This is weed pulling season. Weed pulling season is soooo repetitive, as most of the weeds are of the same handful of species. I thought I'd try out the new camera on a few of the most populous weeds and identify the unknowns at MSU's interactive weed identifier.

This is lambs quarters. Chickens love it, and people can eat it too, if need be. It is always plentiful in July. I always tell myself that this is what I'll be eating when I'm too feeble to plant a garden.


Everybody knows ragweed, at least by reputation. This is the one that will be flowering in a few weeks and spreading so much of that yellow pollen. I don't think the chickens care for it much, but they will tample it down and kill it for me.


Few know purslane, even though it is quite edible and a good source of omega-3. I munch on this as I weed, trying to like the taste because it's reputed to be good for me. The chickens like it better than I do. Maybe I'll give Anna the job of determining which weeds are most preferred by the hens.


I didn't know the name of this one until I looked it up today. It is common mallow, and it has a small but nice flower. It starts out small but can really take over if you admire its white flowers too long.

Labels: gardening

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Richard tells me that John Henderson saw a bear in Leland this morning, in Pendergast's yard on M-22 across from Indiana Woods, just a stone's throw from Fudgie Beach. It's usual to see foxes, minks or an eagle in that location, but a bear is a little over the top. Maybe it will show up at the Wine Festival tomorrow.

I looked for it at 11:30 when I drove in to pick Anna up on the last day of school. I didn't see it -- no surprise there -- but there were fudgies on the beach and downtown was crowded with newly released school kids and resorters riding bikes and walking dogs.

We've had 4 inches of rain in the last week, not a lot compared to much of the Midwest, but enough to make the farmers happy. My sweet potatoes, which looked like produce department scraps when I planted them, have sprung a few leaves and grown a few inches. Still no seedling peanuts, although I've now replanted them for the third time.

Labels: gardening, wildlife

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The garden is almost in, everything except that patch of reclaimed ground across the driveway. Many things are different this year, as I adapt to a changing climate and a changing family.

I'm trying out some things that we used to think were too heat loving for our area. I have planted peanuts, sweet potatoes and okra for the first time this year. I am also paying much more attention to building the soil and using green manures, planting buckwheat on the part that I won't plant until later and planting the paths in white clover instead of just letting them stay bare ground. My timing is good on that last part as we have had more than our share of rain this spring, but I was really thinking of the atmosphere, as the only method of carbon sequestration that makes any sense to me is the old fashioned method, putting carbon back into the soil.

Here in Leelanau we have lots of carbon-deprived soil to restore. While visitors think of our area as relatively pristine, when I survey my soil I'm reminded of the history of Northern Michigan. It was once primeval forests, but around the turn of the last century the penninsula was strip mined for its trees, leaving nothing but sand once the rains came. My garden soil is rare for its higher organic matter content, but if I let a patch lay bare for any time at all the peat blows away leaving a surface coating of sand.

I used to think that when I neglected my soil I was only hurting myself. Thinking of keeping the atmosphere healthier by building the soil is something new, a new motivation to do what has long been the right thing.

Liz is working up the road at Meadowlark Farm this summer, a Community Supported Agriculture truck farm. In many cases she is now helping to produce food for the same families she has known as babysitter, church member, and schoolmates. When I knew she was going to work there I changed my plans a little, focusing on trying new things as I know that she will bring home plenty of the old standbys when they come in season. Last winter we really wished we had more frozen pesto, dried sweet peppers and dried zucchini so I planted more of those.

Labels: climate change, gardening

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As predicted, I am tripping over tomato and basil plants while we wait for weather warm enough for planting. I am trying peanuts this year; my first attempts at starting them inside resulted in rotting seeds that smelled awful. I was advised to try again, with charcoal in the soil to lighten it up. I had a spot in the warmer part of the garden where I had burned before, so I tried some outside with wall-o-water cylinders to warm the soil. No news on that, yet.

The potatoes are in, the peas are up, and we've been eating greens from the garden. I also tried dandelions from the yard this year. They were good, parboiled for a few minutes and then sauteed with a little garlic. You just need to clean them very well because the stray blade of grass is like trying to chew dental floss. Rhubarb is up and very vigorous. I've been selling a lot to passersby and to the Covered Wagon Farm for pies. Rhubarb traffic is a constant interruption, but rhubarb lovers are such nice people that I don't mind.

