Gardening II: Zucchinis and Tomatoes

We’ve gone through the assault of the zucchinis. We’ve adapted a recipe called disappearing zucchini, in which you grate a large zucchini, or several medium ones, into a colander, then salt liberally and let it drain for a few hours. Press dry, or as near as possible, rinse, if too salty, then sauté with anything that makes sense, like a reduction of tomatoes, if those are also abundant at the time, or earlier, just onions, garlic and mushrooms flavored with thyme and oregano. I’ve also blackened drained zucchini cut into strips. We've picked real monsters, while trying to catch them before they grow so large; they hide.

Tomatoes have now descended upon us en masse, but unlike zucchinis, there are multitudes of uses for tomatoes. I just cooked some haddock, a rather bland fish, in a sauce of tomatoes, reduced, with onions and garlic and whatever fresh herbs are available: in this case thyme, oregano and coriander. And tomatoes in the salad, of course.

Some tomato plants look about done, others are just coming ripe, and a large ‘volunteer’ that I noticed early enough not to pull it out, is now overflowing with tomatoes, many ripe, and vying for space with one of the zucchini hills. I had thrown rotten tomatoes last year down where the volunteer grew.

The salad was an expression of my pride in getting a stand of new lettuce to grow. I watered it after dinner so that it will regenerate faster. Again, I’ve grown it in blocks, not spindly lines.

Elizabeth just made a tomato sauce from a large crop of them, but there are more sauces to come.

Crowding does work well for lettuce, but I’ve discovered that more conventional spacing makes sense for corn. I planted my corn much more closely than recommended, (abundant saved seeds made that possible) and it appears that I planted more and more thickly with each succeeding row. My last weekly planting was so cramped that I pulled out most plants, but too late; the corn plants were on their way to reverting to their pre-corn ancestor, pencil-thin stalks and miniature ears, if any at all.

My preparation for my garden, was first begun two autumns before, when we moved here. The garden enclosure held weeds as high as small trees, and a pernicious, nettle-like vine in the center that was so tough and entangled, I had to use a chainsaw to remove it. Then pulled out as many roots as I could (many still remain to pop up, even through a foot of mulch).

I covered the cleared garden with cardboard, then grass clippings and all the leaves from a large number of trees. Last fall, I gathered all the leaves from the trees again, and covered the garden with them, except where there had been a mustard patch with a multitude of seeds. I harvested an early crop of mustard greens there, but later had to pull out eight-foot tall plants going to seed. I kept just a few seed-bearers and some re-seeded plants.

The leaf cover still prevails in much of the garden; I planted individual plants by barely pushing the leaves aside to make their holes. I also dug grooves in the leaves to plant rows of seeds, even for the corn. I still have to water some things, and I watered the late lettuce and peas nightly to get them established. To increase growth, I have watered them every few days in this July-August- drought.

The drought has been severe enough that my bees couldn’t get enough nectar—or pollen—to feed their brood, and make honey. Both food sources are too dry, ergo I’ve been feeding the hive. I did so last year, and was unable to take out any honey. The hive survived the winter, only to be demolished by a bear, who had realized (before I did) that the electric fence wasn’t working.

So, the current hive is a new one created from a package of bees, one of the latest available in the Spring. But even my professional beekeeper friends with 200 hives have had to feed many of their established hives as well.

This drought is peculiar: a little rain, recently as much as 1.5 inches, and yet shallow rooted plants like grass have burned brown. There are some shady places in our yard that seem to be moist even without the rain. The drought’s effects, I think, are intensified by the dry air and hot sun.

What’s most peculiar about this drought is how local it seems to be. In the region according to the radio, we’re actually slightly above the rainfall average; our friends in Troy, about an hour north, report frequent rain; we haven’t seen it. And while we have an abundance of flowers, visited by my bees, they’re still eating my offered bee tea at an impressive rate. My local bee guru, who refers to his bees as “the girls,” says that bees don’t get hooked on easy sugar water; they’ll prefer real nectar when they can get it. I do see them at our flowers, at least through mid-morning. I’m not sure I hear them, or see them later in the day. But they’re still taking the bee tea, at more than a quart and a half a day.

Pesto next.

The Gardener: beginning a series

I long ago stopped following planting “directions, and started planting the way I thought it would work. For example, seed packets advise that you plant the tiny lettuce seeds one or two inches apart and 10” to a foot from the next row. I plant lettuce—I collect my own seeds—in clumps, thickly clustered, so that the lettuce crowds each other, stays tender and molts long after single plants. I extend my lettuce crop into July, without watering and I have an abundance of lettuce.

