Slow Gardening

10 days of cold weather and way too much rain have made working the soil impossible. I had to tear up my beautifully laid out garden to put in a drainage ditch

It didn’t save some of the tomato plants I’d bought. I didn’t start my own seeds indoors this year. RIP goodly tomatoes!

But today it’s over 70 and I pulled the last of the carrots. They’ve been in the ground way too long.

I am not happy with this year’s crop of carrots. They were too small in winter and now that they reached size they have started to grow a hard core. So much for Nantes Coreless carrots packed in the Ferry Morse Planting Strips. They are rather disappointing. I’ll go back to hand planting my old way and not try to winter over the crop.

I have more tomato plants and some green and hot peppers to put in but will have to wait until the soil dries out more.

I planted Diva cucumber seeds today and dug and transplanted the Zeyphr squash plant seedlings that I started in April. The peas and sugar snap peas seemed to have survived well but I don’t know how the garlic will react to this soggy land. Most of the lettuce seed washed away and will have to be replanted.

Shoveling Mud

After 2 days of cold rain, flooding in the garden has threatened to drown the new peas, lettuce, zephyr squash and newly planted tomatoes. The garlic aren’t supposed to have poor drainage either, not ever.

I took a couple of hours this morning to dig trenches to drain the water. When I laid the rows out this way we were in a drought cycle and I was focused on holding rain in the rows by leaving the grass in between the rows. Now I have had to drain off the lake that each row became.

What a mess! As I worked the trench filled up immediately and water rushed to the back of the garden. Here the rush of water is down by half of what it was. And even now, hours later there is still water running through the trench.

Gaely GoLightly, The Hunting Dog, got into the action by deciding that little particles swirling down the trenches were something that she must capture. She dove right in to her job and worked along beside me. Westies are pack animals and we do everything together

Westies are bred to “go to ground” after varmints and love digging in the dirt. No lie. This Westie loves water, too. Bath time!

She didn’t want one and she really hates being photographed. Clean Grumpy Dog

And The Dog don’t pose neither.

She’s so helpful! If I could just teach her to run the vacuum.

Cabbage Ravisher Caught!

I’ve had very bad luck with computers and internet lately. In fact I’m totally burned out and in spite of being on the very edge, I’m still stubbornly trying to fix things. Now I’m fixing things the repair guys messed up.

OK, I’ll spare you all the major whine brewing in my soul and tell you that we have finally captured the critter that has been eating the cabbages in the garden. And she sleeps in my bed every night.

(These are pictures from last summer)

Sigh, so cute

Yes, Gaely GoLightly is the prime suspect.

How could that sweet, innocent looking dog be our cabbage ravisher? Any why???? Who knows.

Since we have prevented her access to the garden by blocking off the porch stairs,

not one cabbage has been chomped.

I sure hope May is an easier month. I could use some smooth sailing!

No Snow, Light Rain, So No Sewing

We have to do some Mud Play outside instead.

I wish I had known more about roses when I planned and planted the front landscape two years ago. Here, they looked so small compared to the plants we’d removed: Front Porch and here: Bedragged…

We heavily pruned back the Cinco de Mayo floribunda shrub roses and the Coral Drift roses. I have absolutely no idea how to properly prune but we got out the book and tried our best. It’s not pretty YET but here’s what we did:

Shrub roses, Cinco de Mayo, get very large and we found lots of weeds to pull after we pruned

They have vicious thorns but my rose pruning gloves performed perfectly

We painted all the cut branches with wood glue to prevent intruson into the plant by The Baddies. We raked out the dead leaves and fertilized, watering it in.

This is a heavily pruned and cut back Coral Drift rose. It’s description led me to believe that they were much smaller and more disease resistant than they proved to be. They spred and overtook the front planting, and did NOT respect the dwarf boxwoods planted around them. I may have to move them in the future. (Arghhh) They are so thick it is impossible to weed around them.

and we dug up a dead azalea and a volunteer holly tree to make room in the shade for the Mountain Laurels (Kalmia latifolia “Keepsake”) that were being burned by the sun in the front yard. I hope they are happy here in the cool shade

We moved the remaining shrub rose away from the front walk way so we wouldn’t have to prune it so heavily. It’s companion had developed rose rosette disease and had to be removed last year. That leaves the front planting unbalanced but right now I don’t have plans to plant more. Our butterfly bushes will have more room to spread now.

We more lightly pruned the Wing Ding roses. They are a miniature polyantha, very sweet but have no fragrance

The only blooming, pretty things now are the pansies

and the dogwood

There is so much more to do but I have to get some commercial sewing done today so I hope the weather allows me to weed and start to mulch tomorrow.

