End-of-Season Overload

Each August, I tell myself that next year I will make sure to take some vacation time from my outside job at this time of year. And every year, I forget to. There is such an abundance of produce harvested at the end of the summer that it seems like a full-time job to deal with it. A nice problem, to be sure, but still …

Right now: the first planting of broccoli is already in the freezer, about 16 bags’ worth, and the plants are still sending out side shoots. The second broccoli planting is still a few weeks away from harvest. Green beans are coming fast and furious – I planted less than half as much as usual this year, four varieties on two six-foot-tall tepees, but it’s still more than I can keep up with; some go in the freezer, some to relatives, lots eaten raw for snacks. Cucumbers are crazy this summer! – abundant and delicious – we eat one every day, we hand them out to family and friends, the chickens get some too. We’ve got corn on the cob on our supper menu nearly every day now, and there will be plenty to put in the freezer very soon. Collards are so easy – they’re cut into one-inch pieces and tossed into freezer bags, no blanching needed; later they’ll be tossed into soups for extra nutrition. And the melons! – sweet, fragrant, delicious muskmelons this year, the best ever thanks to the hot summer; lots of them go into the freezer, cubed, for winter treats.

And what a year for hornworms! There were days when we were picking off a dozen or more at a time, and tossing them to the chickens. Not only did they go after the tomatoes, but the peppers as well, stripping the leaves and exposing the fruit -- which they'd munch on as well (see the little hole in the pepper in the back?). Now that the nights are so cool (often in the forties), the worst seems to be over.


My current favorite recipe uses what’s in season right now, and is flexible enough to accommodate new items at any time. It’s a roasted dish: zucchini, summer squash, tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, kale, all chopped; oregano, basil, winter savory; all mixed with olive oil and just a wee bit of balsamic vinegar (which REALLY punches up the flavor). Popped into a 350 oven for 30 minutes or so, then served with either feta or Romano or Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top, it’s sooooo delicious!

Why Bigger is not always Cheaper

Recently we traveled a bit on a rare day off together, my hubby and I, to a daylily farm in another state. Not only is it just the sort of thing for a daylily obsessive like me, but it’s also part of our continuing effort to observe how other farms and nurseries go about the business of growing and selling daylilies and other perennials. And walking amongst six acres in bloom is like being in heaven.

We had been to this place a few years ago, and had been a bit startled at how relatively high their prices were. This time we looked at the situation in a more analytical way, comparing it to our much-smaller operation.

Overhead is much higher for them, clearly. They have thousands of varieties, and numerous employees; they’re open seven days a week in peak season. Wages, Social Security, FICA, unemployment and worker’s compensation insurance – all that is considerable, and probably their biggest expense. A simple but spacious custom-built outbuilding/office/store, specialized software for the cash register that spits out a receipt telling you exactly what you’ve bought and the statistics on those varieties, several large greenhouses, and a large hybridizing program all cost plenty. There are mowers, tillers, assorted specialized tools and equipment to maintain so many beds and grassy paths; irrigation systems, and the gas and electricity to power it all. There’s a mail-order department with phones and computers, advertising, a beautiful printed full-color catalog, and no doubt more that we’re not even realizing. Whew. No wonder their prices are higher!

And I don’t begrudge them that at all. A farm/nursery like theirs is a “destination” as well, a place of real beauty out in the country where you can spend hours strolling, enjoying the flowers, sitting at any of the many tables and benches shaded by umbrellas. I, for one, have to be nearly physically dragged away when it’s time to go.

As for Dhabi’s, though, I don’t have any desire to grow my business even half as large as that. The “vision” here is to perhaps double in size from where we are now, to perhaps 350-400 different daylily cultivars, and to keep it a small, friendly, family-run nursery with low overhead and correspondingly lower prices. Keeping it simple – yeah.

But, of course, I reserve the right to change my mind at any time ;-).

Here's a few photos of some of the new ones we picked up:

Dottie Warwick

Obsidian

Quick trip to the Big City

So this little country mouse traveled to the Big City today and lived to tell the tale. No, this has nothing to do with gardenfarming, really … except that this is how I spent my morning, instead of weeding, watering, and lining out daylilies.

