Ghosts or Guardians?

These ghostly figures descend upon my garden every fall. In a normal year, we don't see them until late September or early October. This year, however, they have come early. Three times in recent weeks we have seen frost on the rooftop of our house in the early morning. A couple of days ago the forecast was especially grim, and I gave in to my fears, dug out my supply of old sheets and row cover, a new package of clothespins, and set to work crafting protection for as many of my late-ripening tomatoes as I could. Thankfully, the temperature at garden level didn't drop below 40. But it will. This early trial has shown me that I need to invest in more row cover, or head to the thrift store for more bedsheets.

Traditionally we have a long, gorgeous, 'Indian summer' here. With the exception of a few nights in the low 30's or high 20's, the garden grows happily on well into November. But those little dips in temperature spell doom for the tender likes of beans, squash and my zealously-nurtured tomatoes and melons. So I take the trouble to cover them with ghostly raiment and I usually harvest a huge crop in early October. I don't know about this year, though.

It has been a terrible year for tomatoes and other warmth-lovers here. Late, late arrival of warm weather, many cool nights all summer long. Wah! After last year, the greatest tomato-growing year I can remember in 30+ years, a lot of us longtime Bend gardeners were spoiled. I, for one, thought, 'well super -- here's a side benefit to global warming' ......... but I guess it was an anomaly not to be relied on for future years. Back to frost covers and ......

.... well, I recently splurged on a cool new lean-to cold frame/hoophouse, built by my friend Duane. Duane is a local cabinet-maker who got creative during the downturn in the building boom, and began creating custom chicken housing, runs, and superstrong hoop cold frames/mini hoop houses for local gardeners. He built my chicken house and run, and now I have this beautiful little cold frame to play with. The commercial grade plastic should be good for 10 years or more, and the house itself is well-crafted and strong. The front cover rolls up by day and folds down to fit snugly at night.

With the assistance of 2 manly neighbors, we managed to slip the whole thing down over a pre-existing trellis full of cucumber and melon vines. We didn't rip the fabric and the plants are quite excited by their new home. It was 95 in there yesterday morning when I went out around 8:00 am to lift the cover.

I am already thinking ahead on what to plant for overwintering.

Greenhouse panic!

Can you tell by looking at this photo that the temperature outside is 0 degrees F? When I woke up yesterday morning, as per usual I quickly checked the indoor (in the greenhouse)/outdoor (in the carport outside it) thermometer and was shocked to see a reading of 30 degree INSIDE the greenhouse. Uh oh. And this was at 4:30 am, so the temps were still going down.

Although technically an 'unheated' greenhouse ie I don't keep it warm enough to grow orchids, I do keep a small space heater in it in the winter, hooked to a thermostat which is set at around 38 degrees. Since the greenhouse is attached to the MIL apartment's south-facing wall, it normally stays well above freezing most of the winter, even without auxiliary heat. I overwinter my geraniums and a few other tender perennials in containers, on a tiered stand right next to the wall. Other plants that will take light frost -- cymbidium orchids, a California ceanothus, potted maple and larch 'bonsai' -- are out farther from the building, next to the outside walls.

But every 2-3 years it gets really cold here, and then that heater is Life to the plants inside. Years ago I discovered that leaving a small fan on, 24/7, keeps cold (in winter) and hot (in summer) pockets from forming, and works amazingly well to keep things from freezing, even when the outside temperature is in the 'teens. But below 10 or so, that wee heater is necessary to keep things alive.

So I rushed out to see what was happening, and could see that, although Herbie (the 20 (30?) year-old oil-filled radiant heater) was working valiantly, he just couldn't put out enough BTUs. I grabbed the spare space heater -- one of those cheap, stand-up, oscillating ones and tried to plug it in. And promptly blew the fuse powering the fan and light. S---! Now it was 30/0 degrees and dark, and I was still fumbling to plug in the second heater. The electricians who put in this electrical plug carefully covered it with a 'waterproof' metal sheath, which alas, makes it nearly impossible to get actual electrical cords plugged in. I'm still in my nightgown at this point, not feeling the cold in my worry about my darlings, but I ran inside to enlist my manly guy for advice and assistance. He, still in his bathrobe peacefully reading by the fire, protested at first. But nobly (and this is why we are still married and madly in love after 40 years) he got up, put some proper clothes on, and came out to help.

