Good Enough Gardening
A.V. Walters–
Now, a good gardener would have done things differently. A good gardener would have had the soil tested and would have amended accordingly. This year, I’m going to have to be a good-enough gardener. The plants went into their buckets in a flurry of enthusiasm, an unexpected last chance to see things growing, and enjoy them on my dinner plate through the season. What can I say; it’s a done deal.
I’ve heard that the soil here is alkaline. (And the water is hard.) I suppose you could say that this little bucket-garden is a test plot. We’ll just have to see how things go. I fully expect to test the soil on our property, next year, and amend accordingly. So far, we’ve been pretty lucky. We planted in a good spot, which I picked for the southern exposure. What I didn’t figure on was wind. Wow. Like Two Rock, this place has wind, and then some, to spare. (The wheels are turning and I’m thinking… a good spot for wind power.) My little southern exposure turned out to be perfect, because the house also offers the garden some shelter from the wind.
I’m not joking about the wind. It’s a beautiful day, so I hung out the laundry. It hangs horizontal. By the time I finished pinning up the first load, the first things up were already dry. Whipping in the breeze, even the towels dry soft and everything comes up lint free. There has to be another way to harness that energy for good.
Today was watering day for our little garden, too. In Two Rock I was able to satisfy watering by topping off the buckets, twice, once a week. In Two Rock, there was no rain during the growing season. But, there was more clay to the soil, and that helped to hold the moisture
Here, it is largely sand. Even with Michigan’s regular rainfall, I think I may have to water a little more frequently—especially with these winds. The plants, in the ground for about a week now, look healthy and have started to take off. Everything has sprouted a round of new leaves, and the peppers and tomatoes have started to flower. I was surprised at how little they suffered from transplant shock. I’m looking forward to the results of our experimental garden.
With today’s gardening finished, I decided to take advantage of the wind and do “extra” laundry. You know, the stuff you don’t usually do—the throw rugs and some blankets, even my winter coat and the winter’s down clothing. They’ll easily be dry by evening. I’m letting the wind do the rest of my day’s chores, and I’ll get the credit.
Musings from the Polar Vortex–
A.V. Walters–
Just enough snow.
Now there’s a new phrase for you, eh? The only vortex part of it is the rushing-in from the void of all the misinformation about weather, generally, and climate change, specifically. Oh, how the reality-based wonks among us rue the day that somebody started calling it “global warming.” It so distorts the opportunity to study the facts, and create meaningful policy, (or dialogue) in an atmosphere of an anti-science witch-hunt.
Now, the cold snap has subsided, leaving us in the more normal seasonal range of temperatures in the 20s. This weekend they’re predicting a warming trend—one that will bring us sunshine and above-freezing, nighttime temperatures. You’d think we’d be happy about that. In fact, it creates just another set of problems.
First, there’s the leaking roof. In winter’s cold, it’s not a problem. But when things warm up, the leaking roof, in combination with ice dams (damns?) makes this little rental an interesting place. (Buckets and mopping up.) The landlord knows, but it was a bad roofing job and now there’s nothing he can do until spring. At the same time, he plans on putting in new windows—which will be a big improvement, though we’ll be long gone, by then.
That kind of freeze/thaw cycle also creates treacherous roads. The thaw provides the fodder, in the freeze period, for black ice and other hazards of navigation—both pedestrian and vehicular. It means we’ll be strapping on yet another layer of winter gear (spikes) onto our boots. I used to think that these were for old folks. However, my mom swears by them and she insisted that they become part of our new, winter wardrobe. I’m a regular Yeti fashion-plate. At least it’s safe.
And, finally, I don’t want our snow to melt. I’m just about to get cross-country skis. I like look of winter. I love roads with a nice, thick, white, base. (I’m not a fancier of salt or the dirty slush it brings.) So my fingers are crossed that the snow stays through the warming spell.
There are northern things that will take some adjustment. The winter tap water is frigid. My California roots say, “Don’t waste water—use it cold and straight from the tap.” My fingers say, “Skip the frostbite, run it ‘til warm.” The water is so cold that it hurts your teeth to drink it. Northern living takes longer to get anything done, whether it’s the time suiting-up, or shoveling-out, life has to be a little more… intentional. And, the butter is too damn hard to spread on toast. (I can hear my sisters, “Turn up the heat, goofball. Good Lord,” shaking their heads, “They live like a couple of Eskimos.”) This might be solved when we have our own place, and it has insulation. For now, unless I’m baking, the kitchen is chilly. Otherwise, our winter redoubt suits me fine, for now. If only someone could convince the cats.
The Last Garden
A.V. Walters
It’s hot in the valley. And dry. This has been on odd year. We had heavy rains in November and December—with an absolute deluge the first week of January. And that was it. Winter is our rainy season, but this year, it wasn’t. After that, we had a few light rains and one storm in the spring. The local farmers are nervous. Over all, the state isn’t experiencing water shortages. There was a heavy snow-pack early this year, so the reservoirs are full, but those that depend on local, well water may be pumping dust by the end of summer.
