Getting What You Wish For

Last week I was praying for rain and guess what happened on Sunday? Finally, lots of it. I am not complaining, except it was rather muddy planting potatoes. Oh well, you can’t have everything. I am just glad to see everything perk right up because of the wet stuff. And perk up your garden—that is what the rain is so good for. Tap water just isn’t the same.



The tulips are out in full force right now and the bleeding heart sure cheered up with all the rain we had. Everything looks better from getting the good wet stuff.

I have been amending my soil with compost the past few days. I use it for my mulch and it gives the soil nutrients as well. I get it from the city, going over to the compost center each morning before work. I let it stink up my car in the morning before I unload it at lunch time. Then I lay it in the beds very carefully when I get home from work in the evening. With the compost and the rain my garden sure is looking a lot better than it did last week at this time.




Wednesday my parents celebrated their 59th anniversary. So I took them a candlelight dinner that included some asparagus from my garden. I don’t have anything else yet, but the strawberries are blooming and the apple trees have been in bloom so I know I have fruit coming my way this summer.

There is a section in my garden for myrtle, my mother's favorite plant. It is in bloom this time of year and I think of her when I see it.




The types of potatoes I planted are German Butterball, All Blue and Purple Viking. I have never tried these types before so I am looking forward to them. They are heirloom potatoes I got from the Seed Savers Exchange. The onion sets I bought from Burpee’s are planted as well. Soon I will get the peas I started into the ground and plant some leaf lettuce. And this weekend I will set up my greenhouse on the deck and start moving some seedlings out to it. The cat will no longer be a bother to them. What a relief.



The Valerie Finnis hyacinth seem to do well even though they are planted beneath my maple tree in the front. A nice skirt of blue this time of year.

Rain, rain come my way

April, the time for showers, has been dryer than my skin in the month of February. That’s pretty darn dry! I have already been out watering the redbud and viburnum I planted last summer. Not sure if I will get these little guys to survive. I am ready for a good three days of showers, but would be happy with just one if I could get it. Fortunately I do amend my soil with compost and after 10 years of adding this good stuff at least I wasn’t hitting concrete when I divided some perennials the other day. The hint here is that compost will help your soil retain some moisture and keep it from turning into hard rock. Another good hint I picked up in a gardening magazine is to keep buckets, or some other type of container at various places in the garden for throwing those weeds into when I am walking through the garden. It's hard for me not to pick them, how weird is that. This is something I have just started doing and I like this hint just fine.



The white trillium I got on sale at Abele’s last May is in bloom! I was so excited to see it out there; nothing ate it, it survived the winter and is making do with this dry spell. The one I planted up north several years ago I have never seen. I think the deer get to it before I do.

Yesterday I picked 5 spears of asparagus and had one of my favorite dinners—just plain asparagus with a dab of butter. Was it ever good! And there is more where that came from. I will probably be eating it for the next two weeks at least. I just love getting my supper from the garden. No shopping for me! Avoiding the grocery store can be habit forming. Unfortunately the cat doesn’t care for asparagus so I do still need to get there on occasion.




I have started potting up the tomatoes in separate pots, and will be doing the same for the peppers soon. My potato seeds have arrived from the Seed Savers Exchange and I expect the onion sets any day now. Time to get some lettuce and radish seeds in the ground. I started the peas in containers since they don’t like cold soil even though they prefer the cold weather. I am hoping for some rain so I don’t have to keep watering some of the plants I potted up. There is enough watering indoors to do at this time.

I can’t complain about not having rain on Saturday though. The Master Gardeners were at the Andersen Rose Center uncovering the roses that day and rain is heck to work in—I know since I have done this job in the rain before. We did see a snowflake or two, but that didn’t stop us from getting most of the leaves out of the beds. The pruning will come later.



And I guess that’s the word from Saginaw, Michigan during this dry April season. Perhaps the next time I write I will be able to report some foul weather of the wet variety. That’s what I’m hoping for anyways.

Budding Time

You know spring is really here when all of a sudden most of the trees around you have buds on them. This week the redbuds were in bloom. The miracle of life has occurred once again and winter is now officially out the door for another year.




It is also the time to baby seedlings. Even my peppers are starting to sprout through that fine germinating mix I planted them in. Keeping them watered, under gro-lights for enough hours of the day, fed a good fertilizer for seedlings, repotting them when it is time to give them separate homes of their own-- this is what I have started doing and will continue to do until the end of May or the beginning of June when they will actually go into the ground.




The hyacinths, bluebells and daffodils are putting on quite a display. And yesterday I saw my first red tulip start to show, although there are plenty of buds waiting to show off. The hyacinths are planted near my deck so I get to smell their perfume every time I go outside. What a pleasant treat!




By the end of the week I will be eating asparagus. They are starting to push their way out of the ground. Yes, I know it is truly spring when homegrown asparagus is part of my supper.
Happy Spring!

