my garden is coming alive! The dahlias that I had given up on are full of buds! My rose bushes are suddenly ready to flower again…even the ones that had lost their leaves and looked half-dead.
One bush produced the sweetest smelling rose that I have ever had the pleasure to sniff last week. It was an amazing scent. And a late, but fast growing gourd vine has a couple of babies on it that are getting bigger by the day. After all the rain, the black spots, the bugs and the disappointment this season, I am pleasantly surprised. Go figure.

The dahlias typically bloom until the first hard frost. But, I had such bad results with so many of them this year, I didn’t expect them to ever come around. I’ve attached a photo of a beautiful orange dahlia that we picked this week and put in a vase. Better late than never.

I guess that I will try to get them in the ground earlier next year….or maybe start them inside. Like Amy, I am taking notes. I’ve also vowed to plot the plan of my flower garden this fall, so I remember what lives where next spring. ( I vow to do this every year and never seem to get it done.)

It was not a great summer in our garden. In fact, I’d call it one of the worst in recent memory. But there were a few highlights.

In early August, while searching for a pre-school backpack, my husband and I found some very nice healthy hosta plants on clearance at K-mart. There were many varieties, in gallon pots, all reduced to $1.50 each. It was a steal! After a few return trips, we had planted 75 new hosta in our gardens. They blend in so well, that I couldn’t tell you where we put even half of them at this point. I have had success with some hydrangeas for the first time this year. I wish I had planted more of them! And, my morning glory seed experiment worked too. Our fence is wrapped in vines with little purple flowers poking out here and there.

As we move into autumn, the sedum look beautiful. They are full of bees, and are slowing changing color. I am thankful that they have thrived this year. I’ll be busy picking flowers until the frost.
Let’s all hope for more sunny days in 2010!

Filed under: Flowers | Organic

NECN’s Anya Huneke says apple picking season is officially underway in Vermont, and as of now, this is looking to be a terrific year.

For her day off of work, Allison Hale of Burlington, Vermont, decided this would be the perfect activity. Around lunchtime, accompanied by their appetites, she and Mike McGonegal made the trip to Shelburne Orchards to welcome in fall with a bag of hand-picked apples.

Orchards across Vermont are starting to bustle with activity, as crowds turn out to pick what many farmers say is looking to be a bumper crop — in part because of, not despite, the rainy summer weather that has plagued many other crops.

Another likely beneficiary of this summer’s wet weather is the fall foliage, just starting to show its colors in Vermont. Tourism officials say moisture is a key ingredient in bright displays, and the warm days and cool nights we have had recently, have only helped.

Filed under: Organic | Vegetables

Some college students at Holy Cross are digging deep in a major effort to help feed the hungry.

Filed under: Vegetables

By mid-September, I’m all about harvesting and not much else in the garden. I overlook weeds and watering and only ponder insect infestations if supper is threatened. But experience has taught me that it pays to take a few minutes to review the season’s successes and failures before the leaves fall. Taking notes now will prevent me from attacking the garden catalogs like a sailor with scurvy come February.

As you know, I started the season with seed suggestions and a 10′ by 10′ layout from the great gardeners at Johnny’s Selected Seeds here in Maine. For the most part, their varieties and succession planting ideas worked well, but I will make a few changes next year based mostly on personal preferences. (Click on layout to the right if you’re curious about what I grew.)

Working with their plan encouraged me to try some new veggies. I’ve discovered that I like chard and LOVE summer squash. We’ve been doing ratatouille with squash, zucchini, basil and (sigh) canned tomatoes for the last month in my house. Even the little guy likes it. I’ve also concluded that for me, kale will go back to being an ornamental plant. Are we sure it’s food?

I had bad luck with some transplants. Neither my cuke or basil seedlings fared as well as the plants that were sowed from seed into the garden. Next year, I won’t bother starting those indoors.

The peas, beans, lettuces and spinach have all been delicious. All will be invited back.

Thanks to the confines of the 10′ by 10′ space, I found I was much more disciplined about succession plantings. In the past I tucked veggies all over my garden beds and sometimes forgot about them. Not this year. Even in mid-September, every inch of the Just Add Water garden is still producing. Beans are coming up in the tomato graveyard. New rows of lettuce and spinach are launched next to the beans. I tucked in some discounted celery and cauliflower seedlings where the peas once grew. Those will be harvested in the coming weeks. The buds on my brussel sprouts are starting to swell. And the chard, carrots cucumbers and squashes are growing like gangbusters.

Regrets. I’ve had a few. I’ve already said too much about the tomatoes, but that was the nadir. I also regret not planting several crops of carrots. Johnny’s layout called for only a mid-summer planting, but in my house, raw carrots are served at every meal. Next year, I’ll start sowing carrot seeds as soon as the ground is warm enough. That reminds me, I plan to lay black plastic down next spring and purchase a soil thermometer. I definitely would have forgotten that idea over the winter!

What lessons does your garden have to share? If you’re like me, you won’t remember them in February and by then your garden won’t be in the mood for conversation.

Filed under: Just Add Water Project | Sustainable Gardening | Uncategorized | Vegetables

I just wanted to write 09-01-09.. Welcome to September in New England 2009 where we may actually have a week without a Hurricane Threat. Our NECN forecast shows sunshine into Labor Day. I am taking advantage of a quiet weather pattern to talk about, and hopefully, get some time in, the garden. There has been no improvement to my tomatoes, many of the vines have completely died. I left the tomatoes on the vine anyway, though I am sure they would ripen equally if I picked them on placed on the window sill.

During my last in depth discussion, my final though was ‘more on pumpkins next time’. I was going to talk about pruning the vines to possibly increase quality, perhaps at the expense of quantity. I was going to reduce the number of vines from the individual plants. But.. I never got to pruning those vines, now the pumpkins have taken over. I agree with Amy form her weekend post, pumpkins are easy to grow, but you never know how many you are going to get.

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Filed under: Vegetables

When planting a children’s garden, almost anything goes, but there are a few, three really, obligatory crops. And any kid can tell you what they are. Sunflowers, corn and pumpkins. And this September, the news from the pumpkin patch at the community garden is not good. We planted nearly thirty seedlings and do you know how many vines are bearing fruit? One. And by one, I mean one pumpkin. One small pumpkin.

Crop failure is always a disappointment, but losing pumpkins is a real bummer. I think those bright orange balls ease the transition back to the school year. Their promise of treats and after dark antics helps lessen the burden of homework and diminishing daylight after supper.

I always thought pumpkins were easy to grow. Stories abound…..”I just threw the seeds out the window and the next thing I knew, Jim had to use a forklift to get an 892 pound pumpkin off the lawn.” This has not been my experience.

The pumpkins were plagued with cucumber beetles, powdery mildew and too much rain this summer, but this isn’t the first year our patch has produced a scant crop. I’m hoping some of you pumpkin pros will have a few suggestions. We usually transplant seedlings into the garden in mid June and I wonder if we’d be better off direct seeding into the garden? Our soil is good, but maybe sidedressing with compost would help? The fact that we have so few pumpkins tells me we’ve got a pollination problem, but I find this hard to believe. There’s a very active beehive about 15 yards from the pumpkin patch.

We promise a “pumpkin for every child” at our fall Harvest Supper. Hmmm. Maybe I should start spray painting the zucchini?

Filed under: Just Add Water Project | Kids Garden | Uncategorized