But my hands are nice and smooth thanks to Bag Balm and those really great gauntlet rose pruning gloves. I found the Onion pattern 1045 Anarok worked very well in the light rain, too. I hung it to dry before putting it away in the closet. Wool is a wonderful fabric

Let the Gardening Begin!

In case you haven’t heard: Bag Balm is the gardener’s friend. It saves hands from the roughing up they get when working the soil. Must have smooth hands for sewing and knitting you know!

I just received this pattern in the mail yesterday and had planned to sew it up this week in a wind blocking technical fabric but temperatures are going to be in the 70′s and 80′s for most of the week.

I’ll have to cut another pair of overalls instead. My new brown ones don’t show dirt very much but they will need washing soon. Here’s how they look after a day in the dirt: not too bad. You just can’t beat good quality fabric, that’s my thoughts on the matter

The overalls got a good workout yesterday. It was a wonderful day. First, Husband worked just a few hours in the early morning and when he came in we took the dog with us to the Rose Society’s Education Day at a local nursery.

The meeting was incredibly informative and just as I suspected: our area is overrun with dying roses that carry the incurable Rose Rosetta virus. Here’s some more pictures at Fine Gardening

Here’s a wild rose in our neighborhood field that has the disease but is still growing and spreading the mites that carry the virus. The diseased branch is red, while a healthy branch on the same bush is in the background

RRD Closeup

The virus was introduced originally to kill off the wild roses that can take over whole fields. That was done about 27 years ago and now it’s killing off domesticated roses in wide swathes across the country.

It is potentially devastating for the rose industry but only just now are there studies being done to see what cures might be developed. Turns out that our little local Rose Society is full of incredibly knowledgeable folks and the Society provided the seed money for the first year of such a study, YAY for them! Dr Mark Windham is conducting the investigation. I do hope a prevention or cure can be found.

I have had to remove one whole plant last year when this virus continually sent up shoots from it’s root stock that were afflicted with the disease. The plant itself looked OK but one tiny mite, blown on the winds, can carry the disease to all the other roses. Another of the same species is exhibiting this disease in just one area and I’ll keep pruning those branches and hope that it doesn’t spread to the other roses. Yesterday I learned that if I get all the roots out of the hole from where the infected rose was removed I can plant another rose in that space. That was not the thinking last year. And I learned that I could just continuously prune off the branches that show this disease and perhaps the plant will survive.

Roses are a lot of work and even the disease resistant “Knock-Out Roses” are not as resistant as they have been touted to be. And I had just redone the front landscaping in 2011 with 13 roses. Ahhhhh, what have I done?

I had hoped to prune down hard all the roses with Husband’s help but the advice from the Rose Society’s expert is to wait until the new growth is 3 to 4″ long. Mine is only just over an inch right now. So we’ll wait a week or so to prune. Pruning is not my forte but I do try to do things properly so I’ll study up on it. It’s an annual ritual: re-reading rose pruning techniques.

So now: on to the vegetable garden.

Why do I grow the garden? Simple economics: the more food I grow and put up, the less money is needed to run the house, and the more money is available to pay employee salaries over the winter time, our slow season. I’ll bet I only went to the grocery store 4 times this past winter. And so I work, hard.

In the afternoon we planted peas, spinach, and lettuce.

The peas will grow up a 4 foot wire fence and shade the spinach and lettuce behind it. They will only get direct sun in the mornings.

This row held tomatoes last year and being the closest to the creek and the wettest part of the garden grounds, proved to be a hotbed of the anthracnose fungi, Colletotrichum coccodes. WARNING: The following photos are not for the faint of heart: My homegrown Anthracnose Colletotrichum coccodes I did a really good job of letting it thrive! Duh.

Boy, that decimated the ‘maters! I had overplanted so I still got a harvest that kept me quite busy. I pulled the most infected plants and doused the ground with vinegar and water but it didn’t really seem to do much. I still had wet spots even though I didn’t allow any more filaments to form. Perhaps the wet spots were a different form of tomato malady. There are so many wilts and fungus that beset tomatoes!

This year I will plant, water only on the ground, lay down a ground cover, prune all but the growing tip and stake the tomatoes. Labor intensive but with this kind of a fungi in the ground I need to provide prophylactic measures.

I will also cover the ground where the peas, lettuce and spinach are going to grow to keep this fungi off their leaves. I’m not so sure I’ll be able to do as much canning and freezing as I did last year.

