Smallest Farm at mid-June

Smallest Farm at mid-June

We haven't had a smallest farm update for a while so here's the crop report. No pics yet; I'm waiting until there's something that looks impressive and right now it would look like half-mulched weeds with some strategically placed sprouts.

The south garden fence must still have some wabbit-sized gaps because the sunflowers are still getting eaten and the peas are a total loss, chewed off at the ground just as they blossomed.

Everything else in the south is doing fine. Tomatoes and eggplants are a foot tall, with some baby tomatoes starting. The catnip-eggplant interplanting is working well as usual with no flea beetles seen. We've also got a couple baby peppers. I attempted to control the tomatillos in tomato cages but they're already spilling out.

Cukes are sprouted and a couple inches high; I had to replant those once as well but that was because some of them just died, rather than wabbits.

I deviated from the original plan and planted some zucchini and squash on the far south fence and those are also doing well. A combination of weather and scheduling kept me from following through with some of my intentions for the south garden, like carrots and onions, and these plants are sure to fill the gap. I tried to stagger the plantings to try and avoid the inevitable zucchini glut.

In the middle garden, corn planting was finished last weekend and the first two of three plantings are sprouting. I've mulched them as much as I can with grass to keep the weeds down, and had to dig up and give away a bunch of bee balm to make room for corn. (I have more left if you want any, it spreads like crazy.)

The pole beans are almost all sprouted; I had to fill in a couple gaps because wabbits got a few. But the reinforced fence seems to be working better on the middle garden. The tallest beans are maybe a foot up and starting to grab the nets.

Along the south edge the squash family is doing well, including a couple that volunteered from the compost heap and got transplanted. The three giant pumpkins -- duly designated Ethan's, Hayden's, and Daddy's -- are OK so far; the trick will be keeping the pumkins growing once they start. Last year they rotted on the vine.

The west annex is reverting to its weed patch roots but at least the weed patch includes a lot of cilantro. And the hot peppers in the small north garden are just starting to blossom, though the okra is going slow.

And everywhere we look there's catnip, catnip, catnip...

Smallest Farm Sunday

Season Starts on Smallest Farm

I'm not going to claim the Obamas stole my idea--there was a grassroots or shall we say carrot roots effort behind it--but we Smallest Farmers now have the presidential seal of approval.

Here in the Miller-Orchard neighborhood, we have an earliest ever start on the smallest farm, with the first official crops going in the ground on Saturday, March 21. That's a week ahead of last year. It was a perfect all-sunny day, with rain forecast (accurately) for today, so I spent about nine hours straight digging and planting and pruning, with help from the junior farmhands. We're seeing the catnip sprouting in several patches, which is a good sign that we actually have spring.

Last year I spent all winter planning and mapping on graph paper, with mixed success in the final product. My pumpkin and squash vines overran the south garden, and my hot peppers were too close to a walnut tree that lowered their yield. (Walnut roots contain a chemical called juglone that inhibits growth of nightshade-family plants like peppers, tomatoes and eggplant). The boys are hoping for better pumpkin success than last year, when the giant pumpkins stared to grow, reached about normal pumpkin size, then inexplicably rotted on the vine.

This year I'm less scripted, with little more than a big-picture plan. We'll let the volunteers grow where they grow, and this being an odd-numbered year the elections are smaller so I'll have more time at the end of the season.

The two gardens are flipped this year. Hayden learned about George Washington Carver and crop rotation in school and now he's getting a real life lesson. (He also wanted to plant peanuts but he's accepted that we can't grow them this far north). The north garden will be dominated by corn and the pole bean fence. A massive trimming on an inconveniently placed tree (now just a tall skinny twig with a tuft of leaves at the top) has increased the sunshine just south of the north garden. The vining plants will be planted along the south edge of the north garden, trained out through the fence, and allowed to sprawl out into the yard. This will expand the garden size yet save me the work of moving the fence. (I still need some chicken wire; the fence kept big wabbits out but let baby wabbits in).

