Postcrossing Favorites for August

This month's favorite postcards received via Postcrossing.com were both from Finland.

Yes, this one is right-side-up.

(See http://myturntodayyourstomorrow-cheryl.blogspot.com/2010/07/postcrossing.html for details about Postcrossing.com.)

Harvest

The garden is winding down, and almost everything has been harvested. There are still a few zucchini out there, but these are the last of the tomatoes, which will soon be canned and added to the others on the shelf.

Preserving food makes me feel virtuous. It reminds me of the years when I was first married, when money was in short supply, and everything that we could hunt or grow was preserved for the winter. Canning also reminds me of my grandmother, who was a Kansas farm wife, and the times I helped her can peaches and cherries.

Now, I grow my own vegetables and herbs, but in much smaller quantities than my grandmother needed for her family and the farm workers. The large jar of greenery (above) is a garden tea blend of tansy, comfrey, and mint. It's great for sore throats in the middle of winter. The cats have an equally large jar of dried catnip waiting for them.

I doubt that Grandma ever ate or made pesto sauce. Basil is one of the few things that grows in abundance in my garden, and the best way I've found to preserve it--aside from drying--is to make pesto and freeze it in small quantities.

Ground pine nuts, minced garlic, and basil leaves keep well in the freezer, and if all I need is a little for pizza topping, I just scrape off small chunks from the frozen block. No need to defrost.

Peas take up a lot of room in my garden, but the space yields enough to satisfy my needs for the year, and I love going to the freezer for a handful of peas to add to casseroles, soups, and salads. I only wish I could grow enough peas to make a huge pot of pea soup: a blend of peas, garlic, butter, and cream. Yum!

We had a late frost last spring, which resulted in no plums and only a few apples on my little fruit trees. I let the squirrels take the remaining apples after I found one of them chewing on a piece of jute that I'd used to tie up a tomato plant. How hungry do you have to be to chew string?

Later...The answer to the above question may be found at:

http://myturntodayyourstomorrow-cheryl.blogspot.com/2010/10/thief.html

The Challenge Garden, Part III - Cold Frames

The third challenge that most Idaho gardeners face is the very short growing season. At our high altitudes, it's not uncommon for winter to last into April and to begin again by October. Occasionally, we have killing frosts and snow as late as June and as early as September. The sooner seeds can get into the ground, the better, but that's a bit tricky when the ground is covered with snow. 

If you've looked at my previous blog posts, you know that I'm fond of salvaging and recycling materials. The cold frame above was made from a salvaged window, salvaged "L" brackets, and scrap wood. It measures 56" x 24" and is 6 to 12 inches deep, which is a good depth for spinach and small lettuces. The frame faces South and is situated near my front porch. The ground there has been extremely inhospitable to nearly every kind of vegetation, so a cold frame seemed to be the best choice for the space.

The cold frame above was made from used brick, with a salvaged wood-framed window for a lid. The frame was lined with black plastic, and the seeds were covered lightly with soil and aged straw from the chicken coop. The spinach was planted in this cold frame in October, 2009, right before the first snow. This picture was taken in March, 2010, not long after the first plants made their appearance.

One of the things I like best about cold frames is that they may be made from nearly any salvaged material, and they are easy to assemble or to disassemble and move, as needed.

The Challenge Garden, Part II - Rain Barrels

Another challenge for Idaho gardeners is moisture. Our annual rainfall is nothing to get excited about, and the low humidity of our high-desert climate makes watering an almost-daily task.


Last year, I started using rain barrels to collect run-off from my roof. The first time it rained, I was amazed at how much water could be collected in a short period of time from a roof of modest size (my house is 800 square feet on the top floor).


In the backyard, two rain barrels are fitted with dual faucets and linked together with a short hose. Rain from the downspout fills the first barrel, and the overflow passes into the second barrel. I made platforms from cinder blocks that elevate the barrels about 10" above ground level.