The past two weeks they’ve been cutting hay. Sometimes, especially here, where we can have drenching fogs, the farmers can get two cuttings, in the spring. Last year it was cool and very foggy—so, we saw three hay harvests. This year, they’ve cut the first time, and it’s dry and yellow underneath. One cut is all they might harvest this year. That means when the summer heat hits, and all the grass goes, (first to gold, then to brown) they’ll be using up the limited hay supply for the dairy and beef herds.
Like I said, the reservoirs are full. Water managers around the state got their snow-pack early so there’s no hew and cry over it being a drought year. In an odd twist of fate, the cities have water, but reservoirs that supply them don’t help the farmers. And, they don’t recharge local aquifers on which the rural areas rely for well water.
Changes in our lives have us wondering how long we’ll be here. I’ve loved Two Rock, and it’s been good to me. But it’s time to move on to build a different future. (Maybe somewhere where there’s water!) So I wasn’t sure this year whether I should put in a garden.
I have been in charge of the farm garden for going on seven years. If we plant it—and have to leave—would someone step up, and care for it? This year was to be a banner year. Over the past few years, the main garden has been shaded by a line of trees Elmer planted to stop erosion from the dairy next door. If ever there was evidence that livestock can damage the land—the field next door is a clear example. The land drops two feet at the edge of our garden—right at the fence. The cows line up and watch me while I garden, and because of the drop we’re nearly at eye level as I bend to dig or weed. It’s a little weird. In any event, late last season Rick spent a couple of weekends pruning and topping that line of trees. This year the garden finally enjoys as much sun as it did when I first arrived.
Early in the spring I asked Elmer how he felt about putting in a farm garden. He hemmed and hawed and finally said we should. We discussed the dry winter and I said that this year we were ready with the drip irrigation. (Rick set it up last year and it was a huge relief in the workload.) I told Elmer I’d get to the garden once he’d plowed. Usually he plows in April, and then again in the first week of May. That digs under any weed seeds that might flourish in the fresh, loose soil. This year he didn’t plow. And, I waited.
Finally, I figured he’d changed his mind. He did plow what we call the “orchard garden,” where he and his girlfriend plant their personal stuff, but he didn’t plow either the main garden or the long garden by the chicken barn. I saw that he’d plowed and tomatoes appeared by the orchard a couple of weeks ago. In the meantime, spring has rolled to summer. It’s hot and digging is getting difficult. With all this dryness, we are getting an early start on the hardpan layer in the soil. It’s a curse and a blessing, that hardpan. If you wait too long to put the garden in, the digging is near to impossible. But that same hardened layer keeps the soils underneath moist. If you water smart—you can do a garden with very little input. That’s the theory behind our bucket gardens. (See https://two-rock-chronicles.com/2012/07/04/the-proper-planting-of-buckets/)
Getting Ready
Without a word, Elmer plowed Friday night. Late. I woke up Saturday and realized that I needed to put in a garden. I’d already become accustomed to the idea of no garden, so this is an adjustment. The plow didn’t go deep enough to deal with the hardpan, so digging-in the buckets is a lot of work. If you don’t loosen the soil under the buckets, the roots won’t get beneath the hardpan into the moist earth below. So today I dug in enough buckets (and gopher-shielded rings and corn rings) for a modest garden. It’ll host eight tomato plants, half dozen peppers, four cucumbers, some zucchini and yellow crook-neck squash, a couple of winter squashes, beans, some lettuce, spinach and herbs, and corn. That’s enough for the farm tenants, since most don’t cook much and fewer avail themselves of the garden. I’ll plant with seeds and some starts, this week. I’m not planting the long garden this year.
Digging-in
Gopher proof rings
I don’t know if we’ll be here for harvest. (But, we should be able to enjoy some of the early offerings.) With the drip system, the garden will trickle along, with or without Rick and me. It’ll be like a ghost garden. If that’s the case, I can only hope my farm neighbors will enjoy the harvest. (Assuming someone will water it, said The Little Red Hen.)
Ready for plants
AV. Walters
And no rain, in even a normal year, for at least a month. We’re not getting our usual heat wave this month–and with the fields like tinder, that’s a good thing. We are all wary of the risk of wild fire. In most years I take the advice of ’30 feet of defensible space’ seriously–I clear everything away from the house diligently. This year there’s no need. Not even the weeds grew in this dry season. There was a fire yesterday–somewhere between here and town in the other end of the valley. It was a grass fire–it’s a different smell and taste than a more serious structure or forest fire. Smoke lite. Apparently they got it out, because the air cleared and the lingering haze made for a lovely sunset.
I’ve been following fire and emergency news these days because I’ve become more involved as a volunteer with our local fire department. Not fighting fires–I think I’m a little long in the tooth (and clumsy to boot) for that. But I can chip in with administrative stuff, or selling T shirts for fundraising. It’s a small community, everybody does what they can. It’s so dry that our new firefighters have to train on the hoses without water. Don’t laugh. Nobody has excess at the wellhead these days, so they learn to man the hoses dry–with the seasoned volunteers pulling and pushing at the back end of the hose to simulate the force of real water. Consider it a dry run, in the most real sense of the term. They revel at the chance to share training programs with nearby departments that have city water.
