2022 garden progress up here on Sweet Gum Hill

  2022 Garden Progress on Sweet Gum Hill

The name here is Sophy. I'm head of Home Front Security for Sweet Gum Hill and the surrounding woodlands. Because we're working with a skeleton crew these days, I am gonna be your tour guide for the summer. Please keep up and we will watch the gardens of Sweet Gum Hill go through their seasonal routines and I'll try to give you some insight into our planning process.  There will be a question and answer session following the summer, but feel free to post a comment and one of my people will get back to you pretty quickly.  Your suggestions and advice are appreciated as we learn something new up here every single day.

This spring is off to a comparatively slow start. Not that we have not been working at it,  our efforts have been focused on expanded output for fewer varieties.  More photographs will follow as my staff gets around to it. 

The summer tour will go like this:  You will get to see the various beds take shape and I will discuss the planting rationale as we move around the hill. I will update you as each bed gets planted and may give some insights as to the progress of the growing season. Sometime after the Spring planting is complete, we will have an Iris Intermission as the various varieties of Iris take their turns. After that we will have some early summer plantings and then a Lily intermission. Feel free to stretch your legs and spend some time looking closely at the blooms.  Sometime in mid-summer we will begin to reap what we have sown, so to speak. I will try to get photographs of the foods we grow up here and explain the metrics of yield and processing.  We hope you enjoy your visit. 

So off we go.     

Mushrooms

One of the many benefits of living where we do is an early spring emergence of morel mushrooms. We dry them and use them in soups all year. Now Thanksgiving turkey must have a large serving of mushrooms in the cream turkey gravy.   But our annual harvest starts up here with a turn about the woods in May by Ma 'rent who has an uncanny visual talent to find them, even when Dad can not see them at all!

Asparagus  

This year we decided to double the asparagus beds again. We've found raised beds surrounded by dry stacked rocks with pebble pathways between the beds seem to keep the soil nicely drained, just as asparagus are wont to live. So we built several new beds.

  Last year we had approximately 60 plants between 2 and 6 years old.  The 7 ft by 21 ft bed just directly behind me (between me and the shovel)  in the above photo contains 30 plants that are now in their 6th year.  During the season we will get between 12 and 15 spears a day from just this one bed.  

Then the bed to my right, just behind me over there, contains another 30 plants that are 2 years old. 

Sometime during the first week of May, the asparagus shoots begin shooting. We'll pick them until mid June...selecting only the thick sprouts. 

We are awash in asparagus.  But dad does not know how to moderate. Especially when something grows well up here, he tries to maximize output long before he seems to consider what we are going to do with all of the asparagus.   So this March we added 50 purple and 50 green asparagus plants in the beds behind the older beds, back in the back there behind the shovel in the photograph up above with a shovel in it. But we built  in enough space there to expand again next year by another hundred or more plants. So the three year plan for asparagus is that 2025 will be an asparagus based May festival up here on Sweet Gum Hill. 

May 6.    Fifteen minutes prior to this photograph, these asparagus shoots were still a part of our garden.  Steam grilled in white wine and olive oil, wrapped in smoked ham roll from a local farm, and drenched in a caramelized reduction of the juices with lemon peel, sage, and balsamic vinegar,  these asparagus are the epicurean symbol of glorious springtime.  Now we will eat them until we want no more...sometime in early June. 

May 25 Perhaps we are at the peak of asparagus season. Today we're eating all we want, again. Dinner for two!  

Sugar Snap Peas

Last year we learned that sugar snap peas are easy to grow, fix nitrogen in the soil as well as do beans, and are finished with their production/life cycle in enough time to use their rows for late beans or another fall crop like broccoli or cabbage.  So this year we got serious about planting sugar snap peas. Our biggest challenge will be to discover new ways to put them away.  Last year we ate them fresh and blanched/froze the rest.  Blanching/freezing takes SO much freezer space. Anyone out there have any luck in canning them? 

Two of the rows of sugar snap peas on May 15.  I'll update once the pickin starts. 

