Talk Dirt to Me
Talk Dirt: What’s Creeping in Your Compost
I, like most everyone who can read this, am a proud endotherm. I do a pretty good job of maintaining a constant internal temperature. It’s something I’m pretty good at, so why shouldn’t I be proud? All birds and mammals are endotherms. There are even some large fish...Making Middens
Most of us in this country generate a lot of trash. I spend a lot of time feeling guilty about it, but it turns out that doesn’t actually decrease my trash production. There’s very little incentive for cutting down other than ideology. With a tiny amount of effort I...
Poking at Bird Poop
We’re in the midst of the good New England weather that keeps the weak away. It looks desolate and lifeless out there, but it most surely isn’t. With temperatures staying below freezing the little snow we have is sticking around and treating us to the signs of the...Staghorn Sumac in the Snow
We’re in the midst of the good New England weather that keeps the weak away. It looks desolate and lifeless out there, but it most surely isn’t. With temperatures staying below freezing the little snow we have is sticking around and treating us to the signs of the...
Like a Lycopod
This winter we haven’t gotten enough snow. “Enough” is what allows for cross-country skiing. Even in New Hampshire, where I spent part of the holidays, the snow cover was patchy or absent. We passed a wet hour tubing at a ski resort. The wet snow and underinflated...Aspirational Gardening
I used to live in Texas. Well, Austin. We didn’t have quite as many seasons as we do in the north. Up here, you’ve got spring, summer, fall and winter — generally in that order. In Austin there were essentially two seasons hell and bliss. Hell was...Seeding Onions
It’s early March, the robbins in my part of Northampton never left, so I can’t say that they’re a sign of spring. This year, though, we’re getting a traditional New England mud season. We haven’t had one of those in a while. Good thing I...Dungeon Surprise
This time of year I head down to the basement at least twice a day to check on my onions or other seedlings. This evening, I was greeted by a peculiar smell. I sniffed and stepped, then stepped again. I thought, “that smell is very familiar.” Not exactly...Genetically Modified Fodder
I am no fan of big business and I certainly would like to see our country go in the direction of sustainable agriculture. At the same time, I’m not as rabidly against genetically modified crops as many in our not-exactly-humble valley. It’s partly the fact...Pig Farm
As I will hopefully convince you in these blogular entries, I’m trying to live a more “sustainable” lifestyle. I’m really not particularly impressed with my efforts. Yes I bike to work (or take the bus), I grow a fair amount of my vegetables...Children hate vegetables
People who don’t eat their vegetables are only fooling themselves. Animals can’t do the magic. They can’t take CO2 and turn it into sugar. The magic of taking an inorganic gas and turning it into an organic nutrient didn’t make it into the...Plant of the Week: Welwitchia mirabilis
I’m sure many of my legion readers are familiar with the blog Badass of the week or the more subtly titled F.U. penguin. I would like to introduce the plant of the week. What a clever name, yes? This week’s plant could really be a bad ass of the week:...Chaos, order and gardening
I didn’t know them personally, so this is hearsay, but when the first westerners arrived on these shores (oddly coming from the east) they saw untrammeled wilderness. They were misinformed. According to William Cronon in Changes in the Land, it was actually a...Something there is that doesn’t love a lawn.
Perhaps it would be more acccurate to say “someone there is who doesn’t love a lawn: me” The lawn of the American house is a new thing. Before the advent of the gasoline mower it really was difficult to keep a perfect mono-culture going in the yard....
Peregrinations
Peregrinations Many Saturdays I have the job of keeping the six and three year olds from causing irreprable harm to themselves or others. So far I have succeeded. I usually try to find other children of similar ages and pen them up together with plastic bags and other...
