Garden Post: May 2011

May

I’m regularly torn between wanting to work with my hands in the soil and equally wanting to write down observations and lessons learned from the experience, or from comments and advice coming from more experienced gardeners. It’s amazing how fast those thoughts can become scrambled or lost. When I was travelling and living in the jungles of Panama, I tried to jot down at least the most basic of observations. Often it felt ridiculous to record such simple details, yet even a week later I would often be surprised to read the notes. Especially in situations where every day, almost every moment, there is new information and questions flooding in, I tend to only retain fuzzy and general outlines. It helps to have the garden journal to refer back to. By next spring or summer I will be able to rely on these records to avoid repeating some of the mistakes I’ve made so far this season.

The month of May can produce a variety of garden experience, depending on the climate of that specific year. We’ve had hot and dry years in recent times, but last year and this one have been wetter and cooler than average. The one thing that separates last year’s experience with this May, is the addition of the new greenhouse and all of the cold-frame windows. Even with leaving the ends open on the tunnels, I am able to keep plants slightly warmer at night, and drain off much of the direct rain so that the raised beds don’t become saturated.

Jonathon offered raspberry canes and gooseberry starts that he had cut from other projects. Paul K. also provided a collection of raspberry canes along with another dozen potted blueberry plants. Sometimes it feels like I already have too much happening to take on another row of plants, but almost always I give in, and I carve out another bed. I know that by this time next year I’ll be harvesting new fruits and berries from these gifts. It would be crazy to say no.
Plants surrounding the house take turns flowering. From Magnolias to wild flowers and planted bulbs. From Rhododendrons to Camellias, and dogwood trees to wild cherries. Tulips everywhere. Peach trees, pears, apples and blueberries. Even some of last year’s kale plants burst into yellow flowers by the end of the month.
I pot the calendula and nasturtium starts, and re-pot the pole beans, hot chilis and cilantro. I put a new layer of wood shavings over the established blueberries from last year. I haul rocks to build rings around the new blueberry plants and the apple whips I planted in February. By now the peas are climbing and enveloping the trellis, forming pods by the third week of May. The Beets, turnips and kohlrabi produce great greens, and their roots are developing well. I turn and re-pile the compost in the triple-bin I built last winter. It smells like life and death all mixed together. Beautiful.
Weeds are starting to explode as well. In the back garden I use scissors to trim comfrey and horsetails just above the surface. I find that if I pull the horsetail out by the root, it comes back with two or three heads. By snipping off at the surface, it often doesn’t return – at least not at that spot. I use both of these cuttings to make a fertilizer tea for the garden and greenhouse.

May has brought a few battles.
After planting out the first 25 tomato plants under cold-frame tunnels, my semi-feral (less and less each year) cat decided to shit in the garden bed. She must like the atmosphere in the covered gardens. We’ve been through this before. I close up the ends of the tunnel, and it seems to fix that problem. The second battle is this year’s bumper crop of major thistle in the areas where I cleared forest but didn’t seed with my mix of rye-grass, clover and oats last summer.
I spent the better part of a day digging them out in the area around the back orchard, along with the new population of the Dock (spelling) weed with its amazingly deep tap root. It was a day of meditation. It didn’t start that way, but it became a good life lesson.

Even with the cold and wet season, by the end of the month, most everything is in full swing. I’ve planted out, or potted in the greenhouse or on the deck, 30 varieties of tomatoes, 74 plants in total. That will certainly be incentive to build the solar dehydrator in the next month or two. The potatoes are all up and growing well. They were planted in trenches, but by the end of the month they have been filled in until the plot is fairly level. I’ll keep hilling the soil as they continue to grow, encouraging more potato production as the roots become covered deeper and deeper.

On May 22, I see that the Lapin cherry branches are covered in tiny green cherries. A few days later, all of the newer cherry trees planted last summer are also full of tiny fruit starts. I did not expect so much production after only one summer and winter in the ground. Now I really need the dehydrator. Last year Paul K and Kristi gave me a jar of their dried cherries. Each one tasted like a real gift. I want to be able to do that for myself and for others.

Near the end of the month, Tova came back for a visit. We hiked with a few friends, and we boated to a nearby island with for our annual “ship of fools” overnight camp out. Beautiful.
I’ve started to hike in the evenings, three or four times each week, looking for a black bear to fill my empty freezer. I have all sorts of thoughts about that prospect. The spring bear hunting season ends on June 15th, so there isn’t much time left. Otherwise I will be left to buy meat, from local farmers (good quality, higher price) or from the commercial grocers (lower price, unthinkable additives). This month, while working, I listened to Jonathon Safron-For’s book, “Eating Animals”. And while it never really told me that much that I didn’t already know, or suspect, it has being the final push to stop sitting on the fence. If I am going to eat meat, I can’t accept or support the disaster that is served up through industrial-style meat production and slaughter houses.
I have a lot more thoughts concerning meat eating vs. vegetarianism or vegan diet. I have a lot to say about animal rights and hunting. All sorts of questions and gray zones to consider. But there is no way of defending what has become the accepted form of producing meat for mass consumption. For’s book helped me realize that personal level of hypocrisy. Thank you for the lesson.