Note to self (and apparently all of you since I am posting this here), when they say “organic” mulch, they do not mean that it was made from chemical-free trees.  When the lady on the phone said “Do you want the organic mulch?  It is excellent stuff.” I should have asked what organic meant. I assumed and you know what that stands for.  Your neighbors get pissy because your yard smells like a cow’s ass.

I should have suspected that something was up when it was the cheapest mulch on the list.  Delivery to your home, ½ price even. Well, duh. The landscaping company wanted to get rid of it as much as my neighbors do.

I know cow manure is good for your garden, but I could have sworn composted manure did not stink.  So why does mulch with cow manure stink?  These are the mysteries I am pondering this week. That and who will replace Simon Cowell. We all know that is urgent to the functioning of the universe.

Second note to self – Do not have organic mulch delivered to your house the day before Memorial Day weekend. While organic mulch may do wonders for your flower beds and you will have 3 whole days to work on spreading it out, it does not greatly improve the taste of hamburgers and hotdogs.  The smell apparently has quite the opposite effect.

It would seem that I need to apologize to my tomato plants for insulting their sexuality. It has come to my attention that my lack of red tomatoes is not due to their lack of reproductive vigor, but rather a thief.

There is a tomato thief in my garden bed. I know what you are thinking. Here Hanna goes on a deer rant but, unfortunately, this time I cannot blame the long legged rats for this catastrophe. To be very frank, if it were deer, I would be missing tomato plants rather than just tomato fruit.

Nope, this thief is smaller, craftier and has thumbs. How do I know this? Because the tomatoes had been picked off the plant and the vines were undamaged. A feat that would require the perp to be able to grasp and pull the fruit. Anything remotely ripe was eaten. Anything green had a little bite taken out of it and was then thrown to the ground in apparent disgust. Oh, and the theft only occurs to a height of 3 feet.

Since we lack any monkeys, apes or gorillas roaming wild in this part of Cleveland (though often my children are mistaken for ones), I must turn my attention to the more native species of the area.

My first thought was raccoon. These shrewd critters long ago had their agents make a sweet deal with Disney that helped portray them as cute, cuddly and adorable. Fact of the matter is, the things would as soon eat Pocahontas’ face off as dance around the forest. They are not cute, they are not nice. They can be lethal on many levels.  They are wild animals, not stuffed animals. 

I promptly called animal control and was told I could have a cage to catch it with… in about 3 weeks… if I was lucky. And by lucky, they meant that it did not enter my house and make its home in the walls. For understandable reasons, people with raccoons in their home get precedent over people with them in their garden.

Understandable or no, 3 weeks is too long to wait. I have tomatoes on the line, people!!! I headed over to see my good friend Craig and in less than an hour, I had procured a live animal trap.

Then I went home to do my research. What is the best way to lure a raccoon. My first thought was to bait the trap with a tomato. After all, that is why the bugger was in my garden in the first place. And that is when I discovered a really important fact. Apparently raccoons are not so fond of tomatoes AND that damage like this is normally done by another vile critter. Opossums.

Yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck. Nasty beasties they is. I am fairly certain that ROUS’s were modeled not after actual rats but rather opossums. These freakish marsupials are immune to most snake venom and resistant to rabies. And, they have more teeth than any other land mammal. They are just scary.

So, it’s off to catch a tomato thief.

Night #1 – I baited the trap with… what else… a tomato. Yes, a store bought tomato, but I was kind of hoping that tomatoes were to opossums what chocolate is to me. “Ok, so it’s crappy chocolate, but it’s still chocolate.”

Results – Nada. Well, except for more tomatoes pulled off the plants.

Night #2 – I moved onto peanut butter. There is no force in the ‘verse greater than peanut butter.

Results – The wily, wily critter went into the cage, scooped out a handful of peanut butter and did not trigger the trap. *grrr*

And, on top of that a rather cuddly squirrel tripped the trap after I checked in the morning. It must have been in there for an hour. By the time I found it, it had bashed its nose good while trying to escape. I go out to find a bloody nosed squirrel glaring at me. I let it go. Let me tell you, I can now recite a few choice not nice words in squirrelese.