Each of us was hampered by a different problem. After watching years of sci fi movies and shows, he claims to have become quite expert on advanced technology of all kinds. Unfortunately, since we are not on Battlestar Galactica, the Enterprise, or moving through the Stargate universe, most of what he has learned is useless. A Level Three Diagnostic did not help. The forward naselles could not be located. The inertial dampeners were offline. He was left with only a flashlight and a simple electrical cord to save the day.

I suffer from a different handicap. Despite being 60 years old, and having lived my entire life (bar a great deal camping, backpacking, and living in various cabins, Forest Service guard stations and the infamous 2 years in the pink trailer) using electricity, I still don't really ... get it. It seems unnatural and probably highly dangerous to me. In fact, I am the spiritual descendant of James Thurber's grandmother, who ....

"lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house. it leaked, she contended, out of empty sockets if the wall switch had been left on. She would go around screwing in bulbs, and if they lighted up she would hastily and fearfully turn off the wall switch and go back to her (magazine), happy in the satisfaction that she had stopped not only a costly but a dangerous leakage. Nothing could clear this up for her."

This explains why I still have the uneasy feeling, whenever I plug something in, that I will be electrocuted. And fishing around in the (cold) dark bowels of the greenhouse, where there could also be huge, hideous spiders, trying to jam the 2nd heater into the plug, gives me the willies. Although I suppose the spiders have probably packed their wee spidey suitcases long since and headed south for the winter.

Anyway, the plug went in, and thankfully, that circuit did not blow. The extra heater did the trick, and the oscillating motion fills the need to circulate air. Nothing froze and this morning, despite the temperature having fallen to (so far) -7 outside, it's a balmy 38 in there. My darlings are safe.

True Confessio, er 2009 Harvest Report: Sweet Potatoes

Let's just review the situation. We had seed greed. We ordered crazy things. We planted them in all trust, innocence and -- even in the face of Climatic Reality -- optimism. A clear case of Zonal Denial, but hey -- we gardeners are a bold and audacious lot. We love a challenge.

So there they were, tender green slips inserted in a big black tub in the greenhouse. We tended them. We nurtured them. We talked to them. And now that the um, harvest is mostly gathered in, and thoughts of Over the River and Through The Woods to Grandmother's House We Go (with visions of sweet potato pie dancing in our heads) are lurking on the subconscious horizon, it's time to display our magnificent sweet potato harvest to the world. Ready? Stand back, now.



By the way, I had to use the macro-lens setting on my camera to get that shot. And just in case it's not totally apparent how truly tiny these tubers are, here's another photo, with my not-very-large hand in it to show scale. Ready? Here goes Take Two:



I'm going to blame these pathetic results on my own sweet self. The slips I planted were surely hardy enough. Remember? The literature that came with them promised me that Sweet Potatoes would produce my 'greatest gardening thrill ever'. It said that my harvest would consist of of big 'jumbo' size (2-3 lbs) potatoes. As I read on, I only wished I had ordered 2 dozen.

Lest you have forgotten their initial, rather desperate appearance, here is what they looked like on arrival from Territorial Seed Co in May:



They looked fine in the early stages of growth. But then the crucial 6 weeks of early summer vanished in a puff of smoke and a whole lot of musical events which precluded the planned ongoing addition of soil, to gradually raise the level of the growing tops and create a big rooting area for massive tuber production. In short, the plants sat down in the bottom of the big, deep, black plastic tub and I suspect, had a hard time getting enough sun to really get going. Kind of like trying to grow in the bottom of a deep well. Hallllloooooooooooooo, little sweet patooties -- you down there?



