Rob's Rants

The first strawberries in may garden started to ripen last week while I was away in California. My wife and daughter were luckily home to begin the picking. The growing season has been weird this year, with some very warm days in April to get things started, followed by a cool period in May, and then another heat wave in the last week of May with temps pushing 90° F. So many plants seem “confused” and the strawberries are no exception.

I have three varieties planted: Earliglow (an early bearing variety), Seascape (a day-neutral variety), and Jewel (a mid-late variety). But all three are beginning to set fruit. The Earliglows have the biggest fruit by far though.

This is only the second year for the bed, so the plants aren’t dense and the berries are sparse. I cut back all the flowers and runners last year to help the plants establish themselves. This year, I’ll start to let the runners fill in the rows and make the area more dense.

They are growing this year on top of hemlock mulch. I started them last year with red plastic mulch that made it through the winter. Since I started the beds on a hillside that was pretty much weeds the year before, I wanted the plastic to help with the first year weed control. But now I want the plants to have room to set some runners.

There seems to be mild to moderate slug damage this year – probably 1/3 of the ripe berries showed some signs of being gnawed on. Time to sprinkle the Sluggo snail killer. Otherwise, I haven’t had to spray for anything.

In one of my earlier garden posts I implored people to start their own vegetables from seeds rather than buying some mass produced seedlings raised by the thousand in some Mexican greenhouse. The benefits of selecting specific varieties are great – you can choose specifically for conditions that match your geography. Here in New England, we have a short growing season. Usually not much longer than 150 days between frosts. Choosing your own varieties lets New England gardeners select fast maturing varieties.

When a commercial greenhouse selects plant varieties they tend to emphasize things you wouldn’t – like plant strength and drought tolerance so that the plants will witstand a couple of weeks being shipped across country on a truck and won’t wilt when the Home Depot or Lowe’s people forget t water them a couple of days. Flavor isn’t always high on the list of characteristics.

If you can’t choose and start your own seeds, then the next best thing is to work with a greenhouse as local as possible. Mainly because a local business has an interest in selling things that will grow well in your local climate. Selling a bunch of plants that grow a few scraggly vegetables that taste like garbage isn’t exactly good for business.

Today I found another source here in Grafton, Massachusetts: Mapel Plants. Mapel has been around for 20 years, but is one of the best kept secrets in town. The owner, John Mapel has run a small greenhouse business along side of his other gardening businesses for years. And he stocks a variety of vegetables and herbs that are selected for flavor and for their ability to grow in this part of the state. My first clue that Mapel takes an interest in people’s success: they won’t sell warm-season vegetable plants before May 15th. Especially after the warm weather we’ve had recently, he is kind enough to remind people that we won’t really be frost safe until near the end of May. In fact, even though last weekend the temperatures hit 90° F, today it hasn’t climbed out of the 40s and we’re expecting frost tonight. I’ve seen a lot of small tomato seedlings in people’s front yard gardens that might not be there tomorrow.

Mapel has a great selection of the common vegetables and herbs, but they specialize in tomatoes, including some hard to find heirloom varieties. The list of varieties is posted here. In addition they have a variety of annual and perennial flowers and a selection of native New England wildflowers that they’ve propagated from ones growing on their property.

Mapel plants is the kind of local business I like to support. My wife and I grabbed a few things to supplement our garden this year and I’m sure we will be going back. Mapel plants greenhouses are only open from May through June, so don’t wait to check them out. Take a ride through one of the nicest parts of Grafton up Brigham Hill Road and check them out.

Almost two weeks ago I started my seeds for this year’s garden. I just updated the table in that post with the dates for the potatoes I just planted along with some sprout dates, etc.

I also thought I’d record a bit about how I started the seeds this year.

One glance at the table will show you that Johnny’s Selected Seeds is my primary source for vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. For the record, I have no affiliation with them, receive no free stuff, and don’t even get a discount. But when I find a local company that has a great inventory, excellent service, and a lot of knowledge they are willing to share, I am happy to promote them. In the sever or so years I’ve been ordering from them they have never messed up an order. And all of their seeds are top quality and I swear I get nearly a 100% germination rate on everything I plant.

Now, about how I start my seeds.

