Book Binge

Love this book

So. I had to pick up some books at the library. I was participating in World Book Night. I volunteered to pass out 25 free copies of one of my favorite books. That would be The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. (I read that book that time we went to Africa.) When I got to the Wheaton Library, I found they had a used bookstore. So I went to the gardening shelf and bought four used books for five bucks. I gave away my free books and started reading my used books. One book, had a list of favorite books recommended on the inside cover. So I bought those books on Amazon in the used book section. Now I got more books coming, including this great classic called Norman Taylor's Encyclopedia of Gardening and a collection of essays and poetry by a feminist farmer named Janet Kauffman. I got up early this morning and started reading one of my used books, a collection of essays by Dorothy Sucher called The Invisible Garden. It turns out she's from Silver Spring, Maryland, like me. Great lady. Lovely book. "I had become infected with my first bout of garden fever, a recurrent disease, like malaria; an obsessive state in which plan piles upon plan, project upon project, the more grandiose the better, and nothing, absolutely nothing, seems impossible." I know this feeling. I wish I could have known Dorothy. I passed out my books last night in just 20 minutes. I gave away 25 books and most people smiled and thanked me. Some people, though, looked worried when I approached them and rushed away. Some said no, thanks. A disturbing few even laughed and jostled the arm of their buddy derisively, as if reading were so uncool and I was freakishly weird. Meanwhile, I wish I had an extra pair of eyes, because I've got a lot of books to read now. The Putterer

A Month Ahead and A Month Behind

Azaleas are peaked or past peak.

Roses are busting out.

I was just going through last year's photos of the garden and it looks like we are almost a month ahead in terms of bloom times. In fact, my garden seems like it's in a big hurry, and every flower and every plant is vying for attention. The azaleas bursted open as if they were trying to beat out the daffodils. The roses woke up so early, I thought they might ask for a cup of coffee. The dogwoods flowered so fast, I almost missed them. And the May-blooming irises and peonies are warming up in the batter's box for their turn at the April plate.

We're finally going to get some rain today and it couldn't come at a better time because while the garden is out ahead, the Putterer is way behind at work. So today, I'm going to be head down at home on the keyboard. Though, really that doesn't bother me. It's a pleasant task, I'm writing little blurbs on the cool things to see at each of the museums. I might even run downtown and take in a museum, or two, to complete the task.

A bus man's holiday.

Meanwhile, I couldn't be more pleased with the garden this year. I'm right on schedule, having put down mulch for the first time in half a dozen years on some of the beds and staunched a few weeds. I got grassseed down just before the early spring showers arrived, so the blades are robust and thick. I grew red lettuce, kale and chard from seed, so the vegetable patch is ready to deliver. I worked and worked

Dogwoods are showering their petals.

Swiss chard is ready for picking

the soil over at the community garden. I grew a cover crop of clover, then turned it over in trenches, row by row, mixing in compost so that my beds are thick and spongy, and teaming with earthworms. Over there, I've got sugar snap peas and greens growing in one bed and the others are ready to plant just as soon as the nights can be counted on to stay warm. I've got tomatoes, melons, cukes, swiss chard, basil, eggplant, peppers, onions and parsley starts all thriving under my lights and waiting to go out to be hardened off and planted.

Today, the temperature shouldn't  rise above 55, so I've got my fireplace humming with a toasty blaze. Delicious coffee in hand. Snoozy pup snuggling beside me. It's going to be a wonderful day today.

An early spring for an at-the-ready gardener. Not a bad thing at all. The Putterer

Got Crafty Today

Made a succulent mini-garden today.

My neighbor put this pitcher and bowl out on the curb last fall marked free, so I took it home. Last weekend I drilled drainage holes in the bottom of both the bowl and pitcher and today I made an arrangement of succulents and stones. I can't get out to water all my potted plants every day in the heat of the summer, so I'm potting ups some sturdy fellas, who don't need so much water. The Putterer

Sunny Saturday!