Our wells are low and that intensifies the mineral salts–leaving a cloudy blush on the glasses, if you use the dishwasher. When canning, I have to put vinegar in the water with the bottles, or they’ll come up clouded and gritty feeling. Some of this is normal at this time of the year. The rest has us seriously conserving and sniffing now and then for smoke when outdoors. It’s a good thing that the rainy season runs during the same time as the winter heating season. By the time I put a fire in the stove, it’s cold and wet out.
I buy bottled water for coffee–not because of contamination (our well is high up on the hill) but because I’m a coffee nut, and I like the flavor of a less–gritty–source of water. In the low part of the valley the wells are contaminated. It’s a fact of rural living–nitrates in the water. Those folks must drink bottled water, especially kids. It’s a reminder that , even here in rural county, we need to be aware of our footprint on the planet. Nitrates are a common form of contamination in areas with heavy livestock concentrations, especially where, like here, people rely mostly on shallow wells. This is a dairy area, with chickens and beef cattle thrown in for good measure.
Many years ago the county put in a dump, (now called a transfer station and refuse disposal area) about a mile from here. The runoff from the site runs into our local creek. There’s a debate in the valley, not too seriously entertained, that the county dump is the source of the contamination. Folks who’ve been spreading manure on these hills for generations wince–and don’t point too many fingers, except occasionally, for sport.
Water Wars
A.V. Walters
Have you ever noticed how folks are at their very best in times of scarcity? I don’t mean hard times generally, but true (or perceived) commodity scarcity, just warms their little hearts. It’s good to watch it on a small scale because it gives you a better understanding of it on a global level—“Worry globally, obsess locally.” So, I’ll tell this tale, but you must remember that I, too, have a dog in this fight. I can rationalize that my bucket garden is already a water-saver, and that the produce I’m growing is for the benefit of everyone on the farm—it’s all true, but I’m sure that everyone who’s got a pony in this show, has good reasons, too.
So, I’ve said, several times, that it’s been a dry year and that we’ve all been concerned about the wells running dry. It hasn’t happened yet, and we’re all trying to avoid that, but it’s in the air. We’ve all seen the news—the record temperatures and drought back east, the fires in Colorado.
I remember when I lived in the city during one of California’s recurring droughts. We were on water restrictions and it became almost a point of pride to drive a dirty car. Everyone was eager to show that they were conserving water. The lawns on our block were dead and our yards all looked like hell. When things start to get really tight though, it degenerates quickly to backbiting and finger-pointing. I had a little flower garden in my front yard then, mostly santolina, rosemary and lavender (all drought resistant), which I watered exclusively from the cold water that ran in the shower before the hot water arrived. I collected it in a bucket and used it judiciously in the garden. One woman, whose peonies didn’t survive the watering restrictions, rebuked me for having my lovely, little garden. It didn’t matter that it was already a Xeriscape, or that it was watered with gray water, what mattered was that my garden had survived and hers had not. So, I come to this with some history. It’s why I started bucket gardening in the first place.
The landlord has been cautioning us to conserve. One neighbor has a nice garden—not a thirsty one, but she keeps it up. Elmer has complained to me several times (and to her) that she waters too much. She doesn’t really—she chose good plants and now they’re well established and deep rooted. Those comments have left her feeling defensive, so much so that if there’s any interruption in the water—she makes the point, to me, that “It wasn’t me!” By comparison, my yard looks parched. I water a couple of hydrangeas at my front gate, but I let the “lawn” die every summer and only the truly determined yard plants survive the neglect. I stated from the start that my landscaping water goes to the vegetable garden. Since last year there was produce that went to waste, this year we cut back the size the garden. The garden’s total, water consumption runs about 200 gallons per week. So far, I’ve avoided Elmer’s evil eye. In the house, we’ve always tried to conserve water—such as, fewer showers, fewer flushes. We live in California and that has, for some of us, become a permanent, lifestyle adjustment.
Don, with his field of pumpkins and squashes, keeps telling me I water too much. He says he’s keeping an eye on me. Right, like my little bucket garden compares, in any way, with a field full of water-loving squash! His is watered with drip-irrigation but, even then, just one of his waterings drops the level in the big tank by 8 to 12 inches. (He told me so, I didn’t check.) He asked me not to water on weekends, because that’s when most of the tenants are home—using water. I agreed, but said that I’d still have to water new seedlings or transplants. He wagged his finger at me. Last weekend I transplanted the last of the corn—and of course I watered it. Monday morning he commented, revealing that he knew I’d watered. (I’m not sure if he’s got spies or was bluffing!) I felt I had to defend myself—“Only the transplants!” Really, scout’s honor.
Added to the drought-anxiety is that they’ve been working on the water system (again.) Ever since this spring’s debacle with the pop-up tank, Elmer has been working to “upgrade” and add extra storage to the system. This past week, they took one of the older, concrete tanks (it’s more like a cistern) out of service to repair and upgrade it. As tenants, we never know what’s up with the water. (There have been more interruptions to water service this year than in the previous five that I’ve been here.) We are nervous every time the pressure drops—is this it? Did we run the system dry?
