Springtime in the Garden

The peas are growing.

The garlic is thriving.

And the asparagus is just starting to peek.

The compost is ready for moving into the garden.

And the garden is not ready just yet for the compost. I have a lot of work left to do this weekend to prepare the beds, but progress is being made!

Germinating Seeds Indoors - Fun Tip

Over the years I've tried a number of different solutions to getting my seed trays to the correct temperature for germination. The most expensive way is to keep the house heated all night. I've also tried using a fish tank heater in a pool of water under the tray. Which worked well, but is messy and potentially a huge mess. I've even bough a heating pad for putting under the seed tray, which also works but is expensive to obtain.

The easiest and cheapest solution I've found can be used by anyone with a standard hot water heater. Simply place the seed tray on the top of the hot water heater. Our furnace and hot water tank are in the same room and it stays toasty all night long without any additional cost. I used that approach this year and had my tomatoes all germinated in 4 days.

I should note that this will not work for seeds that require light to germinated, such as lettuce seeds. I don't have a full list of seeds that need light, but I do know that most don't.

While we were gone..

We've been busy with our new baby, and other life goals since we last posted on the blog. Now that spring has arrived, however, it feels like the time has come to breath some life back into the blog. Here's a shameless plug for Franklin Matters, which did a report on a pea planting demonstration I gave at the Franklin Community Garden.

http://www.franklinmatters.org/2012/03/community-garden-grey-day-for-green.html

Our agriculture is a mess

" A sponsor of Alabama's tough new immigration law told desperate tomato farmers Monday that he won't change the law, even though they told him that their crops are rotting in the field and they are at risk of losing their farms."  Yikes.

I should have mentioned. . .

A reporter at a local news source got word of Unicorn 1's discovery and pollination, and gave me a call right before I took off on vacation. Heh. . . my first time being interviewed, and I happened to be about to set foot in the shower. I was answering questions while wearing a towel, and trying and failing not to laugh as my naked son climbed in and out of suitcases.

Here's the article.

In other news, I stopped by the American chestnut orchard at Idylbrook, and most of the trees have been marked with blue ribbon. Those, I suppose, are the losers in the breeding competition. I need to get out there and photograph them before they are cut down.

Success!

Lookee!




Unicorn One has been pollinated! See the paper bags? There are 11 of them that I could see.




The nuts under these bags will be collected when ripe, and used to grow the next generation of Restoration Chestnuts. There are somewhere between 11 and 44 pollinated female blossoms in there, each blossom could make up to three nuts. So that's as many as 132 future trees here!



These nuts are developing higher on the tree. I don't know if these nuts are viable for growing new trees.

This is the American chestnut tree growing next to the Upper Charles Trail in Milford, MA. It turns out the Friends of the Trail group had already spotted the tree, but I guess they didn't know to pass the info along to the American Chestnut Foundation.




I feel like I have done something deeply good for humanity and the environment. :) Someday the wilderness will be full of these trees again, and I have now played a small part.

My Husband is Not a Tool

This is my husband Chris, standing in the community garden that he built. The garden was a team effort, but his involvement was pivotal. And now there it is, and there he is. Awesome, both of them.

He's hot, isn't he?

Now, let me explain the division of labor in our yard. Chris does the veggies. Lots of veggies. I do most everything else: the arid lawn, the swamp, the wooded paths, the flower beds, the oak tree that needed felling, the toddler play area, the meadows. Even the pile of rocks topped with cacti.

Everything in my domain is a mess right now. I have a three-month-old baby and an older child going through potty training. The lawn looks perilously similar to the meadows at the moment. A cottonwood tree is cracked and poised to fall onto the woodland paths. Every flowerbed needs weeding, every pot and transplant needs watering.

But the poison ivy is under control.

It so happens that the number one thing that brings people to this blog is information on poison ivy removal. I don't know why - perhaps it's just that time of year? A bumper crop of Toxicodendron radicans? - but I'm getting a lot of snotty anonymous comments on one of my older poison ivy removal posts. "Dump poison on it." "Hire a professional." "Hire a professional, like me! I pull poison ivy with my bare hands! And I eat it for breakfast!"

But nothing tops this:

"Have your husband do it."

Excuse me? My husband does not come to my rescue as I retreat in some prissy fashion from dangerous things. Poison ivy is my personal enemy, and I consider its control within our yard to be my obligation. My obligation. It is a vendetta that I carry out myself, with vicious, cautious, and thorough glee. My husband is my beloved equal, with his own worthy pursuits and his own lack of time. He is not some macho tool to be pulled from a drawer to solve problems at my whim with hairy chest and grunts.

Mister anonymous, your sexism is a contemptible relic. May garden gnomes rub urushiol in the tighty whities you have no doubt left lying on the bathroom floor. Go have a beer and watch a football game, instead of wasting my time editing up your messes.

In other words, fuck off.