When the electrical power went off I located my portable charger and plugged in my phone. The WiFi was dead yet access to the internet is crucial in an emergency.
A neighbor asked if our power was out via text message. I responded, “Yes, do you need cucumbers?” I walked a bag of freshly picked cukes over to the back door of their house where they were preparing the grill for a cook out.
The rural electric cooperative website reported more than 1,600 homes without power. The plotting of outages on their map was based on reports from customers so I phoned in our report. The operator was patient and helpful. All the information she had was on the website except that crews were working on the problem.
Our association has a Facebook page which was more active than normal. The loss of electricity didn’t have any apparent effect on social media. No new information there, just neighbors asking what up?
The duration of the outage was about 90 minutes. Just as power came on the doorbell rang. One of the well volunteers came down from the well house to report the water pressure was going down and soon they would have to turn on the back up generator. He smiled when I told him the electricity was back on. I made a post on our Facebook page pointing out the well volunteers were monitoring the situation.
In a rural subdivision we rely upon each other for information. Mobile phone technology makes our lives better. Glad I adapted back in 2012.
These summer days are gorgeous. Temperatures are rising to about 90 degrees each day with clear, calm skies. Humidity has been high so I get my outdoors work done early after sunrise and spend most of the day indoors. There is plenty of work.
I harvested the rest of the celery yesterday. Most of the harvest gets chopped into bits and frozen for use in soups and stir fries. The flavor of home grown celery is hard to believe, better than any celery grown for commercial sales. Fresh celery lasts a shorter time than store bought. That’s okay. It is worth the 120 day growing season for the flavor.
I sorted and brought the last of the 2019 onions to the kitchen. They need using up. In the meanwhile the portable greenhouse shelves are filled with this year’s crop, drying so they can be trimmed and stored.
Planted last October, on July 2 it took about an hour to harvest the crop of 50 head of garlic. It was the biggest garlic harvest we’ve had in our home garden.
The variety comes from my friends Susan and Carmen who in succession, over 25 years, have been growing and selecting seed from the annual crop to produce it. Garlic doesn’t take much more effort than proper planting, weeding, harvesting and curing. The genetics and culture of producing it are everything though.
Garlic Patch in Late April 2020
If everything goes well, I plan to keep the best third of the garlic heads to use for seeding next year’s crop. By doing so I’ll continue the process started so long ago on that nearby farm.
Photos from the 2020 garlic harvest.
Just so you know, our household doesn’t have any problems with vampires.
The garlic is ready. Yesterday I dug a head from the plot and the cloves are mature. As this image shows, each clove is pulling away from the stem and when I cut into it, the hydrated precursor to the paper had formed around each clove.
I’ll dig up the 50 plants today or over the weekend, rack them in the garage, and cure them until it’s time to remove the stalk.
It’s a nine-month process from planting cloves in October until the July harvest. Done right, the time commitment is worth it.
Garlic is a basic part of our cooking: I can’t imagine being without it. I also can’t recall the last time I had to get some other than at the farms where I work. If the quality is good this year, I’ll save a third of the heads for planting this fall.
In addition to garlic, the zucchini, cucumbers, celery, and onions are ready. Tomatoes are forming but it will be a while before they are mature and ripen. By the calendar it’s time to dig new potatoes from one of the four containers. The garden is turning to peak production whether I’m ready or not.
As it does my attention turns to writing for Blog for Iowa the next four weeks. I will cross post here the following day, although it is more political writing than I usually do. There is a lot to say about that part of society these days and I’m glad for the platform.
The forecast is hot and humid the next ten days… Iowa summer. July will be a mad rush to get everything done as we remain is semi-isolation because of the coronavirus pandemic. There should be less distractions than in the before time. I’ll miss the company.
Eventually I will snap out of this coronavirus funk.
For weather and productivity this was the best spring I remember. The garden is doing great and I have time to give it daily attention. Without work commitments each day is mine. I spend more time outside and at the state park. I’ve gotten my bicycle out and ridden for the first time in years. The weather has been drop-dead gorgeous. What is the matter with me?
I live in a broader society that is going to hell in a hand basket.
My response is stay positive, although negativity drags on my spirits. It takes a village to make a life and when we are each isolated because of the coronavirus, it’s tougher to do.