Night #3 – More peanut butter. Obviously it worked, just have to make it work better.

Results – Well, we will see. Tonight is night 3. With any luck (and not the kind that keeps raccoons out of your house), in the morning, I will have caught myself a tomato thief.

UPDATE – No kidding, just as I hit publish on this post, I heard a snap and a high shrill chripping.  I caught my tomato thief!  And it was… drumroll… a raccoon!  Apparently they are not as nearly opposed to tomatoes as the internet would lead you to believe.  In the AM,I will have my little thief relocated (not killed,even I have a heart) to a new, not tomato growing area.  I promise to post photos before he goes.

I have often told people that I live my life to a soundtrack. There are just songs that speak to me about every part of my life. And gardening is among that. There are gardening songs that I love to listen to because they speak to me about the world I love, except in words and melodies that are much better than I could ever express. So, for your listening pleasure, here is my gardening “iPod” list*:

1. Lullaby for a Stormy Night
2. Night Swimming
3. Octopus’s Garden
4. Where the Green Grass Grows
5. Cowboy, Take Me Away
6. Lonely Little Petunia In An Onion Patch
7. Strawberry Wine

So these songs mean something to me in terms of gardening. What songs bring gardening to life to you?

* I don’t actually own an iPod. I spent that money on more plants. But you get my meaning.

It has been so long since I have posted and I have no excuse for it. Winter has just taken the fun out of writing about gardening. But, we had a warm snap last week and I am feeling a bit more than glass half full and a stack of seed catalogs await. It is that time of year to plan for the next year garden!

This year, I had a generous tomato seed donation made to me from Botanical Interests. On a side note, if there are any gardening brides out there, the packaging the seeds come in is quite lovely. Botanical drawings of the plants, vegetables and fruit, which would make them quite nice for favors at a wedding.

They sent me:

• Silvery Fir Tree Tomato
• Green Zebra Tomato
• Speckled Roman Tomato
• Cherokee Purple Tomato
• Red Siberian Tomato

I have grown the Green Zebra and Cherokee Purple before, but not in the context of my tomato tastings. I remember enjoying both, so I am looking forward to growing them.

Last year, I lost so many of my tomatoes to a wilt infected bed or could not tell which tomato it was due to screwing my tags up as seedlings, that I will be regrowing many from last year.

These would be:

• Early Giant
• Italian Tree Tomato
• Omar’s Lebanese
• Blue
• Marmande
• Cosmonaut Volkov
• Kimberly
• Winsall
• Celebrity
• Russian 117
• Kellogg’s Breakfast

I will defiantly be growing the Green Moldovan, Azoychka and Black Ethiopian again this year as they are among my list of must haves. While I won’t be actually planting Matt’s Wild Cherry, I am fairly certain I will be growing that one again as well. The volunteers from that plant will be difficult to keep at bay but fortunately, my kids love that tomato. I actually think I may set up a “kid’s garden” area this year and ust let that one take over a corner of that bed from year to year.

I am sure there will be a few more that get thrown in at the “oh, lookie” last moment, but this is my tomato attack plan for the moment.

As for other plants, well, last year I had some great success with Swiss Chard. It was my first year growing that and I enjoyed the results.

I am also going to grow some squash, which I have never had luck with, but with a twist. In true Illegal Garden fashion, I am going to plant it up front. I believe that the reason I can’t grow it in the back is because the beds are just too badly infected with vine borers. Maybe having the squash up front where they have never grown before will fix the problem.

I am also going to have a go at corn this year, a vegetable I have avoided in the past for no reason other than it seems like a fussy plant. But last year we had one surreptitious encounter with a true roadside corn farmer and a taste of truly fresh picked corn made me remember why sometimes fussy plants should be in the garden. I have not settled on a variety yet, so if any of you have any suggestions, I am all ears… (rimshot. Dodge rotten tomato)

I am going to do cucumbers again too, despite the fact that I have yet to harvest more than 3 in a season (damn vine borers or cucumber wilt or evil spirits or whatever kills them). They too will be dealt with in a new fashion. I am going to grow them in hanging baskets upside down like tomatoes can be done. Seems to me that they should do will like this.