It couldn't be more beautiful out this morning. The sun is so bright, it was piercing my eyes as I fumbled to make the coffee. I had to shade my eyes in the kitchen in order to see where to pour the water into the coffeemaker.

This morning, I'm off to Behnkes to pick up some fertilizers, non-chemical of course, to feed my soils to the letter of their needs. The soil tests came back this week and I am armed with the specific requirements to make my garden produce. I spent the whole week studying the reports and planning what fertilizers I'll use and how to make them work for me. I'll be planting four new rose bushes, a hydrangea and a native kalmia all along the fence. Last weekend, I had the boys help me dig out the holes. The soil was tough and difficult. So, I'll also amend with compost. The kalmia needs a particularly acidic soil and a place on a shady slope. Its root ball needs to be planted a bit above the ground, so I've selected the perfect home for it just beside the gate. The roses that I picked out thrive in sun, but tolerate shade. They are perfect for the range of shade and sun that play along the fence throughout the day. I'll start off the morning by putting the dry roots into buckets of water and leaving them to soak all of today and tonight and I'll plant them tomorrow for Easter Sunday. Over at the Community Garden, the water is turned on and so I can commence to begin. The soil there was higher in pH, than I expected, a 7.3, which is at the highest range for vegetables. Word up is that our compost was heated improperly, elevating the pH. I'm going to add Espoma sulfer in to help acidify.  The soil test recommended that I add straight up nitrogen in the form of urea or bone meal to start the season. I've evidently added too much compost because my potassium, magnesium and calcium levels were in the excessive range, while my phosphorus was at optimum levels and my organic matter was admirable, at 12 percent. It's going to be a perfect day. The Putterer

Boys in the Hood

My helpers

I was so lucky today to have some help. I won't embarrass them by naming names, but there are two guys in my neighborhood, who are the best of friends. They are together all the time and today, they dug holes for me. The Putterer

Dear Soil, Talk to Me, What Do You Need from Me?

Double dug, tilled and composted. What more can I do?

I feel like a Potash-head this morning. Potassium, nitrogen, magnesium, oye.

I am the very model of a garden Major-General. I've information vegetable, animal and mineral, but I'm just so confused.

Plot number 24, by all intents and purposes, should be a veritable vegetable factory this year. It has been lovingly tended to. Last fall, I grew a clover cover crop in it to help build nutrients into the soil. Then I double dug it, turning the rows of clover under to add compost into the soil and to build a fluffy, spacious soil composition that would encourage germination and root growth, and then I added compost to the surface to give it that much more organic matter. Last weekend, I laid over that an additional three to four inches of compost for top dressing. I am, you see, gardening to the letter of the law.

But here's the pisser. I sent soil samples to the University of Delaware the week of March 5th and I have yet to hear back from them. They promised two week delivery, maybe a month if they were busy. But don't they realize that spring is at my throat! I need information, people, and I need it now.

Because, and here's the action I hadn't planned on. Other gardeners at the community garden, after receiving their soil analyses, are putting lime in their gardens!

So, I am a lime lover, I can lime a margarita like nobody's business. People come to my house from all over and are sublimely limed with one of my margaritas. Two, three sips, and I have raised their pH and diminished their acidity, which improves their mood immeasurably.

But for the soil, I don't know my calcium carbonate, from my calcium magnesium carbonate, from my calcium hydroxide, from my calcium oxide. I sure wouldn't want to suffer a morning after from any margarita mixed with that shit. 

Studying my Maryland Master Gardener Handbook this morning, I read that in this state many of "our native soils in unimproved condition are acidic." And that soil acidity is especially deadening where growth is desired. My soil is certainly improved over last year. But my question is what exactly does just the mere applications of compost or organic matter do to the soil in terms of its chemistry? I was under the impression that compost would balance the soil's pH in lieu of chemical fertilizers. Yes?