Invariably, the problem is with the switching system. It’s supposed to be an automatic changeover—when one tank gets low it should seamlessly switch to another tank. More often, something fails and, because my house is highest on the property, I’m the first to turn on the tap and… nothing! Then, I get to call and report that there’s no water, which only gets everybody started again—finger-pointing and defensive. We’ve offered, but nobody will teach us, (or permit us) to step in and pinch-hit when the system goes down, so we’re always having to call Elmer, or Don, at a family picnic or dinner out. Of course, they grumble and ask, “Well, you been watering today… was So-and-So…?” It makes us all feel a little guilty. (Which is probably the point of it.) The fact is, we’re in better shape than in earlier years because of the added storage. Don tells me that there’s an extra 10,000 gallons, but damned if he can figure out how to get it fed into my system. Only Don and Elmer understand the system and, more often than they’d like to admit, not even them. The system goes back to Elmer’s dad, parts of it at least seventy years old.
It grates on tenants that Elmer harps about conservation and then pressure-washes everything in sight. Spotless trucks and tractors shine, parked next to the shop, while tenants’ gardens wither. Well, that is the landlord’s prerogative, but I don’t think it’s wise social policy. So, the sniping goes in all directions. (Unlike the water!)
I watered Friday night—everything—all three gardens, because I’d committed not to water on the weekend. The pressure was low (don’t ask), so it took longer than usual—hours actually. Rick finally came out looking for me, wondering where I’d got to. (He doesn’t much like the water-sniping and chafes a little with the scheduling requests and unannounced shut-downs, for repairs. We don’t use that much water!) Saturday morning the pressure was still low but there’s little we could do—Elmer was called away to a family funeral and Don’s on vacation.
Rick and I did “the garden walk” just to see how things were doing. (The garden looks great, except something’s messing with the beet greens—looks like a virus, probably carried by those little light green beetles with the dark spots.) We walked over to check on Don’s squash field. We do that from time to time—mostly because he’s got quite a gopher problem there, and we’re watching to see what, if anything, in his anti-gopher arsenal, might be working. Sometimes we just go and pull weeds there. Lo and behold, Don’s zucchinis have taken off. He has baseball bat sized squash. Don, who last year scolded me for letting the zucchinis get too big, has a field full of them. Apparently eight inches is the commercial standard (insert your own joke, here)—or so he chided me last summer. All of these squash will have to become animal feed. Partly, this is because Don’s on vacation, but it’s also because he planted a crop for which he didn’t secure a market. (I can see Rick’s blood pressure rising.) We’ve been conserving water so that Don could plant a crop that he’s now letting go to waste. (Insert your own profanities, here.)
Well, that night, the taps ran dry. Of course, nobody who knew the system (you know, the members of the secret, Only We Know the Water System Club) could be summoned—I called Don on the cell phone, cutting into his vacation, and he walked me through a manual switching to a reserve tank. As you know, I’m not supposed to know how this is done, and Don commented that he’d catch hell for letting out water secrets. (He may have to kill me.) What’s goofy is that there’s all this secrecy and water paranoia. There’s no shortage. We have an extra 10,000 gallons more than in previous years—we’re just working out the bugs on delivery. Still, there’s a perceived shortage and it’s bringing out the worst in everyone. Tenants bridle because they think Elmer is cowing them into a ridiculous level of water conservation (one man invited Elmer to live with his wife when she hadn’t showered in days.) We’ve come to the conclusion that the bee in Elmer’s bonnet is probably not the amount water being used, but the amount of electricity he’s paying, to pump it.
What’s really worrisome is how badly people behave when there’s a shortage—even when it’s not a real shortage. What happens if the wells really do run dry? Not just here, but everywhere. We really need to look at water issues in this country—nothing is more important, to keeping our world safe and sane, as a sound water policy. (So, why on earth are they permitting “fracking” without safeguards for critical, aquifer protection? We can survive without oil for a lot longer than we can live on poisoned water.)
Anyway, not everyone behaves badly. Sunday morning, Rick got up and installed drip irrigation in the long garden. Smart use of resources is half the battle.
The Proper Planting of Buckets
A.V. Walters
Recently, I’ve come across some not-so-clear-on-the-concept plantings, and so, perhaps, we need some clarification on the bucket farm issue.
As usual, if one first defines the objectives, and communicates (and here I may have failed), the implementation will be more successful.
So, the objectives of Bucket Planting are:
1) The bucket directs watering directly to the root zone and thus saves water;
2) If the plant is placed low in the bucket, the top unused area (3”- 6”) serves as a reservoir for watering;
3) Properly planted (see above), the bucket serves as a wind shield for seedlings;
4) The top of the exposed bucket serves as a hose curb to protect the plants;
5) By watering only into the bucket, you keep the area (walkway and unplanted areas) weed free (Since even weeds need water–granted in areas that get ample summer rainfall this is less helpful, but it will still reduce your weeding chores.);
6) Most weeding is limited to the interior of the bucket, and once your plants are established, they’ll shade that area, further minimizing weeds and reducing water losses;
7) And finally, properly prepared buckets prevent gophers from eating your plants!
Of course, there are limitations. Buckets can’t protect truly long-rooted plants, whose roots navigate through the bucket’s bottom holes and beyond—but they do buy them time to get established. That way they’re more likely to survive if they get nibbled on.