Symplocarpus foetidus
How could you not love a plant named skunk cabbage? It’s one of the first flowers of spring and the blatant eroticism of the spadix and spathe would make Georgia O’Keefe blush — perhaps it did picture of flower from the online? It’s an arum, so...Planning
Planning overhead picture of garden Good planning=good gardening Good fences=Good neighbors Practice=way to Carnegie hall I’ve been lax on planning. I’d much rather be standing in the garden than drawing a picture of it. For me this is even true when the...Cross cycling
A house near me is getting the architectural equivalent of a boob job and botox: vinyl siding. It’s also getting new more efficient windows; that’s probably more like a gym membership. It does look a lot nicer though: it’s all gleamy and has plump...Orchids
I don’t think people’s passion for orchids can be overstated (c.f. adaptation). I do not collect orchids; in fact I own no orchids, but they do thrill me somewhere outside of the concious mind. This week’s New Yorker features an article by Jonathan...The Birds and the Peas
The Birds and the Peas Garden pic The other morning the older of our two indigent boarders noticed a “black thing” near the swingset. Closer examination revealed a decapitated robin. Good morning, happy spring! Bird watching was not a popular past time for...Fagus sylvatica
Fagus sylvatica Thus far in my ruminations about plants, I have kept my dorkitude focused on smallish plants. True Welwitschia (https://valleyadvocate.com/blogs/home.cfm?aid=13287)can get pretty big, but it’s kind of a weird shrub really. The dominant plants in...Peas in a cup
Peas in a cup The peas are in a cup because they germinate much better if I soak them overnight. This seems to work with all the big fleshy legumes: beans and peas. I mentioned the peas last week because I’d been worried about birds. One variety has come up. The...Critters
critters According to most dictionaries, the word “creature” was pronounced “critter” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — when the colonies were being founded. It now has a sort of jokey valence and brings to mind creepies,...Trillium erectum
This spring beauty has some very peculiear adaptations and some really lovely common names. Pointy-headed taxonomists call common names “trivial names.” Some don’t strike me as trivial in the least. These names are often informative. TheTrillium...Solanum lycopersicum
I think the proper botanical clasification is in fact Lycopersicum esculentum. The beloved garden tomato. It goes really well with this other favorite that’s looking good at the moment: garlic. Last night I finally got around to seeding my tomatoes. The process...Maple Pollen
The last few weeks have been very rough on the boss’ respiratory system. She is allergic to tree pollen. Many of the trees around here do their reproduction in the spring and a lot of these trees use wind to spread said pollen. That’s all well and fine...When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed
WHEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. From Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass....Gallus gallus
I have long shown myself incapable of resisting any little breeze of conformity. And so it is that on Thursday I drove to Amherst Farm Supply to pick up chicks: six buff orpingtons to be exact. Here’s a picture of red hot chick on chick action. Well a few of the...cut worm
A few weeks ago I transplanted several lovely brassicas to the garden. I put in 10 or so broccoli plants, ran a soaker hose (hasn’t really been so necessary) and mulched with leaves. I also put in some flowering kale (Happy Rich F1 from johnny’s), cabbage...Amateur Day
Spring has now taken full possession of the valley. The trees have fully leafed out and in my yard mosquitoes swarm to me like lemmings to a cliff. The plants in the garden, wanted or not, or growing fast and furious. I suppose that should be quickly and furiously,...Roughly one day
start with control tower A few decades ago an All-American Hero Ronald, the Gipper, Reagan saved America by firing a whole bunch on ungrateful flight traffic controllers. These experienced professional union hacks were replaced with people who would accept more...Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
The noodly one certainly decided to introduce us to the summer with a slap to the face. It was perfect weather for sipping fermented beverages and slapping mosquitoes, and I surely took advantage of that. I also got to see a parade as the indigent boarders insisted....
Soil Testing
Because a recent passer-by asked me how long I’d been gardening I gave it some thought. I think I planted my first plot in Austin in around 1995. Since then I learn new things about plants and growing plants constantly. I’ve also learned to be humble both...Horsetails
Several yeas ago I spent time commuting along I-90. I hated it for so many reasons, but it did give me time to listen to lots of NPR and to stare at the plants that survived along a highway with all of its attendant smog and salt. One morning I noted some very odd...The Summer of My Discontent
Like it or not, and I don’t, gardening can be a bit competitive. I mostly compete with people in books: Eliot Coleman, Ruth Stout, Barbara Damrosch and Wendell Berry. No matter what I do at least one of them disapproves. Certainly the fact that I’m not...Daucus carota
Daucus carota Carrots are too often ignored as a source of great joy. When boy one was even smaller than he is now we fed him all sorts of blended and stewed veggies. He loved “carrots” and “chicken with butternut squash.” He even went for...The trouble with men
Hectic ain’t the half of it. This weekend I planted, mulched, packed, fenced, weeded, tended, and attended a dinner party. I am now, I’m afraid, officially an adult. I seldom use “party” as a verb, and most often it has an adjectival modifier....Seed Dormancy
I performed an unintentional experiment this past winter. One of my neighbors purchased a bunch of worm castings for her garden. She used what she wanted then gave me a 1/2 gallon ziploc bag full of the rest (neither this blogger nor the parent company of this blogger...Children turn to the dark side.