But on page 64, Marylanders are told that they can mix their soil margaritas with a choice of limestone and dolomite limestone, which are very slow to act, maybe years, or the faster acting hydrated or burned lime. But is that organic? No, of course it can't be. And if you don't get the mixture just right, it will run off and make all the Maryland streams, well, limey.

And as for compost, here I'm reading that you should add no more than a quarter inch to a half inch of compost to turf in year, page 94, but over on page 407, in the vegetable chapter, it says that new garden areas may need four to eight inches of organic matter the first year or two. So that means you are planting young plants directly into compost and not the soil. Can that be good?

I put about five inches of compost into the plot last week and I left it on top of the already double dug soil because I didn't want to destroy the structure of that system. Because you see, I've also read that tilling the soil can severely rupture structure and doing that can take years to repair!

But since my soil test isn't back yet, I don't know if I need to do anything else.

And yet the temptation to plant something was assuaged last weekend, when the master gardener gave me some extra of his plants to plant. I planted those directly into the layer of compost on the top and when I went over yesterday, I was dismayed to see that some of the leaves of the plants had yellowed. Meanwhile, MG's plants directly across from plot 24, were just a lovely green.

I want to die. Just kill me now. Was it the lime? Do I need lime? The Putterer

The Last Days of the Month

A turtle stepping stone stands watch over my greens.

March is over. We're in the final stretch. We closed the magazine. People aren't in the office. It's a time for resting, recovering, readying. I've been living my life on the last days of the month for so long, I don't know any other schedule. My months are always a frantic climb to get it all done, to finish, to sign off, to let it go, to come to a rest and a recover. Even my daughters complied with this schedule. Both of them arrived in this world just days after deadline. Once a friend said to me, "you have no idea what it's like to live without a deadline." The statement stopped me cold. He was right.

I think I'd fall apart. How would you organize your life if you had longer than four weeks of five days, excepting holidays, to finish? The thought is you'd take deeper breaths? Slow down? Me? No way. I might at first, fail completely to get anything done? Would the laundry pile up? The leftovers rot? The weeds and the grass take over? Maybe like in college, after an all-nighter, I'd finally sleep deeply? (Those days are gone forever, I suspect.)

So I took the day off today. I know I'm messing with fire, because that's one day less for the next cycle, but I'm going to pretend for a moment that I have all the time in the world. (Except, in a minute Jim's going to make me drive him to the subway, and Caley will need a walk, and I really need to make those doctor's appointments for Claire, and we're having Friday night here tonight and we're out of wine and limes and cointreau, and I want to go for a run, and mow the lawn, and turn the compost, and go to the community garden to water my greens, and oh what else can I do to turn my day off into a day on?)

It's on that dash, remember the famous line that Jesse Jackson read at Jackie Robinson's funeral, that we live our lives. From the day of the birth to the day of death. The dash on the tombstone is were life lives. Not, the dash from the beginning of the month to the end. Nor, the dash from the start of the growing season to first frost. Nor is it the dash from the chime of the radio in the morning to the droop of the eyelid at night.

I realized, though, this winter as I ordered foundation plants to decorate my new fence in the backyard garden that I might be closing in on the final frontiers of my garden. That after I put in these final pieces, I might be finished. All that would remain is moving plants from here to there, and maintenance. Does that mark an end date or the deadline of my garden. One of my friends asked me what would be next?

What do you do next? When gray sparkles in your hair and the kids are living away more often than home? When you mark a significant anniversary in your career, the kind they give you a cheesy pin for?

What's cool about that dash between birth and death is that it's longer than you think. It's got some time built into it for thinking about possibilities and opportunities. The maybes are kind of exciting. Garden metaphors abound. The tiny green elbow of a future plant poking up through the soil on a crispy, cool spring morning.

But I don't have too much time today to think about that, because really, no matter what you do, there's always a deadline. The Putterer