making a haul from one the country's best and oldest blueberry nurseries

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Finch plants  for sale and pickup at Club Blvd. Elementary's first annual blueberry bush fundraiser, held two weeks ago...

Finch Nursery is also well known for their handmade bluebird houses

I've helped hustle blueberry bushes by the truckload over the last few weeks. These have come from Finch Nursery in Bailey, NC...not too far from Wilson. It's been well worth the two hour round trip. My son's school has been selling them as a PTA/Garden Club fundraiser. And it's been a wild success. I'm in charge of the sale next year. We are thinking about expanding to include muscadine vines along with the blueberries. Send me an email if you know a good grower in North Carolina.

Lehrich Ford

Dan Finch started the nursery over 50 years ago

Driving into the nursery, you will notice  the large groves/windbreaks of Empress Trees. A fascinating sight in early April when they bloom. 

for Durham backyard poultry enthusiasts..

....there is a new website to check out.  Purple Roost is a recently launched business designed to take care of your flock while you are away. Other services are in the works too. Keep this electronic bookmark handy if you or someone you know needs help raising chickens or is just interested in getting started. The entreprenuer, Michelle, lives in Duke Park but can service Raleigh area coops too.

cherry pickers

couldn't resist posting this story about urban bees in NYC.

morning news: Among the Hmong

I'm having a busy week so it is hard to find time to come up with my own original observations about gardens, people, and outdoor miscellany. And the fumes from painting my basement aren't helping.
But that doesn't mean I can't rip a hyperlink out of the cyberworld for you to  read.

Check out the lead from today's Life section in the N&O. 

I had no idea that North Carolina's western piedmont and foothills were home to such a large  rural population of Hmong immigrants...... Another pretty cool fact- you can grow rice in dry ground and charge $25 a gallon for it?  Um, goodbye squash.  Of course I am sure there are probably a few centuries of agricultural traditions that one might need to get some practice with first.... Enjoy this story.

a growing concern

So, I'm really trying to savor the kitchenette garden right now and hoping for the best....but the truth of the matter is, that right now is as good as it gets for me and vegetables.

"Wha?" you say... I haven't harvested a single eggplant yet,  how could it be downhill from here.  It boils down to space and ambition. As a lot of us kitchenette gardeners know, you cannot buy one pumpkin vine. You cannot buy two pumpkin seeds. And who in their right mind only wants ONE tomato plant...we've got to have golden, Roma, heirloom, and at least one other type right? And then there are the herbs, the root veggies, the marigolds, the ubiquitous crookneck squash (with the elephantine ear leaves), and viola....my zinnia seedlings have evaporated and the watermelon vine has become a patch....*sigh*
All those gourds and vines usually only give me an armful or two of produce all in the same few weeks of the year. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it. But my enjoyment usually enters a valley in July and August after peaking with the Solstice.

Yesterday, my dad told me a story that I had heard before. It was about his grandfather who had moved from the country into Thomasville, NC sometime before WWII. He usually leased a few acres on the edge of town just for a vegetable garden but one year he decided to plant it ALL with watermelons.  He drove my dad, who was just  a little guy then, out to the watermelon patch to show him this eighth wonder of the world. And he made my dad promise not to tell his grandmother about it. She would have gotten angry at such a foolhardy decision....I don't know if she ever did find out because that wasn't part of the story......I cannot imagine she couldn't have considering they didn't exactly rely on Target or Harris Teeter to proffer up sweet white corn in July.

I guess I could think of worse things. Like not growing anything at all.

yesterday's Times

In yesterday's New York Times, there is a great  profile on John Ameroso, a pioneer in the world of urban farming.

I had never heard of him before reading this article. I think his story is fascinating especially given the fact that urban vegetable plots and community gardening are often cast as trendy throwbacks to the victory gardens of  WWII.....at least that is the impression you often get when you read about the "rise of urban agriculture" in most popular magazines and newspapers.

But as this piece shows, it's been catching on for quite a while. 

that time of year

Until I can find some more time to write a post or post some pics, I will need to lean on other good stuff out there. Here is this week's front porch essay from the Independent. ... by the always-awesome John Valentine. He makes a lot of us say, "damn...wish I could have written that. "

food and fellowship in the St.Phillip's community garden

This community garden sits beside the parking lot of Durham's St.Phillip's Episcopal Church at the corner of East Main and North Dillard Streets. The gates are always open. One of the goals of this well designed garden was to invite nearby residents to come in, ask questions, pick vegetables, and enjoy the pleasant green space. With that measure, the experiment was a success. The garden is beautiful even on a cloudy and foggy morning. Look for a short piece about this garden in next month's Skywriter.

great recession garden update: late summer

So... if basil and cherry tomatoes were all I needed to get through the summer, then I'd be set. I still have a good many large heirloom tomatoes on the way (I lost the tags, so I am unsure which kind they are). My 20 ft. long pumpkin vine is looking to give us two cantaloupe sized jack-o-lanterns: one for each of my kids. The butternut squash is laying out about a half-dozen small gourds and one large one. But given my "input costs," I would stand to lose money if this were an agricultural business. But thankfully it's not. And like the man at Stone Brothers and Byrd said, "keeping a garden is a lot cheaper than a paying a therapist."

plants and policy?

I heard this NPR story on the way to work yesterday. It was about one suburb of Milwaukee and their town policy against planting in the public strip between the street and sidewalk. No veggies allowed. In fact, no plants over four inches allowed?!

