MamaStories

I’m enjoying a week of holiday at Cape Cod. Will report back on Monday, 16 August.

I was showing off my comfrey patch (above) to my mother-in-law when suddenly she asked “what is that!” I confessed not to know. I had weeded the bed – which also has some hostas, feverfew and columbine in it – some days before, and I had noticed this one weed, very beautiful, very singular, and had left it, wondering what it was, then forgetting about it.

“That’s dhatura,” said my mother-in-law. “It is a hallucinogen, and very poisonous.”

Really?

Really.

In the States it’s called jimson weed, devil’s trumpet, devil’s weed, thorn apple, tolguacha, Jamestown weed, stinkweed, locoweed, datura, moonflower. Its botanical name is datura stramonium, Datura from dhatura, quite mundanely an ancient Hindu word for a plant, and stramonium from the Greek strychnos (nightshade) and, more interestingly, manikos, for mad.

It turns out that all the parts of this plant are indeed poisonous. It contains tropane alkaloids, which are autonomic nervous system blocking agents. Eating from this plant (apparently even after it has been cooked in a stew) may result in delirium, hyperthermia, tachycardia, bizarre, and possibly violent behavior, and pronounced amnesia, and even death. Some native Americans tribes use/d it sacred ceremonies. In India it is used by the followers of Shiva, so my MIL said my garden is now blessed by Shiva.

Now this may sound crazy but I find this incredibly cool. After being so down about my garden I am now elated to find something poisonous in it!

It’s in a part of the garden (the “utilitarian part), where kids never come, or livestock (as I haven’t any yet). I want to leave it and observe it. Or should I pull it? What would you do?

~

Unrelated, part of my new line drying setup:

Magnificent espaliered pear tree at the Cloisters

I investigated my tomato plants more closely today and to my consternation all the green tomatoes – at least 50 of them – have disappeared. The stems have been chewed through. I also found 6 chewed off stems on the eggplants. There are a lot of husks in the husk cherry bed, but no cherries.

It is unbelievably frustrating. I am quite used to being down about the fact that my garden cannot feed my family even during the growing season. I had long ago accepted that,  unless I take down each and every tree on my property, and some of the  neighbor’s trees as well, I will never be able to grow grains. But last year’s blight debacle made me cross off potatoes too, at least for this and perhaps even next year, and I can’t find room even for corn or soy beans.

But fine, sunny spots are at a high premium, so I grow high value crops in them. So I had thought we’d have at least lots of tomatoes, eggplants and peppers, at least, enough for daily eating and for putting up for winter. Instead I see  almost my entire crop go to unknown, wasteful critters.

Some days – like this one – are just palled by this feeling of failure, impatience, and a low dread. I am bewildered by the maps and projected yields of backyard homesteads in books like The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre! (click on Look Inside in Amazon, go to page 13 for an example). All these ideal situations have no resemblance to my garden. My pure joy a couple of days ago when discovering the herb garden and orchard at The Cloisters in NYC too quickly dissipated when the inevitable comparisons to my own perennial garden and berry bushes.

To try to cheer myself up I tell myself that this is only my second summer gardening. I am learning daily and next year will be better again. Look around at all we’ve accomplished! It doesn’t help. It seems so insignificant. Then I tell myself that we will instead support my local foodshed by buying more at the Farmer’s Market. I do this already for fruits and corn. In case of doom descending, that local foodshed is just as important as the garden, if not more, but it is of course also more vulnerable too.

We all have days like these, no? Does it help to make a list of what is still to be done? Here goes, the most important projects:

1. build solar dehydrator
2. plant more seeds in empty beds, buy and barter perennials and transplant
3. build tool shed so big shed can becomes woodworking shop
4. build second beehive and extra boxes
5. look into possibility of a dwarf orchard
6. weed and prepare front garden after water leak has been fixed
7. start planning  for chickens, if not this Fall, then next Spring.

The cucumbers are finally coming in. Amie was happy to harvest some, though she won’t eat them. These, maybe… Still no zucchinis or squashes in sight, just like last year.

Of the dry beans, Jacob’s Cattle is the first one ready for picking. I love the sounds of the hard  beans rattling in their dry pods. They are works of art, each one. All of garbanzo beans were harvested by unknown critters. I was so looking forward to tasting one fresh from the pod.

I’ve harvested all my onions now: 40 medium to small sized ones. That’s much better than last year. Next year I can transplant them even closer together. One 4×8 bed could easily hold 250 of these.

Harvest of 31 July 2010

As you can see we’re eating mostly small tomatoes: Sungold and Be My Baby cherry tomatoes as well as husk cherries, and Ida Gold and Heinz. Mainly they’re the ones in the tops of the plants, where the squirrels and/or chipmunks can’t reach. I estimate that almost half of my tomato harvest has gone to them.

The big Brandywines are still ripening, and I hope I get the chance to harvest some. The eggplants are fattening up, but here again the critters are at work. It’s heartbreaking to go into the hoop house first thing in the morning and find yet another juvenile eggplant has disappeared.

