Nobody sent me photos this week (guess everybody was too busy in their gardens) so here’s a NYTimes link to a Juneteenth gardening epic, “The Seeds of Survival“:
ENSLAVED Africans did not win their freedom in order to starve. Kathe Hambrick-Jackson knew that much from her work as the founder and executive director of the River Road African American Museum here in this town, 60-odd miles up the Mississippi from New Orleans…
“Where’s my nail crew?” she asked, standing next to a muscadine grapevine sprawled over a wooden fence. Like blackberries, she said, these fruits would have been easy forage for freedom seekers in the backwoods.
Other plants in the garden, like cowpeas, okra and rice, were indigenous to the Senegambia region of West Africa. Farmers would have raised them in fields near Atlantic ports like Gorée, in order to larder slave ships. Leftover food became seed stock for enslaved Africans to grow on the plantation.
In a sense, the Freedom Garden may sound like thousands of other African-American gardens across the country. These foods have been staples in many black kitchens for centuries. But an heirloom seed can be a complicated legacy when it comes from a person who sowed it in slavery.
Put another way, it’s easy enough to find white colonial re-enactors, in bonnets and breeches, picking a tidy row of carrots. But it’s a loaded act for the black culinary historian and heirloom gardener Michael W. Twitty to don a period costume, as he will this weekend as part of a Juneteenth demonstration at Natchez National Historical Park, in Mississippi. In a similar spirit of historical restoration, Mr. Twitty, 35, compiled the African American Heritage Collection of heirloom seeds for the D. Landreth Seed Company…
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Meanwhile, here north of Boston, my daylilies have started blooming — before the summer solstice! They’re a good month ahead of schedule. Not that I don’t look forward to their sloppy exuberance, but it’s going to be a long dull August at this rate.
How are things going in your gardens?
JoyfulA
But last year in Pennsylvania, we had snow before Halloween! (And then not again until spring.)
The weather definitely isn’t dull, and neither are gardens, when you never know what might open up next. Maybe your dull August will bring daffodils!
Raven
Oh, well here’s some flower pics
zinnias 1
zinnias 2
Raven
The weather here is almost spooky, with the fan in the window I froze my ass off last night. It’s 57 degrees and that in NOT normal for June 17 in Georgia. I have to drive to Savannah today and it’s similar down there. I wish I was going fishing instead of spending 3 days in a conference.
Steeplejack
@Raven:
Very nice here in NoVa, too–56° right now–but I am quaking at the forecast of 95° on Wednesday and 98° on Thursday.
I read somewhere that this last week’s beautiful weather is supposed to be normal for June–highs around 80°–not the high heat we have had in recent years.
Raven
@Steeplejack: That’s funny, my bride is from Virginia and we have been having that argument for a week!
Steeplejack
@Raven:
Did that NYT fix work on your iPad? I determined on a friend’s iPad that you can hold down a link and get an “Open in new tab” message, but I wasn’t able to fiddle around with the NYT site.
Valdivia
@Steeplejack:
Noooooo. Say it isn’t so. Already those DC summer days are here? Yikes.
Raven
@Steeplejack: My prescription lasts for another week so I’ll be trying it then. thx
Steeplejack
@Valdivia:
All too true. And my air conditioner was kind of flaky last year. (Haven’t had it on yet this year.) I am dreading dealing with my crazy landlady if it goes out.
Raven
Rut Ro
How Depressives Surf the Web
Valdivia
@Steeplejack:
I will pray to the cooling gods that your air works, because on those kind of days it is absolutely necessary.
Otherwise you will be left like Aureliano Buendia in search of ice. :)
Mustang Bobby
May was one of the wettest months we’ve had in South Florida in a long, long time, so I guess they can lift the water restrictions. The hibiscus are always blooming and the palm tree out front is waiting for an unsuspecting passer-by on the sidewalk to drone-bomb with a huge frond; when they fall it’s no joke… those things weigh a lot.
The spiders that inhabit the back screened-in patio seem to be enjoying the bounty of mosquitoes brought out by the rain, so the food chain is functioning within normal parameters.
