Category — Daily Toil

Today we started the nasty task that has awaited us all along: we started excavating the part of our round bed that was crushed by construction. Over the winter, a pile of construction debris sat on top of this area. Over the soil now is a spill of sand probably 6 inches deep. The backhoe must have pushed the edging bricks into the ground as well. It’s not an impossibly large area, just 1/4 of our total round bed but it’ll be pretty close to “real” work, not the let’s-pretend-we’re-farmers kind of work we’ve done ’til now. That’s why we’re breaking the task up.

Today we just want to remember where the edges of the garden bed used to be. We measured other parts of the bed and a good estimate seems to be that the distance between the edge of the central sunflower bed and the edge of the exterior bed is about the length of my favorite hoe. Using this guideline, we used the spade to dig a few exploratory holes. Sure enough, we were able to find most of our “missing” bricks and edging material.

That’s about all we did today in our 20 minutes. We collected some of the bricks but other bricks we left sticking half out of the ground. Now we know where the bed is and we can start to dream and imagine what we’ll grow inside.

Addendum: I forgot something else that I did, something that I bet I’ll pay for tomorrow. I “rolled” a stone, roughly 1 foot in diameter, off the bed and I carried another oddly shaped puddle of concrete, both of which had been uncovered during the barn’s construction and both of which had come to rest in our round bed. We still don’t have a really firm idea what we’ll do with those stones but for now, they’re resting near the asparagus in the “orchard.”

Speaking of asparagus: two of our new asparagus plantings have sent up tentative, fragile stems. I am quite happy because frankly the crowns didn’t look TOO prosperous when we planted them.

Today’s 20 minutes largely involved seeds.

At the center of our round bed, we traditionally plant sunflowers. We like the strong “vertical interest” that sunflowers add to our largely flat yard. Not to mention the color. We keep the sunflowers from falling over with a length of chicken wire supported by a couple metal posts. The wire used to be the frame for our compost pile. Sometime soon I’ll write about the fancy copper gate / trellis I’m going to build for the sunflowers — I’ve been planning it and scavenging materials for it literally for years!) Sunflowers are also a sentimental favorite because my Grandma grew them.

We bought a package of sunflower seeds a few years back and every year since we’ve simply saved the seed heads and consolidated the volunteers that grow elsewhere in the yard. We always get enough to share a few with the wildlife. This year there were a large number of seedlings near the back of our yard, a good 25′ from where we plant the sunflowers. I figure a squirrel made off with a seed head and only ate through half of it. We made a few holes and transplanted our seedlings over to the area. Then I blanketed the area with the leftover seed from last year. We just collect the seed heads from the sunflower in an old bushel basket and set it aside in our basement. The heads become very dry and are easily crumbled. To minimize the number of squirrels at least who eat the seed, I spread a few generous handfuls of dried blood. This won’t keep away the birds but I hope they have better sources of nutrition by this time in the season.

I also spread a bit of the grass seed I bought. I had stored many items from the old barn (including much of the salvageable wood from the barn itself) under a tarp in the yard and this killed a nice broad swath of grass. I realize it’ll take several attempts to re-seed it but I wanted to get started. I realize now I didn’t do all the things one’s “supposed” to do when planting grass seed: I didn’t rake up the soil; I didn’t water the seed… I won’t be losing too much sleep over it though.

This doesn’t sound like much but I swear this took 20 minutes!

And so it begins, the suburban arms race. Just last week, the couple across the street was struggling away with their rotary push mower and now, I hear the growl of a gas-powered monster from their yard. And part of what I’m feeling is that sense of remorse that my lawn will no longer be the only cut and vacuumed one on the block. Yup, we live on a block where the status quo, more or less, has been ragged lawns, hacked by hand-powered mowers. I’d be surprised to learn that many folks use weed and feed. I’m certain only few use an edger. It sounds quaint, like a little cul de sac of the 1940’s. Did I contribute to it’s destruction? What a weird variety of buyer’s remorse.

Regardless, the lawn needed cutting again today. And I am particularly glad to tell you that Jan did it! It really should count as several days worth of work: maybe 20 minutes for the front yard, 20 minutes for the lady next door’s yard and 15 or so for the back yard. But then again the time spent doing the yard next door might not really “count.”

