Tag: organic gardening

Save the grapes.

In past times the marauders took all.

This year we vowed to defend against their incursion.

The harbingers arrived yesterday evening, as we ate the evening meal. I gazed out the open windows and into the gardens as is my habit in weather fair and foul. The grape clusters are small this year, but numerous, and their purpling flesh glowed in the lowering sunlight. I admired their bounty and watched the leaves of the vines rustle in our summery breezes.

But wait. My eyes sharpened and I peered intently. Not breezes rustling the leaves! Not breezes at all! The leaves shook and shimmied as two, no three, no! Many robins and starlings gripped the vines with tiny feet and ravaged the fruits with rapacious beaks. A fight broke out over a particularly lush patch. Wretched pillagers fighting! Over MY grapes!

“They are here!” I announced to the WideEyedSpouse, “They are in the grapes!” He slewed about in his chair and gaining his feet stormed the arbor with determined strides. The winged looters fled his arrival, perching tauntingly out of reach on roof and tree.

The Spouse returned to the kitchen. “Our loses are small yet,” he gravely reported. We thought on it. Do we cede all to the feathered freebooters? Do we protect the harvest, as we vowed? “The air rifle we saw in the market earlier today would make short work of the problem,” he decided with a dark eye. I could see him measuring distance, angle, wind – seeing in his mind’s eye the small pirates falling from the arbor. Neutralized.

“Yes,” I agreed, uncertain of the wisdom of this choice, “but they are many, and you must sleep sometime.” We loaded into the Mighty Pathfinder and set about procuring defensive matériel. We fought even tinier marauders bent on attacking our very persons, buzzing in our ears as we draped the precious harvest with fine netting. “How can this work?” we asked ourselves of the fine, light nylon.

Today the vile garden thieves circle the arbor, cheeping tactical data to one another. The netting wafts in the airy day, effective still. Wish us luck Friends, as we guard our precious grapes.

August 2, 2015
Green tomatoes all over the place.

Hoist with my own petard. That’s my tomato situation. Although to be fair and correct I wasn’t intending to harm anyone with my tomatoes. Ok, I might maybe have considered throwing the nibbled ones at squirrels and urban skunks so maybe I can use the petard thing. You know, I’m just going to.

The healthy tomato garden.

Last summer I planted five heirloom tomato plants: the garden peach and some kind of giant lumpy variety. They grew fast, blossomed well, and produced just a few incredibly aromatic, pleasantly textured tomatoes. The WideEyedSpouse and I made an event of each one because they were so few.

This summer I decided on a tomato blitz. I tortured myself with descriptions of heirloom and organic varieties in the Fedco catalog. I agonized over which seeds to buy. I settled on a cherry variety, a dense purpley Cosmonaut, and the succulent yellow Garden Peach. I nurtured those seedlings under a grow light in my dressing room for months. It was inconvenient, sure, but we all dreamed of a tomato bounty. Baskets full. Frozen. Sauced. Canned. Salsaed tomatoes.

Green cosmonauts.

Look at your calendar. It is September. My 15 lush, health tomato plants carry hundreds of turgid, deeply green tomatoes. I counted them.

If only they were yellow, purple, and red as they are meant to be. Cursed cold Buffalo summer nights. Cursed green tomatoes. Next year I am shoving a couple of store bought Big Boys in the ground and calling it good.

A sorry week’s harvest.

September 6, 2013
Thinning seedlings: I think they scream as I tear them out…

A row of baby little marvel shell peas. All unsuspecting.

I think the baby plants scream when I ruthlessly pluck them out of the ground. I know it has to be done. It is my job as a gardener to be a creative, even divine force. The choices I make about which of the little seedlings get to swell into tastiness, into full fruit and seed producing maturity, are irrevocable. My choices shape the future of plants in my garden through pollination and seed harvesting. The lucky ones spaced properly apart for effective growing survive. The particularly lovely, big, and cheery looking guys make it. A lot of not-yet, never-will-be plants will die though, and their unique random genetic mutations die with them. It pains me every time I tug on their little bodies and feel their tiny roots rending.

A pea sprout gets it.

I have already this spring killed baby radishes, peas, tomatoes, carrots, peppers, eggplants….and it isn’t just the vegetables who get it either. Zinnias, poppies, nasturtiums, wild bergamot, calendula: no one is safe. My seedling book says that I am doing no one any favors by letting them live too crowded. The book says unthinned seedlings will be stunted and weak. But thinning. It has such a Malthusian feeling.

The radishes. Screaming as they lay shriveling in the mulch.

Yesterday I thinned the peas. The tiny roots of the rejected seedlings clung desperately to the soil. I thinned the radishes. And I must admit that in an act of god-like absorption, I ate those tiny baby plants (and again, Malthusian!). I hovered over the beets, but they are too small for thinning. I can’t yet determine which are weak, which are unsightly, which are destined for the compost. The whole row of beet sprouts sighed and shivered in relief as I stood and walked away.

Hamish is concerned by all the screaming, and carefully monitors the garden as I work.

I told the spouse about my worries. That I think the little baby plants shriek and fight to live. The spouse patted the dog and looked at me over the garden fence. He reached over and snatched a tiny radish plant from its tidy row. His teeth crunched a little on the tender leaves. “They’re just plants,” he told me, and wandered off with the weed trimmer. I looked at the empty spot where that radish used to be and now was never going to be again. I really thought I heard it scream.

May 10, 2012