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There are two days left in August and though we’re not yet at the end of summer here in northwestern New York State, we starting to be able to see it. The garden is not looking as neat and tidy as it was a few months ago. Many of our flowers are still blooming, but the pumpkins have set and berries are forming to feed the birds this winter. Here’s a visual update on what’s happening in the backyard. Contrast it to my last update in mid-July. Last Sunday my family and I spent a few hours at the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire, just east of the Vermont-New Hamphire border. August Saint-Gaudens was a late nineteenth/early twentieth century American sculptor known for his heroic pieces such as the Shaw memorial on the Boston Commons as well as smaller bas relief works and coins. Restorers were doing work on the exterior of the main house and a classical concert was being held when we visited, but here are a few photos from around the grounds.
We’re fully in the middle of summer here in northwest New York State, climate zone 5b. In another month the nights will start getting quite cool, though we’ll still have some very warm days into September. A month ago I posted an update on what was blooming as summer was about to start. Most of those blooms have passed, but others have taken their place. Here’s a visual tour.
Next: “The summer garden moves toward the end game” Some objects from my travels and experiences, mixed in with some scifi books.
We have less than a week to go before summer here in northwest New York, climate zone 5b. A lot has happened bloom-wise since my last update at the end of May, and here is some of what I saw as I walked around the house at lunchtime today.
Next: “Flowers in the summer heat” Before my son and I started working in the backyard on Saturday I took a few photos related to the work to be done. One of my first errands in the morning was to go to the farm market and get a few additional vegetable plants for the garden. Half a flat quickly turned into two flats as I walked up and down the aisles. Earlier in the week I had three yards of screened topsoil delivered so that William and I could grade the lawn falling off the west side of the driveway. To give you an idea of how much this is, each cubic yard is 27 cubic feet, so with this much dirt you could spread soil 6 inches deep over an area of 2 x 3 x 27 = 162 square feet.
I’ve already tilled the vegetable garden twice this Spring and it will get one more deep tilling before the seeds and plants go in. One of the neighbor deer is impatient for me to put up her evening buffet of vegetables.
There are two days left to May, but it feels like Summer here in northwest New York State. I will be planting the vegetable garden tomorrow, but there are plenty of plants in bloom or making good showings before Spring says goodbye for 2010. Here’s a visual update, one month after I last showed the flora in the backyard.
Next: “Almost summer in the garden” After I had finished my meetings in Munich last week but before I started my 48 hour adventure to get home from Germany around the volcanic ash cloud, I had a chance to walk around the city a bit and take some photos. This is hardly comprehensive of the breadth and beauty of the city, but rather just some things I observed along the way. In theory I was walking back to my hotel. Actually, I walked much too far and had to eventually find a taxi.
Two outlets, both unused.
Most airports have pathetic coverage for power outlets, and it’s especially frustrating after they remodel terminals. I understand that they might be trying to drive people into the airline lounges, but some, like Boston Logan, are particularly bad. This shot was taken in the Rochester, NY, airport. It’s been three weeks since I last did an update on the state of flowering things in my yard, and I did manage to sneak out yesterday to survey where things were. We’re at the end of the daffodil season and moving into the final phase of the middle tulip blooming time. The lilacs are in bloom, a good two weeks earlier than usual here in upstate New York, climate zone 5b. Here’s a visual survey of what’s blooming. For the most part I’ve omitted the dandelions since they and I are no longer friends. I don’t use chemicals on them and even though I dug up many of them last year, they are back in full force. I actually am resolved to live with them, but I do wish they would stop mocking me. All photos were taken with an Apple iPhone 3GS.
