Goodbye, garden
Sunday June 29, 2008
Categories: Gardening
It was sad to get home and see that much of our garden is lost to the heat, which hit triple digits for several days while we were gone. The cucumbers, on closer inspection, aren't going to make it. The...
Filed Under: gardening
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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I've been using self watering earth boxes on the victory patio. The tomato is looking great, the soybeans are mostly dead, the shiso is going into dinner tonight, the eggplants may rally, and the peppermint, rosemary, and lemon balm look exactly the same size as the did when they were planted. So much for subsistence gardening.
One of the problems I am having is that the plants seem to "steam". There is enough moisture just too much heat.
At least in TX we can get a second go in the fall.
Your right on the money about making out mistakes now.
Welcome back! Good to hear that at least the basil and jalapenos are still standing.
If you water intensively for the next few days, you might be surprised what does survive.
Also, since you have *long* growing seasons, you might be able to replant at least some things, if you can find the plants for sale anywhere. And there are always the cool-weather crops (peas), as well as the possibility of at least one crop of bush beans, spinach, which can be grown from seeds. Also, I've found that if you take relatively old cloves of garlic and plant them when they're starting to get that little green spot on the tip, they'll grow as well.
So yeah, you had a setback for going out of town, but it's not the end of the world. The aim isn't to be 100% self-sufficient with the gardening - most people can't do that. But you will be able to get something out of it, it sounds like.
Setting up a timer sounds like a good idea. I was also reading an Oklahoma gardening website; apparently they really can't easily produce vegetables without props - sun shades, wind screens, etc. Some shades for when you are gone might be worth looking into as well.
Am hoping it turns out well for you.
Welcome back. i dont have much hot weather growing experience but i would probably try drip hoses on a timer. Check with the locals. We lost a bunch of our garden when the deer got through. We are already eating from it though. New potatoes and lettuce and herbs. After all these years I finally coddled the eggs (fresh from a neighbor) in our Caesar salad dressing. Seemed to make a nice difference.
Our local orchard had a bumper cherry crop. We picked cherries there yesterday and today I have baked pies for us, family and friends. Cherry pie is one of God's special gifts IMO. A great family time too. Everyone sits and does the pits together while chatting. This year we have borrowed a friend's dehydrator and we are drying some also. Cheer yourself up by finding some local pick it yourself place and take the kids. We are picking blueberries later this week for making blueberry scones, Yum.
Steve
We had some similar experiences with past attempts here; actually, I'm amazed your cukes ever had a fighting chance, as the ones we planted withered in their infancy.
But okra, now. You can grow okra in Texas. You can grow more okra than a transplanted Yankee has a clue what to do with.
Some people water for each other during vacations. I guess you missed that one, but it's a simple concept. Don't you know anyone else who gardens?
Three letters: CSA
Lotsa mulch and inverted 2liter or 1 liter bottles can help you get through a few days with no care. But mostly mulch and lotsa organic matter amended into the soil.
MDAVID-
There's a lot of solar composter plans for human waste to be found on the net. Gets it hot enough to kill the pathogens, renders it inert, but you still have the base nutrients and organic matter to work into the soil. Probably more of an option for the more rural with bad clays, your neighbors might complain in higher population densities. And don't let any Public Health employees find out about it.
Rod, as others pointed out you still have another growing season this year, plus if you play around with row covers and cold frames, you can extend that into winter. You'll be in lots of fresh salad!
I feel bad for Julie, I had a week away from the garden due to work last year, came back to find the deer had wiped out everything except a few grape tomato plants. But you still have local farmers markets, buy fresh and can some tomatoes.
Yup, we are taking the same attitude: make the mistakes now.
I was on a homesteading forum recently where an old-timer suggested that you add one or two new crops a year so as not to overwhelm yourself, rather than planting like 15 different things and maybe not being able to identify what you did wrong. Sounds like good advice.
Our garden is doing great. We ate our first lettuce last night for dinner. Our two blueberry bushes are bulging with ripe berries (wish we'd planted more). Our apple trees however seem to be getting attacked by some kind of fungus. The leaves have brown spots all over them. Still, it's thrilling to grow one's own food.
