Farm and Garden Report - August 18

From Wikipedia:

The cottage garden is a distinct style of garden that uses an informal design, traditional materials, dense plantings, and a mixture of ornamental and edible plants. English in origin, the cottage garden depends on grace and charm rather than grandeur and formal structure.

And that certainly describes the garden at Windy Poplars Farm.
Informal design - definitely. It is 'homely' in the English sense. Nothing really planned. If there's a space, we'll plant something there.
Traditional materials - this is surely true because we grow plants that have grown here since there were people on these acres. Nothing fussy. Just 'plain speaking' vegetables and flowers.
Dense plantings - probably too dense to some people's way of thinking.
Mixture of ornamental and edible - oh yes. Those hollyhocks I've raved about are between corn and tomatoes.

I took some photos which illustrate the 'friendship' between flowers and vegetables.

Tomatoes amongst the hollyhocks

You've already seen those panolas which fill the aisles between the raised beds. In addition to them, some mallow has popped up and grown very cozy with the zucchini leaves.



Yellow beans stretched out and tangled in the tomato plants - the bean flowers are pink and the tomato flowers are yellow. This was taken a while ago. Just today I pulled the beans down. Next year I'm going to plant fewer. I'm the only one who eats them, and I couldn't eat them fast enough this year. I think I'll plant them along just one of the bean poles, and plant sweet peas along the others. I didn't have any sweet peas this year and how I missed them.



I also have milkweed growing with spiderwort and globe thistle. All three have gone by now and need to be cut back. I'll wait till the milkweed pods 'pop' out the lovely silky down. I read the most remarkable information about milkweed here.



It has been an uneven year in the vegetable garden.
The failures: carrots and cucumbers. One carrot came up, and no cukes. Who knows why? And the peas were very spotty. We had only a couple meals of them.
All the raspberry plants died, and we have no idea what happened. It is a two-year cycle, and the dead old canes from last year were there, but no new ones came up. Same thing happened with the Queen of the Prairie out by the barn. There are mysteries in nature.
The successes: hollyhocks!
Potatoes that came from organic store potatoes that had sprouted in the warm weather. We put a few in one of the raised beds and got a lot of delicious potatoes. We've always bought organic seed potatoes through the mail, at quite a high price. We won't have to do that anymore!
Tomatoes have never grown so well or been so prolific. We started them inside, and used Chickity Doo Doo on the seedlings, and they just went to town!
Yellow beans - there were zillions. The poles Tom put up last summer stayed through the winds and snows of winter.

The best corn ever!



For the first time this year I planted Egyptian Walking Onions. If interested, you may read more about them, and order some here. We are leaving ours to grow this year.



We didn't get garlic planted last fall, but it has been ordered and will arrive in October.

For years we've had two peony plants. They've been on the blog several times. They are out by the terrace steps, and can only be seen if we are in that area. I've ordered six plants from White Flower Farm (one called Nancy Nora) and they are going in along the fence so we'll see them all the time. Peonies are so nice because the leaves are lovely before and after the short-lived beautiful flowers.

Years ago we decided to plant bushes alongside the kitchen garden area to draw more birds. We now have lilacs, honeysuckle, mock orange, and the tall William Baffin rose. The birds flit around all through the spring and summer, sometimes nesting in those bushes. Tom says he thinks of them as companionable.

The woodpile is coming along.

This is the log length wood which arrived last summer that we didn't use up in the winter. We also use trees from our own land that have blown down, or that are safe for Tom to cut.

This is a pile of 'junky' wood to be used first when the weather cools.

Just as, 'in the midst of life we are in death,' so in the midst of summer we are in winter. When you live here, and burn wood, you have to prepare in the warm season for the colder season.

And I can't end this without more hollyhock photos. We love these flowers.

This is a little blurry, but can you see all the pollen on the bumble bee? Happy bee.






And I don't need to pick flowers for the house when this is the view I have out the kitchen door!