I am on the fence as far as pepper go. I do love to grow them, but our damn deer seem to have a serious taste for them, both hot and sweet. The plants are normally so damaged that I get few fruit. We will see as we get closer to the season.

And there is, of course, lettuce. I love growing lettuce and would not miss doing so for anything. I always opt for cut and come again lettuce which never lets me down.

Anything else that goes in will be a surprise. Whatever gets given to me or found at the nurseries where I am spending too much money anyway, so why would another $3 plant make a difference. But, that is kind of the fun in gardening, is it not? Because for a small piece of land, you get to be a god/ess and decree what grows there. I wish I had that power over the weather on that land too. Spring is just not coming fast enough.

My feral strawberries are heavy with ripe berries right now. I call them feral because they are not the true wild strawberries you find demurely tucked into the base of trees in the woods. There were domesticated strawberries at one point in time, but in an unprecedented bid for botanical freedom, them broke out of their garden bed confines and traveled who knows how far to settle (uninvited) in my front flower beds. It is there that they wreak general havoc and strawberry high jinks. They have not bit me yet, but still I remain leery of them.

I actively evict the strawberry plants in from my beds, but inevitably, I cave in and leave a few there in the hopes that there will be fruit at some point in time. Up until this year, this has not been the case. Previously, slugs and small critters managed to gnaw the berries before I could get to them.

That all changed this year.

I am not sure where the slugs have gone. Perhaps a friendly snake or toad has taken up residence and is feasting nightly. I do know where the small critters have gone. A new cat in the house seems to have sparked a new hobby in all of my cats, and that is genetic manipulation of the local small critter population.

If the small critter is not smart enough to recognize the danger in the sound of a cat bell, then it is removed from the general population, thus leaving only the more intelligent (or less hard of hearing) critters, who are smart enough to stay away from my garden. Evolution is a wonderful thing.

You can find strawberries in most parts of the world. Strawberries have grown for centuries in North and South America, Asia and Europe. They all started out as those tiny wild strawberries and it was by sheer chance that the modern hybrid strawberry got its start at all. A chance side by side planting of strawberry plants from both North and South America in 1700’s (or 1600’s depending on who you ask) resulted in cross pollination and a better strawberry. Gardeners, being the quick sort, realized that further crossing of species could result in even better fruit. Soon the race was on to breed a bigger strawberry.

We tend to think of strawberries as either ever bearing or June bearing, but in fact, that is like saying that tomatoes only come as determinate or indeterminate. Just as there are hundreds of tomato varieties, each with their own flavors and nuances, there are hundreds of strawberry varieties as well, each with their own personalities.

What kind mine are, I will never know as they were not kind enough to bring along their plant marker when they barged into my beds. But at least this year they have paid their rent by producing a few succulent and sweet strawberries.

It was Memorial Day weekend, which is the weekend we Americans remember those that have gone to war and we American women put our men, who are not currently at war, to work on the ever growing honeydew list. So this weekend I set my husband (and father-in-law) to removing a few oversized weeds. Namely one black walnut and one maple tree.

Many times, trees fall in the same category as deer, in that we are unnecessarily enchanted by them. When they become a nuisance, we are hesitant to remove them. They cast a tricky spell making us think that they are somehow full of more belonging than their less graceful natural brethren. Oh, look! A magical and holy tree. Bow to the tree. Bow down. Bow down.

In truth, if you willingly eliminate slug from your garden for munching on your veggies, how is a deer any different? If you rip out each end every dandelion that dares poke its head out of your lawn, then how is a 40 foot tree that shades your best vegetable plot any different?

And so, in that line of thinking, I took out two very vexing trees in my yard.

These actually were not the first trees I have removed. Considering that I have a postage stamp suburban yard, this may seem surprising. I mean, really, how many trees could be packed into that little bit of space, but that is the tricky thing about trees. They can pack themselves in like sardines before we even know it.

A 50’ pine, a 5’ plum, and several annoying very tall black walnuts have fallen in my yard in the past 7 years that I have lived here. Each planted by the owner before me and each grown beyond what a well behaved tree should be.