HeartlandLiberal
In my backyard garden, which in retirement I have now expanded to around 2,000 square feet here in south central Indiana, we have been eating vegetables about a month ahead of schedule. I picked the first yellow squash a week ago, and we are already harvesting cabbages. Two or three weeks ago I filled a large brown paper grocery bag packed full with the best broccoli heads I have ever managed to grow. We will be picking tomatoes within a matter of days, it looks like, a week at the most. I hope my neighbors like tomatoes, too, I planted 32 plants, 22 varieties. Last night I started the evening ritual of turning on the motion detector water scarecrows. Without them, the deer will start showing up and helping themselves to the buffet I have so kindly provided them. I found where one small one had settled down and slept for a while at one end of the garden a couple of weeks ago. Waiting for the buffet to open, I guess.
The problem is the heat. And now the dryness. As of this week, all of Indiana is officially in at least a moderate drought, and as you trend into the southwest corner of the state, it is hitting high drought level. I am having to run the sprinklers at least every other day for an hour just to keep the garden from drying out. And the repeated episodes of early and high heat have caused many crops to bolt prematurely to seed, e.g. a couple of varieties of radish, the spinach, the mustard greens, the tat soy oriental greens. I guess for many of those I will try again as we go into fall. Last fall’s planting of greens kept growing and producing until the end of November.
John M. Burt
The First Lady will be riding right past my house shortly. Maybe I will finally manage to get the front grass properly cut.
Linda Featheringill
After many days of unfulfilled promises, we finally got rain in NE Ohio, after we washed bluejeans and hung them out to dry!
My house is now decorated with damp denim, accented with strategically placed fans.
I didn’t plant a spring garden this year. Too many other problems to wrestle with at the time. I’m thinking of a fall garden, though.
In one of our garden threads, someone mentioned planting seeds for spring seedlings in January and February. I researched that a little bit and it sounds fascinating. I’m thinking of doing that.
ETA:
http://www.wintersown.org/wseo1/How_to_Winter_Sow.html
for instructions on sowing in the winter.
tybee
@Raven:
yes, it’s been a deliciously cool spring.
some of our ginger that doesn’t normally bloom until fall is about to flower. weird.
jeffreyw
Mrs J has been having potting parties. The cats have a blast. That angers the stodgy old dog.
Scout211
Speaking of weather . . . it was 107 here yesterday. That actually is not unusual here in the summer (Central California). But I had to run the drip lines for my garden twice yesterday. All veggies survived, thank goodness.
Tomatoes are getting larger but are still green. I have harvested bell peppers, rhubarb, yellow crookneck, zucchini and blueberries.
Question for people who have grown sweet corn in their gardens: If the corn stalk has several little extra baby stalks growing up from the central stalk, should those be removed? This is only my second year with sweet corn and last year this didn’t happen.
BruinKid
So remember that SWAT story John wrote about last month?
Matt Osborne now says it might have all been a hoax done by right-winger Brandon Darby.
I still have no idea what to think.
Scout211
@Scout211:
Okay, just answered my own gardening question, using “the google.”
Suckers on corn stalks are not unusual. They neither harm or help the stalk. So don’t remove them.
Learned something new . . .
bemused
I cut off the scapes from the garlic I am growing and now trying to decide how I want to cook them, nothing fancy. I’ll probably just saute them. There is just the two of us so I think I will cut up what we can’t eat right away and freeze the scape pieces and water in ice cube trays.
Yutsano
@bemused: Here’s a good thought, since it uses up a lot of garlic. Plus mussels are cheap, widely available, completely sustainable, and wonderfully delicious. And yes you must have toasted bread with it!
Janet Strange
@HeartlandLiberal:
Welcome to my world (central Texas). Except we’re on permanent Stage 2 water restriction since last summer’s drought and can only water with sprinklers one day a week, before 10am or after 7pm. It’s hard to keep a garden alive in the summer here. We can hand water anytime, which is the only reason everything is not already dead.
