From Cole to Cold

OK this is not a sight we often see in our "neck of the woods". One December day the cole crops are looking good.

A few days later .... "cold" crops..

It's "Cole" Weather

Yep. It's broccoli and cauliflower time in our fall garden. Growing these are a real treat - for a number of reasons. First, these vegetables are on the top of my favorites list. In part because broccoli and cauliflower can be prepared many different ways for the table. Secondly, the chores related to growing these vegetables in the cooler fall weather are much more pleasurable than in the hot days of late spring and summer. Third, keeping the insect pests and weeds under control are much less difficult.

Getting the ground prepared in September seems to be more of a challenge each year. I'm not sure if the September temperatures are warmer in years past, or if my energy level is a lot lower than in years past. Either way, a fair amount of work is needed to get the job done. September and October are done for this year and now we are into November. A major concern, now that the temperatures have cooled, will be in keeping the caterpillars from devouring the plants. It doesn't take long for things to get out of control. A quick application of the organic pesticide BT works great in keeping the catepillars under raps.

This year over 150 plants were set out from seeds planted in early August. The first plantings are just now beginning to produce, missing a Thanksgiving day harvest by only a day or so. The plants will continue to producing in December and will reach peak harvest around Christmas. The latest plantings which were set out in early October will hopefully produce their after Christmas and into early January... assuming or course that all goes according to plan.

Now that the much cooler temps are here to stay the maintenance chores will be a lot more enjoyable. It's now time to break out the recipes from years past and to surf the net for new ones. Now where did I put that that broccoli pasta recipe? Or maybe I should try something else, or maybe I'll try something completely new. OK, next time...from the looks of it there will be pleanty of broccoli and cauliflower for "experimentation".

Oh My Gosh, Vegetables Everywhere!

Now I'm it trouble! This happens every June when my 2000-plus square foot garden comes into production.

Trouble you say, why trouble? Well, the problem is twofold. Problem #1 is just having vegetables scattered everywhere - in refrigerators, and on counter-tops, and sometimes in ice chests. The second problem is having to deal with freezing or canning the vegetables. This chore is easily not a one-man task; I need help. And my wife Brenda is not always enthusiastic about the "mess" and about the helping part. Some of her comments are: "This is your hobby, not mine." "Why do you grow so much?" "Who is going to eat all of this stuff?" "It wasn't my idea to grow corn in the first place." "Do we NEED to grow all of those tomatoes, corn, eggplant, etc."? "Why do we make so many jars of pickles; you don't even eat the pickles?" "Our house looks like a produce market." ...etc..

Needless to say many of her points are entirely valid. But the answer to her concern about why I grow so much is simply that it DOES get eaten, perhaps not by she or I, but by our grown-up children and their families, and also our friends. Much are consumed while fresh and some are canned or frozen. During the months that follow harvest, we seem to have a fairly steady flow of frozen vegetables going from the freezer to our kids, mostly Mitsie, but sometimes April and Mark. Now our grandchildren 4-year-old Benjamin and 2-year-old Carter are also delving into the frozen produce. Every one seems to have a favorite - Mitsie loves sweet corn, Benjamin loves broccoli and Carter loves green beans. Brenda likes the frozen strawberries in strawberry daiquiris. (So I try to keep the frozen strawberry daiquiri container in the freezer from going empty.)

So for now we have quite a "mess" - if you call it that. If we can only tolerate and get beyond the next 4 weeks then vegetable production will subside (and so too will my "being in trouble"). But for now we seem to be "drowning" in cucumbers, eggplant, tomatoes, and sweet corn. (The photo at the left is just the morning harvest.) The squash, peppers, blueberries, and asparagus beans are coming in at a "controlled rate". All will be put to a good use. Much will be given away, much will be eaten, and much will frozen or canned. Time will be needed for the latter.