We also pulled all the collards and I cooked up a big pot this morning, some of which will go into the freezer.

using this recipe from Men’s Health. It was different than the way I usually do them but quite good. I used a packet of country ham, I just couldn’t go without the ham flavoring.

when I went out to the garden to get the shot of the now dirty overalls I found this:

Who ate one of the cabbages last night? Some animal with very sharp, tiny teeth and a big wide bite. I’ll just bet that opossum who checks in on us got hungry for a sweet cabbage dinner! I can’t blame the poor critter. And raccoons eat cabbage, too. So now, I’ve got to figure out how to protect the cabbages from hungry omnivores. One article suggests planting a critter garden. Oh no! That’s more than I can even think about. Don’t know exactly what I’ll do about this. Any suggestions?

With all this garden work I’m facing I would like to applaud this little pot that needed nothing from me all winter: The Italian flat leafed and the triple curly parsley managed to thrive all on their own

When the dog and I went out to the field to get the wild rose shots we crossed over to Cane Creek and Gaely investigated an animal trail down by the water

and did her usual trick of getting a drink of water while wading

The field was full of field pansies AKA Johnny Jump-Ups. From the leaves I’d say they are Viola Bi-Color

I do miss living up on the mountain where wild diversity was so much richer than here in this settled, cultivated valley. But I take pleasure in the wilds where ever I can.

Finished Anorak -Onion 1045-

You may note that the hem does not contain elastic as I planned to do per the pattern suggestions. It is serged, turned and top stitched. I figured I’m round enough from the back view without elastic to emphasize it

I have finally figured out Flikr and WordPress.com. I changed my WordPress password a number of weeks ago and apparently just now Flikr has figured that out. It wanted my attention!

As an admin and member of The Sewing Divas on WordPress.com I’ve seen thousands of spam attacks attached to the photos uploaded into the WordPress.com media library. I am now deleting all my Stitchery photos from that library, I don’t want that happening here in my little blog! Sorry for all the computer whining, I have spent too many years fixing computer stuff on the job to put up with it on something I do for fun!

Anorak Onion 1045 Pattern

The anorak is shaping up.  It’s not finished yet but this is the first try on.

How to line the hood has taken days to ponder since I am not buying new fabrics and only shop the stash.  And I had to think about the faux fur trim issue.

I wanted something very silky to protect my wildly curly hair from being dragged by the hood fabric but could only find solid colored charmeuse in the stash.  Then I checked the linings held in a black plastic bag and found this well aged  silk, just waiting

I had 3 different types of faux fur to use to edge the hood.   It’s pretty on the Onion version though, and is the proper thing to do on an anorak.    But decided I didn’t want to be bothered with feathery fur at the edges of my vision while I am working.

Then placing the pattern became the next thing to ponder

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.  It’s pretty but not too fashionista for the garden environment

I used this pattern because  it has a large pocket covered by a flap that will keep necessaries from falling out when you bend over.   This was the deciding factor, folks, I’ve been thinking about pocket security for a couple of years now.  I just hope the pocket is not so deep that reaching things becomes a problem

Cell phone, seed packets, notepad, pencil, tape measure and ruler, should all be safe from falling out.

I have yet to set in the sleeves (decreasing the upper chest width in the process) and inserting elastic to sleeve and bottom hems.  I don’t want pull cords danging, these are work clothes and should not attract my attention away from what I’m doing.  I have enough problems being distracted by the birds flitting around without my clothes adding complications

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I hope I finish this up today, that my time will not be spent trying to figure out computer problems!

Onion 1045 line drawing

Sewing and the Winter Veggie Garden

I see mud in my future. It’s time to turn my sewing to gardening clothes for both cool and warm weather. I’ve collected a few overall patterns but haven’t compared them yet. I save jobs like that for bedtime reading material.

Tops should be plain, long sleeved, but easy to roll or push up, tees and shirts from cotton, microfiber and technical fleece. Even bandanas will be in order to cover the back of my neck and my hair. Everything must be easy to wash and come out of the dryer with no need for ironing.

So how did the garden fare this past winter here in zone 7a?

Here it is in December 22, 2012 covered with the best floating row covers I could imagine: the fleece stash It was light weight and dried quickly when laid across the fencing. Thank You, Stash!

Here it is covered and anchored after a windy, freezing, snowy night January 31, 2013. This was the last time I actually used the fleece row covers

Here it is, March 19, 2013

I learned that unless the temperatures dropped into below 24 or wet heavy snow was in the forecast, I didn’t really need to cover it. It wintered over quite well, as did the weeds. The plants needed no babying after all.

