Week of October 28

It has been a time of transition with many of our brightest leaves now down, several frosts behind us, and my thoughts turned toward winter. I am mailing off my seed harvests from the Land Institute plot, have dug some of my dahlias with more still to do, and still have my garlic to put in the ground. After this week I will switch to only monthly posts.

I always love the experience of the first morning after a frost that is cold enough to release the ginkgo leaves. This Sunday morning they were drifting down 2 to 3 at a time until a hearty gust blew through and blasted a green cloud of them off. They had just begun to turn yellow and now make a rather muddy green carpet on the ground. All of the understory beech are bright gold and cinnamon brown. Those that are left may stay on the branches all winter, gradually bleaching to a pale fawn color. The upper leaves came down all within a couple of days, letting the clear sunlight onto the golden woods floor. I love the openness of the woods now with bouquets of dark green Christmas ferns and wood ferns poking through the leaves. Our yard is accented by a few very colorful oaks in shades of scarlet, magenta, orange and brown.

I took part in a multi-year civic science project for the Land Institute this summer, trialling 3 perennial seed crops and their annual cousins. I grew 3-foot-square plots of a perennial sunflower called silphium as well as 3 varieties of annual sunflowers. I grew an annual flax and a perennial version called Lewis flax, as well as annual lentils and a perennial called sainfoin that makes a “pulse-like” seed, similar to lentils. I was able to collect a good quantity of sunflower seed heads from the annual varieties, a nice bunch of annual flax and a small amount of the tiny pods of lentils. The perennial plants will need another year or two to produce good seed crops. My harvest will be mailed off to Salina, Kansas to be analyzed and compared with the other data I collected to help them understand where these crops will grow best. It is all part of their effort to develop perennial foods that will reduce the need for constant cultivation of the soil. I am just one of 240 gardeners taking part in the project from all parts of our continent.

I was anxious to get the bulk of my dahlias and cannas dug while the weather was dry and compatible with outdoor work. They had been wilted by frost for over a week but some of the stems were still pretty green and juicy. I hope it wasn’t too soon to dig. The dry soil fell right off the clumps. I put them in boxes according to variety and left them in the warm greenhouse for a few days to dry out further. Then I moved them down into a somewhat damp and definitely frost-free cellar to store for the winter. I feel lucky to have access to such a perfect storage spot. A cellar that is too warm and dry will desiccate the tubers; too wet and they will mold; too cold and they turn to mush. People always talk about what a chore it is to dig them but I had about 5 bushels of them all dug in a couple of hours. The hard part is getting them into the perfect environment. The books all say to store them in vermiculite or sawdust but I have had the best luck tossing them, dirt and all, into a cardboard box or uncovered plastic tub. I am hoping that the weather will hold for one more week of dahlia digging and garlic planting.

We hired a friend to come to our place with his tractor, bucket and manure spreader to deal with the accumulation that had been cleaned out of our cow shed during the past year. In truth our steers made only enough to fill his spreader once, plus a nice pile of rotted manure dumped over the fence where it is easy for me to load into wheelbarrows to bring to the veggie garden. I was waiting for this to happen so I could prep the soil for my garlic patch. I had a little bit of weed/grass removal and then I added the manure, mixed it all together and poked in the cloves of garlic. There were lots of dead or almost dead jumping worms in the mix too. Yuck! At least they will fertilize the soil.

One of the hardest parts of garlic planting is breaking apart the tight heads into single cloves. I rip off the outer layers of skin around the stem and then gently but firmly pry them apart. I like to lay the cloves out on the surface of my prepared bed, 6” apart in rows 6” apart. Then I go back and poke each clove down into the soil with the flat root-end down and the point up. I push them far enough in so there is about an inch of soil over the tip of the clove. I smooth the soil over and press it firmly to insure contact. With my chicken friends out and about it is important for me to mulch the new planting right away and lay chicken wire over or it will be very neatly “unplanted” by the hens.

We are enjoying big tender leeks in soups, stir fries and on pizza. It is great to go out on a frosty morning and still have so much good food to gather. Even the Concord grapes are sweet and plump but it will only need to be a degree or two colder for winter to have the upper hand.

With so much tension in the air about the upcoming election I feel particularly grateful to have garden work to sooth my spirits. My deepest hope is that we can remain a community of gardeners no matter what our political leanings and that we can work together to take care of this fragile earth. We live in one of the most beautiful places in the world with soil, water and climate so friendly to growing the food we all need. Let’s work as neighbors to take care of it.