The south garden will have the peppers and tomatoes, and was the site of yesterday's season-starting planting of peas, spinach, lettuce and radishes. The north row will be a wall of sunflowers, planted from last year's saved seed. I've also got saved seed from beans, catnip, cilantro, and acorn squash. I wish I still had saved seed from my purple pod pole beans; I haven't been able to find that since about 2000. All I find now are purple bush beans and I haven't planted a bush bean since 1995. That was the first year I planted pole beans, still my favorite garden thing.

I'm also making a second effort at what we'll call the west garden--a round patch maybe 10 feet circular that had been dominated by a weed patch. I dug it up last year and planted flowers, but the weeds overtook them. Only the catnip held its own. This year I dug it up again, yanked up some more roots, and planted some herbs yesterday: basil and cilantro. I may try to get some okra over there, or I may put that in the south garden.

We also have a remnant of this neighborhood's orchard roots: an actual apple tree. I'd like to prune that to help its fruit production, but it's also Ethan's favorite climbing tree. I'll settle for just actually picking apples this year; that was one of the casualties of my late season lack of time in a presidential year.

We'll have pictures through the season, unfortunately my camera's memory card is in my still in the shop main laptop.

One last ag note: next year's sec of ag race is warming up as Bleeding Heartland reports on Fairfield organic dairy farmer Francis Thicke getting in on the Dem side. Folks think this means Denise O'Brien is out; in the meantime I can't find any evidence on what Dusky Terry has been up to since the end of the Vilsack presidential race.

Season Ends on Smallest Farm

Season Ends on Smallest Farm



The forecast calls for 31 tonight and 28 tomorrow night, so today I picked the last harvest of the Smallest Farm -- a bag of basil -- and made my first homegrown pesto in years.

There's a few volunteers popping up that won't survive. A hot pepper plant by the compost pile actually produced two peppers, and there's a tomato plant sprouting too. Enough stuff fell ripe off the vines that I may have a decent garden next year without doing anything. (A long time ago I got volunteer sunflowers one year from mulching with gerbil litter.)

The second season spinach and lettuce planting got wabbitized. I'm close to ready to re-till and mulch with the fall leaves, but no time Nine Days Out.

It's too windy to rake today but I did learn that cardboard yard signs fly farther than paper. Three of my four signs crossed the street and one went a full block, but my Flip Yes sign is nowhere to be found. And I was just going to blame a drunk student (we live on a bar crawl home). So next time you blame someone for stealing signs, consider the elements. And don't forget to take them in next Friday for Halloween.

A Full Bag's Harvest on the Smallest Farm

A Full Bag's Harvest on the Smallest Farm



We picked us a Big Bag O' Produce today on the Smallest Farm and the colors mixed very nicely.



E is for Ethan and for eggplant, Hayden has a perfect tomato. The perfect ones are slicers, the less perfect ones are salsa. Two varieties: Daddy's Dangerous Salsa and Mama's Mild Salsa. (It's not truly dangerous yet: the habanero peppers aren't ready.)



Ethan helps me illustrate just how tall the sunflowers are; Hayden took the picture.



Ethan took this artsy extreme tomato close up.



A perfect classic eggplant.



A jar of refrigerator pickles. The one that looks like my cat Xavier is napping.

We met a couple friends today:



Mr. Toad managed to escape from the boys in one piece, thanks to his excellent camouflage.



Mothra here was hungrier for chives than for her usual lunch, downtown Tokyo.

Rebuilding year on Smallest Farm

Rebuilding Year on Smallest Farm



As I roll into August I'm coming to realize that it's a rebuilding year on The Smallest Farm. I've forgotten a few tricks in the six years since I've had a real garden. So I'm having some successes, some incomplete successes, and a few outright failures.

The sunflowers have done well. Some were wabbitized, but the ones that grew grew well.



Some of my more elaborate plans, like canning and pickling, have been abandoned (though I did put together a batch of refrigerator pickles). Too much to try to do in a year divisible by four.

