Who Is The Pest?




Wild turkeys enjoying a stroll.



The ever intelligent
crow.

     It's been incredibly windy this fall.  I awoke surprisingly early because the wind was roaring through our valley.   As I landed my feet over the side of the bed I glanced out the window in time to watch eight wild turkeys march past the hoop house.  A reminder that Thanksgiving is fast approaching.   I marveled at the steadiness on their feet, no swaying, just a purposeful gait unaffected by the force of the wind.  A crow sat in perfect balance atop my bean tower, not swaying to and fro as the gust of wind assaulted the surrounding landscape.  And to the right of the perfectly balanced crow the hoop house plastic puffed in and out.  I started to fret  and questioned whether I'd make my goal of eating out of the hoop house into the month of December.  Last year, around this time, my neighbors had the plastic rip off their hoop houses. Leaving the denuded frames exposed to winter's harsh elements.




They seem innocent enough, but they sure can
eat!  They really like to dig up freshly
planted seeds.

       As I watched out my window my thoughts drifted to early Spring gardening, and a time when I was working on a garden project with my nephew.  He had agreed to help me plant seeds enabling me to get an early jump on the gardens with small vegetable starts.  I'd been battling chipmunks that were rooting through the seed trays forcing me to start a second batch.

      Entering the hoop house to get started on our seeding project, I recognized that I had a little issue on my hands and a moral dilemna at the same time.  I had caught a chipmunk in a havahart trap that I'd set earlier in the day.  Since I'd been battling chipmunks for a while, I decided I needed to take action against them.  They kept digging up my seeds and replanting them elsewhere or blatantly sat around the gardens eating the large squash seeds like popcorn at a movie.  And being terrible garden guest they left the trail of seed hulls on the ground. It made me irate.  The lost revenue was starting to add up and every crop that I planted and lost was setting me behind in my short growing season.   I looked at my nephew and knew that I had to make a decision.  My intention was to 'dispose' of the offender.  I decided my garden helper needed to know the score, so I quickly brought him up to speed on the chipmunk saga. With the aid of a havahart trap and a little bit of ruthlessness I was able to finish my gardening season unhampered by chipmunk activity.     

Cabbage worms have
quite the appetite!

     Weather grew warmer and crops started to mature.  My next battle was with the cabbage worm or Pieris rapae, a green caterpillar that has a voracious appetite for brassicas or anything in the cabbage family.  My brussel sprouts and kale were being chomped.  Last year I opted for hand picking the tiny green interlopers and that seemed to be futile.  As I cooked well-washed broccoli, only to have more tiny green worms float to the surface of the pot.  I almost ate as many cabbage worms as broccoli, cabbage and kale!  I started cooking casseroles to disguise the extra green protein.  This year I was a little more pro-active and I used  an organic spray of bacillus thuringenis to control my creepy crawly problem.  I've also thought about covering the brassicas with remay when transplanting them into 

the gardens.  Many gardeners have reported some success with this proactive measure. 

Isopods that are anthropods that breath
through gills.  They have many nick-names
like sow bug.

               There are no shortage of pest in the gardens.  Soon I discovered Isopods.  A two time offender, both in my raised bed gardens and  hoop house.  Although these ammonite looking creatures, with their grayish segmented bodies, look like insects they are anthropods-which means they breath through gills.  Some of their common names:  sow bug, pill bug and wood lice.  They tend to like moist places and have an appetite for decaying matter.  However, they will eat live plants too.  Which I've been witnessing in my newly seeded, winter-hardy greens.  The plants are being decapitated before they even get their first true leaves.  AND as if this affront isn't bad enough, while digging my potatoes I found several potatoes devistated by these pigs!  It almost looked like a mouse had been chewing, but the offenders were right there at work.  Thankfully it was only a small percentage of my potatoes that were munched.  I am making trails of diatomaceous earth (DE) to thwart the work of the Isopods within my hoophouse.   DE is a natural occuring substance and Wikepedia's definition of diatomaceous earth is: "...consist of fossilized remains of diatoms, a type of hard-shelled algae."  Although, this is a natural occuring subtance it's harmful to breath.  In its pulverized form it's a very fine powder and when applying I took precautions not to breath it in.  With a little hand picking of the Isopods within the hoophouse and the DE, I seem to have saved my greens!