Up at 4 am, we were, so that I could get my daughter to Logan for an early flight. No big deal, it would seem, especially for someone who used to zip on into Boston regularly for museums, shopping, entertainment, classes, seminars, back in pre-farm days. But seven years of country living has wrought some changes in my perceptions.

The traffic, for starters … four lanes in each direction of bumper-to-bumper shiny SUVs! All that speeding and weaving, all those near-misses! My heart was in my throat … I’m now more accustomed to slow pickups heavily laden with hay, to lightly-traveled roadways, to, shall we say, more polite drivers who aren’t in quite so much of a hurry and who aren’t driving vehicles equivalent in cost to a small New Hampshire home. (And while I was desperately trying to hold my own in that seething muscular river of metal, hoping to maneuver safely into the correct lane and make my exit, I was catching snippets of the radio news … “drug war” … “severed heads” … “car bombings” … adding to the feel of having stumbled into some dystopian alternate universe.)

Finally, the airport, with its choking atmosphere of jet, truck, bus and car exhausts that burn the throat, with signs everywhere insisting “Absolutely No Parking” at the dropoff, and warnings that your car may be searched; the $3.50 charge (wasn’t it $1.00 just a few years ago?) to drive through the Callahan to get outta there and head back north; the gas stations charging .20 more per gallon than we pay up here in the sticks.

Of course people live, commute, and work in that environment every day and many love it. I don’t. While the city has its charms (none of which I was able to savor on this particular trip), I was relieved to head north again and reminded how fortunate we are to live in this slower, quieter, relatively unspoiled and friendly place. Heading over Pitcher Mountain with no other vehicle in sight, I was once again knocked out by the three-state view of mountains and forests, shaggy horned cows grazing in the fields alongside the road. A graceful white egret was poised on a rock in the Ashuelot as I followed the winding river road into my little town. And when I pulled into our own driveway, the farm looked even better to me than when I left. Nice to be back home.

Hot, dry, and over too soon ...

Here we are at the end of July, when normally there is still an abundance of daylilies in bloom. After talking with other gardeners and nursery growers, though, it’s clear that what I’m experiencing here is the norm in this region – most of the blooms have gone by already, and great swaths of the gardens are nothing but foliage.

There’s a friend who always goes away at the beginning of August, and cuts all her blooming daylilies first to bring them with her; she has none left to cut this year. Another gardener has pointed out that so many things are way ahead of schedule … goldenrods in bloom, an abundance of monarchs, the nesting of certain creatures, acorn drop. I can hear the insect sounds of late summer, and keep thinking that it’s the end of August, from the feel of things.

This leads, of course, to worried speculation about the coming winter, as if there’s some connection to be made. Maybe there is, but we mere mortals cannot divine it yet. That doesn’t stop us from fretting that it will be early and severe. Indeed, more extreme weather seems to be the norm these days, and certainly we’ve heard that same prediction for the future. The National Climatic Data Center says that June 2010 was the warmest since record-keeping began in 1880; both NOAA and NASA rate this year’s January-to-June as the warmest such period on record. And, of course, rainfall’s been in short supply this summer as well … not a banner year for gardens, that’s for sure.

Xeriscaping is the art and science of using drought-resistant plants in the landscape, and daylilies fill that bill, along with many of the other perennials we grow here. The vegetable beds have drip irrigation, which uses only 30% of the water of overhead sprinklers. The newly-planted fruit trees and bushes have needed supplemental watering all season, without established deep root structures. And the greenhouse, full of pepper and tomato plants, has needed hand watering every day during this long hot summer. Such a difference from the wet summer of 2009!

Deb's garden

Having a big old farmhouse with an oversized lawn and garden beds spread all over, I’ve tended to plant taller daylilies with larger blossoms. Proportionally, it makes sense, and since my gardens tend to be an overgrown riot of mixed flowers and herbs, like English cottage gardens, the blossoms don’t get visually lost so easily.

But my friend Deb has a different situation and a different sensibility; a lovely smaller house in the city, with perfectly manicured, curving garden beds. Deb particularly loves the smaller pastel daylilies, tends them lovingly, knows them all by name, keeps the clumps from getting too large, and gives them breathing room. With her artist’s eye, she carefully juxtaposes them with a variety of striking hostas, ferns, other perennials, and unusual trees and shrubs. And as her daylilies increase, she shares her bounty so generously with her friends … the smaller daylilies in my collection are nearly all varieties that she has given to me at one time or another.