Mission this summer: to perfect the home-baked loaf of bread. When my husband's favorite Italian-style bread hit $3.99 a loaf I knew it was time to consider alternative options.
We've been experimenting with an herb garden in the back of our new home, which I'm hoping to expand into a vegetable patch in the coming year.
Our biggest insight - you just can't kill basil, even with a Louisiana summer!
And that's prompted us to create some wonderful pestos, as well as a few Thai recipes with the Asian (or "holy") variety.
Very nice!
Can I just note that for less than $50 at Lowe's or pretty much any hardware store, next time around you can install a do-it-yourself low-cost drip irrigation system with a timer on your faucet and leave for vacation AND come back to a healthy garden. I do it every year, and it saves a lot of money on the water bill.
This is a reminder of how grueling and ceaseless farm work is. Those guys can never take a day off. I grew up in small New England town. We were surrounded by dairy farmers. Every day those cows had to be fed and milked and the stalls cleaned. Tough work.
BTW, Erin did a great job blogging for you in your absence.
Oh, and welcome back, Rod!
Your cucumbers were probably going to die eventually, anyway. They have been grown for so long,historically, that they are prone to many diseases. They usually give out from exhaustion, and over producing after a while. Ah, basil, tough plant that is. Try to ask around for old timers opinions on what cultivers do best. Some times they are local varieties that are not available in garden centers. They are often the best adapted to local conditions. Good luck Rod, you'll get better at this, if you keep trying to learn. I promise.
Thanks everybody for your comments and good wishes. Our neighbor (who grows tomatoes) agreed to water for us, and I'm sure she did, but it was complicated to get into our backyard, with the lock and all, and I wouldn't be surprised if she watered only once a day ... which, given the heat we had last week, just doesn't cut it. On the other hand, that might not have mattered much; Julie was showing me not long ago something in a gardening book about how tomato blossoms will wilt if the nighttime temps stay above 79. Which happened last week, I think. It's quite possible that Julie and I simply planted the tomatoes and cucumbers too late. I've been enjoying absolutely delicious East Texas tomatoes from the farmer's market.
I hadn't thought about the long Texas growing season. We don't have our first frost till mid-to-late November. We'll probably be able to bring in a nice fall crop of something or other.
B.D. Rucker, run, don't walk, to Mark Bittman's No-Knead Bread recipe. We've talked about it at length before on this blog. It truly is miraculous -- stunning, bakery-quality bread, and super-easy. The greatest investment is the time necessary for it to rise.
And around here people were losing their gardens to too much water, particularly the ones with the basement variety that found their cash crops drowning.
Rod,
You water twice a day? I water every other day and mine's doing fine here. (We're just north of Dallas) Just wondering what you are doing differently. I have lots of mulch in raised beds. Maybe I should be watering more...
The 'maters should make it. Give them plenty of water.
This is a sign from God that he loathes gardening.
great blog, first comment that i am leaving. thanks for gathering all the info that i am interested in into one thought provoking stream
Try rabbits :) Here in wisconsin we are lacking in heat, which puts plant growth 15 days behind schedule--so I am unable to share your misery (not including the non-stop rainy June). Our nemesis is the hoards of rabbits that populate the woods behind out garden, and seem to know how to find every hole in the fence. i now an learning to practice dominion, with justice from the barrel of a pellet gun. my wife, Jenny, knows what growth this has been, having been the only kid to grow up in wisconsin and not hunt (i cant even harvest the trout i catch.)
Other day we were front porch sitting when a hugh cottontail (mother to the masses I am sure) hopped from our neighbors yard across our front and into the side. what opportunity! (like quail for heaven) I grabbed the rifle-esque pellet launcher (an up grade from the red rider that was completely ineffective) and in the heat of blood sport shot him it twice. Only then did I realize a couple out walking had watched the whole thing in horror from over the fence. atleast the kids are cheering me on, and the strawberries are recovering. Would such a scenario ever unravel in Houston?
Two tips--mulch, which will hold in moisture and temper the heat (make your own with a composter or pick it up free from the city clippings). Second is to water deeply (ie 5 min per plant) twice a week and no more to encourage deep roots (sounds like a spiritual lesson:)
Blessings on you and your family!
DeeAnn, I think part of the problem could be that we planted our main bed in a part of the backyard where it gets too much sun. Maybe. We're going to have to think hard about this.