Here are some photos from early summer to cheer us up.
Tasty Jade Cucumbers
Monarch Caterpillar
Wild Section of Garlic, Milkweed, Iris and other plants.
By the last day of spring the broccoli harvest began. Of the 31 remaining plants, I harvested six and the rest are not far behind. There will be broccoli shoots as well as summer begins.
Already this is the best crop I’ve grown from a taste and abundance perspective. The seeds of the fall crop have germinated in our portable greenhouse, so there will be more.
It’s raining this morning so I might just kick back and eat broccoli all day.
Neighborhood Kale and Collard Stand, June 15, 2020.
Yesterday’s kale harvest was big. To share the wealth I displayed some at the end of the driveway and posted the free give-away on Facebook.
Some of it was claimed, the rest returned to the garden via the composter.
Ten years ago I saved or preserved everything I grew in the garden. Any more I keep only enough to get us through to next year. I’ve visited root cellars filled with very old Mason jars of a garden’s preserves. That’s not who we should be. We take what we need and if we can’t give it away, leave the rest for compost.
Leafy green vegetables are not a favorite around here. I have regular customers who use it in smoothies or bake kale chips. Others prepare it traditionally as greens. The main use in our household is in tacos, soups and stir fries. When out of lettuce we make kale salad. Once in a while I add a leaf to a smoothie. I’m not a smoothie person. I tried kale pesto once and it was okay. Pesto with more flavor, like mustard greens, is better. For a gardener the main challenge is to grow just enough to meet needs. I cut back the space for kale to 18 plants this year. It is still too much.
Combine kale with kohlrabi, collards, mustard, spinach and chard and there is an abundance of greens this year. Next year I’ll use the planting space differently to more closely match what I grow with kitchen usage.
Collard greens are easy to grow and the plants produce for a long season. Once one decides to include them in a garden there had better be a plan to use them.
The first picking, before little hungry insects arrive, is the best. Sorting leaves near the composter is a way to cull the best of the best. Yesterday I harvested two pounds of leaves and decided to make collards on cornbread for dinner.
The vegetarian recipe was a collaboration with people I know combined with a few internet searches. Traditionally the dish is made with pork so the issue of how to replace lard and the meat was a primary issue. This dish came out tasty tender.
Collard Greens
One pound stemmed collard leaves
One cup diced onions
One head finely minced garlic (5-6 cloves)
Tablespoon each butter and extra virgin olive oil.
Salt and pepper to taste
One teaspoon hot pepper flakes or fresh chilies if available (optional)
Three cups vegetable broth
One pint canned tomatoes or fresh if available
Measure one pound of stemmed collard greens and cut into half inch ribbons. Set aside.
In a Dutch oven heat one tablespoon each of extra virgin olive oil and salted butter. Once foaming subsides, add one cup diced onions and a finely minced head of garlic (5-6 cloves). Season with salt and pepper to taste and sautee until softened. Add a teaspoon of red pepper flakes (optional).
Once the onions become translucent, add the collards and three cups of prepared vegetable broth. Also drain the liquid from a pint of diced tomatoes into the pot. Bring the mixture to a boil and cover. Stir the greens every so often. Once the volume of the greens is reduced, reduce the heat to a simmer.
Cook until the leaves are tender, about two hours. Add diced tomatoes and continue cooking until they have warmed.
Spoon onto cornbread, including a generous amount of the cooking liquid.
We found the recipe to be quite satisfying and a welcome way to use produce from the garden.
Kohlrabi greens with spring onions and garlic, steaming in vegetable broth.
I’m determined to grow shallots and onions this year. I took the solar powered radio to the onion patch, took down the fence, and weeded until it was done.
The onion starts purchased from the home, farm and auto supply store are growing but not yet forming bulbs. The shallots growing from seed look like they will be something, and soon three varieties of storage onions started from plants will need thinning so there is room for them to grow.
If the garden produces storage onions it would be for the first time. I’m following the guidance of my mentor so there’s hope of success in the form of a bin full of onions stored near the furnace over winter.
