Hasn't the rain been something! I think I've emptied my rain gauge almost every single day this month. I'm feeling totally hemmed in by my hay fields, still uncut, the grass almost as tall as I am. And look at that carpet of weeds in the front of my photograph. You wouldn't have known it was a picture of the vegetable garden if I hadn't weeded the row of bush beans before I took it. The tomatoes, the carrots, the onions - in fact all the other vegetables I've planted are still drowning in weeds. On the other hand, the lawns have never looked more lush and the flower beds never more brilliant. All this rain has made me realize why England has such fantastic gardens.
The weather has kept me from all too many outdoor projects, and because that's usually how I come up with my column ideas, I've had trouble dreaming up something to write about. Fortunately a few days ago I finally came up with an idea. Regular readers of Weeds and Wisdom are well aware of the fact that my columns contain far more weeds than wisdom, but this one will be the exception. It won't be my wisdom, however, but that of my fellow gardener, Bruce Zinke.
I think Bruce knows more about growing things than anyone else I know. He has a farm stand on Clayton Road just off Route#7. For many years his business consisted of a small tent and many many tables full of flats of seedlings. Bruce himself was too busy raising all these amazingly inexpensive plants to attend to his customers, so on the front table he put a list of prices and a lock box with a hole in it so buyers could do their own calculations and put the right amount of money in the box! Sad to say, although it worked for years, the system finally proved unsuccessful and this year he had to fence the area and have an attendant take the money.
I've learned an amazing amount of vegetable lore from Bruce, little tricks of the trade, great "how to" ideas. Try this one - Plant a row of sunflowers four feet part. When they reached a respectable height, plant three or four pole bean seeds at the base of each. The bean vines love those sturdy, rough-barked stems and will climb up them in a hurry.
When I went to buy my pepper seedlings this spring, Bruce happened to be at the stand. I asked him if he had any yellow or red pepper seedlings. I've tried to grow them in the past with no luck at all. Now I know why. It turns out that even commercial growers have trouble with these varieties. They tend to rot, and as a consequence, half the crop must be discarded. No wonder these colorful peppers are so expensive in the supermarket. Bruce doesn't grow them.
When I picked up a small six-pack of green pepper plant seedlings, Bruce shook his head. "Here, take this pack," he said, switching my bright green seedlings for some that were a more pastel green. "Those dark green seedlings have been fertilized. They will grow fast but set fruit late. Peppers should be fertilized after they set fruit."
Having always had trouble with my tomato vines, my next question was about why their leaves get some horrible virus and turn brown and dry up. There are all too many tomato viruses, and I never know which ones are attacking my plants. Even if I did know, it probably wouldn't help as I don't like using chemical sprays. Bruce agreed. He doesn't know one virus from another either, but he grows a tomato called Top Gun that has been very successful. He says it's resistant to more viruses than any other variety.
Bruce sells produce as well as plants. He is already selling ripe tomatoes! He plants his tomato seeds directly in the ground inside a greenhouse. Tomatoes need 14 hours of daylight, but artificial light can easily fool them, so he keeps the greenhouse lit when October's sun only provides 10 hours of daylight.
Last year the greenhouse had an infestation of aphids. He bought a gallon of ladybugs and released a handful into the greenhouse, putting the rest in his icebox. Like me he still refers to a frig as an icebox. The ladybugs can remain dormant for months that way. At the end of a week he released another handful and continued that pattern all summer. Those ladybugs worked day and night, or should I say, ATE day and night. He also bought bumblebees who do a great job pollinating the plants.
I grow several rows of carrots each summer. Compared to store-bought carrots, they're so sweet it's like eating candy canes. But every few years they're what you'd call "hairy," containing many fine roots. Bruce says that is caused by too much manure in the soil. He doesn't grow carrots because supermarket carrots are so inexpensive.
Years ago I bought (not from Bruce) a six-pack of broccoli seedlings that turned out to be Brussels sprouts. I was mighty unhappy, since I'd always loathed those little cabbages, but it turned out to be a blessing. Too cheap to throw them out, I planted them and discovered how good sprouts can be when they're home-grown and not harvested until Jack Frost has converted their starch to sugar. Sprout seedlings are easy to distinquish from broccoli seedlings. If you look carefully, you'll see that young broccoli leaves have two Mickey Mouse ears sticking out at the base of each leaf.
When I got the idea of writing a column about Bruce, I decided I'd better even ask him about vegetables that I never grow such as cauliflower and cabbage. I love cauliflower, but growing my own never appealed to me, especially the thought of 8 or 10 fully grown heads ready to be harvested all at once. And I knew that to produce beautiful white cauliflowers, you have to tie up the leaves in order to blanch the heads. Bruce said you should plant all the brassicas - broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbages, cauliflower, etc. in July as they all dislike hot weather. The nice thing about planting cauliflower that late is that by the time you should tie up the leaves the cold weather has arrived and the leaves stand up and cover the head all by themselves.
When I asked Bruce how he'd gained all the knowledge he has about gardening, he gave the exact same answer I would have. "Just by doing." I've always said "I'm not a horticulturalist, just an entertainer." I don't have half the know-how Bruce has, but what little I know has been acquired "just by doing."
