Tag Archives: soil

Protecting the Crown – A Bedtime Story

05 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Perennials

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Here at the farm, it’s finally time for bed. Fall has been long and warm, which has been helpful as we scurry to button up the house. Lack of consistently cold weather has delayed the last of our garden chores, however. Several hard freezes with temperatures falling to at least 25 degrees are needed before tucking in the perennials with their winter mulch.

Yields from our vegetable gardens surpassed all expectations this year. Our baby apple trees settled themselves into the orchard and thrived. The flowers and herbs in our window boxes grew enthusiastically, well into the fall. Pots of annuals were so gorgeous as we approached frosts, I wished for a heated sun room, so I could bring them all inside.

The greatest delight is the condition of the soil in the gardens. Instead of appearing depleted, having given its all to support such a bountiful harvest, the soil is soft and rich and ready to go again. Mulching gardens, trees and all my container plants with Premium Ground Cover has made all the difference. (www.PremiumGroundCover.com) 100% natural and heat-treated to kill weed seeds, this mix of chopped straw, timothy and alfalfa hay is nutrient rich, and my plants and soil love it.

As cold weather approached, Premium Ground Cover was my obvious choice for protecting strawberries and other perennials from winter stress. The purpose of mulching perennials, particularly newly planted, shallow rooted and marginally hardy perennials is not to keep them warm, but to keep them cold. During inevitable temperature fluctuations and periodic winter thaws, soil expands and contracts, heaving plants upward, exposing tender crowns and roots to drying winds and cold. Several inches of loose mulch applied to the soil late in the fall helps keep soil temperatures cold, conserves soil moisture and provides protection from the wind. Additionally, mulched soil warms more slowly in the spring, keeping plants from breaking dormancy during an early warm spell.

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Putting down the mulch is a pleasure. It’s soft and chopped short, so it stays where I want it and does not blow away, even in the stiff wind blowing on the day we put our gardens to bed. The recyclable plastic bag is easy to close, so unused mulch is neatly stored for later.

We’re ready for winter now, I suppose. Long days outside in the gardens will be replaced with shorter days on the snowshoe trails. Inside, we’ll be researching insect pests, studying seed catalogs, and dreaming about next year’s gardens.

Good night, everybody.

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Henry, king of the farm, inspecting the mulch.

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Who Goes There?

23 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Harvest

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“Did you harvest the rest of the beets?” I asked my husband. With most of the carrots and parsnips and a few beets remaining in the garden, root crops were next on my chore list.

“I didn’t,” was Tim’s response. “I noticed they were gone when I composted the squash and pumpkin vines.”

“Maybe Dave pulled them,” I suggested, referring to America’s finest neighbor.  I hadn’t seen him, but he was welcome to help himself to whatever he wanted.

It was unexpectedly warm after several days of cold and rain, a good day for a harvest. The carrots came out of the ground easily, and soon a wheelbarrow was mounded. But when I neared the other end of the garden, the evidence was clear. Something had been eating my carrots! Where there should have been lush, green tops, intruders had feasted their way down the row. With mulched soil as soft as a loaf of good bread, the uninvited didn’t have to work very hard to tug up a lovely meal. Here and there was a chewed stub of carrot. That’s when I noticed the partially eaten beet. 

I’m grateful for an exceptional harvest this year. Certainly there have been challenges, like the night the raccoons raided the corn. All the corn. Every ear. Every single ear. But there has been plenty to eat, plenty to put by for the winter and plenty to give away. Certainly, I’d prefer not to share with the deer or skunks (or both) that enjoyed my beets and carrots, but as wildlife invasions go, it’s been a tolerable season. Not so for my friend, Shirley, whose garden, well-known in the animal kingdom, suffered a moose family take-out dinner party, among other adventures.

To all my four-legged and winged friends and foes, whatever you find in my winter compost pile is yours, and I promise, you’ll eat well.

The first wheelbarrow of carrots

Poor Things…

08 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by in Perennials

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“I want all these lupines out of here.” Katie was emphatic. At my daughter-in-law’s new home, the flower garden was a tangle of runaway perennials. Katie had a different vision, and she wanted the whole mess to go away.

At my farm, an overgrown area next to our property line desperately needs renovation. I want nothing more than a sea of lupines. This was clearly a case of one person’s misery being another’s happy day. Katie’s lupines were blooming in all their white and purple glory. I wanted to move them, but how?

With so much to do that day, we knew we had to dig them out in a hurry, preserving as much soil as possible for Katie’s garden. The taproots certainly would be damaged. Worst of all, their intended new home wasn’t ready. They would have to be transplanted into a temporary bed, then moved again in the spring – if they survived. “I hope you’re tough,” I told them as I stabbed my shovel mercilessly into the ground.

Back at the farm, with more pressing chores waiting, I stood the lupines in a deep bin and gave them a long drink. There wasn’t time to plant or even to cut them back. Their chances seemed bleak. “Hang on, or it’s the compost pile for you,” I warned as I pushed the bin into the garage to keep them out of the sun.

The following days were unusually hot and windy. Transplanting would have been futile. Although the lupines were watered and shaded, they wilted badly. My expectations dwindled.

Four scorching days later, with the temporary bed ready and rain in the forecast, my dear husband dragged the bin outside, bedraggled lupins already beginning to stink of rotting leaves. It was evening, and the blackflies were ravenous. Waving and swatting to little avail, we dug holes, pruned and planted with more speed than care. “Be brave,” I encouraged, as I tucked each one in with a good blanket of my favorite hay/straw mulch, Premium Ground Cover by Lucerne Farms.

Water is the most important thing now. If the soil remains moist and cool, Katie’s lupins just might survive their rude uprooting and bloom again, here at my three acre farm.

She Begins

29 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in Story

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This is the story of a woman who loved a farm and had to leave it behind. It was a small farm by the standards of some; 65 acres of gardens, raspberries, wild strawberries, fiddleheads, an old apple orchard, a new orchard, potato fields, woods and dreams. It was a farm with a hill at the center. From the house she could watch the sunset, then walk up the farm road to the top of the hill and watch the sun set again.

The worst part about the leaving was not missing the house or the dear neighbors or even the moving far away. It was the aching for the land; the deep, deep longing for one piece of earth to call “our farm”. The new garden at the new house in the new town did not soothe the ache. Neither did the peach trees, nor the forsythia, nor the beds of blooming perennials. The land belonged to someone else, and even the rose bush brought from the farm refused to grow.

This is also the story of a woman whose passion for the soil brought her home to a corner of land. The orchard was ancient and long untended. There was no garden, but wild strawberries filled the field. There was a clothesline. “This is where we will build our life together,” she said. “And this is where a corner of land will become a three acre farm.”

Come along, then, for a journey as long as this is best with companions.