I'm getting some tomatoes, but not the bucketloads I expected. Made the first homemade salsa yesterday with mostly cherry tomatoes. Something blighty got some of the plants, and my hot peppers are a bit stunted. I think there may be a walnut issue. Nothing to do about that but move it next year and plant something walnut-friendly like beans there.

The experiment with single-stem tomatoes is too soon to tell. I have blossoms but not much fruit.



The corn is a mixed success. Last week we picked our first, and I employed child labor in the shucking process. Flavor was good but size was a little small. And one batch was mysteriously knocked over.



Eggplant is a major success thanks to the catnip.

I've only harvested the long Ichiban variety so far, but the classic variety is also producing.



Beans are a partial success. Some of the vines grew well but a few got wabbit-nibbled. The fence keeps the big wabbits out but the adolescent wabbits sneak in. For next year: add tight meshed chicken wire to the fence. There's still a lot of season left so I may get the bushel-loads of beans yet. I also used too tight a type of netting, so I have to cut some holes sometimes to get at beans.



The pumpkins, indeed all of the squash family, are successful to the too much of a good thing level. I made the rookie mistake of planting too much and I'm overwhelmed with zucchini and spaghetti squash -- and I only planted ONE spaghetti squash. I'll remember next year to plant only ONE giant pumpkin vine not two.

Watermelon was a failure -- the squash family grew faster and overran it. But the salad square plan -- plant a square a week, put a zucchini in the middle, then by the time the zook grows the salad is eaten -- more or less worked.

The weed crop is overtaking most of the rest, though the mulching has helped.

Gophers

I'm Gonna Have To Get All Carl Spackler On This Gopher

The Smallest Farm has been invaded by a gopher. I haven't seen him myself, but the boys say he looks sort of like this:


.
There is, of course, only one appropriate response: a license to kill gophers.

bigger than the smallest farm

Bigger than the Smallest

Desmoinesdem claims to have a smaller garden, so while I may not claim the title of Smallest Farm in Iowa, that's still its name.


Sunflowers have recovered from the rabbits and are now bigger than the boys, who are also growing in the backyard.


Ethan has to quality inspect the pepper plants.


This is the Big Picture of the north garden.


Two of the three eggplant are productive so far.


Starting to see red...


Bee balm is like catnip for bees. This may be the single best photograph I've ever taken of anything.


The south garden is starting to like like an Iowa cornfield. The vining squashes and pumpkins are sprawling bigger than I had expected, though. The big failure is the watermelon -- it started slower than the pumpkins and is losing the race.


It won't be long now...


Here's a spaghetti squash just a couple days from ready.


A future giant pumpkin.


A sample of harvest: one very large zucchini, an eight ball squash, a cuke, and what's probably the last radish. Also a coffee stain on the counter.

From Smallest Farm to Table

From Smallest Farm to Table

It's early July, and the Smallest Farm is beginning to pay off in actual edible produce -- enough to produce most of a meal.



Here we have an Eight Ball squash (basically, a small round zucchini), an eggplant, some basil, a banana pepper, and some garlic greens.



Chop, throw some olive oil in the old cast iron pan, assemble. On the side, some pasta and sauce.



The tomatoes were ringers, as were the onions you see here, but both are growing strong. So this meal is plausibly home grown, if not 100 percent. (OK, I'll admit I don't have a crop of durum wheat growing for pasta.)



Can't forget the salad. What's left of the spinach has bolted, but I'm still getting lettuce, radishes, and (not seen here) peas.



Simple, tasty...



and completely vegie.

Smallest Farm

Smallest Farm Post-Flood



With Mom now a regular reader, I need to throw in more human being posts in and amongst the politics. The Smallest Farm is beginning to look like an actual Iowa corn field.



We've way surpassed knee high well before the 4th of July, though that's an archaic benchmark anyway. The purple on my knee is not a giant bruise, it's mulberries. We've got several trees in the yard and way more berries than we can eat. (Best on vanilla ice cream.)



The grape tomatoes are about full size, just waiting to get red.

The flood waters never approached. In fact, we've now gone nine days with no rain, and on Sunday when I took these, I had to water. The rain barrel was nice and full from pre-flood.