Seed Starting

I love when spring is actually, really, and truly here in Michigan. I am not 100 percent certain we won't have more snow, but the weather has been gorgeous lately and low and behold, one lone daffodil last Tuesday turned into several by the end of the week.

I started seeds in earnest this past week. I use germinating mix I get from the Garden Supply Company as well as some seed starting kits that have been in use now for over 20 years. They still work great. Starting seed requires moisture and these kits work fine for giving seeds the moisture they need to get going.




The tomato varieties I am growing this year are Cream Sausage, Dafel, Dandy, Flamme, Golden Delight, Gold Medal, Golden Treasure, Great White, Juliet, Purple Smudge, Roma VF, Speckled Roman, Kellogg’s Breakfast, Striped German and White Beauty.

I grow a lot of peppers as well. This year’s varieties include Anaheim, Ancho, Bianca, California Wonder, Cubanelle, Fish, Golden Calwonder and Orange Belle.



I am also growing cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli. Basil varieties include Cinnamon, Lemon, Genovese, Sweet Mammoth and Serrata. I grew the Serrata last year and it did super for me. I am still eating pesto I froze last fall using the Serrata basil. I had enough to share with my sister which is pretty amazing. I usually hog all the basil I grow for myself.



Other herbs I am growing this year include Black Cumin, Epazote, Fennel and Hyssop. I am looking forward to cooking with them. There is nothing like fresh herbs to cook with, although I do dry them for the winter time. Or make pesto with the basil and freeze it.

Over the next 4 weeks or so I will struggle to keep my seeds under good growing conditions. This means watering them when they need it as it can get pretty hot under the grow lights. It means some fertilizer and transplanting them to bigger pots when they out grow the seed starting kits. They tend to take over my house as I struggle to find enough places to keep them where they are safe from the cat. I will eventually set up the little greenhouse I have on the deck where they will spend some time hardening off. I used to take them out and bring them in, in and out, in and out, but it has gotten difficult to harden them off this way due to a pesky cat. Now if they can bear to be outside in the greenhouse they simply go outside as soon as I can get them there.



I have been spending some time doing cleanup in the garden as well. We hit 80 degrees here in mid-Michigan last week, quite unusual. But we could get a snowstorm any day. That is Michigan (and perhaps global warming) for you. I was happy to notice the garlic had poked out of the ground. So the squirrels didn’t get all of it last fall. I think they thought they were good, tasty bulbs. Surprise! I am excited to try these varieties I planted last October: Broadleaf Czech, Lorz Italian and German extra hardy.



It is tomato dreaming time of year for me. I will probably get my first tomato from the Farmer’s Market which opens Memorial weekend. I won’t have any myself until August. But until then, I can dream.

This and That

The seeds I ordered have arrived which is always exciting to this Midwestern gardener. And now down to work. The leeks have been peeking up out of the seed tray I started them in, but so far that is all I have started. The “grindstone” awaits me. Let us hope this farmer’s granddaughter doesn’t tire of it.



Because if Anne doesn’t tire of it, she will be eating potatoes from the garden next March. This is what I had for dinner last night, banana fingerling potatoes from 2009. Maybe they have seen better days, but they still tasted fine. And they are organic (since I spray nothing—I’m too darn lazy and ornery and cheap) and local (about as local as you can get since my vegetable garden is about 30 feet from my back door).

I guess I was trendy before I knew it. Maybe I will take it a bit further. Do two horses and a plow await my future? Perhaps a cow for milk. Or some chickens to peck at me. I wonder how much the neighbors can put up with on this small city lot I live on.

Garden Day took place at the Horizon Center here in Saginaw, Michigan on Saturday March 27th. This is such a good way to segue into spring. I helped Susan and Gloria work the Saginaw Master Gardener table at the event and managed to sell some of these fine cow pots and hopefully inspire a few gardeners to take the next class being offered in the fall. Actually Gloria was the great sales lady who convinced folks to buy the pots, and Susan kept me on tract to give folks the right change since I was foolishly put in charge of the money.



In the coming months the Master Gardeners will be out and about volunteering in the community, educating and working on beautification projects everywhere we can. It is a wonderful way to show support for the community we live in and care for this good earth. Call it what you want to: the good earth, soil, humus, peat, compost, or my favorite word which is dirt. I ordered some “dirt” which arrived last week and I was just tickled pink to get it. This “dirt” is actually germinating mix, the soilless type that is great for seed starting since it is so porous. I also ordered transplant mix and have some special potting mix I bought at Abele’s last year that I will use for the Cannas I wintered over.

The next few weeks I will share my kitchen, my bedroom , my desk etc. with pots and seed starting trays that I can hopefully be devious enough to keep the cat away from. I do have a gro-light system for seed starting that a friend’s husband made for me, but it never seems to hold everything I want to start. I bought the cat some wheat seeds which I will start in hopes that she will attack it and leave everything else alone.