In the big harvest picture you can see the three red peppers that came in so early on the overwintered pepper plants. What a treat! There are plenty of green peppers growing, some ready for harvesting, but I’m so fond of the red ones. The hot peppers are coming in too, one or two each week: that’s plenty for me. They’re hot!

We’re eating kale and chard whenever we want it, and I will start putting them up when they grow beyond the bounds of our appetites.  The lettuce  I sowed last month is hanging on in our hot, dry weather, but it’s not growing. We’re still picking leaves off the old lettuce plants, but they’re pretty bitter by now.

chamomile – it’s a start

I’m also taking and drying herbs, such as mints, comfrey, chamomile and feverfew. I’m on the lookout for a good course in herbal medicine. If anyone can recommend a good book…

You know, I wouldn’t mind sharing my harvests with the critters, if only they weren’t so wasteful. They take, munch a few bites, then discard.  My garden is littered with half-ripe, half-eaten vegetables. I tried this product called Repels All, and it worked the first time around, but now, not so much anymore. Next up to try is cayenne pepper!

The bees have still not drawn out the honey super. What with the dry weather not many flowers are growing, so  there’s a nectar dearth. Hopefully it will pick up soon and we’ll have one super of honey – I might take out two or three frames but leave the rest for the bees to overwinter on. I did get to taste some! I broke some comb when taking off the super to peer in the nest boxes and there it was oozing. I couldn’t resist. I took off my glove, scooped some up and licked my finger through my veil. So sweet!

Last but not least, a fantastic Freeycyle haul! We were so lucky to catch these items, which the owner so generously putt out on her driveway. A chipper/mulcher which will need some work and an already much-used hammock with stand.

This month there were 4 1/2 of us -  though one was a teenager and in my opinion teenagers count for 1 1/2, but okay. In any case, these here are the calculations for one month of (not very conscious) rioting for two adults, one four-year-old and one teenager (my nephew from Belgium) for the whole month and one adult (Amie’s grandmother from Singapore) for half of that month. Last year’s averages (calculated here) are mentioned as a baseline. I use this calculator. Don’t ask me how it works, all I know is it keeps me honest.

Gasoline. Two round trips to NYC (from Boston area) to pick up and drop off my nephew from and at JFK, and more trips for DH to his office in Cambridge than usual because his shuttle doesn’t operate in summer. I also had to drive the kids to their summer farm camp for a week. This adds up to an unusually high gasoline bill. I’ve been eying the listings for light diesel pickup trucks and instructions for making one’s own biodiesel, not just because of the gasoline, but also because it’s been one thing after another with our cars – the dashboards are lit up like Christmas trees with all the warning lights.

17.84 gallons per person (pp) in cars

43 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 24.8%)

Electricity. Our electricity bills is up a bit. We’ve had fans going (we don’t have AC) on the hottest days and nights. And what can I say, teenagers are not very good at turning off unused light and computers.

489 KWH (all wind).

14 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s early average: 18.2%)

Heating Oil and Warm Water. It’s just our warm water. As there were more of us – more showers – it is up a bit, because this is calculated for the entire household, not per person.

11.05 gallons of oil.

18 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 77%)

Trash. This one I’ve got down really well, and since I’m still the one buying things, I’m still the one controlling the amount of trash, which after recycling and composting usually comes down to mainly food wrappers. 10 lbs pp.

7% of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 7.3%)

Water. Our rain barrels are have been mostly sufficient. I’ve had to water the garden with tap water once or twice.

723 gallons of water pp.

24 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 16.5%)

Take one kale plant, overwinter it in hoop house – kale is a biennial. In Spring let it flower and  go to seed.

Cut it down when leaves start getting brown, hang upside down to dry for months.

When plant is fully dry and pods are almost bursting, stick the entire plant into a pillowcase. Whack.

Take a peek.

Using a strainer, separate seeds from the chaff – which smells wonderful.

Marvel at the thousands of seeds from just one plant. Store for sowing in a few months and distributing among friends.

Russian Kale seeds. Who wants some?

This is one more long update. Life is so full it’s tough to find a moment to sit and write it all down. But here goes…

Home-grown salads are a common fare nowadays: lettuce mix, beet “greens,” cherry tomatoes, onions, garlic scape dressing. I could throw in bell peppers too, but I’m letting them mature to red – one (from an overwintered plant)  is getting really close. We are also harvesting lots of tomatoes and green beans.

I took down all my favas. I had high hopes because the pods were so fat. But a 4′ by 2′ bed with about 20 plants yielded only 6.1 oz. de-podded and peeled favas: enough for one small appetizer!

I won’t be growing favas anymore, however delicious, and however interesting.  The following photo shows the mycorrhizal nodules on the roots of the plants when I pulled them (there were a few more blossoms, but the leaves and developed pods were developing a black spot).

Most of my brassicas bolted. Neat, a bolted cauliflower:

It’s like a space ship. I’m keeping it to see what happens next.