I start everything on a table in my basement under a single, double-tube fluorescent grow light, and on top of warming mats. Most of this equipment came from my parents’ house after my Dad gave up gardening a decade ago so I have no idea where much of it came from. I suspect Gardener’s Supply, but I can’t be sure. The light frame holds two flats with a little room in between. The flats are suspended over the heat mats by about one inch.

In the flats I usually use peat pots for the seeds, but this year I switched to Cow Pots, which I first saw on an episode of Dirty Jobs in the Discovery Channel. Again, these are made locally to me in Connecticut, and they promise to solve a problem I’ve always had.

Peat pots promise to degrade when planted, but they simply never do. Honestly, I’ve planted them with seedlings in them, had a mediocre garden, then pulled up the plants at the end of the season only to find a nearly intact pot still attached. In fact, I have little pieces of peat pots that I’ve torn up and thrown onto the garden and they still come up in identifiable pieces two and even three years after I’ve dropped them there. So, for the last few years I’ve started my plants either directly in flats or in peat pots which I tear off the seedlings and compost separately. Cow Pots claim to degrade much better and not bind the plant roots. This is good. I intend to put them to the test.

But my first experiences with them have been positive. I suggest you check out their web site and give them a try.

For soil, I’m not too fussy. I usually grab a couple of bags of whatever Lowe’s has on sale at the beginning of the season. I fill the pots, plant the seeds, and let the go for a week or two. I will often plant four to six seeds per small pot and then thin down to one or two after a couple of weeks. Keep them watered and everything should be fine.

My Grow Light Setup

I do keep my grow light adjusted to just a few inches above the seedlings so they don’t get too leggy, and it is on a times so it’s on for 18 hours and off for 6. Then I just keep the flats watered.

After about a month (which would be around May 10th) I move the flats outside to a stand-up cold frame/mini greenhouse that holds about 4 full flats. I’ll give them a couple of weeks there to adjust to the natural sunlight and temperatures. Then it’s into the soil.

This system has served me well for many years. After that first round of plants makes it into the soil I will often start my second round of late summer plants like watermelon and pumpkins, as well as a second round of things like lettuce and basil. These I will often start in the outdoor cold frame, but occasionally inside if we’re having a very cool summer.

Last week I got a start on this year’s vegetable garden. We had had a week of unseasonably warm weather earlier in April (a high temp of 86.6 °F on April 7^th! Seriously – our last frost date is usually April 27^th) so I and a lot of people in New England decided to get going earlier than normal. I know full well that we could still see a frost and the soil isn’t nearly warm enough to sustain tender seedlings, so I’ve started anything tender inside in my basement, but I was at least able to add two inches of compost and some fertilizer to my beds and turn over the top couple of inches of soil.

Anyway, here’s a table listing what I’ve put in the ground. I’ll be tracking the progress throughout the season.

Rain on Grass. Courtesy Adrian Benko / Wikimedia Commons

I always intended this blog to have some gardening component. In fact, the third post I ever wrote was about an asparagus bed I had just planted.

But then last Summer happened. And last summer was an absolute disaster for New England gardeners (and farmers too).  So about a third of the way through the season I gave up, and didn’t write a thing about vegetables or anything else. And it was a good thing too, because at the end of the season, my harvest amounted to exactly two dozed snap peas, one stalk of basil, and about a dozen fingerling-sized Yukon Gold potatoes. What happened? Rain. A slow and steady summer of rain that simply kept everything soaked for several weeks straight. And the end result was a round of fungal diseases (including Late Blight) and an onslaught of slugs and other pests which killed and consumed everything in sight.

My carrots? The leaves were eaten by slugs. Cucumbers? Slugs. Lettuce? Slugs. Peppers? Slugs and a fungal disease. Basil? slugs. Tomatoes? Late Blight. Pumpkins? Late Blight and slugs. What a disaster.

According to my weather station, and the rain gauge which sits right in my garden beds, we received 35.05 inches of rain between May 1, 2009 and September 30, 2009. The average temperature was only 62.8° F. And if you look at the rain graph from around June 15th through August 1, it rained almost every other day on average. In one stretch in June, I recorded eight straight days with measurable rain, followed by two dry days, followed by twelve more days with measurable rain. That’s twenty out of twenty-two days with measurable rain. It was terrible. (You can see the actual data from my weather station here: http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KMANORTH12&graphspan=custom&month=5&day=1&year=2009&monthend=9&dayend=30&yearend=2009.)