Iris Intermission

As the asparagus beds reach their maximum output, the irises begin to bloom. We have named the iris varieties after fictional neighbors. You can find out more about those neighbors and their irises by seeing last year's PARADE OF IRISES.   But this year, for this intermission, we will provide a sample of the varieties, since technically, people can not live on veggies alone. 

You may want to click on these photos to see them in their full size. 

First up, as usual, "The Jordan Roberts"   May 10 Smallish, pink purple and blaze orange. 

Next in line, here on May 15,  comes the Tilde Fost.  This variety blossoms quickly and remains in bloom for only  a few days. But with purple, white, pink, and blaze orange in the same flower, this is an impressive iris. 

Here is the Gregor Braun, opened on May 16

And, coincidently, his lovely wife, Lorraine, after whom the township was named. 

Announcement:  We have gotten pretty busy up here...weeding, planting, mowing, etc. So the rest of the iris photos will be without names and description. Perhaps you can go to last year's "Parade" if you would like to have more information. 

 

We estimate today, May 25, is PEAK IRIS DAY, a sacred holiday up here on Sweet Gum Hill. 

Sugar Snap Peas

We are awash in sugar snap peas right now, on June 19. Two fifteen foot rows seem to produce a half bushel every two days. More rows (later planted to extend the season) will be coming online shortly. 

One of my assistants, we call him "Pa 'rent," grows peas.  Long story, short, it is all a part of my labor force engagement protocols. Taking charge of one or two little projects seems to make a big difference in their attitudes and force retention metrics around here. So Pa 'rent uses the spaces between asparagus plants to grow sugar snap peas. He says he does it to provide a shock of nitrogen to the asparagus shoots just at the time they need it, at the point when we have stopped harvesting the shoots and the fern stalks are beginning to grow quickly. This is how asparagus achieve the above ground plant mass to store needed energy for next year's crop of shoots. And the sugar snap peas provide the go juice for all of this.   Pssssst:  This is just Pa 'rent's rationalization, I believe. You should see his face as he picks a bushel of fresh young sugar snap peas, during that otherwise slow period between the last of the asparagus and the first of the beans.  I think the peas are an economic good in their own right, and the nitrogen they "fix" in the soil for the asparagus is just a side benefit. 

I actually don't even like the things. They are kind of crunchy, sweet, and green for my taste (although a mess of green beans, boiled for hours with a nice ham bone and judiciously salted and peppered is one of my favorite meals, go figure.)  But Pa 'rent, now, Pa 'rent loves sugar snap peas. He eats hands full right off the bush like a rabbit might if I were not around.  Pa 'rent blanches and freezes them, putting them safely in the back of the freezer for those February dinners when something green seems like an almost forgotten dream.  Ma 'rent does an amazing rice pilaf thingy with these frozen ones that keeps Pa 'rent from buying food imported from places that grew them a long time ago, and far far away, and sprayed with who knows what kinds of chemicals.  But the frozen peas do keep the 'rents from climbing the winter seasonal walls, when it might seem that green beans and potatoes are the only thing in the garden larder.  Pa 'rent is experimenting with brining them in a soy/salt bath and then drying them in an attempt to find a healthy alternative to pop-corn for his repeated watching of _Rogue I_ and other stories from a "Long Time Ago and Far Away." Winters are long and dark up here.

So blanched, dried, grilled, steamed., the 'rents eat these things all year. But does anyone have new ways to use/cook/preserve them?  I get the feeling that Pa 'rent would add another big garden plot into the rotation just for sugar snap peas if he could figure out how to use more of them. 

Another mess of peas on June 21.  Please, if you have any good ideas about preserving and or eating these in new ways, let us know. 

June 29 still peas...This batch is getting frozen. Dad says he can't even imagine eating another one. 