They did their best for me. But I failed them. And to be perfectly honest here, I got bored with the whole thing quite early on. I realized I don't really like sweet potatoes all that much. I didn't really want to bother with the whole soil addition thing. I won't say I exactly had Buyer's Remorse, but I will admit that I came to regret my spring seed greed, at least in the case of sweet potatoes.

So I will eat my tuberous bounty (in about 3 mouthfuls), thanking the sweet potato deva for the good effort, and put sweet potatoes on the list of vegetables I won't lose sleep over not being able to grow in future years.

Or at least until I forget and get a wild hankering to grow sweet potatoes, in 5 or 6 years. If that happens, please show me these photos?

Technically snowing

Harbinger of Doom? (ie we're having an early/hard winter?) or just our typical goofy weather? The forecast is for another day of this lot, then temps in the 60's F, rising to 67 on Friday. Go figure.

Not so bad, really. I got the tomatoes harvested and now I can get an early start on pulling up blackened vines and starting the next batch of compost. Most years I stall and stall until it's time to plant new ones in June. But this year, boy, will I be on top of things.

Yesterday was cold and er, rainy (except for the technically-not-snow that fell throughout the day) and I spent most of it cowering, I mean, sitting cozily by the fire, doing gainful indoor tasks. Around 4:00 pm I awoke to the fact that things were going to continue going south (not only the geese, but the temperatures) and if I wanted any of my geraniums and other tender container plants to survive, I'd better hop to it ASAP.

I'd like to be able to say that every year I do this pleasant task in a relaxed, slow-paced and responsible gardenerly manner. That is, I stroll around the deck and bring in a few pots at a time over a period of a week or so, as the temperatures tastefully lower in a gradual, civilized manner. But no. I think that's only happened once in my many decades of gardening. Normally it's a haphazard and desperate afternoon, sometimes on a crisp but sunny day, sometimes freezing-ass windy and raining, with me bundled up in wool hat and vest, the plants shivering and nervous in case I get impatient and start practicing triage sooner rather than later.

In many ways having a greenhouse is a disadvantage, since before I had the space, I had to fit everything into my tiny added-onto-the-carport sunporch. This pretty much limited overwintering to about 15 geraniums and a potted tomato or two. Now, although my greenhouse is small, 8' x 10', I am able to be somewhat greedy, and every fall I manage to squeeze a few more favorite guys in.



There are still some bigger plants that need to come in before it gets really cold. I left them outside yesterday because they are semi-hardy and can take some light frost and because I don't have any more room at the moment. Now comes the question of what to do about the melons and sweet potatoes, which are hognoiding the south wall of my greenhouse. The melon vines, though copious, have only a couple of small, presumably unripe melons hanging from them. I say presumably because they are somewhat smaller than I had imagined they would be, though how would I know? I've never grown these varieties before. The infamous sweet potatoes are also happily growing along, and I suppose will continue to grow until the next millennium, since the greenhouse will not freeze (I use a small space heater to keep the lows at around 38). Shall I cast these fellows out into the snow now or later? See how long the sweet potatoes grow but call it quits on the melons? The spirit of research is wavering...

I can't believe I bought this (etc)

Our story so far:
Growing sweet potatoes. In Bend. Short growing season. Cool nights. Frost possible any day of the year. Almost 4000 feet of elevation. Low humidity. Right.

My greatest gardening thrill ever, as promised by xxxxxxxxxx wherever Territorial Seed Co gets their sweet potato starts. Hokay.

Georgia Jet: 'matures in 80-90 days'. Right.

Thus, we see the poor dears in their fated growing area in my garden. That is, in the greenhouse. Don't look so hot, do they? Could that be because they languished on the kitchen windowsill for 2 weeks, due to crappy weather, extreme gardenerly busyness and a goodly amount of human sloth?

I have faith, though. They may look pitiful now, but stand back. They are going to perk up and grow like banshees and overflow their giant black pot and crowd out the melons (in adjacent pots) like anything. Just you wait.

I know I am.