This is a shame for a lot of reasons. I love seeing folks take over public spaces and front yards for a garden. Sometimes you just need to make use of the best sun you have. And sometimes you need to personalize a garden with more than grass, nandina shrubs, or mulch. If you drive around some of the older neighborhoods in Durham you will see some pretty cool front yard gardens. The Tuscaloosa-Lakewood neighborhood is always a good place to hunt for examples. On my way between James and Kent streets, I've seen corn stalks and canteloupe vines near several front walks and mailboxes. Brave, smart, efficient, however you want to describe their green thumb decisions-- those gardeners have made it easy for me to drive slow by their house.

hive visit

Duke university student, Chuck Abolt, prepares to check on a colony of honey bees. He is involved with Duke's Farmhand organization and a university apiary club.

On Sunday I spent some time visiting the six honey bee hives that are being kept at Sarah Duke Gardens, by the Duke Apiary Club. Their main purpose, according to member Chuck Abolt, is to educate the community about the importance of honey bees.

Domestic and feral honey bee populations have been in decline in North America. Thankfully, an interest in beekeeping is on the rise as more and more folks wish to see and taste where their food really comes from (i.e. backyard gardens and small local farms).

Honey bees play a crucial role in pollinating fruit and vegetables. Agricultural operations of all sizes are paying good money to rent hives for the growing season. Look for my short article on beekeeping in next month's issue of Boom. It is a free monthly newspaper you can grab outside of Whole Foods, where I recently paid a king's ransom for a pound of good local clover honey. It was worth it. But considering the two hives on the left produced 120lbs of honey in a single harvest, the idea of keeping my own colony has real appeal.

recession garden update

Not counting herbs, last night's dinner saw our first garden supplement. The royal burgundy bush beans were very fresh and very good. Interestingly, almost as soon as they hit the frying pan they lost that purple color. There's more of these outside, but the tomatoes look a long ways off and my eggplants haven't even flowered yet. But the zinnias and marigolds and purple coneflowers that I planted nearby are giving me some pretty things to look at while I wait on more food.

Recession Garden update: middle June

It has been a good month for my vegetable and herb garden. On the heels of one of the wettest springs in recent memory, the early summer has started off with several showers and storms--enough to keep me from having to hand water any of the vegetables I put in a week before Mother's Day.

I've already had to pinch back the basil a few times, add in some flowers for color (verbena, marigolds, four o' clocks), and re-tie the purple string bean bushes. My pumpkin and butternut squash vines are already venturing into parts of the bed I didn't think they'd visit until August. So, I am watching, waiting, weeding. More pics after the solstice...

my great recession garden

Most of my good sun grows flowers and shrubs, so I do not usually keep a big kitchen garden. However, I can appreciate local produce whether it comes from a farmer or a friend's yard. Every summer I try to eke out some room for an eggplant or two, one tomato, and a couple of basil plants. Not much to keep track over.....see this related post from 2007.

But this year is different; everyone is growing a vegetable garden! So I decided to till up a good sized portion of my yard and join the movement. Now we have promises of squash, tomatoes, burgundy pole beans, basil (Thai and Genovese), bell peppers, chives, oregano, dill, eggplant (Chinese and “regular?”), and pumpkins. And I threw in a few packs of zinnias and marigold seeds…..and a creeping jenny- just for show. My plot is too small given how far the pumpkin and squash vines will travel. But I'm planning on taking things as they come. A few snips here, a stepped on crooked-neck yellow squash there, I can handle it.

The sand and pebbles are to mark the spots where seedlings needed help to germinate. Although, with the dependable moisture over the past two weeks, I haven't really needed to tap the rain barrel. The post and twine set-up is to serve as a deterrent for my two dogs. If a tennis ball gets thrown in there, it probably will not stop them.

I will try to keep some pics up as the garden grows unless it becomes a huge failure. Then I will probably just post about my wildflowers growing in the ditch by the road.

from today's N&O

In line with my last two posts, "Heirloom Needs," an article from today's N&O Life section caught my eye:

http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/708713.html

Heirloom Needs

It is hard to look outside and think about landscapes without focusing on the drought North Carolina is in. It has made me wonder how folks may have tended to their gardens and farms a couple of generations ago when the clouds failed to burst for weeks on end. If my great-grandparents were living today, what would they think of the choices I have made for my garden and what advice could they share for coping with tough growing conditions?

First, before sharing anything, they would be shocked at the lack of a premium I put on freshly grown produce from my own yard. The great-grandparents on either side of my family were not occupants of large farmsteads in central or eastern North Carolina, but they certainly grew beans, okra, greens, and tomatoes for their table and from their topsoil every summer. Fig and Pecan trees were not necessarily started because they would be handsome landscape elements some day.

For my parents’ parents, supplementing or supplying your dinners with a garden was mandatory. My father inherited the duties of tending a family vegetable patch in the summers immediately before and during World War II. I would have looked at his “patch” and called it a field. He weeded the plot in the mid-afternoon sun before his parents came home from their mill-work in Thomasville. Dad does not remember too many hours spent hand watering or lots of rows lost to drought. Even though it was a successful source of food, this garden was a still a step down from what his grandfather grew only a couple of decades before when the family lived further out in the countryside.

I have almost bottomed out this downsizing family trend. This summer, on my urban southwest Durham property, I planted two tomato plants, one eggplant, and one pepper plant each in a large pot. Granted, these were the deepest containers I could find, but the watering was still too much for me last month. The sun dried out these vegetables which got no relief from the late afternoon sun. I have sparingly hand watered, but instead of trying to save anything for my plate, I have tried to keep a half dozen other moisture loving plants alive. My ancestors would take one look at my mixed shrub and perennial border and wonder how I hadn’t starved. After an awkward tour, they would undoubtedly take me aside and point out the merits of getting some fall collards started.

This heat may have zapped even my grandparent’s ambitious plot of edibles. The fact that they used composted manure for the soil, mulched generously, watered deeply and infrequently to stimulate root growth, and made good use of the sun and shade, meant their seed starts and transplants stood a fighting chance. They also prayed more.