Peaches

We spend most of our early spring worry energy thinking about peaches. During a springtime walk on a hillside with 21 peach trees of 4 varieties, a peach blossom is a beautiful thing. But it can be frightening if we have a late freeze predicted. All of the peach and nectarine trees have already broken bud, today (April 17). Small green leaves can be seen. On a few of the early varieties the blossom buds are even open. Dad claims this to be.a dangerous time for peach crops because of the possibility of a late freeze. Tonight's temps are forecast to be in the neighborhood of 30 degrees. If we get through tonight we should have bushels of late summer fruit...pies, jams, bowls...and fresh from the tree.  But we must get through tonight. Fingers crossed!

            21 Peach trees, 3 Nectarine Trees, 3 Cherry Trees, 4 Apple Trees, 7 Plum Trees. A late freeze

            could spell trouble for this year's crop. 30 degrees forecast for tonight. Ahh the anxiety!

Dad woke up this morning and looked outside. He took this photo from the bedroom window. Then he went back to bed. Should we send for help? 

Spring Peach Update on April 29 2022.   We may have lucked out of a long winter with several late freezes. Fingers Crossed! But we still have plenty of blossoms on Peach and Nectarine trees. Cherry trees are starting to blossom now. Apples and grapes are breaking bud. So all hope is not lost. 

The peach trees have greened up very nicely. But there is little hope for peaches this year due to that late freeze. This will be a good year for root development and nitrogen fixing in the orchard. 

May 25 No, very few peaches this year. This will be a year to concentrate on the trees, i.e., we'll plant some beans around the roots, clear away the weeds, and motivate the trees toward root development.  There's always next year. 

Potatoes

Last year we enjoyed our home grown potatoes so much. Who knew that fresh tates tasted so much better than anything we can find in the store?  And we eat lots of potatoes.  "New Potatoes" with beans and ham is a quick and easy meal that we enjoy twice a week. But German Potato Salad, Kartoffel Kloss, (dumplings), smashed grilled fries, au gratin, a baked potato from time to time, several of my dad's favorites of Ma's soups (spinach/sausage/potato soup comes to mind)...yes potatoes are a foundation of our eating.  I like to think of potatoes and beans as a kind of deep cycle life battery. You spend time recharging that battery in the spring, by cultivating, planting, and weeding. In the summer you add more energy through picking processing and finally more cultivating. And then year round you can discharge that battery every time you open a jar of beans or bring up some more potatoes for dinner. The trick is to get a powerful enough battery to keep you going all year. 

Our home grown potatoes ran out sometime in late January and we vowed to stock away more this year.  So this early spring we more than doubled the size of our potato patch. Our normal rotation of crops involves three beds. The rotation begins with beans one year, followed by potatoes in the same plot next year, and then a mixed up produce patch including broccoli, peppers, squash, cucumbers, and paste tomatoes. So doubling the size of one bed is an undertaking of a commitment to do the same thing at least two more years (as you double the size of the other beds to make room for the potatoes in the rotation.)  Accordingly, the past three weeks have been spent breaking sod, removing rocks from the soil, cultivating, and finding uses for the rocks in other landscaping projects. The work is hard, but once it is over seems most rewarding. 

Part of the fun of gardening up here is finding uses for all of the rocks we dig out of the plots. Here we used field stone to create coffee tables around a bench seated squarely in the middle of a strawberry patch. It is for those days when you would like to repose in the middle of a strawberry patch with a good cup of coffee. 

This year we planted 30 lbs of Katahdin White, 25 lbs of Kennebunk White, 20 lbs of Pontiac Red, and 25 lbs of Yukon Gold. 

                      100 lb of potatoes in the ground on April 16 at 2pm.  Bring on the spring rains. 

                                  Potatoes are in. Now we await some rain, some sprouts and then we

                                  can begin the long process of layering soil on top of the rows as the 

                                  plants grow.  April 29th

May 26: Potatoes are all up.  The white potatoes on both sides of the garden (forward and back of the photo) are now twice the size of the yellow and red potatoes in the center. But that will all even out. These beds need to be introduced to a hoe very soon. Then soil from the rows need to be scooped up onto the plants. This will encourage more potato formation. So it is not optional. But right now the priority is grape beds. 

May 29   Time for some attention to the potatoes.  Will one of my assistants please make this a priority...just after beans are planted.  These things are growing quickly. Gotta get some soil stacked on their roots and stems before they blossom. 