Tomatoes peaked a couple of weeks ago and the big’uns quit setting fruit about then (too hot at night). Just a few green ones left. When they ripen that will be it for this year. Little SunGold cherry tomatoes still going strong though.
bemused
@Yutsano:
We are not fans of mussels. If we get some fresh walleye fish, the sauce would go well with that. Even if we were mussel lovers, we live in the boonies and I don’t think I have ever seen mussels in the fresh seafood/meat/specialty section of local supermarkets, seriously. Heck, those sections didn’t even exist not that many years ago here. Change comes very slowly to the hinterlands.
Kristine
We’re in maintenance mode in NE Illinois. Tomatoes are flowering. Basil is flourishing. I’ve had to break out the insecticidal soap to vanquish caterpillars. According to my blog archives, in 2009 and 2010 all my plants had buds by the last week in June–wish I recalled whether I was referring to the first sign of flower buds or the actual flower itself, because that would indicate whether or not matters are proceeding more quickly this year. I want to say that we’re 2-3 weeks ahead of schedule with the budding, but I wouldn’t bet the rent.
I’m not counting last summer because it was closer than normal and everything was messed up.
It’s been damned dry over the last few weeks. Ground cracking and lawns starting to brown. Received a healthy dose of rain last night, finally. Water hitting the roof and rattling down the gutters–such welcome sounds. Could have record-setting heat during the week, so we need all the water we can get.
Kristine
I meant “colder”. WP would’t let me edit the comment–are the permissions browser-specific?
Yutsano
@Kristine: Not really. Just capricious. FYWP wasn’t created in a vacuum.
Violet
A volunteer cantaloupe came up from compost I used to make a new garden bed this year. Being a soft-hearted gardener, I just left it. It’s been fantastic. So far I’ve harvested three cantaloupe from it. Cantaloupe harvested at the peak of ripeness — they literally just come off the vine when you pick them up to check if they’re ripe — are amazing. Incredibly sweet and tasty. I’m giving a cantaloupe to my dad for father’s day.
Not much else is still producing except for Matt’s Wild Cherry tomatoes. It’s too hot here for tomatoes to set. Eggplant are growing and I’m hoping we get some of those this fall. Along with peppers, which did produce, but again, it’s too hot for the fruit to set.
There are things I could grow right now, but I’m not a fan of a lot of them, like okra, so I don’t bother. Outside of long beans, the summer is kind of a fallow season in the garden. I’m just waiting for fall.
Mnemosyne
For people noticing that everything is blooming earlier, don’t forget that the garden zones were shifted a couple of years ago to account for global warming, so you may now be in a slightly different zone.
Gretchen
My daylilies have some sort of disease – the leaves are turning brown as if they haven’t gotten enough water, even though they have. Anybody have an idea what the problem is?
Kristine
@Mnemosyne:
This is true for me. We were Zone 5; now we’re 5.5.
FlyingToaster
{Just west of Boston} Our second daylily was blooming yesterday; but since most of the plants I started from seed this year, everything is pretty small.
We’ve had several cool nights in a row, which isn’t helping the chilis or tomatoes. The basil and cilantro just fine with it, however.
Anne Laurie
@Gretchen:
When this happened to me, I was told it was (past) time to dig up the plants and split them, like proper gardeners do every three to five years. Right after they flower is supposed to be the best time for that…
Violet
@Gretchen:
There’s a form of rust that attacks daylillies. You might want to check into it and see if it looks like what your plants have.
Moderate Urban Champion
Can’t grow spinach in upstate New York anymore. First plantings bolted early this month. 2 years ago it was the 4th of July. Last year it was a week before that. Oh well, tomatoes are doing great and bush beans are doing well (the ones whose leaves weren’t trimmed by a short-lived groundhog scourge).
RAVEN
@tybee: Hey, I’m in your backyard!
The prophet Nostradumbass
Speaking of climate zones, if you live in the West, the Sunset magazine climate zones are far more useful than the USDA ones, as they take more into consideration than winter hardiness.
Gretchen
@Anne Laurie: Thanks. I bought them all at the same time several years ago, so that might be it.
@Violet: I looked for the rust symptoms and didn’t see them. I hope that’s not it.