Okay, here is the beast and she says hi in the only way she knows how-- by hiding every time another human voice passes my threshold. Some folks don’t believe she exists, but I know she does since the food disappears and the litter box fills up.

To everything there is a season

And this is the season of March in Michigan. Crocuses in bloom one day, snow the next. It doesn’t matter since spring will get here eventually, along with asparagus, which is always something to look forward to.



My brother recently mentioned having watched the movie Food Inc. He was utterly appalled at where our food comes from. His stepdaughter recommended the movie to him and her mother and now he feels that he needs to pass the word on. If you have not seen this movie, you must see it. You will never feel the same way about the grocery store again. It is a must for all people who care about this earth and what our system of supplying food to people in this country is doing to us.

So what is a person to do? Well, here are some suggestions:

When you shop at the grocery store, read the labels. Food producers are required by law to tell you everything that is in the product they are selling. Be aware of the fact that corn syrup, which is not a health food, is in a considerable number of products in the grocery store. If you can’t pronounce the word that is in a product, you are probably better off not buying it. Put products that have fewer ingredients at the top of your list. Browse the perimeter of the store—that is where fresh produce tends to hang out. Buy as few processed foods as you can. Visit health food stores, specialty food stores, look for the organic label. Ask your grocery store to carry more organic and locally grown products. Be aware of the fact that other countries may not have laws against the spraying of DDT. If you buy products from the United States you at least know they haven’t been sprayed with DDT since DDT is illegal here.

Better yet, shop at your local farmer’s market. Don’t know where that is? Go to http://www.localharvest.org/ and find one near you. I know that for many people this is only available at certain times of the year, but the advantage of shopping at these markets is that you can buy food in season which always tastes better. I just bought some locally grown greens (he grows them in a hoop house) from the farmer’s market in Lansing, Michigan yesterday, a day with a light snow on the ground! Truly amazing that this is possible!



I used to eat strawberries from my grandfather’s farm as a little girl-in June of course. Were they ever heavenly! After grandpa sold the farm the strawberries I ate from the store were hard as rock with absolutely no flavor. When I planted my first garden I planted strawberries because I wanted the memory of those strawberries with flavor and juice galore back in my life. They are definitely worth it. Do we want our children to eat their fruits and vegetables? Yes! How do we get them to do this? By eating in season when the fruits and vegetables are at their tastiest.

And finally, you can plant your own garden. You can even grow tomatoes in a pot if you don’t have a lot of garden space. What you need is at least 6 hours of full sun per day. You can feed your plants lots of compost (cheaper than fertilizer, especially if you make it yourself), keep them mulched and watered and you will have abundance. If Anne Birkam can do it, so can you!

Dill, Herb of the Year

Some folks count on the yellow blooms of witch hazel to let them know that spring is on the way. I planted this last year so I can let you know in a few years how true a harbinger of spring it is. For now, my harbinger of spring is the conference held each March by the Michigan Herb Associates on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing. And like each conference that has preceded this one, I have returned home just geared up to go in garden. Not to mention with a few new plants, one of them being dill, the herb of the year.




Now I don’t need any more dill in my garden. Dill is such a reliable herb I can always count on it to return for me, year after year after year. It pops up in surprising places, some a nice surprise, others not so, but it always returns. I could not, however, resist the lure of a variety of dill that grows almost as tall as I am. Long Island dill is supposed to do just that—growing to 5 feet tall. I also bought a variegated sage, stevia, a Mexican sage and a Vicks plant. Now the task is to keep the cat away from them.

Stevia can be used to replace sugar as a sweetener. The Vicks plant has a minty smell (not surprising considering it is in the mint family) and variegated sage will be a nice touch near the other sages I already have.

Tina Marie Wilcox and Susan Belsinger were the keynote speakers at the conference. We were able to sample many of the fine recipes Susan prepared for us and laugh when Tina’s wry wit was on display. They talked about herbs in cooking, healing and household cleaning so I was able to bring home many tips to use in the future. I have been using vinegar to clean for years now. This next year I plan to add a bit of lavender to it as suggested.




I also learned how to make cheese and am anxious to try it myself. I have made paneer before (an Indian type of cheese). Now I am ready to try some other recipes. And believe it or not, it isn’t that hard to do. More and more folks are returning to the tried and true of a previous century. No more factory farm products for me! I either buy what I need from someone I trust or I try to do it myself from now on. I don’t care to eat vegetables that have been sprayed with DDT which is what happens in countries that do not regulate against it. So, the best advice I can give folks at the grocery store, read the label, know what you are eating! It really does make a difference.

Mary Birkam’s Dill Weed Dip Recipe

1 pint yogurt
1 ½ cup salad dressing
1 Tablespoon dill weed
1 Tablespoon instant onion
3 Tablespoons parsley flakes
1 Tablespoon chives
1 Tablespoon Lawrey’s salt
Mix all ingredients. Chill several hours