These two barrels and a third are linked to soaker hoses which run through the flower and vegetable beds. When the collected rain has been used, I simply fill each barrel with the garden hose, and the soaker hoses disperse the water slowly throughout the garden.


The barrel-and-soaker-hose arrangement eliminates the need for water sprinklers. In a dry, windy climate such as Pocatello's, watering by sprinklers is a very inefficient way to get moisture to plants, as most of the water evaporates before hitting the ground.


Sometimes, especially in the early mornings, I enjoy watering the garden by hand, but the rain barrels have made even this procedure unnecessary.

The Challenge Garden, Part I - Raised Beds

In Southeast Idaho, our growing season is very short. In some years, it's cold and raining (and even snowing) into June. It's not unusual for the temperature to vary as much as 40 degrees in a 24-hour period. Much of the time, summer weather ends before the school year begins in September. While cooler summers are more comfortable for people, most plants need a longer, warmer growing season.


Weather conditions such as these present challenges to the Idaho gardener. How early can I plant? How soon can I harvest? How much time and energy will I spend safe-guarding against killing frosts?


The situation of my yard adds other challenges: the garden is located in a narrow strip between the house, which shades the garden in the morning and a hill, which rises sharply on the west side and shades the garden after 6 p.m. Add to that the fact that if I dig more than 2 inches down, I strike rocks, since my yard is merely an extension of the hillside, which is comprised mostly of loose stone.


These conditions are vastly different from the garden I had during the years I lived in Oklahoma. There, the frequent rains provided constant high humidity, and it only snowed twice each year for the 4-1/2 years I was there. Gardening was no challenge at all, unless it involved keeping the slugs off the plants. My solution there was the same solution I've used in Idaho: raised beds.

Raised beds can be made of pretty much anything: wheelbarrows, half-casks, wooden crates, recycled brick. Anything that holds soil and provides drainage will do. Raised beds reduce the number of weeds, and I can even pull a chair up to the bed and weed without bending over or sitting on the ground. The beds raise the plants up about 2 feet, which exposes them to more sunlight, earlier in the day. My raised beds are made from wood salvaged from the 100-year-old house's original fence, so many of the planks are certainly "well-weathered."

Because the raised beds are never walked on, the soil stays loose, and it's easy to work in composted material. This year I added straw from the chicken coop (see January's postings to read about our backyard chicken project), and well-aged material from a friend's horse barn. I felt a little like one of MacBeth's witches, using my shovel to stir the cauldron of fertilizer. "Double trouble, boil and bubble" frequently came to mind as I mixed peat moss, kitchen waste, and plain old dirt, along with chicken and horse poop, to make a tasty garden brew.


Pictures    [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Top: a leaky, old wheelbarrow makes a great raised bed for my salad greens. It also has the advantage of being easy to relocate.
Middle: This box is made from recycled fence planks and salvaged hinges. Pieces of salvaged rebar lend additional support.
Bottom: A 1/2 cask holds enough soil to make one tomato plant happy. I drilled a few holes in the bottom to provide drainage, but as the cask ages, water will seep through the slats, too.

Gotta Love the Garden

Dawn on West Center Street

The cats wake me up as soon as it's light during the summer, so I've gotten into the habit of feeding them and the parakeets, then taking a cup of coffee out to the garden. 
     At 6 a.m., the neighborhood is just beginning to wake up; only the birds are already active. After I hang the parakeets' cage outside, I wander around the garden, listening to the calls of various wild birds (which the parakeets answer). 
     The garden is lovely that early in the morning, and I make my rounds, checking to see which vine needs to be staked up, which leaves should be pinched off, and which herbs and vegetables are ready to harvest.

Purple basil flourishes in pots, and the first tomatoes are almost ready to eat.

I don't subscribe to any particular religion, and I'm never sure what people mean, exactly, when they say they are "spiritual." If spiritual means feeling at peace and in sync with the natural world, then spiritual is what I am in the garden: humble and connected. A spider that I might quickly annihilate should it show up in the kitchen is welcome to go about its business in the garden. We are in shared space.