Here are some basic guidelines to proper bucketification:
I prefer the black, semi-pliable nursery buckets. They last for several seasons, and they don’t get all brittle in the sunshine. Plus, most people just throw them away when they bring their nursery plants home. Sometimes you can get them free from recycling (and even neighbors, “Hey, I got a bunch of them!”) They’re pliable and drill out nicely. A bucket must have enough drainage. If you use just the holes that come with it, your vegetables will have “wet feet” and they’ll suffer rot or fungal problems. We drill three-quarter inch holes (using a sharp “spade” bit) every couple of inches, or so, across the bottom and a row or two around the bottom of the sides. (That’s an editorial ‘we,’ as I am not in the drilling department.) Our hole size is specific to the size of gophers, larger holes can be used if you don’t share this risk. (Indeed, for things gophers don’t like, we sometimes use bottomless buckets, which are much easier to pull out at the end of the season.)
When you ‘set-in’ a bucket, dig a hole as close as possible to the size of the bucket (up to its ‘shoulders’ so you leave a lip above the ground surface—2”- 3”.) Loosen the dirt in the area below the bucket, so the migrating roots don’t hit a solid barrier of compacted earth. Place the bucket in the hole and fill in around it, packing the dirt firmly. Now, refill the bucket, leaving the 3”- 6” inch area, I mentioned before (depending on the level of compaction) at the top of the bucket. You need at least three inches to be a decent reservoir. At the time you refill the bucket, this is a good opportunity to add any amendment. We use well-composted chicken manure because, well, we’re on a chicken farm.
When you plant a bucket, (especially if you’re using starts) make sure you’re not filling in your reservoir area. Take out some of the soil, if necessary. (Your start may look lost, deep in the bucket, but that also helps protect it from the wind—and we’ve got a fair amount of that, here.) If using starts, as with any other transplant, remember to loosen the root ball! I recently had to re-plant some peppers that had been put in too high by a neighbor and discovered that, though the soil in the bucket appeared properly damp, she’d set the whole start in as a root-bound block, and little of the moisture was getting in to the roots through that block.
When watering, especially initially, use a soft, slow watering method. The bucket contains the water’s energy, and if you’re not careful you can erode all around your poor baby vegies! And yes, this is a good opportunity for even more water savings, if you use drip irrigation.
These simple steps should ensure buckets of success.
Farm Surprises
A.V. Walters
You just never know around here—something’s always up. We water the gardens by hand. I don’t mind, it’s a bucket by bucket meditation. We’ve got a couple of good watering wands—with off/on switches—that let you shut the flow between buckets. This saves water and minimizes spillover, which cuts down on weeds. I water each section twice a week, on different days for the three gardens. It takes me four to five hours each week. Usually, I get up early and try to get the watering done before the regular work day, and before the sun is high. I admit, after such a dry winter, the buckets look like little islands of green on a moonscape. The ground is very dry this summer.
Aside from the heightened fire risk, the dry doesn’t affect our garden operation. We are already operating on water conservation mode with the buckets. Elmer is concerned that, before the summer is out, we’ll be trucking water in, but he hasn’t said anything about cutting back in the garden.
That leads to the first farm surprise. About a month ago (while I was still down and out with the cold from hell) one of our pastures was plowed and planted! Not a big pasture, but it was usually occupied by 3 rams who have the thankless job of “servicing” the ewes. As I’ve said before, this is not a dirt farm, but the farm foreman convinced Elmer to let him put in a cash crop of pumpkins, zucchini, crookneck and cucumbers. Whatever possessed him to put in a field crop in the driest year in a decade is beyond me. (And, these crops are water suckers.) Don, the foreman, is conscientious, though; he set up the field with drip irrigation. At least we won’t be wasting water. I don’t know what kind of a deal he worked out with Elmer—we are all sharecroppers in one way or another.
Because of my head-cold, Don’s crop got a head start on my garden. His vegies, looking much more like a farm operation than my silly bucket brigade, are a half-foot taller than mine. Don has always had a quiet respect for my garden over the years, but now, with victory in sight, he’s ribbing me. He pulled up next to me while I was watering yesterday and asked how my midget garden was doing. I smiled and told him we had a long season and I intended to take full advantage of it. It’s a good thing, he said, because his corn is tasseling and chest high. Mine, of course, was only just transplanted from starts and is all of a strapping five inches. Okay, I know I got a late start. But, Don has to be nice to me—I have the tomatoes.
Don is giving me flack about why I don’t use drip irrigation. He sees all this hand watering as sheer insanity. Sure, it would be easier. And, for a cash crop it makes perfect sense. However, it’s a significant investment for the gizmos and tubing and a lot of work to install. I remind myself from time to time that I am a tenant here. I am a gardener, not a farmer. In five years, I’ve never had an offer of help for such a high-end investment of time and money. But for twenty bucks, I got this lovely switchable watering wand. And so I drag the hose behind me. I’m not complaining. I don’t begrudge one minute I spend in the garden. (Except for those two moments this summer, so far, when I stupidly went into the garden barefoot, and both times ended up getting stung by the wasps.)
