How Does My Garden Grow

In essence, the fall garden is an exercise in denial of the season.  These last few days of chilly rain have been exactly what the veggies wanted.

As long as I can see these beautiful green spinaches, I can stave off the idea of winter.  These guys have been quite lovely in salads.  Nearby kohl rabi seemed to be wanting something more than encouraging words. What did they want, blood?  So, I gave everything leafy some blood meal.

Turning away from the turning tree leaves, I can still feel like a gardener. Although most welcome, the rains have left the soil too wet to work.  The last time I tried to turn over the soil in the old strawberry bed, the shovel would only go into the ground about an inch.  Now, it will be a race to see if the soil dries out enough to work before it freezes solid.  I am eager to turn under these choice cow pies.

The turnips have great leafy tops and have taken up more space than I gave them.  It was easy to thin them because they are not my favorite vegetable. The Merveille de Quatre Saisons lettuces, although not growing as quickly as some did in springtime, have held their own through a couple of hard frosts, bless their hearts.

Recently, I hauled up the remaining seven cement cylinders from the intermittent stream bed.  They were stuck fast in the dirt until the rains came.  When the soil can be worked, I'll continue this bed.  It will be fabulous.

The asparagus patch is in its fall plumage. Pretty soon, I'll cut it down and cover the bed with more manure.

We gardeners do not like to even hear about November being only ten days away.  Months of bleak withdrawal from our passion doesn't bear thinking about.  Meanwhile, I'm cutting firewood with my little chain saw.

Four Years Between Harvests

This was supposed to be a bearing year for the hickory nuts, but the long drought put a stop to that plan.

How the hickories know which is the year for the crop is a mystery to me.  Perhaps they circulate a newsletter so all the trees can have nuts and there won't be some sneaky hickory upsetting the market by being the only source some year.

In 2010, I discovered I had twenty-four bearing hickories on my land.  The clay soil and steep hills were great for hickories.  Learning that it could take as much as thirty-five years for a tree to bear, I realized I had a potential gold mine.  A buyer promised to come fetch the nuts.

It was great fun finding all the trees, some of which I named for the grandkids.  This bronze beauty  is Shelby.  I went out daily and brought back ten gallons.  Sometimes, I sat under the tree and popped off the thick hulls to save weight in carrying them home.  I was thinking that this surely was a suitable enterprise for me when I was bopped on the head by a falling nut.  It really hurt, and raised an immediate goose egg.  After that, I wore my hard hat when working under the tall trees.  I named that tree The Bonker.

Growing under the trees were wild roses, red cedar trees and other nasty underbrush that I cleared out as best as I could.  Identifying the trees by a Missouri Department of Conservation Field Guide, I discovered I had some shagbark and some shellbark.  Of course I got beaned by one of the bigger ones, the shellbark, about the size and heft of a hardball.

The record for most nuts went to a tall tree down by the river, giving a total of 48 gallons.  That one I named Bountiful.

The hulls popped off readily with the twist of a small screwdriver.  Then I put the nuts in a bucket of water.  The floaters had worms, so had to be discarded.  The next step was to spread the nuts out on screens to dry in the sunshine.  Then I put them in mesh bags to hang in the breeze during the day.  At night, I put them in galvanized cans to keep the mice from getting them.

Only when I had 150 pounds of choice nuts did the buyer flake out on me.  I put an ad on Craig's List but didn't get any response.  It must have been a great year for hickories because everyone had plenty.

    The hulls made a nice mulch in the border, weathering to a restful gray.

Reading  that the nuts would go bad in hot weather,  I took the precaution of  putting some in the freezer.  However, the ones stored in cans in the hot workshop are still good, so I guess I'm all set to wait for the next crop of nuts, in 2014.  Since I can't bear to waste food, this delay may be a blessing in disguise.