I saw a recent post on a gardening forum stating the opinion that it costs MORE to grow vegetables than it does to get them from the produce market. I guess this might be the case if you are planting just one plant, but once the economies of scale take over then the economics are overwhelmingly in favor of planting vs purchasing. Be aware that economics aren't the whole story. Surely there is fun, exercise, gratification for a successful harvest, the reward of fresh vegetables, the good feelings from sharing, etc. etc. But also what comes with this is an element of disorder and work associated with a bountiful crop and thereby resulting in ample opportunity to "get into trouble."

Spring Vegetable Garden 2007

Spring and soon-to-be Summer are here once again to play out another "vegetable gardening" chorus. And so the process began in early March with the first clearing of the winter garden and churning of the soil. This was the followed by a second April clearing and tilling. An early May harvest of the fall planted garlic and onions making space for the last of the Spring garden rows. So just this last mid-May weekend the final Spring/Summer garden 2007 tilling was done.

Each gardening task comes with an element of gratification. Needless to say, these tasks are more enjoyable in the mild and pleasant days of early spring than they are in the later spring when both humidity and temperature increases. The tasks are many and include - clearing remnants of previous crops, elimination of excess weeds, preparation of trellises and vegetable cages, seed plantings, mulching, etc. The eventual goal will be (hopefully) a bountiful harvest from the garden.

So after expending several weekends of prep work, the bulk of the spring garden has been planted. It's now time to focus on the second phase, the routine maintenance and the chores which come with the harvest... But, more about that in subsequent updates...

Double Trouble

This last weekend marked the completion Fall 2006 garden tilling. It was one of those typical November days where the temperature barely makes it to 70 degrees and a mild breeze was blowing. A perfect day for gardening! The soil was a bit damp from heavy rains about a week or so before which made the tilled soil a bit clumpy, but not to the point of being too hard to work. Nonetheless, it was a now or possibly never situation as more rains were forecasted for the upcoming week. The routine was to first take down the electric fence to allow access by the garden tiller. Then after digging up the last of the summer peanut crop, removing invading roots from a nearby tree, digging up miscellaneous weeds, nut grass and a bit of bermuda grass, tilling, spreading a bit of fertilizer, hand working the tilled soil into rows with shovels and rakes, and finally re-installation of the electric fence, the job was done. These activities took a few hours of clock time to complete. Seems like each year the process takes a bit longer than the year before. I seem to be finding each year more truth to the popular Toby Keith song "I ain't as good as I once was"..

But now it's all done. The garden tiller has been saved with the fuel additive to keep gum from forming in the carburetor. During the upcoming weeks the remaining fall vegetable seeds and plants will be set out thereby taking advantage of all available garden space. The main item left for planting will be the onion sets which will be planted in December. The Texas Supersweet 1015 onions planted last year were wonderful.

About that electric fence.. one of the best garden investments I've ever made. It is the only item that I've found to be effective in stopping the garden raids by raccoons, rabbits, squirrels and opossums. Before installing the electric fence I was encountering numerous critter problems each year. These would include raccoons eating dozens of sweet corn ears per night, rabbits eating small vegetable plants down to a nub, opossums eating strawberries, raccoons eating the cantaloupe, squirrels eating the tomatoes, and most recently armadillos digging up plants while looking for grubs in the garden soil. With the electric fence in operation my animal pest problems are fewer and far between. Squirrels sometimes slip under the fence, and every now and then the fence becomes ineffective (shorted out) when weeds touch the wire.

Although the garden problems are mostly solved, I still have to deal with the pest problems outside of the garden, most of which are from raccoons. These animals have become far more numerous over the last year or so. Perhaps this is due to the developing landscape in our area. Since there is less area to forage for food, the animals need to depend on mankind to help provide them with something to eat. In late September after seeing several raccoons on the carport in the evening, I decided that I needed to break out the trap and relocate these pests. The raccoons eat the leftover cat food so it's easy to tell when they visit in the evening. There is absolutely nothing left in the bowl.