Farm and Garden Report - May 24

Last week Melody, a fellow New England blogger wrote:

If you asked me my favorite season... I'd always say fall or winter. I think I forget how much spring has to offer. New growth, apple blossoms, lush grass.... and things unfurling from their long winter's nap. The sweet smells of spring hang heavy in the air on damp days like this…

And I echo those words. I always go on and on about how much I love winter, and that cold crisp invigorating air, but I have to say that once May comes to Windy Poplars Farm, the days are so perfect with their sounds and smells and sights that I think there is no other time as beautiful. After all those months, which begin for us in October, of gray and brown and white, this green just amazes me. I stare and stare feasting on this color. Even if there were never any flowers, I could be happy with only green grass and trees and bushes. Some days it feels like my eyes can't look enough.



Just last week I picked a cup of rhubarb for that great Apple Rhubarb Cake, and now all my rhubarb plants are huge. This is just one plant, and I took the picture after I'd picked the rhubarb!


Today I picked and froze 14 cups. And there is still so much more. Some people say to blanch it before freezing, but I never have. I just quickly rinse, chop, and put in freezer bags.


The lilacs have come and gone. There were a few beauties but mostly I think this was an off year for them. I've decided to cut off the old flowers. I've not done it very often even though all the books say to do so. We'll see if it increases the amount of flowers next year. If not, at least the old brown ones won't be there.


The honeysuckle is in full bloom. We have an old pink bush from when we lived in my childhood home.


A few years ago we planted a cream colored one along the fence and it has grown beautifully.


And then there are the Tartarian honeysuckles which are now considered an invasive species. We had planted them ages ago before the label. We tried cutting them down, and they just grew up again so we'll just let them quietly stay.


The violets were especially beautiful this year and have been in bloom for weeks now. We have whole bunches out in the lawn,


and Tom just mows around them this time of year. As you may see in the banner photo, the mountain bluets are in blossom. I've written about them before in my letters, and my favorite story is connected to a Eudora Welty book .

The bleeding heart flowers have appeared.


In the vegetable garden, we took a big chance and put out two tomato plants we started from seed.


We still have four more under the lights, just in case, but the weather forecasts haven't talked about any cold frosty nights in the near future. These plants are huge!


Truly, the biggest we've ever grown, and that may be due to this wittily named fertilizer called Chickity Doo Doo. I highly recommend it. And look at those hollyhocks! Speaking of hollyhocks, I've never had much success on this windy hill, so this year I decided to just think of them as annuals. I'm hoping they will bloom this year. They are the one flower I remember in my mother's flower garden - right up against the east side of the house. Here's hoping.

The peas are up,


and the lettuce is fantastic.


The leeks and onions are still pencil-like but they should come along.


My potatoes were sprouting so we decided to throw a few of them into one of the raised beds to see if they'll grow. We planted some beans from 2010 along the poles Tom put in last year. If they don't sprout, we've got some from last year that should work. Those bean poles haven't moved since Tom put them in last spring. They are sturdy and have withstood all the weather which winter brought.


We've planted corn in the space where the planter used to be, behind the daffodils.


And look at those panolas! Amazing, amazing little flowers.


I talked about them last month, and see how they've grown since then. They seem to be taking the place of weeds in the main walkway, and I say hooray.

Last month I reported that one of the goats died, and now we've had another death of a farm animal. This week Tom went in the barn in the early evening and one of the sheep was lying dead. Twelve years old. We can't wish a better life for a sheep. Grazing all summer, eating hay in the winter, being shorn in the spring. This is fullness of life for a farm animal on a vegetarian farm. Tom and Matt were out in the pasture digging the grave by headlights of the tractor.

Meanwhile, the remaining goat, Esther, continues to believe she is simply an outside dog. She has even walked across the terrace. The fence hasn't been made that can keep her from where she wants to go.


If you click on the picture maybe you can read the danger electric fence sign. Esther can't read it, and she just crawls through the strands whenever she feels like it.


Along with the little red squirrels and chipmunks, we have another dear visitor these days. One morning I looked out the bedroom window, and thought it was a stray cat down there next to the front door. I took this picture out the kitchen window.


Delightful creature. We've had a groundhog other years, and they never bother anything in the garden, except for parsley! And this year, we were hardening off some on the terrace that we had started from seed, and the dear little fellow found it. We don't begrudge any animal meals from our garden which may be why we've never had any trouble.

There is a lot of bird activity as you might expect. The bluebirds have returned, for the third straight year. This was taken through the screen so not very clear.


They are nesting in the house under the eaves.


