What Growing Lettuce Says About Me

Every year, I grow lettuce. Not just lettuce, but several kinds of lettuce. I'm always hopeful that this will be the year that we won't have the wildly fluctuating temperatures. Lettuce is unfazed by frost that kills (and did kill) some dear coleus starts I forgot to bring inside. Heat is the thing that turns lettuce bitter and makes me surly, too. There are just a certain amount of days that it takes for lettuce to be ready to eat. I started off this season with some plugs that I grew under lights in mid-February. They went into the garden March 15, pretty much as early as is possible here. Of course there was a record high of 82 degrees the next day. It was 85 degrees on April first, no fooling.

Then on the second of April another record high of 89, followed by hard frost on the eleventh and twelfth. I had to rush out with sheets to cover the strawberry patch both nights, but was unconcerned about the lettuces.

Another frost on the twenty-first of April only made the lettuces laugh. By then, some were big enough to make great salads with the bumper crop of radishes. These made such a lovely bouquet I had to take their photo. Yesterday, it was another record high. It was ninety-four here and some of the lettuces finally had had it. When a leaf is plucked on a bitter lettuce, it oozes milky stuff, like a milkweed. I've discovered it doesn't even pay to taste these because they will be dreadful despite looking quite tempting.

The worst ones were the Deer's Tongue, which I failed to notice took 52 days to harvest. Too long! Some of these Tom Thumbs were still good and might reach salad size shortly.

These bronze beauties, Merveille de Quatre Saisons, French for Marvel of Four Seasons, are still quite good. So, what growing lettuce says about me is I continue to be optimistic about having a lovely spring here in Missouri, with heat only a possibility after mid-June.

By the way, the strawberries are doing great and have berries already, which is surprising since they are supposed to be a late June-bearer. I'm still keeping the sheets ready.

Rowdy Neighbors

The cows decided to move back to the field on my side of the road. They took advantage of an open gate to explore the grazing opportunities on the gravel road. The first I heard of it was a lot of mooing, so I stepped over to the lily bed at the crest of the hill. There I could see that the cows were unaccompanied, not a good sign.

A few minutes later, the cow guy drove his truck back from over the yonder hill and found his charges had all vacated their green pasture. By then, they had wandered into the yard of the rental house down at the corner, where they were milling about waiting for the gate to open. Those folks don't have any vegetable garden or flowers, preferring to race around and around the house on four-wheelers, so probably there was no harm done to their yard.

The cow guy made several attempts to drive the herd of about thirty cows, calves and one bull back across the road and through the gate. Finally, he came to the obvious conclusion that one person can't herd cattle. He opened the gate on this side of the road and they poured into the field in an orderly fashion. None of the last-second pivoting and breaking away that they had perfected earlier.

My house is close to their fence, so it takes me a while to get used to seeing them as sort of part of my summer living room. The cows come up in the afternoons to stand around in the shade and see what I'm up to in the garden. There have been socially incorrect moments when I have come out with a steak for the barbeque.

The herd was out in the field yesterday when something spooked them. They came as close to running as cows can, sort of a speed walk. After a while, I noticed some birds diving at something and saw it was a small coyote. It probably was after meadowlarks' nests. The coyote ambled up and over the hill.

Nighttime Coyote Noises Off

Just after dark, a great cry of joy is heard coming from the coyote pack. I have the same feeling when waiting for it to get dark enough to stargaze. Night, at last!

To start the night, the pack must howl and yip and run. They are very fast. If I hear them close by, across the road, they will be gone before I can grab the big flashlight and step out on the porch. One night recently, I heard them as they made a run through the back yard. The cats were safe on the high deck, which has no steps. They were wide-eyed and eager to come inside.

The Lone Coyote

In the early mornings, I have seen one big coyote. One time, I stepped out on the side porch to watch him. Loping across the field, he spotted me. He made a wide u-turn, then went back the way he came. He seemed to be saying, "Better not risk it, these country folks are so gun-happy."