So starting in late September I began to catch and relocate these nuisance animals. At the end of October after about 4 weeks time I had trapped and relocated 4 raccoons. One would think problem solved, right? Wrong. I again noticed the cat food bowl was showing "clean as a whistle" each morning. So last Sunday night I set the trap once again. After waking early Monday morning I could hear from inside of the house the tell-tail cage-rattling sounds of another trapped raccoon. As usual I put the trap out in the middle of the patio and duck taped the safety latch for transporting to the relocation site. About an hour later I made my routine check of the garden before heading out to work. As I walked towards the trap to put it in the back of my truck I couldn't believe my eyes, for there was not one but TWO raccoons in the trap. Who'd of thought it. Never before had I caught two of anything in the trap at the same time. So my current count is 6 raccoons since September.. and wondering how many more to go... It turns out there is at least one more out there as the cat food bowl was once again clean as could be this morning.

The rains came yesterday as forecasted and so the garden is now happy, but hopefully not too happy. It has been said that too much of a good thing is bad for you. Well, this is certainly true for rain on my garden. The rainfall the week before was about 3 to 4 inches. This amount literally drowned the broccoli and cauliflower. I replaced most of the sick plants (note one remaining droopy plant in the foreground of the adjacent picture). But time will tell if the replacements will have time to produce this winter. Gardening, like many other things in life is not an exact science. But then again that's usually what makes gardening (and life too for that matter) so "interesting" at times... So we'll see.

Spring Out & Fall In

I've always preferred a fall/winter garden over a spring/summer one. The reasons are simple. First off, gardening is a much more pleasant activity in south Louisiana during the cool fall and winter months than during the warm, hot, and humid spring and summer. Also, there are fewer insect pests and fewer weeds to deal with during the cooler weather making maintenance much less. And last but not least, my favorite vegetables are broccoli and cauliflower which seem to do best in fall Louisiana weather.

The front-end work effort in getting the Fall garden ready is the toughest part of fall gardening. Clearing out the older spring and summer vegetables and tilling up the soil takes a fair amount of time, particularly for a 2000 plus square foot garden. The weather in August and early September can be quite hot and humid for the initial garden prep. It definitely helps when the there is a temperature and/or humidity drop on an early cool front. However, this is not something that happens too often in August and early September. Plus, when a pleasant period does occur, it's usually not on the "free-time" days available for gardening activity - some of us still have "regular" jobs and need to work. Secondly, it doesn't help much when the temperature and humidity cooperate following a heavy rain, as this makes the ground too wet for clearing and re-tilling. Nonetheless, if one wants to partake of the fall veges then one needs to do the up-front work required regardless of the obstacles.
The first clearout and re-tilling has now been completed. About half of the garden space is now available for the fall broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and cabbage. The plants grown from seed planted in August and early September are slowly ready to set out in the garden. By early October about 180 of these plants will have been transplanted into the fall garden. Many folks have indicated that this number is more than necessary. But we do have lot of family and friends who enjoy the harvest. I was just reminded by my daughter Mitsie that my 3 year old grandson Benjamin LOVES broccoli. Hopefully his younger brother Carter will come to enjoy this fall vegetable. (So I surely need to compensate for this - So what do you think, Mitsie? Is an extra 25 plants OK for the boys?) I have also learned over the years that overplanting is a safeguard to compensate for when mother nature is not quite as good to us as she has been in years past.
The 2nd garden clearout was completed early October. This area will be allocated to strawberries, radishes, lettuce and spinach, which are planted in October. Strawberries planted in the fall are harvested the following spring. So I guess strawberries would be classified as a fall-planted spring-crop. The final clearout will coincide digging of the last 2 rows of peanuts during October. Love those boiled peanuts! This remaining area will be dedicated to onions.

The third week of September had started a trend where low temperatures dipped into the upper 50's thereby signaling the start of serious fall gardening weather. Soon after the temperature highs were back into upper 80's. But one would think that the high humidity and 90 degree plus days were on the way out thereby making the second October garden clearout more tolerable than the first. It didn't happen. With high humidity and temperatures in the 90's, the second clearout was almost as brutal as the first.

But the garden "spring-out" and "fall-in" is essentially complete. All but about 20 or so broccoli and cauliflower plants have been set out. It's time to sit back, do a bit of maintenance, and just watch 'em grow. .. and they really NEED to grow this year. For I surely don't want to dissapoint my grandsons.