Deb also has a lovely habit of floating one or more daylily blossoms in a shallow dish of water, bringing them to the table where perhaps for the first time each one can be closely examined and admired at length. It’s one thing to gaze appreciatively at a lovely garden scene; it’s another to look, really look, at one blossom close up, daylily or any other. Flowers are utterly amazing, as could be said of pretty much any of Mother Nature’s creations, don’t you think? It’s rare that we take the time to focus in that way, though, and I’m grateful to Deb for drawing attention to this level of appreciation of nature. And I’m always grateful to have gardening friends who are all about daylilies too.

Mail-order mistakes --- grrrr!

For the last five years or so, I’ve been ordering many daylilies by mail. Of course I love to visit other daylily farms in person, too, and purchase some that way as well; but I don’t want my collection to be simply a repeat of what the other area nurseries offer. Many of my cultivars have come from farms in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Illinois, Virginia, New York – you get the idea.

But oh, how frustrating it is to me when, after waiting a year for a new-to-me plant to bloom, it turns out to be NOT what I ordered. And it’s amazing to me how often this happens.

Just this morning, the long-awaited first bloom of Lady Neva opened. I was eager to see this “tall, soft buff yellow with rose eyezone” spider at last. But what I got was a short, bright yellow-orange self, and not a spider. Obviously, the wrong daylily – again.

Sometimes I’m delighted with the “wrong” daylily, and just keep it (actually, only once! – that one became Maison Rouge, a deep coral/red beauty, in the photo here). Usually I notify the seller that they made a mistake, and I’d like what I paid for, and offer to send back the mislabeled fans. Most of the time the sellers rectify the situation – some begrudgingly, some with sincere apologies. One seller never responded at all. (Makes it easier to know who NOT to buy from next time!)

Certainly it’s challenging when you’re digging daylilies for customers, and not all of the scapes have open blossoms; it’s important to tag each plant as you dig it, and to pay attention to make sure you’re packing up the right order. Being human, we all make mistakes. But also having been on the customer side of this situation many times, I am pretty persnickety about making sure my customers get what they ordered.

Since I’m kvetching about mail-order, I’ll add one more pet peeve: sellers who alter their photos via Photoshop to the point that it’s no longer “what you see is what you get.” For example, I ordered an Oliver Dragon Tooth awhile back, admiring the lovely white-and-purple blossom in the photo; the real-life Oliver is actually mauve and purple. Now I know to do a Google image search first, and see what shades predominate in the results.

Beneficial bugs

The other day I noticed a blurb on the cover of a popular back-to-the-earth-type magazine that shouted something like “Insect-Proof Your Garden!” Knowing this is another one of those headlines that promises more than it can deliver, I looked inside; sure enough, the article was all about the magic of having an insectary in your vegetable garden.

What’s that, you ask? Well, the idea is this: certain blossoms are known to attract beneficial insects, the kind that prey on the nasty bugs, slugs, mites, thrips, caterpillars and other baddies that gnaw on your carefully-tended veggies. It makes sense, then, to plant some of these flowers in or near your vegetable beds, therefore creating an “insectary,” an area that offers habitat, shelter, and an alternative food source for the good guys.

We did just that several years ago. The photo shows our insectary row on the left; bee balm, Shasta daisies, and rudbeckia were in bloom at the time. In addition, the row contains coneflower, lemon balm, yarrow, thyme, tansy, bronze fennel, angelica, and more; annuals often include sunflowers, cosmos, and cleome. Umbelliferous flowers – ones with umbrella-like blossoms, such as dill and Queen Anne’s lace, are particularly good ones for this purpose. You don’t need a huge assortment – half a dozen different types offer a variety of attractions, and they can be grown from seed.

Certain plants are much better than others for this purpose; google "insectary" to learn a whole lot more.

But, let’s get real: an insectary will not “insect-proof” your garden. Nothing will do that. It can help lessen the impact of the undesirable bugs, for sure; although I cannot measure it, it seems apparent to me that we have noticeably fewer insect issues since our insectary was established. It needs only weeding, and not too much of that if you mulch the plants well. And, perhaps less practical but certainly enjoyable, it adds beauty and color to the vegetable patch. What’s not to like about it?