Maggie's Farm

A re-post

I cannot imagine mowing an entire hayfield with a scythe, but they are excellent tools once you get the hang of the rhythm and the motion, especially for steep or hard-to-reach places. If you sharpen the blade.

We always had a foot-pedal-driven sharpening wheel, with an oil can on top. Handy for sharpening anything. Easy to get kids to do the foot-pedaling for a few minutes.

In the words of Wendell Berry:

"The Marugg grass scythe proves itself an excellent tool. It is the most satisfying hand tool that I have ever used. In tough grass it cuts a little less uniformly than the power scythe. In all other ways, in my opinion, it is a better tool because, it is light, it handles gracefully & comfortably even on steep ground, it is far less dangerous, it is quiet & makes no fumes, it is much more adaptable. In rank growth one narrows the cut & shortens the stroke. It always starts - provided the user will start. Aside from reasonable skill & care in use, there are no maintenance problems. It requires no fuel or oil. It runs on breakfast. It's cheaper to buy than most weed eaters & is cheaper to use than any other power mower. And best of all it's good exercise."

Berry wrote a short story titled The Good Scythe.

As for me, I suffer from a decadent weakness for power tools and power equipment - anything that uses gas or electricity -  but I am sure Berry is right. I do have two large patches on the farm that require a scythe. One is too steep for the tractor, and one is too muddy for the TR or the tractor. A stuck-in-the-mud heavy machine is no fun at all. A TR on a very steep slope makes for dangerous slapstick, but I've done it a few times.

My Mom still reminds me about how much her Dad - a businessman, Polo player, sailer, fisherman, skiier, hunter and shooter, Poker-player, Scotch-drinker, cigar-smoker, and a good pal of mine - loved to clear his head with a few hours of scything each weekend on the farm. Followed by a few hours of riding over hill and dale. My Mom does not approve of my affection for power tools (unless I am doing something she wants done). I miss the guy, dead from an MI at 63.

He made the most of the time he had, which was and is an inspiration to me. A Congregationalist Protestant, in his will he gave his field next to his house to the RC Church which had wanted to purchase it for a new church, and left them his house for a parish house.

During the War, he made that field into a large Victory Garden with a large chicken coop, and raised cattle on the Farm (and kept his - and my Mom's - horses at the farm too. Big Hunters). My family tradition is to always have some land somewhere, whether for survival or for pleasure.

It's the best stone- and brick-cleaner, but it has to be handled carefully. I am cleaning a hearth with it.

When you buy it, buy goggles and gloves. It's actually a solution of hydrochoric acid - same thing your stomach is full of. 

You can't let it near bleach - the combo produces chlorine gas which will kill you. So it is fun to use. You really do not want it on your skin either.

Ever gnaw on a raw Rhubarb stem? I used to love that, when I was a kid. Especially the tender thin stems. Huge flavor, tangy, bitter, spicey.

While "researching" this post, I learned that it's commonly done in Turkey and Iraq. Our garden rhubarb came from China. The leaves are poisonous. There are lots of types of rhubarbs, most inedible.

Rhubarb is the most reliable edible perennial that you can have in your northern garden. Just throw some manure on them every Spring, and you're done. The only problem I have had with them (my last patch) was that the plants kept going to flower and seed without producing new stems. I guess I should have cut off the flowering stems sooner.

How to make a rhubarb patch.

A few fine Rhubarb recipes (don't talk to me about Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie which is an insult to both Strawberry and Rhubarb).

Rhubarb Crisp

Rhubarb Tart

Rhubarb Custard Pie

Gaura lindheimeri is a new plant for me. This one is nicknamed "Whirling Butterflies."

These are perennials (depending on winter temperatures), hybrids of a North American wildflower. Drought tolerant, prefers full sun, blooms all summer. Perfect border plant. They come in white or pink.

The only thing in life more charming than a well-structured and well-designed perennial border is a well-structured, well-designed girl.

Ours is in full bloom.