There is one more bake sale, this Saturday, in front of the Leland Mercantile, for the Odyssey of the Mind teams that are going to world competition. They have managed to raise over $1o,000 in a about six weeks, though bake sales, car washes, a movie premier, large and small donations, and grants from the Leland Educational Foundation and the Oleson Foundation.

I will be baking again for this sale, but I have to go to work earlier and attend a noon meeting so my output will be less than the 20 loaves I baked last time. Maybe some Rhubarb Crumb Cake would be in order.

All this happens, but we still stop to admire the orioles, indigo buntings, and hummingbirds. And to hunt for morels. I never find any, but all that hunting gives me opportunity to note the locations of raspberries and gooseberries so I can go back later in the summer. I came home from work late one night and found a Cool Whip container of morels on my kitchen table. It seems the neighbor was weed whacking when he found the mother lode of morels on the site where the former neighbor cut down an apple tree 12 years ago. Not many people will share morels, but I have wonderful neighbors.

Labels: baking, gardening, leelanau, Odyssey of the Mind, wildlife

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That's Richard, with one of the biggest walleyes he has ever caught. He got up early this morning and went down to the dock as the sun was just rising. He nailed this one on the first cast, then struggled to land it as it was surely going to break the line if he tried to haul it up conventionally. It weighed in over 6 pounds and yielded some beautiful fillets.

I woke up early (by my standards, but hours after Richard) to drive Anna to her dog sitting job. I was able to snap that picture because over the weekend I took my old broken camera to work and spent my breaks disassembling it and trying to figure out why the batteries drained within ten seconds of turning it on. I was looking for bad contacts or a short, but once I took the case off and tested it, it started working almost fine again. I say almost fine because it makes a strange new noise when the lens extends. Before I took the case off, the lens was totally stuck and the camera was wasting all of the battery energy trying to move the lens. Once it started working, I put it all back together, testing it at each step, and now I have a working camera again.

The camera is going on four years old, which is ancient in the world of digital cameras. Richard has his eyes shut in the picture, just like he had his eyes shut in Shelagh's graduation picture. I'm still wishing I had a camera with a screen that I could see without my glasses. But my wishes and my budget just don't coincide. It's good to have any camera again.

I spent all Friday baking bread for a bake sale to help Leland's Odyssey of the Mind teams go to world competition. Anna didn't do OM this year, but her old team members still have their teeth sunk into structure problems. Her old teammates now are split among two bound-for-worlds teams, and it's going to take the whole community to raise enough money to get them there. I contributed 20 loaves of bread, one of many bakers, and I hear the Saturday morning bake sale raised over $600. Their next fundraiser is dinner at the Steak Haus by Sugarloaf on Thursday May 15th from 5-8 pm. . All tickets are $15.00. You have a choice of either a steak dinner, battered shrimp dinner or a veggie alfredo dinner. Team members are selling tickets and they are also available at Northwoods Kitchens.

I keep getting interrupted by people who saw the rhubarb sign. I take them out to cut some rhubarb, chat a little, and take their dollars. Eggs are selling, too, faster than my hens can lay. I've started giving away my tomato plants, using them to encourage the many people who are starting new gardens this year.

Labels: family, fishing, gardening, Leland Public School, Odyssey of the Mind

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Unfortunately, the next stage in seed starting is always, at least for me, aphids. It starts with a few seedlings looking poorly, maybe with white mottling on their leaves, maybe with shiny sticky stuff on their leaves. If I look closely and under the leaves, I will see the tiny, soft green aphids, sucking the life out of my plants.

Fortunately, aphids are easily killed using a soap solution that clogs their spiracles (breathing pores) and suffocates them. I use the product made by the Safer company, buying it in bulk and mixing it up in a spray bottle as needed. I last bought an $8 bottle 3 years ago and have yet to use half of it. The year I didn't spray I lost my peppers and basil, but the aphids pretty much left the tomatoes alone.

The aphids hang out on the underside of the leaves, so I spray gently and run my hands over the leaves to make sure all parts get wet. The bottle says not to use the soap on jade plants, but aphids don't seem to like jade plants anyway.

That's not one of my photos above. My camera is acting up again but this time I can't fix it with a pencil eraser. the photo came from Plantedoktoren.

Labels: gardening, seed starting

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Labels: gardening, seed starting

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From left: Strawberries, onions. tomatoes, peppers, more tomatoes,and basil.

The next step in seed starting happens when the plants have their first two "true leaves." The first leaves, the cotyledons, were packed inside the seed and popped through the soil. These are plain leaves designed to store energy in the seed and then collect light to convert to energy to feed the growing plant. The next set of leaves are usually more ornate and look like the leaves of the adult plant.