     When I first witnessed the tops of my greens missing I assumed it was the work of a mouse so I quickly set traps--but wondered why I wasn't catching anything.  Then I saw the sow bugs (Isopods) at work.   Only a very small number of plants were affected, mice would have eaten much more.  But I was glad I had traps out, just in case.  As the weather grows colder mice are going to take refuge any where they can.  Within the past week I have caught five mice.  My husband, Rob, shakes his head at me because the hoop house is at the base of a large field that must be loaded with an infinite number of mice.  I will remain diligent. 

Deer mice sure look cute but they are
wicked pest.

     Anyone that has gardened knows the work is relentless and often times things don't go as planned.  Tomato blight, lack of rain, too much rain.  The list can go on and on.  Yet those that have the calling are right back at it year after year.   To me gardening is like fine music in that it can have beauty, upbeat tempos and an eerie yet satisfying quandary to it all.   When I think about it, I wonder about those wild turkeys bypassing the hoop house in their foraging, being forced to reroute their journey, past a structure that once wasn't there. And I think of the countless murders that I have on my hands thanks to natural subtances like BT, DE, or mechanical devices like mousetraps and havahart traps.  Makes me wonder, who is the pest? 

     But  as long as I need to eat and survive I'm forced to make decisions.  I recognize that in retrospect as long as I'm not trying to annihilate all the sow bug or mice population on my land, yet designate small areas where I garden,  'free' of those critters-I think I'm being reasonable.  It's when we carelessly set out to destroy an entire population that we can get ourselves into trouble.  And that's my take on it as I continue to grow greens into the waning part of November here at Chicken Hill Gardens. 

Grandma's Hope Chest Filled With Salad



My hero and husband, Rob Hunter who makes all my
 projects turn into possibilities.

      Doesn't everyone put salad in their hope chest?  I am from a generation that is re-learning about eating healthier.  Most have heard of Fast Food Nation, Super Size Me and Food Inc.  We are becoming more and more aware of the atrocities involved in mass producing monocultures.  In my time--it seems to have started with slow food, then the localvore movement.  I've watched farmer's markets grow exponentially in the past couple of years.  I recognize that there was a generation way before mine that subsisted on tofu, wheat germ and yogurt.  However, I was a product of the era of shake and bake and casseroles made with canned soups. 

Local goods purchased at a one
day farmer's market in Monkton



     A few years a go I  read Barbara Kingsolver's:  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, where she talks about eating within a certain radius of where she lived for an entire year.  She gave up fruits and vegetables that were out of season or not from her geographic region.  And what she ate, she and her family raised, canned or procured from local farms.  Up until I read that book, I  hadn't thought much about where my food came from.

      I grew up in an apple orchard, my family planted a substantial garden, and dabbled in home canning.  But, like many others, my  family grabbed quick and easy things off the grocery store shelves.  We didn't pay close attention to how those foods came to us.  When I went to college the goal was to see how many cans of tuna or boxes of macaroni and cheese I could purchase for my dollar.  Maybe an occasional onion was obtained to add flavor to my otherwise devoid of vegetable diet.  I was all about eating cheap, money could then be spent on entertainment, fuel and other debaucheries. 

Pan seared scallops on a bed of home
grown spinach and our own potatoes.



    

     Fast forward to my sensible forties, where I recognize I don't want to spend all my waking hours traveling to and from a job that helps me pay for the car and fuel that gets me to said job.  I want to celebrate my freedom of choice and embrace it although that means downsizing, or maybe it means living within my means.  And it means living a more self-sustaining existence.  



Pies, bars and brownies I prepared

for a reception.