It was the dragging hose that led to the discovery of the second farm surprise. We are not kidding when we call one of the gardens “the long garden.” It’s over 160 feet long and about 15 feet wide. There’s a hose spigot at one end. At the other end, across the lane there’s a hose spigot at a tenant’s house. I can use that. I have a 75 foot hose, which I don’t mind pulling along behind me. But I do object to having to undo the hose and haul the whole thing 160 feet to the next spigot. Rick suggested that we plumb in another spigot, halfway down the long garden, and then my hose will essentially cover the entire garden without having to move it. We consulted with Elmer, who said it was fine, just get the materials from Number Four.
Rick looked around, no pipe. He checked out the far reaches, behind the chicken barns, still no luck. Then he looked in, under and around Number 7 only to find oversized pipe and—pigs! Yes, surprise, surprise. There are now 4 pigs in a pen in the shaded area, under the far end of Number 7. Who knew? It turns out that one of the tenants approached Elmer about keeping a couple of pigs. The tenant works in a fancy high-end grocery store and brings home the gourmet, ‘unused’ produce—so essentially the pigs eat pretty well, and for free. Elmer said it was okay, but he’d buy two baby pigs, too (so we have four.) The tenant does the feeding and slopping and mucking, and at the end of the season they each get two grown up pigs. It’s a sweet deal, all the way around. I told you we were all sharecroppers in one way or another. Elmer gets his summer vegies from our garden (plus a load of winter squash) and we get to have a garden that exceeds any tenant’s dreams. Like I said, it’s a sweet deal all the way around.
So the surprises are pumpkins and pigs. But these things are supposed to come in threes, aren’t they? There’ll be one more surprise. Last year some wise guy (and we’re betting it was Don. “Who, me?”), planted carving pumpkins in the winter squash buckets. So this year, somebody’s going to plant strange and exotic squash in his pumpkin patch. (“Who, us”?) It’ll be awhile until he figures it out. But, I can wait.
Hard Pan
A.V. Walters
The blessing and curse in this area of Sonoma County, is the ubiquitous, clay layer in the soil. There’s a reason that there’s an Adobe Road in Petaluma. During the rainy season it’s not a problem but starting around June, about six inches down, we get a really hard, clay layer. You plant early here, or not at all. (Oh, I suppose you could use dynamite and break up the soil, and get a handle on the gophers, in one step.) The good news is, that once the garden is in, that subsurface clay layer locks the moisture down in the root zone—making for lovely gardening conditions. No rain in the summer means very little weeding. Since we plant in buckets, we water into the well of the bucket and don’t waste any water where there aren’t vegetables. The soil otherwise is lush and fertile.
Since we will be away for the early part of May, Rick and I started early yesterday, digging in some of the buckets. It’s still too cool at night to put our starts in but daytime temperatures soared into the eighties, for a blistering day of digging (It takes extra planning to be sure you’ll be digging on the hottest days.) I’ve been worried about the soil. All winter I’ve been commenting about how little rain fell this season. We need it to recharge the soils—and the supply for well water. And, if yesterday was any indication, we’re in for a very dry summer. Already the clay layer has started to harden—in May! We dug in about fifty buckets, about half of what we’ll do for the season. Usually we wouldn’t see these conditions for another four or five weeks. It makes for slower going, because the buckets go in deeper than that hard clay and because you need to break through it, or you risk having a “perched” layer, where any water you add follows the clay shelf and doesn’t sink down into the root zone. We dig in each bucket with a shovel-full or two of Elmer’s finest, eight-year-old manure.
It’s a community garden, sometimes in The Little Red Hen, sense. Though everyone this year is excited about the garden, only one neighbor stepped up to the plate with a shovel, yesterday. I guess we must have looked pretty rough—sweating up a storm with our grunting and digging—not exactly an ad for Fun with Gardening. At least we didn’t need to pull out the adze.
I’m particularly fond of “The Claw” for this kind of work. Yep, The Claw, (As seen on TV!) I used to scoff at those ads, but my nephew set me straight. It was years ago, during a time when I was disabled from a car accident. My nephew was visiting and had been directed by his mother to help me put in the garden. He asked me where my Claw was. Eh? What’s that?
He went on to say that his mum couldn’t garden without it. He turned up his nose at my trusty spade and garden fork. So, off he went to the hardware store to get The Claw. I was dubious. Then I watched, and tried, and became a convert. It’s the perfect tool for breaking down through our cursed, clay layer. Real men scoff at it, it looks like a girl-tool. But when push comes to dig, I noticed that even they reach for The Claw.
So, it’ll be a dry summer in the garden. Thank god for buckets. I noticed how strange my priorities have become when our new neighbor offered some really lovely, black buckets to the cause. I was almost drooling. Testing the waters I inveigled, “You know, we’ll have to drill holes in these for drainage?”
“Sure, do whatever. I was going to take them to the recycling-center, anyway.”
Nirvana! Lovely, choice buckets, heavy-duty, wide, but not too deep (think grueling, clay layer, here) perfect for winter squash or cooking-pumpkins. (This ain’t no Jack-O-Lantern garden!) You know you’ve gone a little batty when you covet someone’s used, nursery buckets. What a garden-gal won’t do…. Rick drilled them (adding additional, drainage holes—large enough for fast drainage but still too small for a gopher!) and we had them in the ground within an hour. A rolling stone gathers no moss.
Now, we’re ready for whatever weather comes our way.