When the true leaves show up it is time to "dibble" the plants out into more spacious pots.

Here we have a row of tomato plants on the left, and a couple of tomatoes already enjoying their new home. Tomatoes are very forgiving of root damage, but you have to take care to pick the plants up by the leaves, not the stems. I water the soil before I start working with it and I water again when I'm done, gently, to make sure there's no air around the roots.

I'm using old pots from years gone by. If I keep them out of the UV light as much as possible they will last four or five seasons. I never buy new pots, I just pick them out of other peoples' trash and wash them well.

My one flat of started seeds is now four-plus flats of seedlings. I'm swapping them out under the grow light and hoping for spring.

Labels: gardening, seed starting

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After thinning. You can still see a few "trunks". A small but important step in raising seedlings is to thin them when they start to shade each other out. I thinned the tomato seedlings, with a nail scissors, to about one inch apart. I looked for nice fat stems, not tall plants, as the shorter, stockier ones are stronger.

The basil plants on the right need thinning, too, but I will let them get a little bigger so that I can toss the thinnings into a salad.

Labels: gardening, seed starting

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Yesterday this tomato seedling was standing tall. Today its stem is shrunken and its top is toppled. It is suffering from a fungus infection that goes by the common name "damping off." I lose a few seedlings to this syndrome every year, but I plant more than I need, so it will all work out. I'm brewing a pot of strong chamomile tea (a cheap natural fungicide), and when it cools I will use it to water the entire tray of seedlings. I will also stop covering the flat at night. The cover worked for the peppers, keeping them warm, but it also made conditions ripe for fungus.

Labels: gardening, seed starting

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But just on one shelf in the house, so far. Those are basil plants in the foreground. The tomatoes are behind them, waiting to be thinned with a nail cutting scissors. The peppers are slower. The jalapeno types are showing just a little green above the soil but the bell types are still just lying there. The heat mat under the flat helps to get the peppers going.

There are a few rows of onions and leeks and then the alpine strawberries. The green field in the background is a cake pan full of lettuce and arugula. I'll be cutting that by Easter, for some fresh greens.

The snowplow came by again this morning, to scrape off the three inches of frozen junk that fell last night. I can't wait to dig in the ground.

Labels: 4-H, gardening, seed starting

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We're all tired of snow, but the animals are doing something about it. The red squirrel and the grey squirrel are both done hibernating and back to raiding the bird feeders. Our cats and the dog are back to chasing the squirrels; the cats are coming close to success.

The tracks in the snow tell stories all over the yard. Above we have the dog's big tracks, a cat's smaller tracks. and the tiny tracks of a mouse that came out from under the lilac and wandered in skittering paths all over on top of the snow.


I'm doing something about the snow, as well. This is a flat of lettuce and arugula, planted from the seeds of last year's crop. I'm growing them under lights and in the window on sunny days for cutting greens. They were doing well until Shelagh and Jordan brought their cat home for spring break. He found this flat to be a fine place to curl up in the sun. and watch all the action in the yard.

I try to plant peas on St Patrick's Day, but this year it seems unlikely. Lettuce, radishes, carrots, peas, and parsnips will go in as soon as the ground thaws; a little snow won't hurt them as much as the hot sun of June does. I will have a few of last year's parsnips to eat as soon as the ground thaws and they will be a treat.

Labels: gardening, seed starting, weather, wildlife

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This is an alpine strawberry seedling, one of the first things I planted for the 2008 garden. These tiny seedlings will grow into small strawberry plants that bear fruit, small intensely flavored strawberries that kids love to find and eat.

I started these a few weeks ago in paper towels, but I had to have Anna tell me if the roots had emerged because the seeds are so small. I planted them onto trays with vermiculite over soil, but they were so hard to see that I wasn't sure if I was planting them or smooshing them. A few days ago I saw tiny green leaves so I knew they were growing.

Tonight I planted peppers, tomatoes, and basil, It seems early, but I never seem to get ahead of myself, especially with peppers. Come May 10th, we may be tripping over plants everywhere, but I'll worry about it then.

Labels: gardening, seed starting

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A World War II era Victory Garden poster. (Oops, I mean WW I)

I've been on a list binge for a while and I planned on writing a list of reasons for planning a garden this year, even if you didn't last year. Sharon, over at Depletion-Abundance, beat me to it, with a nice post listing many reasons for growing a garden. I'm long overdue on posting pictures, so I found another version of her Victory Garden poster, and will add my own thoughts on gardens.