Grapes   We now have three types of grape totaling sixteen vines. We have five vines of Niagara white, five  black red wine grape vines called Frontenac, and then a bunch of seedless Concord grapes.  This is that time of year when our staff can be found on hands and knees weeding the grapes. Dad likes to grow irises on the sunny side of grape vines. He says it does not help much with the weeds, but you get more space that way to grow irises in. 

Here is a row of Niagara grapes on May 25. 

Frontenac grapes looking good on June 19.  This will be a dark black, small and sweet variety. For now, they are tiny green globes, storing up the sugars for some kind of future jam to be enjoyed in the deep freeze of Pennsylvania wintertime. 

 Beans

This year we'll plant, as always, more beans than we can ever use. A bean crop is good for the soil. It replenishes the nitrogen into the top layers so next year's crops can use it. And bush beans grow in orderly beds that usually crowd out most other weeds by blocking most of the sunshine. A side benefit?  Green beans!  We usually put away 55 quarts of snapped green beans for our use through the winter and spring, until fresh beans are available again sometime in late June. I would figure we eat as many processed beans (October through June) as we eat fresh beans (July through September.)  Since we doubled this year's potato beds, our next year bean bed will much too big for our needs. But for reasons of their benefits to the soil we will probably fill up the beds and try to give even more away.  Some smart person once said "if only one in ten people produced enough food to feed his own and three other families, the world would have no hunger."  That same smart person also said, "the best way to store an agricultural surplus is in the belly of your neighbor."  Taken together, these chestnuts seem like some kind of agricultural philosophy. 

                  This was last year's potato bed. We will expand it dramatically between now and bean planting time. First we'll turn the sod. Then after a week or two we will re-turn the garden into rows and hills. After that, and a little bit of hoe work, we will plant three pounds of beans:  Blue Lake 47, Tendergreen, and Yellow Wax. 

Here is the bean bed on April 29th, as they say in the deep south, "Twicest Turnt." With just a little hoeing and then after  a good drenching rain storm, this plot will be ready to plant.  

  

  That will give us all of the young green beans we wish to eat, and 55 quarts jars put away for the duration.  But we'll be adding a patch of Yellow Wax (aka black wax) bush beans, just to offer some variety (and because it is hard to beat grilled yellow wax beans and onions as a side dish for largemouth bass.) 

                                                                        Beans of July 7

July 7    First mess of beans picked.  Now starts the picking and processing part of the summertime. These first rows were Yellow Wax, often called "Black Wax" for reasons unknown to any of my humans.  But they are crunchy, sweet, aromatic and grill nicely with onions augmenting any barbeque meal. 

Beans are coming in by the front end scoop load. The first of the green beans are ready to be picked any moment. But what we almost hope are the last of the early beans...yellow wax, are filling in the blank spaces on our plates these days. 

Yellow Wax Beans on July 17

Tomatoes

Sandy, my Ma 'rent,  grows her "slicin' tomatoes" in several raised beds, spending hours in mixing the soil, (one part coffee grounds, one part dehydrated cow manure, one part composted kitchen waste, one part loam from one of the nearby garden beds, one part wood ash from the winter's heating effort, one part lime dust, one part composted leaf mould, one part peat moss, egg shells, etc.  Then from the time she plants them she seems to hoover over the plants, pinching, tying, sniping, protecting from bad insects, encouraging helpful insects watering, shaking water off drenched leaves, etc.   Lots of work involved, very little of it Dad and I even understand or have the patience to learn about.  But sometime in late July begins a parade of the most lovely, delicious, tangy, sweet, fresh tomatoes to enliven every meal. Quite often, our entire meal is comprised of tomatoes in some kind of olive oil and vinegar drench with basil leaves and garlic bits...of course with salt, pepper and perhaps a squeeze of lemon.  Any slicing tomatoes we do not eat fresh from the vine get added to the  "Roma" tomatoes which Dad and I grow in a garden patch, and are then processed into stewed tomatoes that become chili sauce, spaghetti sauce, soups, Salsa and more, during the months of the year when we can only dream about the taste of fresh tomatoes from the vine. 