Next: “Life in the garden, end of May” Last week my family and I went to Chicago to visit my daughter Katie who is in college there. Our primary planned activity was seeing chef and author Anthony Bourdain at the Chicago Theatre, but we took some time on Saturday afternoon to visit the Shedd Aquarium, part of the huge museum complex that juts out into Lake Michigan. It’s a terrific aquarium and though it was a broad collection from around the world, its emphasis and displays on the Great Lakes is excellent. We arrived after lunch on Saturday and were shocked that we had to wait in line outside over half an hour before we could buy our tickets. Below are some photos of the experience and the fish and other animals. I was curious how my little Canon PowerShot SD780 would do with the fish since I would obviously be photographing them through glass and water. Overall, the verdict is “pretty well.” It would have been better if the fish had stop moving for me, but most of them were singularly uncooperative in that regard. Here’s the best of the batch.
Two weeks ago tomorrow I planted some seeds for this summer’s vegetable garden and put them under grow lights in the basement. (“Starting the seeds for the Summer vegetable garden”) Dissatisfied after 10 days with having no growth evident, I moved the whole operation upstairs to the ping pong table in a sunny room. Two days ago I say the first evidence of growth and yesterday, when this photo was taken, things were well underway.
These are baby tomato plants and some of the basil has started to sprout. I’m still waiting for the peppers to make an appearance. Once I get solid growth in the majority of the cells, I’ll move the operation back to the basement. Every week or so I’ve been documenting the flowers and flowering shrubs that have been making progress over our long winter here in northwestern New York (climate zone 5b). This last week has shown the great activity so far because it made it into the 80s F last weekend and, though it’s cooled off, we’ve had plenty of sunshine and some rain as well. Here’s where we stand today.
Still no sign of sprouting in the vegetable seeds I planted 9 days ago. Next: “End of April flower status” I had targeted April 1 to start the seeds indoors for my vegetable garden for this Summer, and I only missed by one day. Last year I bought plants and started seeds in the ground, but did not begin any in early Spring. Usually you begin them inside 6 to 8 weeks before they should be transplanted outdoors, allowing for one week hardening outside before they go in the ground. I live in the northwest corner of New York State, in climate zone 5b. I decided to use the Burpee “Ultimate Growing System.” This provides 72 cells and makes it much easier to keep the soil moist while the seeds germinate and get underway. You can put together your own system, but since it’s been several years since I started seeds I decided to keep it simple. I may need to transplant the seedlings to Jiffy pots if they get quite large, but that’s a decision for down the line. Today I only planted seeds for tomatoes, peppers and basil. The majority of the seeds will be planted in the garden directly in mid-May, but I may start a few more seeds this weekend for flowers like Zinnias. I ended up planting seeds for 6 varieties of tomatoes, hoping to get 3 plants of each; 4 varieties of peppers, hoping to get 4 plants of each; and 2 varieties of basil. Almost all the tomato and pepper cells were single seed plantings while the basil had 4 or 5 in each. Basil seeds are very small and it will be fine if I get more than one plant per cell. Cherry tomato seeds are also quite small, so those were double planted. Each row of seeds was labeled with permanent ink on a plastic label, and the codes are reflected in the table below. I’ll augment the table to include other data as the process continues.
Once everything was planted, I put the whole contraption under grow lights in the basement. The lights are on a timer to be on between 7 AM and 7 PM.
Next: “Sprouts!” It’s the 2nd of April here in northwest New York State and the weather forecast calls for a high of 80 degrees F (27 C) today. This is very unusual, but I’ll take it. Last night we were able to sleep with a window open for the first time this year. We’ll certainly have colder weather and even frosts between now and mid-May, but I plan to enjoy this while I’ve got it. I have a a lot of outdoor projects planned for this weekend, most of which are cleanup projects after the winter. As I walked around the yard the last couple of days making my plans, I couldn’t help but notice how many flowers and plants have either bloomed are almost ready to do so. As a continuation of my series of photos of the changing of the seasons, here is an update on what the flora around my house are doing in early Spring.
Next: “Spring 2010 is well underway” A week and a half ago I posted some photos of early flowering plants here in northwest New York State. Though I was away much of this week on a business trip, the weather evidently was warm, sunny, and evidently very nice all around. Here are some photos to show you how far things have come in just a few days.