Tomato-land is ready to go into its new digs, in the long garden. This is our warmest, sunniest garden and I’m expecting great results this year. Today I’ll sterilize the tomato cages and get them in. We have the super-sturdy, delux, 42-inch tomato cages. That part of the garden always looks impressive. Elmer likes a tidy garden. I accommodate by planting with plenty of space between the tomato buckets. I’ve done square-foot gardening with great results, but here we have room to spare, so we spread out some. We put in twenty-two tomato buckets, (plus six in our back yard for those troublesome Romas.) Hopefully, this year we’ll keep the tomatoes plants to less than thirty. (I know, I’ve said that before.)
A.V. Walters
Spring?
I may have spoken out of turn when I announced it was Spring in Two Rock. It’s something, but I’m not sure just what. Northern California seasons can be a little confusing, especially if, like me, you’re from areas that have real winter. I’ve been here over thirty years and I still get caught short by faux seasons.
So we’ve had gorgeous days in the 60s and 70s. We walk up to feed the emus and, from the vantage up the hill, the valley is beautiful. The daffodils are in bloom, even in Two Rock. (I say even because Two Rock is always a couple weeks behind Petaluma–and more when it comes to frost free nights.) The grass is lush, mostly from melting frost or fog, because we’ve had so little rain this season. I just barely got the peach tree pruned before the buds started to swell. A few of the blossoms have popped open like popcorn. Plum trees are in full bloom throughout the valley. Over the weekend we drove to Santa Rosa and saw them pruning the grape vines in the vineyards. The most dramatic and confusing thing is the mustard. Farmers put it in as a cover crop, sometimes mixed with rye grass. The mustard is in full bloom now. Whole fields of yellow, sloping with the contours of our rolling hills, take your breath away as you crest the hill and come down into the valley. How could it not be Spring with that display of yellow?
Three nights of sub-thirties temperatures is how. We still need to keep the fire burning to keep the house from slipping into the 50s. I’ve always thought that this mid-winter hesitation was a feature in the California winter. It’s too early to plant but you can still clean up the garden, prune (though you best hurry up on that at this point), plan, divide bulbs and generally get things ready. If you’re really old fashioned, you can clean and sharpen all the garden tools. (I always wished I could be that dedicated. Instead I sharpen on the fly, as needed, and almost never clean a shovel or spade.) My first Spring here I was chomping at the bit to plant. Elmer said, “No. We see frost until the first week of May.” Every year he’s been proved right. So I wait, leaf aimlessly through the seed catalogues and peer anxiously at the dwindling wood pile.
I worry about the weather. Though the surface is damp from the dew and frost-melt, too little rain has left the soil dry any deeper than that. I worry about the well and about whether the dry soils will be a challenge for the garden through the summer. Will this cold weather kill off the blossoms and spoil the fruit tree harvest? Can the peaches and plums pollinate so early–when the cool days and nights impede the bees? But I’m a worrier. Probably it’ll all be fine. By April I’ll be planting seed starts for transplanting when the soils warm up. In May we’ll be digging in buckets, and it will fall into place, like it does every year. In the meantime, I’d better throw another log on the fire.
Ah, Monday…
A.V. Walters
This weekend was a cavalcade of problems on the farm. Our long dry winter has finally decided to normalize. The storms are welcome; we really need the water. Naturally though, the change brings its own set of issues.
Indirectly the weather change brought on a well emergency. The farm straddles a major road, with the old section on the west side and the newer part on the east. Our side, the old part, is mostly devoted to chickens (and tenants), and some sheep. The other side, about 60 acres, is all about sheep. It’s also where Elmer keeps the emus. (Yes, emus. A long story, for another day.) So, Saturday in a sunny break between squalls, we walked over to visit Mr. and Mrs. Emu. They’ve become quite attached to us, in their ‘big-bird-feed-us’ kind of way. Yesterday when they spotted us coming up the hill, they headed our way at a full trot. It’s quite a sight to see, 120 pound birds running at you; it warms our hearts, even if it is just about apples. So, while there, we noticed that the big water tank at the wellhead, was sitting kind of catawampus at its moorings. While we were walking back down the hill, Elmer flew past us at a full gallop on one of the mules (mechanical, not hoofed ) with his cell phone pressed to his ear. Once home I heard an odd, water-running kind of noise under the house — all the water in our pipes was being sucked back into the system as the pressure failed. Apparently a temperamental switch failed and the tank didn’t fill. That would not usually be a big deal, but with all the recent rain, the hydrostatic pressure in the soil was pretty high and that tank, sans water, was too light to hold its semi-buried place. In an unfortunate “Rube Goldberg” scenario, the tank literally popped up out of the soil like a wet bar of soap from a firm grip, snapping the attached pipes as it went. It must have happened just minutes before we got there. Well, Poor Elmer was in a state–it wiped out our whole water system. There he was as night fell, storm rolling in, jerry-rigging a connection to his daughter’s neighboring well. We’re limping along on a severe conservation alert so I quickly rinsed the dishes, but left them sitting in the sink.
