Category Archives: Horticulture

Winter is a-coomen in…

November 17, 2010 by The Manic Gardener

I shouldn't complain. After a brief cool spell in late August that left me gnashing my teeth (were we really going to be cheated of autumn this year, after having had practically no spring and only half a summer?) temperatures rose again and we had a long, warm Indian summer straight through October and into November. There was frost several mornings a week, and temperatures in the twenties some nights—after all, this is Montana—but during the day, we'd see fifties, even sixties.

Given that we had a wringing wet spring that culminated with the wettest June on record, punctuated by frequent hail, this long, warm autumn was especially welcome. I was still picking not only lettuce, broccoli, and of course kale, but even tomatoes right into November.

Of course, it couldn't last. Two weekends ago, on an almost balmy Sunday afternoon, my husband and I washed windows and got the storm windows up. The next day it snowed.

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Posted in Herbs, Vegetables, Weather

Chanterelles! August foraging I

August 24, 2010 by The Manic Gardener

It is August, the month of foraging, and almost every day I am gathering or processing fruit—or this year, for the first time, mushrooms. Last Tuesday I cycled the six or eight miles to the lowest pull-out in one of the canyons south of town, where the Hyalite stream slows and broadens by a little stony beach. There I met a friend and her two young children, with whom I picked a few service berries (Saskatoon, June berries) before abandoning them all to go upstream into swifter, deeper waters, looking for black currants.

I hit the jackpot. They were profuse and ripe, hanging in long drupes under their large, grape-like leaves; I could simply pull down, stripping the berries cleanly from their stems, gathering enough for jam in minutes. There are also gooseberries, with much smaller leaves and prickly stems, but I'll take the thorn-free currants any day.

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Posted in Native Plants, Out and About

Calling all tomato experts: help!

August 5, 2010 by The Manic Gardener

What is up with this tomato leaf?

This is one of the two potted plants on my friend Catherine's deck in Minnesota, and while the plants appear to be generally healthy, they're nowhere near the size of the monsters I wrote about a few days ago, which were all in the garden proper. Only one of the potted plants shows this curious purple-bronze discoloration.

Want to see it again? Closer up?

Does anyone out there recognize this bronze color? I've been through about every diagnostic site I can find, checked out numerous forums, and nothing matches. There's a lot of stuff on the web about phosphorus deficiency causing purple leaves, but that's primarily the undersides and veins, and this is exactly the opposite: the upper side of the leaf, and everything but the veins. Furthermore, this is a very bronze purple. I've considered sun scald and cold damage, nutrient deficiency and fertilizer burn, and just to be thorough, alien invasions.

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Posted in Tomatoes, Travel, Vegetables

Minnesota is not Montana

July 30, 2010 by The Manic Gardener

Home again from Toronto, and since this is a garden blog, I'll start with the garden entry, appending to it the Father Report with the latest news about my dad, who suffers from dementia and who had a debilitating stroke last fall. Later posts will proceed to the Tomato Mystery Problem, the somewhat garden-related entry, and to the entry having only the most distant relation to gardening.

I. The Garden stopover

On my way back from my spring trip to Toronto I stopped over in Minneapolis and helped some friends put in a tomato garden. On this visit, two months later, the plants towered over me.

Even bearing in mind that I am (well) under five feet tall, this is ridiculous.

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Posted in Tomatoes, Travel

We’re going to need a bigger harvest basket.

July 11, 2010 by The Manic Gardener

That's spinach on the left, and a major chard leaf on the right. I hadn't set out to make a major harvest, but when I lifted the cover off the greens patch next door, I found the spinach pushing the row-cover ceiling. So I got out the scissors.

I needed this. I've been digging for days, prepping plots that should have been planted two months ago. So I'm looking at all this bare dirt, wondering if I'm ever going to get on top of things, and at the end of the day, I actually get to bring this in.

What a relief.

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Posted in Food & Recipes, Vegetables