Dutch late cabbages are leafy and the most tasty when sliced up for slaw or sauteed then rolled in philo dough and baked. The heading cabbages taste wonderful too but are better for storage. We haven’t stored any except in the ground.

The Brussels sprouts never grew much before frost and they went rather dormant over the winter but are starting to grow again with the longer days

The carrots and spinach survived covered lightly in hay but uncovered like the cole crops

Happy spinach

Even the dead looking broccoli plants gamely has sent out new shoots

Garlic, hard and soft necked varieties, survived with just a light covering of hay

Elephant garlic is putting on new height

Soon, I’ll be clearing and planting for the summer harvests. I have not tried to start my own seeds this year. I just don’t have the space without having to move trays constantly. I’m probably going to regret this decision but sometimes I am just too lazy to do it all. Know what I mean?

Back in the Landscape Again

Hi folks: I’m back. I have been resting up from a Series of Unfortunate Events that started in January and just kept on coming. But as of yesterday, I’m back in the saddle again. Out where a friend is a Friend! (love that old cowboy song)

David Lee stayed home the whole day and helped me knock out most of the renewal of the front landscape. We still have a couple of plants to dig up and move to more agreeable locations but that will come, all in good time. I’m so grateful I’ve finally gotten my buddy to work with me. My hero!

Today I went out to document the work done and found a Sparrow hatchling trying out the bird bath.

This little guy had a hard time getting out of the tub!

We reseeded the bare spots in the lawn. I had sprayed for weeds a month ago. I’ve been pulling weeds for 11 years and was delighted to find my work was paying off. This lawn was almost all weeds when we bought the place 12 years ago.

and greeted the new flowers on the Mountain Laurels

and the beautiful Cinco De Mayo roses that start out a smoky lavendar-rose and turn to a spicy soft coral as the sun matures the blossoms

I had to learn about rose diseases, all of which I tried to solve organically last year but which have returned with a vengeance this year. I had to spray, according to the rose expert, Dr Mark Windham from the U of TN. He was on hand at Chuck Johnson’s Garden & Nursery for their Rose Education seminars held yesterday.

A large, 1/2″ long, Rose Slug

Rose Slugs, the larva of the sawfly, are eating all the rose leaves with such speed I can’t pick them off nor can the natural predators such as the wasps keep these little critters in check. They defoliate the bushes in no time.

Rose Slugs climb up the rose trunks as tiny, almost invisible, hatchlings where they go to the underside of the leaves and eat them through

Black Spot fungus is particularly bad for us here in Middle Tennessee this year (also shown is more rose slug damage)

My Azaleas have it, too, and what were huge full bushes are now spindly, struggling plants so they got a drenching as well. This fungus even attacks those roses who live in hot sun all day, like this climbing rose on the power pole

Powdery Mildew

This was a surprise as the Coral Drift(tm) roses are supposed to be resistant to these fungal diseases but all my azaleas have this as well so it was time to take up the stakes.

So, sprayed, weeded, fertilized and watered we were ready to mulch. Last year we chipped up the branches of two Black River Birches that we had cut down and the resulting mulch was adequate but not a good type for soil building. This year, using the Amazing Dave’s method of mulch buckets we managed to get 4 scoops transported and laid upon the landscape beds in 2 trips and all done in one day. We even mulched the front yard trees. Things have never gone so well!

Roses in their new beds

Shovels are one of the few tools Dave says he is allergic to. The others are anything used for plumbing and most importantly, a hammer. “Hahahahahahaha”, sezs I, “but you’re so good with them! You can’t ever give up trying!!!”

Anyway, ignoring my “encouragement” he devised a method of bringing mulch to the house in the most economical manner by laying down a tarp on the trailer and filling the bed with paint buckets. We have plenty of those from our finish booth at the company. Then all the buckets are strapped down with bungy cords and off we go to visit the mulch purveyor. This year we got 2 scoops per trip and used another tarp across the top to keep any pieces from flying away.

Once we make it home we then carry all 30 buckets to the mulch needed sites in the yard and simply dump and spread. This store bought mulch is much better at soil building than the chipped up birch wood.

Our neighbors saw us doing the mulch Dave’s way and just had to borrow the buckets for their own mulch run scheduled for today! In fact they sat on their porch and starred at us for hours, willing us to hurry up so they could grab those buckets ASAP.

Oh the pressure….

I’ll be glad to see them not having to shovel into a wheelbarrow, transport and then shovel into the garden beds. So much less work!

Dave’s very fine solution to a very exhausting problem. Our Hero!

