Rain and Inspections with Sassy

Tomato flower.

Sassy and I do regular inspections of the garden. Today we spotted two tomato flowers on our new tomato plants, where they share space with some cucumbers and sunflowers.

We have a special rain gauge I check on our walks. One street is poorly drained, so it collects water in proportion to the amount of rain. A good soaker will form a lake that goes completely across and makes walking on the busy street hazardous, except for immersionists. The drivers are thoughtful and really slow down for the lake.

As the soil dries out, the lake evaporates. Or - if the rain is scattered and sparse, the puddle is not large enough to reach across the street and soon dries up.

We are supplementing the rain with three soaker hoses, which seem to be most effective at the faucet, where they spray me and the bushes, saturating the soil, creating oozing mud. Later I will get some stepping stones in the late summer, when the amateur gardeners think the season is over and stop buying.

Malabar Spinach - not a true spinach, but MS tastes like it and loves heat.

I am starting next year's vegetable garden early, with beans and Malabar spinach. The area will be mulched  to kill most of the grass, wide rows dug for whatever I plant. Mrs. Ichabod wants okra, which is new to me. She likes to use a mixer for raw vegetables. I like to eat them raw from the garden.

No matter how fresh the vegetables at the market, garden produce is far fresher and more appealing. Long ago we had young boys eating green peppers and beans out of the garden. Raw carrots are really good, but carrots pulled from the soil and washed off, are especially crunchy and sweet.

Potatoes, tomatoes, and peas are best from the garden. Sweet corn loses the most from the moment it is harvested, so it is the most prized product. Why go through the bother of a block party when sweet corn will pull in neighbors from afar?

I have used French intensive and wide row gardening, which simply means packing as much growth in one growing area as possible. I remember fishing through my tomato plants for all the fruit. No matter how many tomatoes I picked, at whatever color for ripeness, they disappeared fast inside the house. The ones I ate outside were pure red, seasoned with dill seed. I pulled the seed from the dill plants all over the yard and dipped the tomato in it.

My neighbor uses the old straight, narrow rows, bare soil, and rototiller methods. I believe he tills the weeds up. I leave no bare soil in the garden and do not till.

My favorite mulches are:

• Compost - the best, since worms pull it down to amend the soil.
• Newspapers - useful under a layer of mulch, earthworm-friendly.
• Wood fragments - inexpensive and easy to haul. Heavy as mulch, they stay in place and hold down newspapers and leaves.
• Lawn clippings - full of nitrogen for the soil, quick to dry up, pleasant looking. They stay in place.
• Leaves - blowy in the wind, but good when ground up with a mulching lawnmower. They can also be under a layer of wood mulch.

Mulch can absorb nitrogen when decomposing, but the nitrogen is released afterwards. Wood products are supposed to increase the good microbial counts in the soil, making it more productive.

Why haul away all the lawn and tree products when they can amend the soil and almost end the labor of pulling weeds?

Instead of bagging grass and hauling it away, I use a mulching lawnmower that chops it up and drops it back into the soil to feed the worms. It does the same for leaves, to some extent. I have sycamore leaves, which are otherwise almost indestructible.

Basil smells great, seasons tomatoes, and is considered an herb promoting happiness.