The harvest of clippings was less that last week, but I was able to mulch all the planted beds with them.

And the yard looks just spectacular. Magazine cover good!

For today’s 20 minutes, I planted and mulched a “wedge” of jalapeño peppers and a “wedge” of “Ichiban” eggplant.

All I needed to do to prepare the beds was to rake off the brown and shriveled vines from last year. Usually we collect all that material for a compost at the end of the season but the barn builders came too quickly so we didn’t have a chance to put our garden to bed. And seeing how easy it was to rake the dead vines out of the way now, I think we might just skip some of the end-of-season rituals that we used to think were so important.

I used the edge my hoe to dig four holes in a diamond formation. Then I poured a little water in each hole and let it sink in. The peppers and the eggplant both went in the same. When I was finished I took a few handfuls of fresh grass clippings and mulched around all the plants. A good thick layer of mulch is import because part of it’s job is to discourage weeds.

We usually plant two kinds of eggplant. The “Italian” style with its plump round body and dark purple skin which is great for Eggplant Parmesan and Babaganooj. But we also love the slender, lighter purple fruits of the “Asian” style eggplant. Jan has a recipe for stir-fried eggplant with a slightly sweet sauce (of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and mirin) that we VERY much enjoy over helpings of rice.

The little tags for these seedlings say the the jalapeños will mature in 72 days and that the “ichiban” eggplant will mature in 50 - 60 days.

We frequently put cloches over the eggplants until they develop a few extra leaves. They don’t seem to need protection from the cold as much as from these tiny little mites that will eat their leaves to lace. The mites aren’t enough of a problem to investigate poison but we don’t want to stunt the growth of the eggplant when they’re so small.

We spent most of “today’s” 20 minutes shopping even though it took us a total of an hour start to finish. We left our house at 1 PM and strolled up to Downtown Home & Garden, our local garden store where we picked up a pound of full sun grass-seed, a pound of plow-down rye and a big bag of dried blood (also known as blood meal.)

Don’t let the sound of “dried blood” scare you off — I find it absolutely necessary. For one thing it’s great source of nitrogen that’s also organic but that’s not it’s major attraction. Blood meal TERRIFIES squirrels. I love all of God’s creatures but I admit few of them make me angrier than the common red squirrel. I suppose it doesn’t help matters that someone up the street from us feeds them peanuts and English walnuts like they were fluffy-tailed songbirds. More than a little of that squirrel-chow ends up buried in our yard, often in holes dug right dangerously close to garden plants. Furthermore, our neighborhood squirrels do things that seem either mean-spirited or just dumb. For instance, every year, we’ll lose a couple Italian eggplants just when they’re getting plump enough to make a nice parmesan. The little furry critters will pull them off the stem, take maybe three bites and and discard the ruined remains. I’d mind it far less if the squirrel just ate the whole thing; I certainly don’t mind sharing. I know this all sounds petty and, in my heart, I know it is. But a good sprinkling of blood meal every couple weeks will keep the squirrels and their hijinx out of my yard.

We also wandered up to the Farmer’s Market and got a few more seedlings:

• jalapeños (four for $1.50)
• Asian eggplant (four for $1.50)
• Italian eggplant (four for $1.50)
• acorn squash (four for $2)
• yellow crookneck squash (four for $2)
• an “Early Girl” tomato for our neighbor ($2)

And we also did a little browsing in a nice used bookstore that’s also on the way. We picked up a copy of Uprisings: the Whole Grain Baker’s Book. It’s a 20 year old collection of recipes from various collective bakeries, mostly in the Midwest. One of those bakeries was located here in Ann Arbor, right down the street from the Farmer’s Market we frequent and in fact, right next door to the place where this bookstore now is. Jan and I remember stopping in the bakery on Saturday mornings, not to buy bread because we made that ourselves at home, but for a slice of this incredible vegetable pizza they’d make every week. It was piled high with things that we didn’t normally expect to see on a pizza, like broccoli, sweet potato, zuccini… and was delicious! The book reminded us of the Wildflour Bakery and our smiles grew deeper when we noticed that one of the recipes in the book was for this wonderful pizza.