Tropical Minnesota...

...is not just the name of the tanning salon on Main Street in Hopkins where I still have credits for 60 minutes of tanning from 4 years ago.

Our heat index is expected to be over 100F for most of the week. My spinach bolted within a week of going in the ground - I didn't get any harvest. I hope this weather will help the peppers. Lots of watering this week.

I "installed" 4' plastic fencing around my plot to keep Alexi (Valentina said he cut my plants) from getting at my plants and to burn off my frustration. The birds are loving it. They know that they can land on my beds and nothing can get at them, not even the people-critters. Happy little birds.

I'm knitting like a knitting fool. Knitty's Winter 2008 Dead Fish Hat pattern. I finished one last week and I'm nearly done with #2.  Pictures to come.

1:30am and some really strange thunder has finally started after 1/2 hour of lightning. It's gonna be weird. I'd love to open the windows, but I've finally gotten the humidity in my apartment under 75%, so I've got to stay buttoned up.

Hey Shorty! What's up Stretch?

My sweet peppers are too short. They are all under 14 inches. One has fruit and the others have buds. It just doesn't seem right.
I decided to check out the University of Minnesota site and I found a paper with basics about peppers. I think the plants are short because of all the weird weather we had - they need warm weather to grow and all of the flux, they just couldn't get in the mood. It warns, though, that high temperatures will cause the blooms to fall off. I haven't noticed anyone's pepper plants. The tomatoes are tall so maybe their peppers are short too. I'm going to water with plant food for the next couple of days and see what happens. It's over 90 again today so fingers are crossed.


The sunflowers are getting really tall. I've learned that the stalks are really tenacious. They'll do whatever they can to get at the sun and grow tall. They seem to grow from the ground up rather than the head stretching to grow up. One plant was growing through the mesh I've put up for the climbers. The "shoulders" of one leaf set were caught on a horizontal section of the mesh. The stalk kept growing from the base and the stalk was forming a "c" shape because it was pushing up, but was caught. It's free from the mesh now and the leaves that were hooked on the mesh died.

I have a clump of 6 or 7 sunflowers that are planted close to each other. I noticed early on that they were wrapping around each other to follow the sun and get the most sun possible. I put a large tomato cage around them to contain the stalks so they wouldn't fan out and shade the neighbor's plants. This has worked well. The plants are growing straight. They lean against the cage which reinforces it and keeps them all in check.

Four of the sunflowers are planted in a row on the border with Alexi/Valentina. They were blown by the big storm last night so they were leaning over the neighbor's plants. They are about 6 feet tall and since they are in a line, there isn't much I can do to keep them together. As a short term solution, I put a large zip tie loosely around the stalks, tied cord to the zip tie loops and tied the cord to a tall stake six feet away. There is a lot of extra cord on each tie so there is some flexibility as they grow, but I hope they will get back to straight, anchor well, and I can remove the cords. I'm mentally planning a Plan B, but no run to Home Depot yet.

Lovely, lovely weather

FINALLY the weather has turned to summer in Minnesota! No tornado warnings every three days. No 50F nights. It's been in the 80F's several days in a row and the garden is loving it. I always watered every night, but it's crucial these days. Crucial, but with good results.

The sunflowers are nearly 6 feet tall. One tomato plant is over 4 feet tall and the rest are catching up, even the tomato ball.  There is fruit on almost every tomato plant, but nothing to harvest yet. Peas are more than knee high. My Asian long bean plant is up to about 6 feet. Squashes are blooming nicely and starting to crawl. The peppers are still really short, but one pepper plant - less than 1 foot tall has 1 pepper on it that is 5 inches long and of good size. They maybe short, but willful. I'll focus on giving them plant food the next week or so.

All well and good. Alexi/Valentina asked me to take down the wild bird feeder. It's hard to get exact meaning but either it happened or they worried it would happen - the wild birds would/might/did eat Valentina's strawberries and may destroy all of our tomatoes. I think this is  a worry more than a fact.

I didn't see any fruit-eaters at the feeder and strawberries in unestablished gardens have not done well here at all. The birds are everywhere and can't be helped, they just don't want me to encourage them to come to the garden.