At the end of July 2009, the National Weather Service published a Public Information Statement about the unseasonably cool and wet Summer weather. Here is the summary for Worcester, MA:

WORCESTER REGIONAL AIRPORT MA OFFICIAL RECORDS SINCE 1892

AVG TEMPERATURE  DEPARTURE   REMARKS
 JUNE 2009         61.9F           -2.8F    6TH COOLEST JUNE

JULY 2009         66.8F           -3.4F    4TH COOLEST JULY
 COOLEST JULY SINCE 2000.

JUNE/JULY 2009    64.4F           -3.1F    TIED COOLEST JUNE/JULY
 COMBINATION WITH 1958.

PRECIPITATION    DEPARTURE   REMARKS
 JUNE 2009       6.51 INCHES   +2.49 INCHES NOT WITHIN TOP TEN WETTEST

JULY 2009      10.81 INCHES   +6.62 INCHES 2ND WETTEST JULY…WETTEST
 SINCE RECORD 11.41 INCHES
 IN 1938. IT ALSO RANKS AS
 THE 10TH WETTEST MONTH OF
 ANY MONTH ON RECORD.

JUNE/JULY 2009 17.32 INCHES   +9.11 INCHES 2ND WETTEST JUNE/JULY
 COMBINATION ON RECORD AND
 WETTEST SINCE THE RECORD
 OF 18.80 INCHES IN 1938.

ADDITIONAL REMARKS…
 - WORCESTER NO JUNE OR JULY MAXIMUMS 90 OR HIGHER – NONE SO FAR IN
 2009.
 - THE LAST TIME A 90 DEGREE OR HIGHER DAILY MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE DID
 NOT OCCUR IN EITHER JUNE OR JULY WAS BACK IN 2004..PRIOR TO THAT IN
 2003. NONE ALL YEAR IN 2004.
 - 40 DAILY AVERAGE TEMPERATURES BELOW NORMAL…16 DAILY AVERAGE
 TEMPERATURES ABOVE NORMAL…5 NORMAL IN JUNE AND JULY 2009.
 - 38 DAYS OF MEASURABLE PRECIPITATION 0.01 INCH OR MORE OCCURRED IN
 JUNE AND JULY 2009…DEPARTURE PLUS 17 DAYS. THIS BEATS THE RECORD
 FREQUENCY 34 DAYS IN JUNE AND JULY 1958.

Note the part about 38 days of measurable precipitation in June and July. And that pattern continued into August. That set up the perfect conditions for a fungal disease epidemic, and that came in the form of Late Blight. The Boston Globe wrote an article on the destruction of the state’s tomato crop and said,

Produce farmers in Massachusetts and elsewhere in New England – already struggling with one of the wettest, coolest summers in recent history – are now battling late blight, a fungus with tiny spores spread by the wind that rots tomato and potato plants. It is the same disease that was responsible for the 19th-century Irish potato famine.

Needless to say, this year I’m hoping for a little sun.

I’m placing my order tonight with my favorite seed supplier, Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine. On the list this year:

• Cucumbers
• Lettuce
• Bell Peppers
• Basil
• Dill
• Yukon Gold Potatoes
• Brandywine (heirloom) Tomatoes
• Plum Tomatoes
• Carrots
• Green Beans

Hopefully it will be a drier year. It looks like my asparagus and strawberries survived from last year. I should get a decent crop of strawberries at least.

The New York Times published an article on 6/11/09 that once again named poultry as the largest source of food poisoning in the US. Also listed as causes of illness: vegetables. In fact, the article had this to say:

Researchers counted leafy vegetables, fungi, root vegetables, sprouts and vegetables from vines or stalks as separate categories. Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group, noted that if all of the produce categories were combined, outbreaks associated with vegetables would have far exceeded those in poultry.

Of all the food categories mentioned in the article, one was absent: hamburger. In fact, it wasn’t even mentioned.

So, as I said in my original hamburger post, most people won’t get sick from a rare burger.

About a week ago I planted 25 asparagus crowns from my favorite seed source, Johnny’s Selected Seeds. The first few are already poking through after only 7 days, probably owing to the unseasonable warm spring weather we had last week (80 – 90 degrees for 4 days; unheard of in April).

Asparagus was a new plant for me, but I found some good resources with information: the best is probably on the Kitchen Gardener’s International site.

Isn't it cute?