In a couple of months, this bed will be a tangled mess full of Roma/Paste and a few cherry tomatoes. Today (April 29) it looks like a pile of clay clods, right after its first turn. Between now and planting, we will dig into this bed a full hopper of composted kitchen waste from the past year. Then after one more turn, and a bit of superficial cultivating, it will be ready to plant. 

May 29:  Ma 'Rent's "slicin tomatoes."  Now they are planted and staked. Today begins the hours of round the clock attention, including snipping, watering, pinching, pulling off insects, twining, and altogether pampering that these tomato beds get.  

July 17    Ma 'rent pampering a couple beds of her slicin tomato plants. Looking good so far!

May 29: Pa 'Rent's "cookin tomatoes."  Here are a dozen paste tomatoes that also got planted. These will be lucky if they get tied up on the stakes. According to Pa 'Rent, they have one job: ripen all at the same time so the vines can be shorn and pulled up. Then we end up with a mountain of little pear shaped tomatoes which have lots of pulp for canning.   To the left side of this patch are 20 bell pepper plants. Hopefully they will yield enough peppers for salsa making and for salads. 

Cucumbers

Each year we get a little closer to a satisfactory cucumber crop.  We like to make pickles, but rarely ever get a big enough crop of the little pickling variety all at the same time to do so. We also like sliced cucumbers for salads. We have learned the hard way several lessons that I will mention in case anyone out there is really reading this and thinking, "hey, I'd like to grow some cucumbers."   Do not plant seeds. Small rodents called voles seem to love the shoots of cucumber plants but do not seem to bother plants once the full pointed leaves have formed. So plant cucumber plants in your garden, not seeds. By mid June the soil is warm enough and the voles have fallen prey to snakes and cats and birds (and black mouth curs who will, by disposition,  not permit a vole to live on the property for long).  So in Pennsylvania, do not plant cucumbers before the second week of June. One more important thing: Rotate your cucumber patch such that you only grow cucumbers and/or squash there once in every three seasons. This will prove to be a real annoyance, because what do you do with that patch each of the other two years? We are still working on this problem and the answer does not seem to be cabbage and brussels sprouts and broccoli.  There is a small white fly that are the parents of small white worms. There are also some small striped beetles that also have a hungry larval stage. Together their larva cooperatively feast on cucumbers in the first year. As adults they lay their eggs in the soil in their parental expectations that what was good for them will be good for their offspring. Trouble is, one set of parents can yield next year's thousands of offspring. And when they can't get cucumbers, they seem to be perfectly happy with cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and squash. Since we do not use insecticides, our option is to rotate the crops such that the next year's generation of white fly and striped beetle are disappointed and hopefully must move to better digs.  Sadly, the rotation of cucumbers with something else has to be something that both the beetles and the white flies can not eat. That rules out squashes, pumpkins, cabbage, broccoli, and brussels sprouts.  

Preliminary solution:  This will be the second time we try this. So we are not yet recommending this rotation quite yet but will report on how it works. We have constructed three smaller gardens (smaller than the bean and potato rotation.) This year we are continuing the experiment in trying these  three smaller patches in a separate rotation from the beans/potatoes/produce rotation in the larger plots (described above).  Year 1: Sugar Snap Peas in the spring followed by Cucumbers, Year 2: Radishes in Spring and Fall,  (Dad absolutely loves the radish greens. They are much more tender and flavorful than turnip greens, try them and if you are a greens eater you will see what I mean.)  Year 3: Roma and Paste Tomatoes grown in bed alongside peppers.   Again, we will have to wait until the 4th year to see if the white fly, striped beetle problem has been solved by this rotation.  If not, we'll try something else. 

Cucumber Patch on April 29.   Dug, redug, turned into hills, composted, and after a drenching rain, will be ready to trellis and plant sometime in June. 