I've watched him through binoculars and found him to be magnificent, not long-legged and scruffy like some coyotes. Telling my daughter Lissa about him, I said he looked more like a wolf or a German Shepherd. She offered that maybe it was a German Shepherd.

So I thought maybe I might call him, but feared I would be known locally as Whistles at Coyotes.

If a Tree Falls in the Woods

One night in late February, a quick but fierce blast of wind and rain came through.

The next day, I discovered an uprooted walnut tree on the small pond dam. Since I never wanted it there, that was okay, although I would never have cut down a bearing nut tree for fear of a squirrel uprising.

The grandkids found it was the perfect pirate ship.

Above the river, I found a tall cottonwood that had broken about seven feet above the ground, then split down to the dirt. Caught up in nearby trees, it couldn't fall. Every day since then, I walked down and checked it out. Avoiding the zone where it probably would fall seemed a good idea, lest I be pounded into the ground like a stake.

A few days of strong winds dislodged it slightly. Yesterday at noon, I gasped to see it was ten feet lower but still hung up in the canopy. At that point, I would have liked to pull up a lawn chair and wait for the inevitable. Reminding myself that I had already been weeks on this slowly unfolding drama, I hiked back up to the house.

At six last night, I heard what sounded like a distant, muffled explosion. When I went down at seven, the tree was down. It took out a big limb on a huge hickory, plus limbs on some nearby maples. Beau obligingly lent scale to this photo.

So I've concluded that if a tree falls in the woods, you will surely not get to see it. However, you may hear it fall.

The Morel Report

In the opening days of morel season, I found a beauty in the back yard. That only encouraged me to peek under lots of other wild gooseberry bushes.

Allowing Beau to sniff it through the mesh bag, I waited for him to point out more. He gave me a doggy smile, as if to say, "Good Girl!" Then he wandered off, having lost interest in the hunt that was to keep me occupied for hours. So much for my theory of teaching a dog to search and rescue morels. Maybe I should have started training him when he was a pup.

This was the one I found first. In a bed of leaves it didn't stand out like it did on this white counter top. Two days and much hiking later, I found the other three within two feet of where I spied the first one. They were drying out, indicating they were there all along. They were smaller and growing in grass clumps, which was hardly sporting since I was searching in leaves.

They were all delicious, if not full meals. Everyone says, "a mess of morels," which I guess means enough for dinner, as in Mess Hall or Mess Tent.

The May Apple colony showed further development but the flowers hadn't opened under the leaves.

Days passed while I was under the grip of morel madness, until it became too dry to expect to find any more. The good news is now we are getting another soaking rain, after which there will be more warm days.

Enough undergrowth has shot up to require a morel hunting stick. Not only does one help to move competing greenery, but I think it helps to focus the eyes. A friend of mine has a genuine morel stick with a hand-carved morel at the top. She finds messes of morels on her country place south of here. I'm not envious, much. Way to go, Judy!

The Latest Dirt

Knowing that I find soil endlessly fascinating, my son Chris recorded a documentary about soils of the Amazon. Some archeologists got to looking from the air at some mysterious green islands in the middle of pretty barren savannah in Bolivia. Coming down to earth, they explored those fertile patches. They discovered terra preta, or black soil. It was a mix of the surrounding poor soil, charcoal bits, broken pottery and organic material.

The video showed a reinactment of what life must have been like before the entire civilization vanished. The women, pretty much naked in some scenes to hold the interest of guy viewers, were doing all the gardening work. I imagine lugging tons of soil to higher levels was probably the work of strong men. Or maybe the women were true Amazons.

After making one tier in the garden from found aluminum soffits, I was blessed with some actual landscaping terrace stones for the top tier. My daughter Izzy had dug them up at her place, where they had been used for borders.

The hard part was getting them level for the first layer. Using the bubble level, I kept at it. The second and third layers were easy. It was not whimsical like the other level, but quite lovely, almost professionally landscaped.

That level of the garden was dreadful clay. I decided to make my own terra preta. Inexplicably, I was out of pottery shards. Having no desire to be that authentic, I substituted cow and horse manure for the human waste. I added crushed eggshells, pelleted limestone and buckets of silt from above the river, mixing it from time to time with Tillie. I incorporated kitchen scraps in the top few inches.