I have a book from the 70’s that I consult about “companion planting.” Peas dislike onions, for example; basil and tomatoes like each other. Or, at least, they supplement each other, enrich each other.

I planted one crop of potatoes in November, under a layer of fallen leaves. It was something people did up in a little Gunk’s hamlet not far from here, in the 19th century, people who lived close to the land. The potatoes are doing well, and may have benefited from the plenitude of rain in the early part of summer.

We’re now in a moderate drought that has impacted my bees most of all. I can water vegetables a little bit, and start fall peas and lettuce, because we have a well whose water is not potable. Apparently, bees can’t extract nectar from all the abundance of flowers in my yard and in two large fields with bee balm flanking me,because it’s too dry—baked, really. I’ve fed one hive about two and a half gallons of bee tea (highly sugared water with some herbal infusions). I may feed them more. Right now, the feeding bottles just hold water. I’m hoping they can tolerate municipal water.

I’m also watering by drip hose, a big, 300 year old Oak; I give it a couple of hours an evening, and it seems to be doing better. Something attacked its spring foliage, probably gypsy moth, and it has an incurable fungal coating (according to an arborist) on one hip, but watering seems to be helping flesh out its thin upper foliage.

I have a philosophy of gardening, not a dogma, but I do shy away from chemicals, from fertilizers to pesticides. Since it’s my garden, I want it free of poisons, if possible, but I do water it with the “bad” water we have in our well.

Our “bad” water is the result of an industrial cleaning plant on a nearby hill; ending more than a decade ago, it dumped its toxic waste on the ground, without safeguards. Anyway, the “plume” of trace toxics reached ground water up to a few houses beyond ours on our sparsely populated exurban road. So, Superfund/EPA cleaned up the toxics and built a municipal water plant and water lines to all of us (our predecessor here), but were able to keep existing wells, for other uses. Our plumbing was all connected, courtesy of Superfund, to the municipal water system.

I should test my well water, to see how bad it is, but I’d rather have the municipal water: there’s no cutoff if the power goes off, whereas with a well, you’re out of luck: the electric pump won’t pump. Our water comes from the same source as New York City, but is treated locally. It tastes good, although I worry about the small amount of chlorine if I want to make wine or beer.

More later.

Bees and People

I keep bees; three hives. Elizabeth asked me if I could describe them.

The oldest hive is laid back; it's the only one that had only two filled supers, but had filled some of the hive body. I left it one super. The next hive, I had assembled from bees and a replacement queen I bought from Sam's Anarchy Apiaries. Sam eschews bee-veils and gloves. He's handled hives barefoot and sleeveless. This hive is not anarchic; it works hard, but it's very gentle. With it, I could probably get by without gloves (never without a veil). It produced three supers. I harvested the two least full. The last hive was a volunteer, a gift. It swarmed into one of my spare hive bodies and it stayed. It is the most productive; it over-filled three supers and had honey down below. I took only two supers. It's always fierce, ready to defend its hive. Its bees have stung me several times.

So, here we have three collectives, each comprising at least 100,000 members, replaced by a new generation of workers every six weeks in summer, and yet each has a collective identity I can readily recognize. Other beekeepers have confirmed this: hives have personalities.

So, do cities. So, do nations. Over time, the personality of a hive may change. The laid back one has become more productive, but it's a survivor of lean years when I had to feed it. France has been fractious since at least the French Revolution, but despite its latest round of strikes, it's calming down.

The USA was big, brash, and wasteful. It's still brash, and it's hard to change its spendthrift ways, despite straitened circumstances. Americans have had a tendency to blame late arrivals for their troubles. Now, that the US is no longer so exceptional, now that nations like China and India are growing rapidly and it is not, blaming the victims flames higher. It could become a nasty wildfire, burning out of control all over the world.

The victims are immigrants, deviants from "normal," like gay men and women, and Middle Easterners, victimized by US imperial meddling.

While Obama and "moderates" think they are trying to restore order to a chaotic world, right-wing hawks want to wade into countries like Iran, or Venezuela: our primacy is threatened; those nations' governments are unfriendly.

The impulse is not pacification, not order, but assertion: "who's boss," like Paladino, defeated for NY Governor; he was going "to Albany with a baseball bat."

Palin represents that spirit, albeit with a smile and a wink: similar resentment drove Fascism and Nazism. Can she carve the American hive into a stinging, vindictive force? The American Empire on a last rampage?

I hope not.