Pole beans have climbed to the top of the fence; rabbits got a few lower leaves but the beans are winning. The sunflowers, though, may be a lost cause.



The first baby eggplant. Eggplant is tough, but the trick is to plant it in the middle of catnip...



...the most popular crop.



IM IN UR NIP GETTIN STONEDS

Smallest Farm Tour

Smallest Farm Photo Update



Political writing is feeling anticlimactic at the moment. The Democrat in me is glad for the Hillary endorsement, but the journalist in me realizes that a convention fight would have been great theater. Plus, I'm still not sure how to cope with having caucused for the winner, after my track record of Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson, Tom Harkin, Bill Bradley, and Howard Dean. This is a weird place for me.

So instead, welcome to the Smallest Farm in Iowa. Mr. Hoot Hoot (named by my then much younger daughter) was the only piece of equipment salvaged from my old garden, and stands ready to terrify any wabbits who are too stupid to see that he's plastic.



Companion planting is more effective; the eggplants are surrounded by catnip to scare away the flea beetles (and get the Furry Three buzzed)



The first pepper is starting much sooner than I expected.



Sunflowers are knee hight and should make a massive north wall on the northern half of the Farm.



Down on the South Forty, the pole beans are starting to pole, and the boys are calling them "beanstalk beans."

Smallest Farm Sunday

Smallest Farm Sunday

Glad I took Friday off the day job to plant stuff, since today has turned out crap for weather. Now I've got about 18 tomatoes, three eggplants a dozen hot peppers, and a couple dozen sweet peppers in the ground. It looks like I'm growing a crop of milk cartons thanks to all the "hats" I've got over the plants as mini-greenhouses.

The goal was to plant corn, too, but since the actual farmers aren't getting that done I'm not feeling too bad. I also transplanted some mint that I'd left at Bohemian Paradise.

Link fest:

John Eskow at HuffPo on Clinton as "failed messenger":

It all came down to a hard-to-pinpoint, rarely discussed, but desperately important matter: the personal authenticity of two human beings.

Clinton's ultimate gift, among many, to Obama was obviously the Gas Tax Holiday. It nailed down her credentials as a Wooden Soldier -- the epitome of the old-fashioned, say-anything, 20th-century politician. She went once too often to the voters-are-dullards well, and it finally pissed them off.

It's a mistake McCain will make, too, because like Clinton he just can't help it. Part of it is generational. Clinton and McCain came of age in a Nixonian universe -- and there has never been a more Wooden Soldier than Nixon. (In my own personal dictionary, when you look up Wooden Soldier, there's a photo of Nixon doing his ghoulish two-handed V-For-Victory salute.) And part of it is a choice, based on an outmoded belief that voters want an Impregnable Persona instead of a genuine human being.

At Kos, organicdemocrat offers a different reason which "Nobody is Talking About":

What doomed the Clinton candidacy is of course, her vote in favor of the Iraq war.... Why is no establishment writer pointing to that as the reason why she lost? Because they are all complicit in the original sin of supporting the invasion of Iraq.

How did a minor American politician, a mere State Senator in Illinois, get it right when all these towering giants did not? It is not that Barack Obama had better information. It is not even because he was smarter. He simply had the courage to say what he knew to be true. He would, strangely, trust that the people he was addressing were adults.

Thus circling back to the same point Eskow made. Although, actually, I've been talking about the war vote forever, though I'm hardly a major-league pundit, I'm more of a Cedar Rapids Kernels level pundit. But on NC/Indy night, Chris Matthews made the same point.

Enough seriousness. Rich people like 30 Rock because it portrays management in a favorable light (and not because Tina Fey is both funny and gorgeous). And...

Cats on a treadmill.

Smallest Farm Report

Smallest Farm Report

After that liveblog yesterday, I spent the rest of the weekend in actual physical labor on the vastly expanded Smallest Farm in Iowa. This included a visit today to the puny 2005-2007 site of the Smallest Farm, to dig up some perennials that were grown over late last July when we made the move out of Bohemian Paradise.