Thinking I was really onto something, I put it to bed for the winter. In the spring, I planned to plant it with snow peas and lettuces.

What Went Wrong?

The blessed stuff would not dry out. It seemed I had made terra goo.

The lower end of the garden dried out first, so the snow peas went in there. They are doing nicely.

Since the stones are a drystone wall, they should have allowed the excess water to pass through. Maybe I need to dig a trench above it to divert the runoff from the slope above it.

The terra preta mix was used in other parts of the garden, so it's probably a good idea.

Compared to the massive scope of the raised earthenworks of the lost civilizations, this little garden is nothing. However I am beginning to have my doubts about how much soil I can dig with a shovel and carry in a bucket.

This motivated me to continue with the Remote Garden. After mowing it recently, I scalped the grasses with a weed-whacker yesterday. I have a few weeks to get the soil ready for the excessive amounts of tomato and pepper plants that are growing bigger every day.

The best part is no earth-moving. Well, I do intend to loosen the plot with a turning fork, but not actually turning it.

Variety Does Us In

If there are conservative gardeners, I've yet to meet one. We are especially extravagant when it comes to starting seeds in pots.

We are not responsible for over-planting. The real culprit is variety. If I were going to have just one kind of tomato, probably six would be plenty. However, there are always new ones to try, plus the reliable hybrids like Jet Star. Then there was an heirloom beefsteak, Kellogg's Breakfast, apparently nothing to do with the cereals. I planted some of those because I could not find Big Bite seeds anywhere.

Buying Rutgers tomato seed in bulk made it hard to be restrained. At Planter's Seeds, I got enough seeds to plant about an acre, for $1.50. If they should turn out to be the best tomatoes for canning, I will be glad I only limited myself to a dozen transplants. Money well spent when a can of tomatoes costs nearly a dollar.

That explains how I managed to have 35 tomato plants. My daughter Isabelle, who is every bit as reckless as her mother when it comes to gardening, has promised to grow some Juliet cherry tomatoes for me. In return, I will give her some of my Gardener's Delight cherry tomatoes.

Izzy came over recently bearing a lot of cut-up seed potatoes. She explained the incredible abundance by telling me the hardware store only offered five pound bags. She found three varieties that looked especially good. It was only after she began cutting them into sections that she realized variety had once again tipped the scale from reasonable to overwhelming. Thinking quickly, she sent out a memo to everyone in her large office building that she had some to give away. Plenty, in fact.

The grandkids helped me plant the small quantity of potatoes, which have come up already. I'm almost out of room in the tiered garden. The strawberry bed is hogging a lot of space. I already have the new plants waiting for the soil to dry out in another spot. I intend to till under the old ones, which have crowded themselves and allowed dandelions, red clover and dock to move in. But first the kids will have to pick this season's berries.

From a logistics point of view, what was I thinking to start all those tomatoes? Not to mention the eighteen peppers I transplanted yesterday. The good news is I can look forward to California Wonder, Chinese Giant, Pepperoncini and Anaheim Chili peppers. Izzy is growing the Fooled You Jalapenos for us. I will take lots of plants over there in a box, like a gift of kittens.

Remote Progress

So far, my efforts to make the remote garden work have only been to mow the fescue. Several heavy rains have made any sort of tilling out of the question. Meanwhile, the June-like
temperatures in the eighties are making the tomatoes grow as if they must bear fruit soon. The situation is what makes gardening so exciting.

I only grow one variety of broccoli, Packman. A modest eight plants, they are doing well despite the unseasonable heat.

Also thriving are the nineteen cabbages. I would have planted less of them had it not been for wanting purple, Bravo, Copenhagen Market and Ferry's Round Dutch varieties. New to try this year are a mid-season variety, Glory of Enkhuizen. Who could resist a delicious cabbage named after a coastal town in Holland? I can't pronounce it, so I call it Glory.

Also hardening off on the three porches are about four dozen flower plants.