 
     I start to look at all parts of my life.  Food is pretty high up on my list of things that make me happy.  My husband grew up with a restaurant background and I was raised on a fruit and veggie farm, it's probably why I rank food so high on my list of priorities.  My husband and I are a lethal combination in the kitchen.  My facebook page has a photo album called "Awesome Things I Just Ate" and in it are photos of lobster salad served with pasta and brocolli, scallops on a bed of spinach,  mussels cooked with shallots and wine, glazed pork tenderloin, and an elaborate Indian meal.  My husband Rob is master of entrees and I love to bake breads, cookies, cakes and pies.  We both like high-quality, well-prepared food.  I spent my twenties drooling over Bon Appetit magazine. 

    

  And now that I'm obsessed with growing my own food, almost everything I look at becomes a means for me to grow high-quality food.  And yes, although I'm not physically attracted to Elliot Coleman (I'll leave that to his wife, Barbara Damrosch).  I am in LOVE with his knowledge of growing food, in cold climates without heat!  His book, Four-Season Harvest:  Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long is my bible for hoop house growing.



The fenced in veggie gardens and hoop house.



     During the early part of Spring I told my friend Amy Olmsted "I'm going to make a cold frame".  I had something sitting next to the fire pit, rectangular in shape and box like that would probably work.  Being frugal I salvaged it from the burn pile.  All the better, I woudn't have to ask Rob to help me build yet another garden structure.  Prior to making it's way to the fire pit this wooden box had had legs and a lid, and had been under our screened in porch.  It housed our garden essentials, like remay and pots.  Maybe we put kindling wood in it for a time.  Prior to that the it made a great prop for halloween, looking slightly like a coffin.  In the Spring I took it down to my fenced in garden.  Rob found a window that fit snuggly over the top and voila, I had a cold frame.  It didn't really work.  I worked away from home a lot and I wasn't diligent about walking down the hill to open and close it at the appropriate times.  Things got too cold or hot.  It was my human error that prevented the success of the cold frame. 



Grandma's hope chest, the stripped down version.


     I'm giving that cold frame a second chance.  This time, inside my hoop house.  It  is my grandmother's hope chest that had sat next to the burn pile during the Spring and now it is seeded with mixed greens and tatsoi.  It might seem a little silly to have disassembled my one remaining item that I have of my deceased grandmothers.  I think I can justify it.  The veneer was starting to peel and it had become a little wobbly.  I also don't feel the need to keep a hope chest. It served so many purposes in its sixty plus years for my grandmother and for me.  Instead of sending it up in flames, I've opted to give it one more life.  The cedar innards will be slightly rot-resistant, perfect for the high humidity environment of a hoop house.  I really do hope that grandma's hope chest will be filled with salad this winter!  Wouldn't she be happy to know that she was providing me with such happiness and the great gift of healthy food?  









The Perfect Gift For A Gardener, A Heat Sink

In front of my house a standard hydrangea  with my
rooster sculpture.

     I am happiest when I am in my gardens.  In my ornamental garden I am pleased with the variety of plants that I have accumulated over time.  They spell out who I am.  After all,  they are an acummulation of my personal choices, gifts by aquaintances and they represent a passion that I've followed for quite some time.  If you walk through my garden you are invited to get to know a part of me.  I can tell you what grower I got the Dendranthema "Sheffield Pink" from or where I purchased the tree-like, white-blooming, perennial Hibiscus.  I will show you the gifts that people have shared with me over the years and when plants get big enough, I will divide a piece off to share with my fellow gardening friends. 

Perennials line the walk down to
the hoop house.

      My family moved to Monkton when I was five years old.  My dad grew up on a dairy farm but went to work as an engineer for IBM.  When I was five he must of heard the call from the land, because he left IBM and moved our family to the country.  My parents purchased an apple orchard.  And along with the apples there were several acres of gardens to tend to.  They provided goods for sale at the apple orchard.  Squash, potatoes, corn and various other vegetable crops.  I can recall many summer days wielding a hoe to weed the orchard's large vegetable patches, it was hard work but really rewarding. 