I've kept the thistle sock feeder though. Goldfinch and other thistle-eaters do not eat tomatoes. It's "fallen down" once, but I suspect Valentina knocked it down. She's lovely, but when Alexi asked me to take down the feeder, Valentina was literally at his elbow whispering in Ukrainian as though she was telling him what to say. When I left the sock feeder, she whispered to him again, he asked if it was a feeder and I said yes. She tsk'd me. It's back up in such a way it can't be blown or knocked down without effort. I have no ill will towards Valentina, I just think she's nervous for no reason.

I've been quiet and not in the garden much lately - nothing beyond the requisite. I hurt myself and I've been laying low.

More soon.  Happy Summer!

Don't forget the birds [update 7-7-1]

I'm doing what I can to get close to nature as I can. Tending my garden barefoot is one way to get close to bature, but birds are becoming another. The wild bird seed I bought earlier has only attracted little brown birds. I've seen goldfinches in the garden, but not at the feeder. I've learned they prefer nyjer seeds and they prefer a small, softish perch, so I bought a thistle sock. It works! The goldfinch have found the food and are singing about it.

[When I was outside the other day, Alexi told me the birds coming to my feeder were eating his wife's strawberries and would eat the tomatoes. Well, that's what I read from what he was saying. His English is pretty good, but Ukrainian to English means that he's not that great about using articles and conjucating verbs to indicate past, present, future. So technically, I'm guessing he was talking about the birds eating the strawberries in the past tense, not future. No problem, I took down the wild bird feeder. I left up the sock feeder. I think Valentina (Alexi's wife) is upset about this, but I know goldfinches aren't going to eat fruit. Does anyone need 7 lbs of mixed wild bird seed?]

The Wild Ones: Dill, Mint, Cilantro, Lemon Grass, and ???

Since ours is a community garden next to a park, a lot of things get churned into the soil when it's tilled every fall and spring, and assorted other things blow in all season.

Last year, it took me a while to identify the volunteer plants that we've got growing in the garden. Since they grow in the straight line trenches I made for my seeds, I can't always tell what's to keep. So far, I need them to grow to a certain size before I can tell what they are. I've asked Anatoli, Zhenfang, and Alexi to help me identify weeds, but sometimes we run into a language barrier. Alexi and I get pretty close.  When I ask if a plant is "good" or "bad," Alexi tends to judge the condition of the plant (healthy v. non-healthy). He calls the volunteer plants "wild." I've tried to teach him the word "weed," but it's not working so far. I don't think he can quite hear the difference between "wild" and "weed." "Can you eat it?" is greeted with a shrug because, well, anything can be eaten.

A lot of the wild plants could be herbs at their early stages. Zhenfang doesn't care for most herbs. She has chives and cilantro in her own garden, so I've given her different herbs to smell (maybe she'll recognize them?) but after grossing her out with basil, she won't go near them. Last year, she was helping me in my garden, and she started pulling out my lemon grass. I wanted her to smell it and look at the color so she could tell what it was and not pull it, but she refused. If I ask her if a seedling is "good" or "bad," she answers based on her own tastes. The herbs are almost always counted as bad, but she also calls onions, sweet peppers and potatoes bad. She knows they are edible but she wouldn't eat them, and she doesn't think I should eat them either. When she sees me come home with groceries, sometimes she'll poke around the bag to see what I've got that will meet her approval.  Too many boxes. She's not happy I bring home boxes and Coca-Cola.

This kind of secondary leaf means it's a kind of
squash or cucumber. In this case, it's zucchini.

This year, the "wild" seedlings are over an inch tall and have gotten to their secondary leaves, so I can tell what they are. Garden plant sprouts emerge with two leaves (primary leaves) on a stem.  They all look the same to me. I have to wait for the second set of leaves to show up to identify the plant.

The "wild ones" in this year's garden are dill, mint, and coriander/cilantro. All three are very popular in our little community, so really the only nuisance is that it grows wherever it wants.