Mrs. BD and I, and some friends, have been spending a fair amount of time over recent weeks with a well-known Scottish landscape architect (Scotland born and bred, now working in the US - a legal immigrant!).

We all happen to be responsible for some lands which demand top-notch design and maintenance, and walking around with this fellow discussing design and plant selection - from trees to perennial beds - is a joyful education.

Mind you, we all have a fair and probably well above-average foundation in these things (eg we know what a Little Lamb Hydrangea is, and the difference between an Iris and a Siberian Iris), but a real Landscape Architect (as opposed to a Landscape Designer or, for the bottom of the barrel, a landscaper) not only knows which of the dozen varieties of Boxwoods you need for a spot, but can also step back and produce a big-picture, coherent plan which is more than any of us amateur gardeners could dream of.

Landscape Architects are professionals, and rightly so. A wonderful career. Good people to know.

Our Dicentra is beginning to bloom right now.  Early, this year. The plants begin to bloom as soon as they are out of the ground. No plant shoots up as quickly, and it's almost too early to enjoy their brief period of glory. Not counting the early bulbs, Dicentra is our first bloomer.

By August, the plant will wither up into nothing. Early-bloomers do that.

More about Bleeding Hearts here. The wild, native woodland version is white.

One of my rare Yankeeland slice of life posts, for our overseas readers who are interested in what we do here in America when we lazy people aren't "working"  -

Fertilize lawns
Re-load the big bird-feeders
Fertilize flowering shrubs and perennial borders with 10-10-10
Re-seed bare spots in lawn and water the seed
Put Preen on borders
Mulch and edge front garden
Pansies in pots
Final late-winter prunings (I have mastered the pruning arts, over the years)
Remove large redundant branch from the big Peach tree
Get organized for our big wild game dinner here next weekend - order delivery of spare tables and chairs, plates and silverware for 30, and warming plates, etc.
Clean self up, if possible, for fancy dinner out with group of new friends tonight

Being a loyal and dutiful husband, of course I showed up. All the husbands show up in their finest and tend bar for the opening night cocktail party, and later to see the big show again. We learn to look at these things, and to appreciate them as ephemeral sculptures.

Garden clubs, I know, are not only great creative outlets for gals, whether they work at jobs or not, but, like so many organizations, they also constitute a form of social capital. I even met a lady at this show who lives down the street from my Mom and belongs to my Mom's garden club.

I grabbed a few pics right after they folded up the show, before we took it down:

More pics below the fold -

Been to lots of parties in the past ten days. It's become one of my marital chores to record flower decor.

I've seen enough cloisers and cloister gardens in Europe to occupy my brain for a lifetime, but we went down to The Cloisters yesterday with friends to go on the Medieval Gardening tour. The museum overlooks the Hudson River near the northern tip of Manhattan, not far from where Alexander Hamilton's farm and country house was located.

Good fun. 1 1/2 hrs. Excellent docent, clearly loves her topic. She spent 15 minutes on the plants in the 15th C. unicorn tapestries besides going outdoors to discuss the medieval gardens. (I think most people go to the Cloisters just to see the unicorn tapestries, the subject of which is a symbolic mingling of romantic and sexual love with Christianity but it is difficult to understand them without an informed introduction to them.)

A Hortus conclusus is an enclosed garden, taken by monks from the Roman enclosed gardens, with a Christian symbolic gloss. (As I always say, if you want to understand the Romans, one must look at oneself. We of the Anglosphere are Romans.)

It's taken me many years to learn one thing: Wwherever you go, Always Take The Tour first. Be humble and learn.

That's the Hudson River in the distance.

More pics below the fold -

This is one of our dwarf Cortlands today, ready to be picked but the fruit will remain good on the tree for a few weeks, at least. If we had bothered to fertilize, it would probably have doubled the fruit. I will fertilize them next year.

There is still so much good green forage in the woods and fields, and there are so many healthy wild apple trees out there, that the deer haven't bothered our domesticated apple trees a bit.