A few dozen onions from 2019 remain in the bin. I am so confident of onion success I’m planning to caramelize a big batch of them and transition to reliance on what I grow. More than anything, onions are a mainstay of our kitchen and growing them a key part of making our kitchen garden more relevant.
Among the weeds I found was lamb’s quarters, which grows in abundance without doing anything but planting other things. Lamb’s quarters grows everywhere in Iowa on its own. While culinarians forage these leaves to include in gourmet preparations, in a kitchen garden a cook needs only so many greens. I ate a few of the tender top leaves and composted the rest. They are a tasty green, less bitter than some I grow intentionally.
Around the country protests continue in the wake of videos of the May 25 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported large turnout for demonstrations in nearby Cedar Rapids and Iowa City last night. No one knows how long demonstrations will continue or how long it will take government to act on them. The expectation is government will act.
In 1968 after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and ensuing riots in American cities, it took six days for President Johnson to respond by signing the Civil Rights Act. I don’t see any such action coming out of the Trump administration whose reaction has been to build a fence around the White House and seek to retain power by winning the Nov. 3 election.
While we need to eat, the progress of my onion patch may be the least of our worries. What happened to George Floyd shouldn’t happen to anyone. There is systemic racism in the United States, and we must each do something to address it. What will be the enduring legacy of the Black Lives Matter movement? With our current federal government that remains an open question.
The day began with a loud volley of lightning strikes west of the house. I don’t recall hearing so many at once. When hail pelleted the windows it felt like were in for the worst.
It didn’t last long and there was no damage to the garden or anything else I inspected after the clouds moved on.
Thus began another warm, wet day in Big Grove Township.
The morning work project was to organize the garage so both vehicles could be parked inside. Mission accomplished.
I found a cooking preparation for Fordhook chard that can be applied to other leafy green vegetables with great results:
Bring half a cup of vegetable broth to a boil in a Dutch oven. Clean the leaves from the stem of the chard. Finely slice the stems, three spring onions, three cloves of garlic, and add to the Dutch oven. Cook 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly. Add roughly chopped leaves and cover. Cook for 2-3 minutes in the steam then stir to get the other side cooked, a couple more minutes. When the chard decreases in volume mix the leaves and bits and pieces and serve. Makes two servings.
When the garden has many varieties of leafy green vegetables a basic kitchen preparation like this is important.
We are not out of the impact of video footage depicting the murder of George Floyd being released in social media. While there are no demonstrations here, the crowd of protesters in the county seat grew to about a thousand on Wednesday. The president’s amateurish way of handling the crisis will prolong more than end the violence. We can all feel the vacuum of leadership sucking.
The coronavirus rages. 106,198 people died of COVID-19 in the United States as of yesterday. No end to the pandemic is in sight, although there is hope for a vaccine. The plan after a successful vaccine is unclear. The president’s failed leadership is evident: he should set expectations and take bold action to assist with the response. He has done neither. Meanwhile, society is deteriorating into chaos with one state legislator saying yesterday to a group that opposes mandatory vaccination laws, “COVID-19 isn’t even killing anybody.”
On the state park trail near where I live most people don’t wear protective equipment. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources does not require it although they request people otherwise maintain social distancing. Joggers, hikers and bicyclists haven’t been wearing facial masks, although I spotted a family group wearing them while taking a hike.
My activities outside home are restricted to grocery shopping, drug store visits, gasoline purchases, medical visits, and a shift per week at the farm. The farm crew moved on site at the beginning of the pandemic and has been self-isolating since then. I work alone in the greenhouse when I’m there. Other than at the farm, I wear one of my homemade face masks whenever I’m with people anywhere else.
I have been participating in TestIowa, the statewide COVID-19 response application. The app suggested I was eligible to be tested so I went to a drive-up clinic at nearby Kirkwood Community College. The result was negative. After visiting clinics for a diabetes follow up I made a list of conditions I’m experiencing. There were a dozen. I’m at a loss to say when all that happened but I feel pretty good. Feeling good likely hinders the effort to address these conditions as well as I otherwise might.
As spring turns to summer I’m ready for change. It’s a time when the morning thunderstorm is both familiar and frightening — a time to persist in doing what’s right for our family and for the broader society.