Me holding a bucket of wild blueberries.
Some of the hardest working, common
perennials behind me.

      Once I entered the workforce I gravitated towards ornamental gardening.  The apple didn't fall far from the tree as they say.  But in choosing ornamental gardening, I was developing a passion that was mine---It wasn't apples and it wasn't vegetables.  That was what my family did.  I  struck out to define who I would become.  And I had a natural abiltiy to work in the soil.  I had been doing it from an early age and it made sense to me. 

     Once I reached adulthood and many years of gardening in the same spot at my home in Monkton, I discovered that you can only plant and rearrange so many ornamentals X number of times.  I was starting to get panicky that I was collecting more plants then I had time or desire to take care of.  I continunued to work in the nursery business and couldn't stop collecting plants.  I had an addiction.  It took all of my weekends to maintain the yard.  And I wasn't gardening on that large of a scale either.  Rob would want to hike and I'd say, "No I need to plant this plant, weed this, or water the gardens."

     And in a way that seems to be cyclical we tend to return to where we started.  Maybe I missed those childhood days of wielding a hoe?  Or perhaps I wanted to plant something I could eat and not just enjoy for its beauty.  My passion for perennial gardens has taken a backseat as I have a renewed  love for vegetable gardening.  In the past few years Rob and I have built a gorgeous fenced in veggie garden and small hoop house. We both agree that living a little bit off the land is important to us.  I still have lovely ornamental gardens but I don't let them rule me.  I love beautiful colors, textures and form, something that can be obtained in the ornamental garden and as I'm starting to discover can also happen in the vegetable garden!

Raised bed gardens with Rob's
hops trellis in the background.

     But ask me and I will tell you, my current obsession is the vegetable gardens, and more so, the hoop house and extending the growing season in our short, zone 4, growing season.  You've probably heard me talk about Elliot Coleman and it is through this Maine gardener that I've been inspired to extend my growing of crops into the winter months in a hoop house. 

Rob in the hoop house amidst the leafy greens.  Remay 
is the white cloth behind him to the left. 

               A hoop house is a greenhouse like structure that doesn't require heat.  And if you plan on gardening into the winter months like I do, you will soon learn that the hoop house doesn't stay much warmer then outside of it during non-daylight hours.  I will use garden blankets and remay (a garden fabric that allows some sunlight and air to pass through it while acting like a layer of insulation atop my plants).   I kept wondering how I could keep my indoor garden growing for as long as possible.  Because at some point without sufficient heat, the produce will stop growing.  No growth, no salad for me!  I wanted more heat but I want to avoid the added expense of using any form of electricty or heating implements.  My goal is to do this on the cheap. 

     I've been researching how to keep my hoop house a little warmer using a heat sink, basically a plastic barrel filled with water that you place inside your growing environment.  In theory the water will heat up during the day and at night it will release that heat back into the air.  It might help add a couple of degrees to the night time temperature, and although that may not seem significent, it might be all that is needed to eek a little bit extra out of my plantings.  It's time for another science experiment, after all this hoop house has become quite the entertainment source for me these days.  Lucky for me I was able to obtain a barrel from my neighbors.  It was blue, and for maximum heat absorbtion a better color would be black.

      My partner, Rob, handed me all the supplies to remedy that situation. And this is what I did to turn my blue plastic barrel into a black one:

•  Sanded the barrel to rough up the surface so paint would adhere
• Cleaned the sanding residue and any dirt off with ammonia
• Applied spray primer 



Heat sink in place and ready to go to work!

• Sprayed on a coat of black paint. 

     I now have a black barrel ready to fill with water.  Once I convince Rob to help me create a cover for it (to decrease evaporation) and build a wooden stand that it can sit on, it will be moved into place in the hoophouse.  This heat sink will be moved outside during the summer months to become a rain barrel.  I will refit it with a screened cover and collect rain to water my gardens.