Growing Sweet Corn

There's nothing like the taste of fresh picked sweet corn. It's something our family looks forward to but also dreads every year. The dreaded part is the work effort involved in processing and freezing the corn for the upcoming year. Is it worth it? Some will tell you most definitely yes. Others might tell you that they are not so sure. They might suggest it's worth it to a point -- meaning, if we just didn't have to grow so much each year.
So why grow so much? The answer would because you just never know from one year to the next what mother nature is going to throw at you. So by planting a little extra you can compensate should any hardships be encountered. This year mother nature wasn't too bad to us. Only a few small obstacles were thrown our way. An early season 5 inch frog-strangling rain washed away major sections of corn but transplanting put everything back into some resemblance of order. A late season micro thunderstorm dumped a small amount of rain but in the process it blew down a good portion of the corn crop just a few days after the silks started to form. Luckily it wasn't too bad and staking and tying the corn back up was easily accomplished. The abnormally dry spring was able to be offset by a good bit of tap water from the garden hose albeit at the expense of a high water bill. The raccoons were kept at bay by the electric fence. And, caterpillar and stink bug damage was kept at a minimum. In short, this year looks to be shaping up as a pretty good year.
Choosing the right variety of sweet corn to plant is very important. Backyard corn growers know there are a seemingly endless number of choices to select from. There is no one right choice. It seems that everyone has their particular favorite. Our family favorite over the years has been a variety called "How Sweet it Is". It's a white corn of the super sweet variety. The one with the sh2 gene. I first began planting this variety in the early 1980's. I had always purchased my seed at the local garden center. Then one year the garden center decided not to carry the seed anymore. Why so? Their reasoning was that the seed did not germinate very well and as a result many folks returned to the store demanding a refund. So after several years of having this problem, the local garden center decided that it just wasn't business wise to carry the seed anymore.
One of the nice attributes of "How Sweet it Is" corn is that ears can be frozen directly (without blanching) and they will still maintain its sweet flavor. Also, because of its sweet crisp flavor, it makes the best macque choux or smothered corn. (We usually omit the tomatoes and bell peppers so as to not cover up the flavor of the corn.) Those in our family would tell you when it hits the table this variety it's second to none. But alas, so it was. No one else in town carried the seed. Ordering was a possibility but for whatever reason -- maybe poor germination, maybe experimentation, whatever, I decided to try different "experimental" varieties.
Each year after sampling the new "test" variety, the comments from my eldest daughter Mitsie always came back the same -- Dad, when are you going to plant that white corn again? This went for 4 years of "testing". Then during the Christmas 2004 holiday period I happened to be rummaging through my freezer and found a 4-year-old package of the frozen white corn stashed in the back of the freezer. I asked Mitsie, who was present at the time, if she wanted the corn. I told her if after cooking it didn't measure up then she could just throw it away. So she said sure -- I'll give it a try. After about 3 weeks I received a phone call from Mitsie. She asked "Dad, do you remember that white corn you gave me?"... Well, last night I cooked it and Jonathan (her husband) wanted to know what I did different from usual. She told him I did nothing different. He then said, well this is the best corn we've had in quite a while. So as you might have guessed... for the next 2005 spring garden (last year) I gave up on experimenting and ordered the "How Sweet It Is" sweet corn.
The 2005 season corn harvest was not all that great. It turned out to be a good thing we had planted a "little extra". The major problems in 2005 were extremely poor seed germination and terrible rainstorms that knocked over the corn right at the optimal time for pollenation. Ears were poorly filled out and we also had a fair amount of stink bug, squash bug and caterpillar damage. However, 2005 did have one success point. I found out by experimentation that this variety of corn needs a week of nighttime lows in the 50's or higher to have adequate germination. That bit of information was a major help for the 2006 planting. By following the nighttime low forecast, the germination for the same leftover seed from 2005 was much improved in 2006.
So now that the 2006 corn has started to come in we can both enjoy it and dread it. And who knows what will happen in 2007. Some folks may be happy, and some may be a little sad. You just never know.