We’re also eating the scrumptious husk cherries, and we’re comsuming two gallons of mint ice tea (mixed mints) with honey a day. Then there are all the other culinary herbs, of which we use some immediately and dry the bulk. I’ll write about our drying setup soon – it’s our next big project.

I’ve also harvested quite a bit of propolis and wax comb from the hive, which is doing well. The top broodbox is heavy with honey. I put on the first honey super two weeks ago, with a queen excluder. The excluder is a grate through which only the worker bees can pass.  We put these between the broodboxes and the honey supers to keep the queen from laying eggs in the honey harvest. However, after 2 weeks the bees had drawn out no comb whatsoever, confirmation that they might be reluctant to do anything in there because of the lack of queen pheromone. So I removed the excluder for now, and will see what happens.

propolis and wax

As for the house, DH, my nephew and I put down a wooden floor on concrete footings in our previously dirt floor shed. The idea is to put up insulation and drywall and two large doors and it can be an almost-year-round woodworking shop. It’s great to have the table saw and lathe out of the porch. Getting all the stuff that was in there before back in, in an organized way, was my biggest challenge. You know how you end up with boxes and boxes of odds and ends…

And last but not least, we’ve also added one more member to the family: Amie’s grandmother has arrived from Singapore. This means lots of art is being made, about which later. And yummy Indian food!  So we’re five now: three adults, one teenager, one kindergartner. I  do love having a full house!

Amie and I went to visit our new friends of the Freecycle comfrey, L and S, last week. Their raspberry garden was bursting with plump juicy berries. L helped Amie pick, she is so good with young kids. Amie was in seventh heaven, practically yelling with the fun of it. I chatted and picked and in less than 40 minutes we had gathered one pound and seven ounces. Later at Whole Foods I saw 6 ounces of organic raspberries for sale at $6. Wow. So:

raspberries from friends: 2 lbs (from two pickings)

We also picked our first strawberries. There are more ripening, I think in the end we’ll have about 100 berries. Amie again had a blast picking them after we removed the net.

strawberries: 3 oz.

We’re getting a good daily harvest of green beans every day now, from one 4×8 bed of Provider and Maxibel:

green beans: 1 lb 1 oz

I had to pull some pea vines because the chipmunks uprooted them. Still, incredibly – we hit 100 F yesterday – the remaining peas are still producing pods and even flowers.

peas (mix): 1 lb. 8 oz.

At the moment they’re straggling in one at a time, but the first big batch of tomatoes is on the verge of ripening and soon though there will be too many to eat day by day. Better get that solar dehydrator built.

tomatoes: 2.2 oz

cherry tomatoes: 6

Other harvests:

radishes: 4 edible ones (1 really good one)

garlic scapes: 10 (made them into Daphne’s salad dressin: delicious!)

garlic: 8 bulbs for eating, 8 for sowing

cauliflower: 1 tiny one, the rest bolted

carrots: 3 ounces of the baby kind, and a big bunch of green leaves that went into soup.

comfrey: 1 stuffed bucket for compost, though it looks like I should harvest it for skin salves.

The fava beans are in the pipeline, they are huge and kinda grotesque, but I’m waiting for a chance to make some Fool Mudamas to pick them. The onions have all fallen over and they are looking fat and juicy. I’ll be able to pull them soon as well, adding yet another empty bed. Time to plant Fall and Winter crops. Maybe the brassicas will do better in the Fall this year – all my brassicas, but (so far) the Brussels Sprouts, bolted.

~

The borage is in bloom and the bees just love it. At my last inspection I found my queen – I thought she had been superseded. I tall looked well enough for the first  honey super to be added on. If we have some honey I will be happy, because local honey can help Amie’s respiratory trouble which – we think – is due to allergies to pollen. And how local can honey get!

~

My nephew from Belgium arrived last Monday and he will be staying here for a month. He’s a strong and friendly thirteen-year-old who can help a lot around the house and garden, and he and Amie get along so well. He’s a teenager but he can still play. What a boon it is to have him here.

No, really. I already harvested carrots. Well, Amie harvested them:

No doubt you’ve noticed that these are baby carrots. Baby carrots.  I had let that bed go to weeds, and when pulling said weeds today found that  carrots have much less purchase on the soil than weeds do, and they too came up. So after weeding I called Amie over and she had a ball pulling the carrots (3 ounces of them, without greens), and then eating them. Crunch crunch. Delicious! The greens went into the vegetable soup.

I also harvested my garlic. I know this sounds too early too, but they were ready, many of them already browned and fallen over. Considering how well they were doing a month ago I had expected a larger harvest.

As you can see, the bulbs on the side of the tray- a softneck kind – are smaller and/or they mostly lacked the outer skin that protects the bulbs. Maybe I harvested these too late? They’re still good, and I’ll use them in cooking over the next few days. The bigger ones – all hardnecks, the  scapes of which were delicious – are just fine, and I’m curing those in my warm, drafty, dark attic.

They make for 8 x 10 cloves – give or take a couple. That’s enough for planting next September.