Rod story, one word: Hasenpfeffer!
Rod: ulie was showing me not long ago something in a gardening book about how tomato blossoms will wilt if the nighttime temps stay above 79.
Yes, tomatoes can be picky. Below 65 at night they sit there; over 80 or so they sit there. On the half-price plant table I found a tomato plant variety called "Heat Wave," which supposedly sets fruit at even 100 degrees F. There was just one ... kind of peaked looking, but it's perked up a bit in the yard. I'll see how it does. That might be something to look into for next year.
Hi Rod,
I don't know how big your garden is or how practical it is, but last summer I was away for about five days and covered tomatos, cucumbers & squash with old sheets. Beans & onions are a little tougher and did fine. The leaves were very slightly yellowed from lack of sunlight but it beats them getting scorched by the sun, and they bounced back fully over the next couple of weeks anyway. I second the notion above of bi-weekly, very intensive watering.
"Which I guess is another way of saying that if we're all going to have to depend more on growing our own food to feed ourselves, we're going to have to make our mistakes now, while we can afford to."
Of course, if we're all going to have to grow our own food, that is a pretty good indication that you won't be taking any "vacations" at all, at least none so far away as to prevent you from tending the land that feeds you.
Cheers,
Adam
I fantasize about putting up a solar screen (like really thick window-screen material) over a garden plot, or even over my whole house, to make this diabolical Texas climate tolerable for humans and our poor plants. Actually, I've seen this sort of thing in Arizona and it works pretty well.
Definitely get a watering system. The easiest is just a soaker hose snakes through your garden, or if you want to go to a lot more work set up the drip system.
For those of us with a long season it's really not too late to plant again, you don't even have to wait for putting in fall vegetables. Many experienced gardeners purposely replant some in midsummer to keep the season going.
Too many people waste time in the spring hoping their summer veggies will grow, but they just sit there for weeks on end, hoping for summer weather. With a little more experience you'll be able to make the most of the seasons.
Rod, we used to grow veggies in our yard in South Carolina; tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and zucchini all can tolerate the hot summers. Definitely put in a soaker hose, and MULCH MULCH MULCH!
We used to do three crops in our garden in the South: onions, radishes, peas, cabbage and lettuce in the early spring; tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, and a variety of peppers in the summer, and then cool-season crops again in the fall/winterr. We typically only had a few frosts during the winter so we could grow things year round. The big challenge was keeping the plants happy during the summer heat and through the onslaught of bugs.
Now we are back in New England and still working out how to maximize the short growing season (we usually can't put in the summer crops *safely* til Memorial Day). A coldframe will probably be the big improvement for next year...
Parts of our garden have been plundered by deer and a very fat groundhog, but the rest is doing well. I'm experimenting with various types of fencing to keep the critters away. But weather isn't as much of a factor in Tennessee as in Texas.
We're missing the most obvious solution here...why not get a friend or neighbor to water the garden for you?
"DeeAnn, I think part of the problem could be that we planted our main bed in a part of the backyard where it gets too much sun. Maybe. We're going to have to think hard about this."
Plant okra and corn. Both love the heat and sun and will give some shade to everything else.
The native Caddoan peoples of the Red River drainage planted corn, squashes, peppers, and beans. Maybe that's the way to go. Growing the herbs in pots you keep in a more shady place- and can move indoors- might be worth a try.
Central European plant cultivars just don't do well in places like Texas. You're usually one to see analogy and metaphor in such things, Rod.... :)
Rod,
Comments on a long time gardener from the southeast end of Texas. Swiss chard has a longer growing season than a lot of greens but it struggles through the heat. Plant more seeds in September. Tomatoes won't set fruit now... too hot. Our cukes are about to give it up for the summer, too and the green beans are done bearing. I don't like okra so we don't plant that but I wish i would have planted some eggplant this year, it's a great meat substitute. I really use my herb garden during the summer and gladly pay to support my local farmer's market.
Also, I think when looking at saving money on food we really need to look at what kind of convenience products we are buying, like canned beans vs. dried beans. Basically staying away from prepackaged stuff as much as possible.
Welcome home!
Thanks for the no-knead bread link. Will definitely check it out.
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