Children turn to the dark side. Late last summer my older son decided to sell some of our produce in front of the house. A farm stand, if you will. I picked him some beans, tomatoes and lettuce. He set up shop with relatively reasonable prices. Several minutes later...Striped cucumber beetle Acalymma vittatum
striped cucumber beetle Acalymma vittatum Today I’m writing about evil. Not just bad, like glass used for paving a bike path. Not just wrong like Michelle Bachmann’s opinions (http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/republicans/a/michele-bachmann-quotes.htm),...Root nodules
Raspberries are full of thorns, and as such, proper protective gear should be worn during harvest. ****** This weekend one of my favorite spring vegetables had to end it’s short life. Back in April I planted my peas with much trepidation. I’d had some bad...Neighborhood knuckledragger
In our household the boss is known for her good decision making. We will leave aside her decision to buy zoo zoo pets for the children this week. We should also ignore the foolhardy decision to marry a graduate student. She generally goes to bed at an appropriate time...Billions of Berries
The picture above was taken in the early evening as the heat became bearable and I arose from my lethargy. As you can see the plants have grown quite a bit since the last time I posted a full garden picture. On the right you can see where the peas were — carrots...Liberty cabbage
Spelling is not easy for me. I don’t like the word sauerkraut. If “au” sounds like “ou” at the end of the word, why not the beginning too? Why the extra “e”? We borrow too many words. We should make up our own name for this...Birdhaven
In the distant past I took a class in small fruit production at the Looniveristy. The boss thought that was the best title for a class that she’d ever heard. I was and am very interested in anything to do with small fruits. Some of my favorite fruits are small...Chicken Time
Keeping chickens has been remarkably trouble free thus far. Before getting them I read Storey’s guide to raising chickens. This is the rough equivalent of a hypochondriac reading the Physicians Desk Reference. I was prepared for my chickens to suffer from...Lichenology
Lichenology Last week in this space I wrote about humans as an invasive species. This week I wish to propose another possibility. This was suggested by a very slow walk up Bare Mt while monitoring our shortest indigent boarder. When a walk that short takes a few...Toxicodendron radicans
You may have heard of a popular search engine named after a very large number. If I type the word “poison” into this search engine, I am directed to an embarassing time from my past. Yikes! Yikes squared, this is a recent picture, these gentlemen are still...Chickens make terrible farmers.
Chickens make terrible farmers. The boarders have a few books about the labor relations between a farmer and his livestock. The first one, Cows that Type, details a labor action started by the cows but ultimately including the ducks and chickens as well. After...Tough gardening
We had a rough bit of heat for a few weeks followed by some good rain and a bit of a cool down. This has been ideal for most of the plant life in my yard. As I mentioned in my last post, I had to chase down my family last week. This was made more difficult as they...It was time
There are many lovely things about chez grouch, but one underappreciated aspect is that most of the trees overhanging our yard are actually growing in other people’s yards. This means that they own the leaves and so have to rake them. At least that’s my...Willdness
On my commute to work I pedal over the mini-coolidge bridge, I guess it could be called the Charles G. Dawes vice bridge. Sometimes I stop and look north (away from Silent Cal’s bridge). I’m always impressed by the J. Elwell Conservation area stretching up...Aphids suck
When you think of aphids, you no doubt think of the alt-country band from Basel, Switzerland and their single “I don’t want to go to heaven” (because they’re closing all the bars). Perhaps you think of the Soviet era missile nicknamed...Growing like weeds, with spikes
I have written about respberries several times over the course of the last few months. Last year’s harvest was dissapointing at least in part because of poor pruning and trellising on the part of my yard boy. This year I decided to change all of that, I fired...Larcenous bees
The boarders love blueberries. We pick a bundle every year at Birdhaven Blueberry farm. That hardly satisfies the yearly need. My parents have wild blueberries that my mother collects by the jug-full each August when she’s not busy worrying. We eat these in...A forest needs a fish like a man needs a bicycle
One of my favorite radio programs is “living on earth.” The host and journalists aren’t confrontationally leftist like Amy Goodman and her colleagues at Democracy Now! (not that there’s anything wrong with that): the “loe” people...Crop spins
Crop spins If Northampton zoning laws were as they should be, when I felt my soil fertility had declined, I’d just go into the next yard, cut down all the trees and grass then wait for the dry season (based on this year, that would be the winter). I’d burn...Tomato Mystery
Oh the humanity! I love my tomatoes. I mean, sure everybody loves tomatoes, but I really love tomatoes. When one of my plants suffers, in some real way I suffer. This afternoon I came home to find one of my plants suffering: It had probably been suffering for a while...It's getting real.
These two photos are separated by a week. You’ll immediately note that the weather is better in the second image. We did have one lovely weekend. You might also notice how clearly lazy I am; the hose is still there. I did manage to move the green rubber ball. In...E-Edition
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