Friday, July 2, 2010

Summer Woes and Wonders

Early summer is a wonderful moment in the L.A. garden. Even if June gloom (our foggiest month) stalls the garden for a few weeks, as it almost always does, there is something so exciting about the burst of young energy in the vegetable bed. This June was unusual. There were very few foggy days and the beautiful weather made the garden particularly verdant.

Woes:

I never plant the summer garden as early as my friends, not for any gardening reason, but because it works best for my family’s summer schedule. This year I planted even later than usual because ALL my seedlings died. All of them—maybe 200. I’ve thought a lot about why this might have happened and there isn’t an easy answer. They started beautifully under my lights in late March and early April. They sprouted in a timely and vigorous way, and I potted them from 72 cell trays into paper cups. I used to use Styrofoam cups but switched to paper because I didn’t like buying and throwing away all that plastic. This year when my seedlings were potted up they totally and completely stopped growing. Completely. For 2 months. And then they died. Part way through this, when I realized there was trouble, I switched some of the tomatoes to 4” nursery pots. Some of these made it, were planted in the beds and are now an amazing 4 or 5 inches tall. Wow. Spectacular growth for 3 months! Not.

I’ve spoken to many gardening friends about this. Various possible reasons came up: some kind of plastic coating on the cups was toxic to the plants; the cups were white and let too much light into the root area; the soil mix, which I’ve used before, had changed formulas; I should have used a sterilized mix even when potting up; too much bottom heat; too much water. I’m stumped. Next year I will use a sterilized mix and seed directly into 4” nursery pots. It was clear towards the very end that many plants succumbed to “damping-off,” but that was only the final straw for already weak plants. Sometimes you do something the same way for years and then all of a sudden it doesn’t work.

I went out hunting for tomato, eggplant and pepper plants in mid June to replace all my losses, but the wide variety I had started by seed can never be replaced commercially. I will miss my Bulgarian Carrot, Czech Black and Aji Dulce peppers, and Senryo eggplants among many others. Most of the nurseries around me seem to get their peppers and eggplants from a single source, and I found very little stock difference at the places I looked. One friend gave me 10 fabulous tomato varieties, and I happened upon a good selection of eggplants one day, but peppers were a problem. While even OSH is carrying heirloom tomato varieties, it seems that the world of commercially available chiles is reduced to Jalapeno, Serrano, Hungarian Yellow Wax, Habanero, Anaheim and Cayenne.

Wonders:

I order sweet potato starts in the mail from a wonderfully quirky and admirable organization, Sandhill Preservation. This year I have the “Rainbow Collection” with purple, orange, white and yellow varieties. There is something incredibly satisfying about digging these up in the fall. They are so crisp when you cut into them, in the same way as spring new potatoes but at the end of summer. This is my first time with the varied colors, and later I will report on their successes. They make such a beautiful plant and flower in the summer garden.

The Hickory King dent corn I planted is well on the way to its 15-foot height. It is in the front yard. One of my best memories from last summer was standing at the kitchen sink and hearing someone on the street in front of the house hit the brakes. I’d look up to see them backing up to look at the giant corn plants. Trailing around it this year are Musquee de Provence pumpkins, giant blue Hubbards, Australian Butter squash and a bright orange turban squash. I know I love the Butter squash and the Musquee. The other varieties I planted for their fun color and shape, and if I’m lucky they will taste great, too. At the base of each corn stalk are Italian Avellino beans. An international three sisters.

I’m trying a new way of trellising cukes this year. I took a 3½ x 5 ft. trellis and laid it on its side on some concrete piers. The idea is that the cukes will hang down from the trellis, they will be easy to spot, not lie on the ground, and will have extra air circulation in the hopes of slowing the onset of powdery mildew, an inevitable visitor in late summer.

This is looking like a great year in the orchard. My donut peaches were abundant and delicious. It’s easy to see why they are so rare and expensive in the stores. Don’t look away from your bowl of peaches, because when you turn back they will have gone from perfectly ripe to perfectly rotten. The other peaches and plums have wonderful crops on them. The brown rot that ruined so much of last year’s stone fruit crop is only minimally present.

And last of today’s wonders is the incredible 2010 avocado crop. The Fuerte tree has been unbelievably generous and is nearing the end of its season. It will soon drop the rest of its crop. I have images of Eva on the roof of the little barn with the picker extended maximally and Jose sitting in a high crook of the tree with a fruit picking bag slung over his shoulder, trying to balance the picker, the bag and himself to get as many as possible. Now we will move on to the Haas crop as the season progresses and the fruit gets oilier and richer. Yum.