Just across the hill from them are the swallows, back in their old home on the telephone pole.


The robins are somewhere nearby, possibly in the old apple tree. I hear the song sparrows and chickadees occasionally so I think they must be living close by. The phoebes are again in the barn, and they waken me each morning with their song.

Glorious May!

Farm and Garden Report - April 19

I haven't written a farm and garden report for ten months. Ten months! I don't know what happened. Why didn't I write in July and August and September? There are a few postings under the 'farm and garden' label but I guess there just wasn't enough in them to call them a 'report.' I do know it was a very dry July, with rain only one day. The daylilies came and went post-haste (I've always wanted to use that in a sentence!). We did get a lot of vegetables from the garden.

Unlike the ducky in the blog header, we are having a bit of a dry spell just now. There have been some grass fires in nearby towns. It is supposed to rain this weekend. These days of Tom's vacation week have been just perfect for gardening. Sunny, warmish, breezy.

Last year he put in a new raised bed on the other side of the fence from the patio. It turned out to be too shady for most vegetables so this year it is to be solely for lettuce.


Today I transplanted the little plants, Black Seeded Simpson


and Optima Butterhead Lettuce


which we started from seed under the lights a few weeks ago.

Yesterday Tom planted the Siskiyou Sweet Walla Walla onion seedlings and Primor French Baby Leeks in a bed which already had two chive plants. For a couple weeks now we've been eating fresh chives, the first edible plant in our garden.


Today I popped in the little Egyptian Walking Onions in that same bed. These are fascinating little perennials which you may read about here. This afternoon I'll plant the Green Arrow Peas, and that will be it until the danger of a hard frost is past on Memorial Day.

Our sheep shearer Katie came yesterday. I've written a few letters about this annual event: in 2007, in 2010, and last year. She is a joy, as always, but this visit included a sad surprise. Tom had led the sheep into a large stall three hours before she came. The goats go in too because Katie trims their hooves. When she arrived and walked into that stall, one of the goats, Bracelet, lay there dead. She had been quiet for a while and not as eager to eat but still it was a shock to find her there. Tom moved her out of the stall during the shearing and buried her later. He has buried a lot of animals in the thirty-one years we've lived here. He always does the job alone with his thoughts, and may sometime share those thoughts on the blog.

The daffodils, bloodroot, and panolas are in blossom. Those panolas! Do you know what they are? They are a hybrid between pansies and violas. Their faces are in between them in size, but they definitely take after the viola side of the family when it comes to spreading. Around here pansies are an annual you buy at the store, while violas or their other name, which I love, 'johnny jump-ups,' pop up literally everywhere. And the panolas are even more hardy and prolific. Tom's mother gave me some and I planted them in one of the raised beds. They practically took it over. We dug them up in the fall to make room for more vegetables in that bed, and now they have self-seeded in nearby beds and in the garden paths.


I'm not complaining. They are beautiful and cheery wherever they choose to appear.


The adorable little grape hyacinths (Bucket!) are up,


along with the scillas.


I got these bulbs six years ago from that wonderful purveyor of heirloom flowers, Old House Gardens. All the other flowers are up and growing but blossoms are a ways off yet.

We transplanted the rhododendron we bought last year. It was in the middle of the lawn and we feared it getting too big for that space so we put it in a corner out by the new clothesline. It is just to the left of the old stone wall. (you may click to see it better)


It looks a little sorry just now but those buds promise new life this spring.


For years now I've been posting pictures of the daffodils which grew in front of an old stone planter which was here when we bought the place. I bet we've tried four or five different things inside the planter over the years and nothing has worked. It made the corner crowded and so this year Tom took it down. Now the daffodils have a little space where they may spread.


We have a second daffodil area just across the road, amongst some lilacs.


Bloodroot also grows there.


and a clump of chives. The flowers will be gone by when the lilacs come out, and the chives grow just fine there all summer. This isn't a good photo, but it will give you an idea. I love this area.


Speaking of photos, I am increasingly unhappy with mine. I have read that my particular camera, with which I was so happy at first, may take blurry pictures as time goes on. I find I'm taking fewer and fewer photographs. I am open to any and all suggestions you may offer on a small but effective camera. Though I hate to buy another one, I really do miss good, clear pictures.