From the top left, going clockwise: early buds on a cherry tree, snow drops in their leaf mulch, some onion plants in the garden that were not harvested last year. and winter aconite spreading across the border by the driveway. By the way, it might snow on Monday. Next: “March showers bring April flowers” Every year I find it hard to resist slipping out of the house on warm sunny days in late winter and photographing the first flowers that break through the ground and snow. Here’s this year’s batch:
Here’s what things looked like in March, 2005. Things were quite a bit more advanced just ten days after the above photos were taken. This afternoon the temperature made it up almost to 50 F here in northwest New York State. This is certainly above normal, which only starts to make up for the very cold but relatively snowless winter this year. I had several hours to kill this afternoon so I took a walk along the Erie Canal. Specifically, I took a visit to Lock 32 near Pittsford, New York. There are hundreds of miles of trails along New York State’s canals. At the point where this photo of a sign was taken three generations of canals forked. The first two turned north near here and went through Rochester, while the current Barge Canal stayed more south and went below the city on its trip westward toward Buffalo.
While quite wide in places, the canal is not neatly framed with concrete along its length, though there are certainly some areas where it is contained that way. Here, looking west, the canal spreads out and bends in the distance.
The northern side of the canal has these iron tie-ups every hundred feet or so. The water level in the canal is dropped in winter starting in November, and it is raised before the canal reopens in May for boat traffic.
Here’s the western side of Lock 32. The lock gates are open slightly on both ends and some water can flow through it during the winter, though most goes through the sluiceway on the southern side.
On the eastern side you get a better idea of the crushed rock along the banks used to prevent erosion and maintain the shape of the canal. The building in the distance is a boathouse. I was one of the few people walking along the canal who did not have at least one dog with me.
This gives you a better idea of how much lower the water level is now than it will be come summer. It wasn’t difficult to get down to this point, though it got quite muddy below the crushed rock.
This sign gives more of the local history of the canal and the boat building history of Pittsford.
Someday I hope to rent a boat and lazily travel the length of the canal, though only my son among my immediate family members shows any interest of joining me. I’ve been trying to convince them for years, so I may need to extend my invitee list! Also See:
Though official Spring is still two weeks away, and “meteorological Spring” is several weeks ater than that here in northwest New York State, it’s possible to find some signs that Winter really is coming to an end. Here are a couple of photos from yesterday: a bunny being sold at the local farm supply store (“just in time for Easter”) and a shoot from a bulb coming up in a warm part of the front garden.
I had to make a quick run to the grocery store yesterday and while I’m used to seeing statues, religious and otherwise, in gardens, this seemed to me to be a strange and awkward location for one.
Last year I blogged about the vegetable garden I put in and my trials and tribulations in protecting it from critters. Today my garden looks like what’s shown in the photo on the right. I live and garden in the northwest corner of New York State in the United States. Therefore, I thought it would be a good time to review what I did right and wrong last year as I start to think about my 2010 vegetable garden. Last year was the first year in about eight that I decided to put in a vegetable garden. In the past I have gardened quite a bit, but I had not made the time to continue it from year to year. Also, we have a particularly obnoxious bush-like weed that spreads via thick, deep underground roots, so it’s a battle all season long to help the vegetables win. I was pretty successful in this this last year, but it was a lot of work. Location As I just mentioned, that weed is very hardy and persistent. If I keep the garden where it is now, I may rent a small backhoe to dig down and pull up all the roots. One key reason to move the garden is to get it away from the black walnut trees that ring the property and are near the driveway. The part of the garden that is toward the front of the photo is just over the drip line for a black walnut and so only certain plants will grow there. If I move the garden, it will be a lot further back in the property and centered in a grassy area. However, it will be very difficult to water and I’ll need to rely on rainfall for the most part. That brings me to … The Fence The fence I installed did a good job keeping out the deer, especially once I extended it by a couple of feet around the corn. The deer just nibbled on the corn over the top of the fence until I added two more feet of fence. The right side of the garden was entirely in sunflowers and corn:
From left to right, the corn moved from earlier to later varieties for harvesting. Probably 40% of the entire garden was planted in corn. It looked pretty promising. We didn’t get one ear of it. The raccoons ate it all, though they didn’t bother anything else. This next year I’m not going to bother with corn at all. To keep out the raccoons I would either have to install an electric fence or completely enclose (encage?) the garden, sides and top. I’m not going to do that. So next year I’ll have more room for vegetable and maybe try something new, like pumpkins. Peppers, Tomatoes, and Basil The peppers I planted in the ground were fantastic, though those I put in a container did not do well. This year I’ll be expanding the group to more varieties and only put them in the ground. While we did get some tomatoes, it’s clear they were affected by the blight. I needed to get a replacement tomato plant and I picked up one from a home center on a whim, and I think that infected the rest of the crop. The basil crop was strong, though late in arriving. This year I plan to start many of my plants directly from seed. They’ll need to get going around April 1, so I’ll have more on that as I get closer. I’ve ordered several packets from some catalog sources, and I’ll go through how I’ll make my final choices. Squash and Cucumbers The Garden Spineless F1 Hybrid Zucchini Squash grew well (too well), and produced a large crop. I need to stagger the planting of the seeds this year to not get inundated with zucchini. This is an old joke, but we were indeed told when we moved to this village that people locked their cars in summer so that others would not put zucchini in them. The Summer Pac F1 Hybrid Calabaza Yellow Squash was a disappointment because it was more of a gourd than a yellow zucchini. I blame myself and will need to do more research this year. The Marketmore Cucumbers produced a good crop and didn’t overwhelm us with volume. I grew many of them up the trellis I used earlier in the season for the snow peas, and that sort of worked. This next year I may build a wood ladder for them. Beans and Peas Both the Tender Green Improved Bush Beans and the Yellow Kinghorn Wax Bush Beans did very well, however they were too crowded. I fell victim to the urge to over plant too many vegetables in too small a space. This year I’ll either have more room because I’m not doing corn, or I’ll be in a larger space in a different location. For peas I went with the sugar snap variety. We got a few, but I put them in too late. I should have started them around May 1, or even late April, but it was closer to the end of May by the time the garden was in shape. My mother always told me to get them in on St. Patrick’s Day, but around here the ground is still frozen and we’re likely to get more snow, so that’s not going to work. Lettuce and Carrots I got a lot of lettuce but should have staggered the crop. The carrots grew very slowly and we didn’t get to harvest very many. Next year I need to explicitly amend the soil where I plant the carrots with a lot of sand. Summary The major lessons in my return to vegetable gardening were:
Sources and Books In a previous blog entry I gave some good sources for vegetable seeds. If you want to go organic, pay very close attention to the seed descriptions or else go with an all-organic provider like High Mowing Organic Seeds. Rob Weir also posted a good blog entry with ten seed providers for New England gardeners. There are hundreds of books about vegetable gardening, some of which are specialized to specific parts of the US or the world. Here are some that I’ve found to be quite good:
Here’s the next round of photos from Lotusphere 2010.
Here’s Peter Woodward of Canonical/Ubuntu and me. Light could have been better, but you take what you can get in a meeting room.
Next is our friendly penguin friend sporting an “IBM Client for Smart Work” label. Get yours starting tomorrow at the Lotus Knows challenge immediately upon entering the exhibit hall at the bottom of the escalator. Here are a couple of photographs taken very early at Lotusphere 2010 at Disney World in Florida this week and they are, perhaps, a bit different.
This was a lonely hammock by the beach looking toward the Grand Floridian Resort. The weather was very overcast and it threatened to rain for seeral hours before it finally did around 9 PM. There were some people walking around because, well, it is Florida, though not too many were swimming in the pool.
This pen, a give-away in the exhibit area for the IBM Client for Smart Work on Linux, is made from corn starch and is biodegradable. Get yours before they go in the compost pile. |
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Copyright © 2010 Bob Sutor - All Rights Reserved |
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by William Least Heat-Moon
by Deborah Williams
by Debbie Daino Stack
by Louis Rossi
(this is an older classic and may not be the most organic book out there)
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