I read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma this winter. Having spent a lifetime thinking about food and where it comes from, I didn't expect any big mind-blowing revelations in this book, but I got some anyway. In the first third of the book, Pollan examines the energy origins of the fast food meal, and in the process ends up talking about a good deal of the food we find on the grocery shelf. Most of the components of processed food are derived from corn, corn is dependent on nitrogen fertilizer, and nitrogen fertilizer is manufactured from natural gas. When you look at the fuel used to plow, plant, spray, harvest, dry, transport, and further process corn and it's derivatives, you start to think of eating corn as tantamount to eating oil.

Synthetic nitrogen became plentiful at the end of WW I as nitrogen was no longer needed for the production of explosives. Our current system of industrial agriculture arose as a way to use this new abundance of nitrogen. Without synthetic nitrogen we would be soon be searching for alternate sources of calories. The caption on the poster, "Every Garden a Munitions Plant", was originally meant as a metaphor, but we might think a moment about our food security in an age when America is dependent on foreign fossil fuels to put food on the table.

So that's my new reason to grow a garden. In my last post, I listed four reasons to save energy. Now I'm presenting gardening, even just a little gardening, as a way to save energy and ensure our food security--as if eating well wasn't it's own reward!

Correction, although I found the Victory Garden poster on a website devoted to WW II, it clearly dates back to WW I

Labels: energy, farming, gardening

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This is the bottomless chicken pen that we built from the aluminum frame of an old window awning. It has a floor space of 30 square feet. I have put six hens in it and moved it around the yard this fall, effectively taming an area that was knee high in lambs quarter and ragweed. It takes about two days for the hens to eat all the vegetation and scratch it up. On the second day I've been feeding them a mixture of oats and buckwheat to "plant" a winter cover crop. They miss enough oats that I've got decent coverage on the places they've already been.

The pen is heavier than it was supposed to be, because of the very large and sturdy nesting box. That part detaches and will probably be re-engineered over the winter. The hens were very bad at foraging at first; they just stood at the wire and begged for grain. Over time, they turned more industrious. Now they are scratching like champs and even laying eggs despite a minimal diet and no lights.

Looking for more chicken pen ideas? Try the City Chicken's chicken tractor page.

Labels: chickens, gardening

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Back in April, one of my 4-H parents gave me three tomato plants. There were two basket tomatoes and one of a variety called "First Lady". I planted the First Lady in early May atop a nice shovelful of composted chicken bedding, but one night when it got cold I forgot to cover it and it got nipped by frost. It grew back from its blackened branches and , as the summer progressed, came to occupy a space in the garden about nine feet across. As other tomatoes succumbed to the usual late season blights and fungi, this plant was making new growth at the end of each branch, and putting out impressive amounts of fruit.

This is the basket of tomatoes I picked from that one plant after a rain storm on October 1st. The shoulders of this variety always retained those green streaks, but the flavor was excellent. I picked an eight quart basket full every few days in September. Now the days are shorter, but still no frost, and I am still picking a dozen tomatoes every three or four days.

Anna and I went swimming in Lake Michigan on October 8th. It was pushing 90 degrees and it was a pleasure, not a challenge, to mark October off on the calendar as a swimming month. Maybe this year we'll try for November.

Labels: gardening

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You can't tell from the photo, but this year I am unusually ahead of the weeds. I tilled once, late by my standards, but after the first flush of weed seeds sprouted, then again in mid June. I also weed when I'm emotionally agitated, so the wedding gave me plenty of motivation. We had no rain between June 4 and July 10, so I didn't have much weed growth in the areas where I wasn't watering.

There has been a lot of noise this year about the disappearing honeybees, but we have been seeing them in our yard. My beekeeper's helper friend tells me that this year is not very unusual from his perspective. I have seen other insects disappear this year, although nobody is going to panic if the rose chafers or Colorado Potato Beetles don't show up. Wasps are down this year, too, after being quite the prolific nuisance last year.

I planted a lot of potatoes, more volunteered, and with no beetles to fight it is turning into a nice harvest. Tomatillos did well, too, although I planted most of what I have as bait plants for the potato beetles. I will can them alongside the tomatoes. The squash bugs did show up and I spent a lot of time scraping their bronze egg arrays from the underside of the zucchini plants. Now I am rewarded with a nice crop of zucchini, although I still had one batch of squash bugs hatch out. I fully intended to kill those with rotenone, but there is a big toad living under the plants, so I guess I'll let it go. Maybe the toad will develop a taste for squash bugs.