The dill is sprouting up everywhere, gets more than 3 feet tall, goes to seed, and cycles back. There are constant crops of dill all summer. I found out that my Russian and Ukrainian neighbors save the seeds and scatter them by the hand full every spring. Valentina kept a huge a tin of seeds and offered to share. I passed on it. Even still, I've got wisps of dill growing. Sofia says that "Russian" dill tastes better than "American" dill. Alexi has said it's really good in soup. There is a "summer borsch" that was referred to last year. It seems to be heavy in herbs - mint, dill, and a lemony leaf that grows on a bush 4 feet tall. I've got to get that recipe.

I haven't planted my mint in containers (cat mint and spearmint). It can spread pretty far on it's own, but since the garden freezes hard and gets tilled every spring, I thought it would be destroyed and not bother the neighbors. Volunteer mint is all over my garden this year. It doesn't look like the mint I've planted, which is kind of bushy. This is a leggy, creeper mint with darker, shinier leaves. Last year, Valentina gave me some cuttings, she told me it was "Russian" mint. Tasty stuff. When Zhenfang saw it in my garden last year, she went nuts - she wanted some! I gave her several cuttings and she was over the moon. It's back.

Cilantro (corriander) popped up in my garden this year. Last year, my planning was really off and by late summer my garden was pretty bare. The waste of space lead Zhenfang to bring me seeds and seedlings to put in the empty spots. In one section of the garden, she scratched the soil and scattered coriander. It seems that some of it survived to live again this year. It's not growing in places I want it, but I'll let it get big and go to seed and replant the seeds where I want them. I should get several harvests this year.

Last year, the lemon grass I planted was just a curiosity - an expensive exotic I wasn't very sure about. I let it do what it would and it spread quickly. It grew nice and tall, and whenever I brushed past it, the air smelled of lemon grass. I got a recipe for a kind of Thai iced tea made from lemon grass and a little ginger - very nice. In the fall, I wanted to pull it up and dry some for winter, but I didn't realize that it's a rhizome. When it was spreading across the surface of the soil, it was spreading underneath and got some really deep, woody roots. I discovered that rhizomes like lemon grass and Mexican bamboo can do really well in Minnesota. This year, I buried a plastic, tight weave basket, filled it with soil and put the lemongrass seedlings in there. I was a bit worried that I'd stunted them, but I noticed tonight that they are growing gangbusters. Since I planted them near the walking path, I'll still get the lovely scent and this fall all I'll need to do is dig up the basket. No wild lemon grass this year and I hope to have some rhizomes to give to Felicia H in BE.

There is still one kind of plant growing in my garden that I can't identify. The leaves look like they might be salad greens, but last year, I let it grow it sprouted golf-ball-sized yellow flowers. When it gets a little bigger, I'll take some pictures and send them to the University of Minnesota horticulture folks for an identity check.

What kind of wild stuff grows in your yard/garden? Any surprises?

What Character: Valentina

Valentina is also my garden neighbor to the south. Alexi is her husband. She was not too thrilled about this picture being taken because it was cold and windy. She'd been outside for quite a while working on rows and rows of her little tiny sprouts, and trying to save her larger plants from the cold wind. I think she looks great. She's teaching me the Ukrainian names of the vegetables I'm growing. I love my neighbors!

What Character: Alexi

Alexi is my next door garden neighbor to the south. He's from Ukraine, used to work in construction and is presently a Lutheran deacon. Alexi is the most fit and most fluent in English of the gardeners. Alexi is has tools, wood for walking paths, and stakes and miscellaneous bits to build with (ski poles, hockey sticks, etc) I love being his neighbor. He has 1.5 plots that he shares with his wife, Valentina.

Garden fury has started.

It was cold and rainy and then I left town. When I got back, my garden plot had been raked several times and my neighbor Alexi told me he had to clean up a lot (though my plot is still cleaner than his). Fences and... gates are going up. Plant stakes are going in, and rows are marked. There are LOTS of onions already in, I've got nothing and I feel shame. I'm waiting for warm weather, so there. Plus I'm going plant shopping at the farmer's market tomorrow.