Want an apple?

As fall planting season approaches here in the Northern Hemisphere, here are two simple tips to save you money and hassle:

1. When you plant a tree or shrub, space it to what its size will be in 10 or 20 years, if not more. Time flies, and the next thing you know you'll be cutting some of them down so they don't jam eachother into poor health. This error is commonly made when planting things too near the foundation of a house. Landscapers love to jam things in everywhere because they can sell you more stuff, and it looks better right away. I have made this foolish error enough times to have truly learned it: I am having to cut down a $175 fir today which I had planted, five years ago, too close to a group - because it looked good at first.

2. When you read that a plant needs "full sun," that means direct sun from morning until dusk. It does not mean full sun for part of the day. Furthermore, half-sun means half-day sun - preferably morning light. More sun is not better for a half-sun plant: just ask any Rhododendron or most Hydrangeas.

Oh, almost forgot a third: Never plant Wisteria anywhere, unless you have full-time gardeners to keep your place looking neat and under control. Take it from me. Just don't do it, no matter how delightful it is in May. Pick some other vine for shade unless continual warfare is your plan.

It's been Babyland here this Spring at ye olde New England homestead. Lots of nests, lots of baby birds fledging right now.

Within 15 yards of our cabin, this year we have successfully harbored nests or homes of:

2 pairs of Robins
1 House Wren family
1 Mourning Dove family (in our Wisteria, pooping on our porch chairs)
1 Catbird family
1  Cardinal family
1 Ruby-Throated Hummingbird family - a male and female are around all day, so I assume a tiny nest very close by
2 Cottontail bunny families - 2 litters each, I think
and, just a bit further away, a Red Tailed Hawk family which feeds on the baby bunnies and baby squirrels
1 (at least) Chipmunk family
Several Grey Squirrel families
1 Red Squirrel family

What's the secret? No cats and plenty of dense shrubberies, gardens, and evergreens. A big brush pile and some weed patches too. When the leaves fall, I will find other nests I didn't realize were there. Usually, a Song Sparrow, Goldfinch, or a nifty little Warbler nest.

I did not have the chance to do a breeding list for the entire Farm this year. It's easily done: You go out at 5 AM in early June and cover all of your land, listening for territorial songs while keeping your eyes open. At night, the owls. Next year...

Pic: The House Wren family is raising their babies in there. Every once in a while, one peeks out. 

We grow them in pots. Pretty colors, but the main point is for salads.

The smaller leaves (the largest leaves are a bit tough) add a spicy, peppery flavor to a salato misto. We also like to throw Nasturtium flowers on top of a salad (after tossing it). The flowers look good and taste good.

Here's a link about Nasturtiums as food.

This is one of our Pee Wee Oakleaf Hydrangeas. It shows what happens when you prune them: almost no blooms. Even though it is a dwarf version Oakleaf, it outgrew its space and I had to shape it aggressively this winter.

Next year, it will be fine if I leave it alone.

One of our white mophead varieties - Blushing Bride - in bloom right now, and, in typical hydrangea style, with a little mid-day wilt from being planted (by me) in a tad too much sunshine:

Time-saving projects always take more time than one expects.

We have always been partial to a gardening mix with hanging baskets, large pots, and planters. According to my local expert Mrs. BD, pots can add structure and height to flower gardens. The only thing that drives her nuts are clashing colors, and she does not like to permit annuals to steal the show from precious perennials and flowering shrubs with their frequently more subtle colors. (Furthermore, she believes that varied and interesting foliage is just as important in a garden as are blooms.) Red annuals? Fugeddaboutit. She says they are for McDonald's and banks - commercial-looking. She is right that overly-bright flowers look commercial and tacky rather than homey unless they are the only thing you are growing.

You could say that she feels that using any annuals is cheating, but I am not so doctrinaire about the elite gardening rules.