At the farm the major crops for the CSA vegetable shares are in. We took time off from new seeding and begin fall crops next week. At home initial garden planting finished yesterday and a few sections have been replanted. Every available spot in our seven plots has been planted — the best space utilization since we moved here in 1993.
Time to consider some lessons learned. This post is about planning and I hope there will be others about technology, seed starting and other aspects of gardening in the near future.
With the exception of adding two apple trees near the west entry to the garden the layout remained the same as last year. Seven plots with three in specialty crops (tomatoes, onions and garlic) and four divided into rows with three-foot sections in each to separate varieties.
Since I began starting seedlings at the farm a few years ago I produce more than I need. This results in a tendency to use them, over-planting some leafy green vegetables which produced in abundance yielding restricted space availability for other crops. Family and friends can only eat so many leafy green vegetables.
I put in a lot of broccoli for freezing (33 plants), more kohlrabi than we will use, and varieties I don’t normally grow (mustard greens, two kinds of chard, okra, collards) because I got free seeds at the home, farm and auto supply store. I’m glad for the experience growing these varieties yet intend to harvest everything in one section of greens this week and replace it with more desirable tomatoes, many of which are mystery tomatoes from a wide variety of free packets from work. Even though the plan was to reduce the number of tomato plants because I canned a lot of them in 2019, I’m gravitating back to the number of plants I had because of the abundance of greens and tomato seedlings.
The main tomato patch is planned by variety (slicers and plums) although I got which is which mixed up when preparing the seedlings for transplant. There are also five plantings of cherries in another plot. Tomatoes make a great gift, so if they all produce, there will be no problem finding homes for them if the canning jars and freezer are full.
Each year I get a little smarter about deer deterrence. In addition to fencing everything with four foot chicken wire, I’ve used two tactics. I position plants deer like furthest away from the fence. This year I put the okra in the center of a plot so they can’t reach over the fence and eat the leaves. The high fence (five feet with an exposed section at the bottom) around the tomato patch also serves to keep them away from eating tender shoots and has improved production. I also use what I call gang planting. That is, I plant rows closer together so deer do not have a place to land if they jump the four foot fence. This year I spaced the rows more properly to enhance production. We’ll see how that goes. Since I began working on these issues, deer have been a minor inconvenience rather than a problem. I appreciate their help cleaning up fallen apples when there is fruit.
There are the questions of rabbits and small rodents. The main trouble with rabbits is when the new bunnies are born and they get into everything. Mature rabbits tend not to dig under the fences, partly because I don’t regularly mow the lawn or use any kind of spray or fertilizer. There is plenty for them to eat more readily available. The undisciplined litter of bunnies is unaware of these “rules.” Their reign of terror on the vegetable patch is short because predators reduce the population quickly. Thus far I live and let live with rabbits, although am skeptical that will be a long term condition of gardening. We keep a watchful eye on each other.
Planting potatoes in containers eliminated the problem of burrowing rodents eating into the tubers before I dug them. They continue to nibble at bulbous roots like beets, radishes and carrots in the rows. I’ve come to accept it as resolved through detente and just live with the damage. At such time there is not enough left for our family from their foraging my attitude could change. I rarely see the rodents although I am aware of their presence. They broke into the sealed compost container for kitchen waste.
The last planning issue is bigger, beginning with trees I situated in the garden that got away from me — the locust tree is dying, and the three oak trees planted the year our daughter graduated from high school (one for each of us) need to be thinned to one. The shade they provide has protected crops in the blistering sun of planetary warming and in times of drought. They became part of the overall garden design although that was adaptation rather then planning.
I have big ideas. One fall I’ll clear the plots early and take the locust down and cut two of the three oaks as they are planted too closely together and have grown too tall to transplant them. At the same time I may hire a landscaping firm to create a deer-proof enclosure and re-structure the plot layout to improve space utilization. That would enable me to get rid of a lot of the chicken wire. I’ll also build a shed to store garden tools so I don’t have to continuously wear a path (now visible from space) from the garden to the garage. These things have been delayed because of financial constraints. Soon we may be in a position to act on them.
Thirty seven years of gardening leads me to this formal reflection about what I’m doing. Next up will be technology which is making a big, positive impact in getting the plots planted and will hopefully improve yield.
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