The basket tomato plants that my neighbor gave me bore nice cherry tomatoes starting the second week of June, but they have succumbed to wilt right now, probably from the stress of living in pots. Maybe if I cut them back they will bear again in winter. I have a dragon tongue pepper plant that is in its third year of production. I let it lose its leaves in the fall and then prune and repot in January.

The tomatoes in the reclaimed land across the driveway are doing well. After getting so many people coming to this blog looking for info on deer and zinnias, I decided to stick the rest of the zinnias in there and see if the deer will eat them. So far, the answer is no.I put the rest of the reclaimed land under a cover crop of oats and buckwheat with some sunflowers to help break up the hardpan underneath. I'm looking at the price of chicken feed and trying to devise a way to turn sunflower seeds into feed.

Labels: gardening

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Tonight I officially finished planting the garden. Except for another bed of lettuce. Except for yellow beans which will go into the bed vacated when I harvest the garlic. Except for the rest of the white zinnias that I started for the wedding; I'd better figure out where they're going because the wedding's coming up soon.

I actually have three main garden areas. I'm particularly proud of the plot pictured above, as it used to be part of the old M-204 roadbed. We used it to stockpile horse manure and leaves until it started to have soil instead of gravel.

Anyone can pave over farmland to make a road, but I made a road back into farmland! I have raised corn, squash, and potatoes there. This year half of it is in tomatoes, but I'm still wondering what to put in the rest. It is outside the fence, so deer are an issue. Do deer eat zinnias? It was a ten day dry spell, but it started raining as I put the tomatoes in and we've had a gentle drizzle all night. It's so nice when Nature plays along.

Labels: gardening

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It was a beautiful clear day and I went a little nuts taking pictures. Anna had a friend stay overnight and we went, all three of us, to do Anna's dogsitting job first thing in the morning.

This was a picture from the top of the bluff over Lake Michigan where we were walking the dog. The water seems impossibly clear this time of year. The water temperature is still in the low 40's. The lake gets clearer every year because of the zebra mussels.



April is the Month of the Young Child. At the Leelanau Children's Center, each kid laid down on a sheet of big paper, a teacher traced around, and then they cut and colored their image. The life size paper kids are hung up in area businesses, each with a red heart that reminds us "Children Matter."

The photo at left is the Post Office in Leland. At the right is The Huntington Bank ATM Kiosk. There are kids everywhere you look.

One year Shelagh's cutout was at the Merc. Anna once hung in Dick's Pour House. Of course Liz hung out at the library.

I stopped by the Leland Library today, and got my fair share of the news. I borrowed The Weather Makers and The Audacity of Hope. Right now I am reading The Hype About Hydrogen, which Liz left here for me. I had to let the three 79 year old volunteers manning the desk chide me about overdue movies, but then I overpaid for my copies and told them to put the rest in the kitty. They were loudly discussing the field of presidential candidates. Dan doubted that Barack had written his own book.

Finally I got to go home and get some chores done. Three loads of laundry hung out and the bread made. It sure looks like the peas (at left) are growing and I should be able to make a rhubarb cake for Shelagh when she comes home this week.

After dinner, Anna and I rode our bikes the two miles back to dog-sitting. In this county you have either hills or traffic, and the route tonight was flat. The traffic wasn't too bad, but I think I am going to get us both those rear-view mirrors that attach to your helmet. If I make Anna wear it around the house for a few days she'll get used to it. She isn't scared of traffic, but it's hard to know if she's paying enough attention. At least on a beautiful Saturday like this nobody seemed to be in much of a hurry.

Labels: gardening, leelanau, weather

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I planted peas during our "first spring", at the end of March. Then it snowed, about eight days straight, including the near blizzard. Yesterday the snow had finally melted off enough so that I could find the garden.

The first thing I did was pick some rhubarb, even if the stalks were only a few inches long. Then I planted another row of garlic, out of the cloves that were sprouting in the basement. Then I planned to replant the peas. but first I dug up one of the previously planted peas to see if there was any sign of life.

The pea I dug up is in the photo above. The color is not quite right; to my eye it looked greener, a beautiful shade of spring green. The root looks ready to grow. Will it grow? I didn't replant, I will give the first seed another week to prove itself.

Labels: gardening, weather

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