Oh, and the Hero also helped me carry out some of the boxes left from closing and sale of my Stitchery so now I can actually walk into the sewing room. The center ceiling light bulb has been burned out in there for the last 2 months! It’s changed now and I can see.

I have a dress to make. Sewing coming up!

Rocky Mtn Trip & HP 1003: The Perfect Traveling Jacket

My new uniform! Enough room for multiple layers and sweaters but style enough for just a cami underneath. Easy to slide into and out of, those huge sleeves make perfect sense. And the pockets, Oh My Gosh, made keeping keys and necessaries so easy.

Seriously, I wore this jacket last week almost constantly on a driving trip to the Rockies. That is 4 days in the truck and 3 days in Estes Park, going with the flow from hot weather to snow.

We rented a tiny cabin

with a fantastic view

and explored the local surrounds after making breakfast, packing lunches and cleaning the cabin

while David Lee showed his Hello Wood Products Montessori materials and furniture to a wonderful group of teachers attending the Montessori in the Mountains conference put on by the Montessori Education Center of the Rockies.

It’s the time of year when elk come down from the high mountain to graze the lower meadows

and they wandered everywhere through the grounds of the site of the conference, the fabulous YMCA of the Rockies.

Gaely GoLightly kept vigilant watch for smaller things she could understand, like squirrels and and chipmunks.  She’s 14 now and her eyesight is poor enough that she doesn’t wander far from my side.  She’s a much more prudent dog than she was as a wild Westie youngster when nothing could stop her

We dined out only one night and mostly ate in the cabin which had a tiny kitchen. We were able to keep costs down and avoid the rich foods served in restaurants. These sales trips can be plenty fattening if we have to eat out all the time.

Dave had originally planned to pack up quickly and return to Tennessee ASAP to get back to work but Jane, a very wise woman who owns Montessori Services convinced me to plead for a quick trip through the National Park.

OMG!

You can see the trip photos here on my Flikr set  I must apologize (even tho some will tell me not to apologize, this I already know) in advance for the darkness of the photos. It was difficult to use a point and shoot camera, even with amazing telephoto lens, to shoot across such light and dark and deep landscape. The colors were amazing, changing constantly with the snow storm and then clear mountain light in the afternoon.

I wish we had more time to spend in Rocky Mountain National Park. Maybe some day I can go back and hike and camp and do all the things that I wish to do.

I am reading A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Bird. You can read it online here or download an audio version here I highly recommend getting to know her life and work.

What a delightful time this has been and is continuing to be, thanks to the book. More access to it is available at LibriVox

I was scheduled to join Dave on this weekend’s travel to South Carolina Montessori Alliance conference in Columbia tonight and Saturday, but I reneged on my driver’s responsibilities in order to stay home and process the jalapenos and bell peppers which are bending their bushes to the ground. The Santa Ana pole bean plants are still producing as are some of the heirloom tomato plants and okra. The fall plantings of sugar snaps and sweet peas are coming in and the cole crops are being enjoyed by caterpillars that I mercilessly pick off and smash under my toe. For the first time in my gardening life I used Sevin, sprayed before our trip, to protect the plants from aphids and those caterpillars while I was gone. I really don’t know if I’ll do that again. While it helped the Brassicas to thrive (except for one row that was being munched when I got home and I can’t explain why) I am afraid I’ve done more damage than good. My wasps are gone and aphids have invaded the okra. Oh dear, I do hope I didn’t upset the balance of nature there! Ah, well the okra is over 12′ tall now and slowing down it’s production of pods in the cooling Fall temps.

One beet has been pulled by me (yay!) and a number of carrots have been pulled by what I suspect are voles tunneling under the row! That’s a funny thing to see: the carrot tops slowly disappearing into the ground. Yeah, I’m easily amused.

By Wednesday I’ll be on the road again, this time to Sarasota, Florida’s beautiful beaches and perhaps a dinner with the Hot Pattern crew if we can match up our schedules. Sadly, Patch won’t be with us this trip but it’s fun to see the pictures of him and Gaely enjoying the Beach from our Nov 8, 2009 trip.  Click this link, to see my fav shot of Patch on the Beach, looking so happy after such a long life at the end of a short chain.  Ah, that was a grand trip, too!

Isn’t it great to be able to sew and have a wardrobe that will work in all these different climates? What a luxury, I couldn’t have matched it back when I worked in a corporate environment and had to travel.

After Sarasota, Florida, we will be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. From the warm beach to the cold beach. Ahhhhhh! I will have my new jacket with me for sure

I clearly wasn’t ready for this last shot, LOL!