Our gardening trick for in-ground gardens is to use plenty of mulch instead of using irrigation, but if you enjoy pots and planters the way the Italians do, and do not always remember to, or bother to, lug watering cans around every night or every morning with all of the other things that need doing, you can assemble one of these sorts of cool dripper systems, set the timer, and forget about them until frost. Our cousins on Nantucket use them for all of their rental houses, and they work great. The mini-hoses are invisible.

Trust me. They'll look much better and grow better with daily water. Pots and planters dry out in one sunny summer day. (Smaller pots don't even make it through a day.) The occasional light dose of Miracle Gro in planters doesn't hurt either.

An annual re-post -

Everybody has an opinion on pruning tomato plants. Here's my view of the subject.

First, I'll assume we are growing "Indeterminate" types of tomatoes, i.e. vine tomatoes as opposed to the tree-like ("determinate," aka "bush" tomatoes) ones often grown in pots. Left alone, vine tomatoes will grow 10+ feet along the ground, as you can often see in gardens in Bermuda, but we stake them.

Up here in New England (Yankeeland), we need to prune them because our short growing season doesn't allow much time for good fruit formation. We have to prune most of the suckers and plenty of their leaves, and we cut their tops off in July or August - all so they will put their energy into good fruit and not into further pointless growth.

Further south, diligent pruning is less important.

And even though I grow mine in fine soft soil, I fertilize them with liquid fertilizer whenever I think of it. I usually have lots of plants, but only ended up with 10-12 this year of around 5 varieties.

Here's the best site I have seen on indeterminate tomato vine gardening. For all of the effort, and despite our short season, it is well-worth it when you pick one on a hot day and eat it in the garden like an apple. A tomato should be hot, with little salt on it.

Image: Commercial tomato picking in North Carolina

Another one of our hydrangeas, a lacecap variety, in bloom right now. Late June/early July is Hydrangealand up here. It happens right after the first bloom of the roses fade, and we try to have at least one variety in bloom through the entire summer:

The Nikko Blue hydrangea and its variants are classic plants in Yankeeland. Mine are in their full glory today.

Hydrangeas are the sorts of things that make a house a home.

Here are three important tips for those who grow hydrangeas of any type: first, they like moist (but well-drained) soil, hence their name. Second, full-day direct sun is too much for most of them unless you have irrigation. Third, prune them with caution: you have to first determine whether they are macrophylla or paniculata, etc. Prune them wrong and you get no bloom. Better yet, don't prune them at all unless you have to.

(More general shrub pruning info: Except for hedging or shaped shrubs, mature shrubs can or should be pruned at ground level - not from the top - removing 25-30% of the woodiest growth to keep the plant young and vigorous. This is especially important with shrubs like Lilacs. I will try to dig out my old pruning posts. Always study the correct pruning technique for a given plant before attacking anything with a sharp tool. Never prune young shrubs.)

I was surprised to stumble upon the fact that the common earthworm, the gardener's friend, is not native to the US and Canada: most worm species are "invasive" introductions from Europe, and have been spread across the country in plant material.

A few more interesting facts:

- The earthworm has been very destructive to several types of forest habitat by consuming deep forest litter (leaves). Ecologists consider them invasive pests in some habitats.

- Earthworms are killed by most pesticides. Fertilizer doesn't seem to bother them.

- Darwin calculated that earthworms can recycle and refresh the surface soil to the tune of 10 tons of soil per acre per year. Count me as a skeptic on that number, but they do churn the soil.

- Yes, some species of earthworm can regenerate lost body segments. No need for tears when you chop one with the shovel.

- Worms need food. For a wormy lawn or garden, it needs to be top-dressed or mulched with organic material. I do a generous top-dressing of peat moss or well-rotted cow manure once or twice twice a year, and after the heavy spring lawn growth, I leave the grass clippings where they fall. I like to mulch up the early autumn fallen leaves with the mowers, too.

A green lawn treated with pesticides, nurtured solely with inorganic fertilizers, and with automatic irrigation, is little more than a corpse with make-up.

More here and here.