Cucumber Patch on May 29.    They are planted and being watered. With fingers crossed for a pickle making yield, we will now watch for slugs, white flies, and striped beetles, while we water during dry weeks and wait. The pickle variety (12 plants) are along the back trellis. The middle trellis (8 plants) has slicing cucumbers for salads. 

June 29th Lots of small cucumbers. We'll begin picking them in a few days. 

I do believe we have solved the white fly/stripped beetle problem. The answer is three fold: i) plant cucumbers, squashes, Broccoli, and Brussels Sprouts late in the season., 2) rotate between three beds (Beans, then cucumbers & squash, then cooking tomatoes, then beans.)  3) trellis them with plenty of straw between the rows to keep moisture in the soil. 

Here is the first haul of pickling cucumbers on July 7. Bushels to come.  Note to staff: get them picked while they are still much smaller. They will stay crunchier and contain fewer large seeds that way. 

                      Gonna need some help up here. July 11 and many more where these came from. 

Berries

                                                        Blackberry Blossoms on May 30

Sweet Gum Hill has two very productive native berries that grow when and where you just stop mowing.  The blackberries are full thorn, a variety with sweet, if small, berries that seem to all come to ripe form in one week. And the thorns are unbelievable. 

                               What happens up here when you don't mow a space?  Black Raspberries!

The native black raspberries are sweet and grow around the edges of the gardens. But their productivity makes vacation scheduling inconceivable until we all see when to expect the harvest. 

We raise two varieties of red raspberry and a yellow raspberry that we use to make isolated beds all around the step parts of the property.  Too steep to mow?  No problem, build a rock wall and put in some red or yellow raspberries.  Maybe not pretty landscaping, but they produce for the month of August and can be found on ice cream and breakfast breads up here all year long, since they freeze so well. 

Also, there are several ferrell beds of June strawberry growing up here. So far, the strawberries seem to be feeding birds and groundhogs, with only a handful or two  each season ending up on the 'rent's plates. We will have to learn more about protecting the crop.  So much to learn and to do up here!

Just imagine, this space will be filled with new Iris beds this time next year! Dad's goal makes sense to me. He says, he'd be growing irises anyway. By growing more of them he has to mow less lawn. Since he enjoys working on iris beds and does not enjoy mowing grass, it seems like he has hit on a solution. 

Lily Intermission

Some of the lily varieties blooming up here on Sweet Gum Hill, starting around mid-June and lasting until...

Among the many benefits of living up here:  there are flowers on the table from late April to early November. 

Year's Garden Tally

Asparagus:   about a hand full each day in May and early June. 

(Expand this bed)

Cooking Tomatoes:  Poor yield.  Unreliable plants turned out to be cherry not Roma. 

(From seed next year?) 

Slicing Tomatoes:   All we wanted!  Nicest plants and yields in years. We ate fresh almost all of August and September, gave away all we could, made "pickalilly" relish from some green ones, and put away two dozen quarts of stewed. 

Summer Squash:  six plants gave us all we wanted and enough extra to give away all we could. 

Peaches:  Crop destroyed by late freeze in May.  

Cherries:  Crop destroyed by late freeze. 

Apples:  young trees not bearing. 

Plums: Crop destroyed by late freeze. 

Pears:  No blossoms this year?  Added three more trees now have five varieties. 

Green Beans:  Gave away much more than we kept.  We put away 70 quarts and ate many fresh. 

Peppers:  Nice crop. Enough for us from about six plants. We have learned how to prepare them so perhaps we should expand  this crop next year?

Soup beans:  We  shelled and froze approx two gallons. More than we want for winter soups.

Potatoes:   Yield getting better as we improve the soil by rotating beds with beans and composting. 

This year's best performers were Red potatoes: 80 lbs. of large. 

White  (katadin and kennybunk)  also did well.  Another 80-100 lbs but mostly smallish .

Gold potatoes had a small yield with smaller potatoes...maybe 20-30 lbs. 

Firewood:  Dead and Down Hardwood.   We cut and split about a dozen dead trees, ash, elm, oak, and maple. This year's stack is almost 4 cords, enough for our winter needs. 

 

There's always next year! ('Till there isn't.)