Most of the weekend's effort was expended on a wabbit fence. My five year old thinks it would be way cooler if it was electrified, but I tell him we just want to keep the bunnies out, not cook them. Nevertheless, the subject keeps coming up. Of course, if I really wanted to Kill The Wabbit I'd let Dylan, the cat who likes mouse killin', outside.

Since 1994 there's only been one year (2003) when I had absolutely nothing in the ground. I went through a stretch of seven years (1998-2004) when I was never in the same space two years in a row, and in 2001 I had a garden that was 20 feet long and nine inches wide; a pole bean fence along a narrow strip at the edge of a parking lot. The last three years were pretty minimal, just a defiant insistence that I put a few seeds in a tiny inappropriate space.

But this year is the Big Expansion. Here's the basic plan. The south garden is about 30 by 50 feet and will be the site of the pole bean fence, the corn field, the giant pumpkins and assorted squashes. The peas are there too but will be long gone by the time the squash vines get there.

The middle garden is long and skinny, about 15 by 40. Mostly tomatoes and peppers, and I'm going to try eggplant again, but the north row will be a wall of sunflowers. Both these gardens will have salad-sized odds and ends tucked in.

The north garden was tilled but after a winter-long discussion with my dear wife, over the conflict between location of trees and sunny spots vs. where the kids like to play, it has been determined that the north garden will grow boys instead of veggies. There's a small remnant to the west that will have a pole bean teepee, as a compromise between play and crops. We've also got a fully enclosed rain barrel with the drain spout piping straight in.

This is the old orchard part of Iowa City, just at the bottom of the Benton Street hill, and we indeed have an orchard consisting of one apple tree. Mid-summer we'll figure out what kind of apples we have and act accordingly.

I'm trying to make the case that this is going to save money in the long run, as I shell out the bucks to replace all the garden tools and equipment I lost after five years of apartment life. But I suspect it'll turn out like dad's fishing boat: a lot of time and money for a few bucks worth of fish -- and my kids like their veggies about as much as I liked fish.

But dad had lots of fun fishing.

Spring Break

No Spring Break In Real Life

It's a shame there's no spring break in real life, but while the boys are home all week, I'm off to the office. I never did understand how students could afford the week long road trip; the most exciting place I ever went over spring break was North Dakota for a speech tournament.

After the 13 hour marathon of the Johnson County Democratic convention (which gave me my highest traffic Saturday ever), I was pretty apolitical yesterday. The big story of Saturday seemed to be "Obama gains from Edwards" but that didn't play out at all in my county where the numbers were virtually unchanged from January 3. The national press also frames it as "Obama gains delegates" when in fact Iowa does not elect any national delegates until the congressional district conventions.

My big project yesterday was planning work on the Smallest Farm In Iowa, which this year will no longer claim the title of smallest. The snow has mostly melted off the three tilled patches of the football field sized back yard, and peas and salad goodies should be in the ground in a couple weeks.

Grandson and mom are home from the hospital. And while Butter is irreplacable, Xavier The Cat With Bad Behavior is working to fill his old job of getting in the way of the computer while I'm writing.

Here's a couple links for you:

Poblano at Kos has a great "Six kinds of voters" diary that inadvertently makes the case for instant runoff voting.

Iowa House candidate Nate Willems has a front page MyDD diary.

Smallest Farm Gets Early Start

Smallest Farm Gets Early Start

Don't feel like writing about basketball beyond "good riddance" so just the briefest of updates on what I call The Smallest Farm in Iowa, the tiny garden patch out back of my apartment complex.

I may be abandoning Bohemian Paradise when the lease runs out so I planted early, early stuff. Non-gardeners may think it's too damn early, but some stuff does well four to six weeks before last frost. The old superstition was to plant peas on St. Patrick's Day. I was just a few days after that. Some spinach and lettuce is also in the ground and radishes will follow. Everything should be good and dead by mid-August, and if one of the places I have my eyes on work out the 2008 farm will no longer qualify as the smallest.