Last night, while the storm was blowing, Bob brought in a mouse. It’s one of the little known secret about cats–not only will they hunt mice in your house, if they perceive a shortage they’ll bring some in for entertainment (and to show us that they’re on the job, rain or shine.) Bob wouldn’t give it up. I was chasing him but he’s quick. He growled every time I came near. Finally I just chased him outside and closed the cat door. Kilo stood by complaining that he didn’t have a mouse. I hated to leave Bob out in the pouring rain, but rules are rules. It was really raining, too. In a really hard downpour the internet cuts out. It’s satellite service. I don’t understand it, but in the paper-scissors-rock game of the powers of the universe, rain-beats-satellite-signal. Finally I gave up and went to bed, but it was raining hard enough to wake me repeatedly from a deep sleep. Finally, in the middle of the night, in a guilty funk, I got up and reopened the cat door.
This morning I woke up to the sound of a cat retching. Yup, Bob was back and apparently the mouse didn’t agree with him. Bob’s a farm cat with a sensitive stomach. Not one to be sick alone, Bob was in from the rain and throwing up on the kitchen floor. Oh yeah, and there were ants. Thousands of them. Ants are not unusual here, they make a run at it a couple of times a year and are held at bay by good housekeeping and Grant’s Ant Stakes. (They’re the only relatively benign thing that works. “That’s right folks, ask for them by name.”) The rains have flooded the ants out and they’re looking to take up residence in the house. Of course, the ants have found the sink full of dirty dishes. The house is cold; the fire is out. It’s Monday. I have work to do, but in the heavy rains the internet keeps cutting out. I really need coffee. Did I mention that there’s no water?
These, too, are the joys of rural living.
Buckets
A.V. Walters
Elmer isn’t just a chicken farmer. Being a farmer requires many skills and those skills translate into other areas. Obviously, since he’s my landlord, he has property management skills. Since he has the farm, and the farm has roads on it, he has road building and maintaining equipment. He has to keep the well in shape, so he has experience with pumps and piping and such. One of the secrets of farming is that you have to know some of everything to get by. It may also be one of the reasons so many farmers are employed, at least part-time, off the farm. They make good employees, because they know so much. Down side is, well, they have a lot of common sense and know how to make do. So don’t be surprised if stuff works fine, but looks a little funny.
Anyway, the reason I bring it up is that Elmer has some rentals, on and off the farm. He and his farm crew maintain them, especially in the off-season. I haven’t yet figured out when the off-season is for chickens, but from time to time this place is deserted because everyone’s out stringing fence somewhere on the property or for another farmer, or paving a church parking lot or painting a rental somewhere. All that painting uses plenty of paint. Plenty of paint uses up lots of buckets. Empty buckets never go to waste, they just hang around inside or outside of the barn we call Number Four, waiting for their second calling. When Elmer told me to look around for stuff to address the garden/drought issue, I saw piles of buckets. Big piles of buckets, the five gallon kind.
Having lived in the city for decades, I am fully aware of the ups and downs of container gardening. It’s a lot of work, filing the chosen containers with earth and compost, arranging enough drainage, planting, tending, harvesting and then emptying the containers each season. One of the risks is that the container will get too hot and cook the poor plants from the roots up. Planting in the ground provides a home that maintains a moderate temperature. But planting in a traditional open garden environment wastes an enormous amount of water. With row crops, you water the plants and the area all around them. I proposed putting our vegetable garden in buckets, which were themselves in the ground. Elmer and the farm hands smiled that okay, Miss city slicker, knock yourself out kind of smile.
I arrived on the farm as a woman without tools. Not that I’d never had tools, or didn’t know how to use them, but that in my retreat from urban living suddenly a lifetime’s accumulation of shared tools suddenly became a gender specific kind of marital asset. Really, it just wasn’t worth fighting about. Nonetheless, it landed me here more helpless than made me comfortable. One day I asked Elmer if I could borrow a saw. Naturally, he wanted to know what for? When I told him I wanted to cut the bottoms off a bunch of those buckets for the garden, he leaned back and considered it. After what seemed like a very long time he leaned forward and asked, softly, “How many buckets?” Then I knew, whether curious or just in it for sport, Elmer was game for bucket gardening. That was half the battle. Not that there weren’t other queries, why was I cutting off the bottoms? What was the point of the bucket? Was everything going to be in buckets? But I had answers.
The reason I wanted the bottoms cut off was to let the water drain through so the roots wouldn’t rot. The bucket tops stuck up above the garden surface and served as a reservoir for watering. That directed the water straight down, to where the plants roots were. But not everything could go in buckets; corn, for example, has very long roots and needs to be planted bunched up with other corn in order to get proper pollination. But that first year, we put the thirsty guys, tomatoes, eggplants and squash, into the buckets. Elmer told the farm hands to cut me as many buckets as I needed.
The crew watched from the sidelines, behind those same smiles, fully expecting failure. The garden flourished; water usage was minimal. Buckets had other advantages, too: they served as hose curbs; because the watering was directed into the buckets, they kept the unplanted areas dry and thus the weeds down; they kept the West County winds at bay when the seedlings were little and they kept the garden tidy. Elmer was won over. He even gave tours to friends of what he called the best garden the farm had ever had and extolled the advantages of bucket gardening. The farm hands shook their heads, with a bit less of a smile. The only hurdle left–gophers.
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