     I'm not sure that the heat sink is the perfect gift for this gardener, but I will let you know the results once I've given it a fair trial here at Chicken Hill Gardens!   

Gearing Up For Greener Things



Fall in Monkton, Winona Lake in the background.

      We are experiencing a warmer then usual fall and its been so nice to clean up the yard and get last minute bulbs, perennials, garlic and seeds planted! 
      Tonight, I sat down to a delicous dinner prepared by my husband Rob.  A chicken stir fry using local garlic, onions and swiss chard from our garden.  We also savored roasted carrots, beets and parsnips that we grew!

My kale, parsnips and Swiss chard !



      When I left my 'regular' job I set out to grow some of our food.  And each year I get a little better at it.  I'm slowly learning about sucession planting and planting smaller rows so we are kept in a constant supply and not an over abundance all at once.  Here we are entering November and still we eat from our gardens, it's the best feeling!  I made a pledge that I would see if I could at least keep things going in the unheated hoop house until the end of December.  (Granted there won't be a lot of variety because I'm only using a small space, about four feet by twelve feet, to grow in this year).  AND I'm not in love with cold weather, I'm kind of a wimp that way.

  

Inisde the hoop house without the remay.

       A few weeks ago I transplanted curly kale, Russian kale, and Swiss chard from my raised bed gardens into the hoop house.  A few tiny beet seedlings I moved into the hoop house as well.  And although it's late in the season I seeded in some mixed greens and tatsoi.  There are a few carrots and herbs and a small patch of  spinach too.  It's a great small scale experiment  to see how our hoop house will hold up to snow and I can see just how diligent I am about racing down the hillside to dust off heavy snow falls and to time my harvesting of salad after the frost has lifted from the greens and before night fall (which will be coming earlier soon).  A layer of remay covers the crops and allows about seventy percent of available light to penetrate through the fabric as well as acts as a layer of insulation. 

 

Holiday wreath that I created.



            My next task is to start harvesting greens, not the edible type.  I  have a knack for floral design and I've worked at a florist supply wholesaler, florist shops and in the nursery business through out my career.  Come late fall and early winter I am delighted to keep my hands busy creating one of a kind wreaths and evergreen arrangements.  I'm not one to buy into the holiday season  because it wasn't how I was raised.  I love the warmth of the holiday season (shared meals, getting together) but I don't like the materialstic association that the holiday has.  Rob and I tend not to exchange gifts and if we do for family members we like to make our gifts.  Sometimes that can be a loaf of bread that I've baked, a hand made holiday ornament, canned goods that I've put up or a evergreen wreath that I've made.  It's fun to think of the person and create something especially for them, or to share a gift that has a lot of meaning, like my sweet chile sauce or cucumber relish that we grew the ingredients that it's made with.    

 

Holiday wreath for my chicken coop.

      And in an effort to work close to home (another one of my goals) I will begin harvesting greens and turning my porch into a workshop.  Kissing balls will be made, wreaths and centerpieces.  This year I will have some of these creations available at The Last Resort Farm on Tyler Bridge Road in Monkton starting the week before Thanksgiving and I will be selling at The Burlington Holiday Hop at Burlington Community Glass Studio, 416 Pine Street.(December ninth through the eleventh) This is where Stained Glass artist Terry Zigmund creates her amazing work.  I will also be offering a few make and take workshops this November and December for the Monkton Community Coffeehouse.  At these workshops I will supply all that is needed to create a wreath or centerpiece and provide instruction on how to make one.  If you'd like a little something beautiful and  green for the winter months please feel free to contact me, I do custom work as well. 
 

Centerpiece created using a chicken feeder.

As my gardens are mostly put to bed and my work in people's ornamental gardens is getting wrapped up I'm happy to think about my edible greens that I will harvest into the early winter months and about the greens that I will  selectively harvest from my property so that I can keep myself busy doing something I love!   



Kissing ball, a donation for the Monkton PTO silent auction last year.