Trees can be damndable. You plant them in one place and a decade (or century) later, the tree has taken over the area and it is really hard move them without killing them. It is not the easiest thing in the world for a human to plan on what the world will be like a few decades down the road. At least, this is the case for me as I sometimes have the foresight of a goldfish. We depend on the tree to be well behaved and, damn it, if they are not always well behaved. It kind of reminds me of my kids…

The point is that one should not feel bad about taking out a very tall weed. A weed is a weed is a weed, no matter how freaking tall it gets.

Here is some video of my father-in-law (who helped us with felling the trees) taking some of the crown off the tree. Yes, those are live electric wires next to the tree (don’t try this at home unless you have a half crazy spousal unit and a quarter crazy father-in-law). Yes, that is my planted vegetable garden that the crown falls on. *Sigh* I only lost 3 pea plants and 1 swiss chard.

While today is rainy and chill, but there is no doubt that the planting season is in full swing. I have planted the celery, cabbage, swiss chard and cauliflower. The peas were planted too, but as they took their sweet time rising from their beds, I think they will need to be pulled and composted. Such is the life of a vegetable, mulched for laziness.

But the peas need to be pulled so that I can make room for the American Idols of my vegetable garden, the tomato. Sorry folks, no phone in on who gets voted in or out but I will share the likely candidates for Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2008. Drumroll please…

Among the nameless seedlings that I grew myself:

• Marmande
• Japanese Black Trifele
• Cosmonaut Volkov
• Homesweet
• Hillbilly
• Kimberly
• Winsall
• Green Moldovan
• Celebrity
• Wayahead
• Russian 117
• Manitoba

Hopefully, I can match the tomatoes back to the name when they grow.

I also purchased a few more from my very favorite tomato seller, Alainia (aka TomatoGirl) of http://www.tomatobabycompany.com/. Those tomatoes are:

• Bear Claw
• Believe-It-Or-Not
• German Red Strawberry
• Heinz 1439
• Omar’s Lebanese
• Chocolate Stripes
• Blue
• Noir de Crimee

All together, I will be growing 20 different tomatoes, which is a few less than last year but still a lovely number of new flavors to look forward to.

I bet you now have tomato envy. I bet you are looking down at your Better Boys and Beefmasters and wondering if there is a world beyond the Britney Spears of pop tomatoes. Disappointed because it is just too late to start tomato seeds now and your local nursery sucks like ClearChannel sucks. Well, I am here to tell you that there is and there is no reason why YOU can’t experience it. But first a segue…

Last year, I sent Alainia a packet full of the Clementine seeds from the plant I grew last year. She grew them this year, so that she could add it to her list of tomatoes she sells next year. But, she has some extras. Return to main point…

If you order some heirloom tomatoes from her, and tell her you are one of my readers, she will include a free Clementine tomato plant with your order. I am giving this recommendation without receiving anything in return. I am only making it because she is an awesome (very affordable) heirloom tomato seller and I do think that you have not had a tomato unless you have tried an off the wall heirloom tomato.

Tomatoes from the garden are not just food, the are something that should be experienced. Whether you buy from Alainia or find your own source, I urge you to try growing something a little different this year. No matter the outcome, your life and tastebuds will be a little richer for it.

49 little seedlings all in a row (well, a square), happy, growing and…nameless. Well, maybe not nameless, per se.

They started out with names. Oddball names like “Japanese Black Trifele” and “Cosmonaut Volkov”. Names that I had found amusing and, knowing my absolutely mind boggleing ability to forget everything, I had written each one down on a neat, line piece of note book paper torn from my son’s notebook.

And as I was writing down those names, I said to myself “Hanna” (and I said Hanna because sometimes in my head I am not so certain who will answer if I do not direct the comments) “Hanna, “ I said, “Get you lazy ass up and go get your laptop and type these seed names and which hole they are into a spreadsheet like you did last year. You won’t lose it.”

I was going to type it into my computer. I really was. Then my youngest son brought home a whole stack of artwork and after I had waxed on to him about his Picasso like ability to fingerpaint, I whisked the stack surreptitiously to the trash when he wasn’t looking. I am fairly certain that my seed list was at the bottom of that pile.

It just goes to show that my second grade teacher did not know what she was talking about. Being a pack rat does indeed pay off as you will never permanently lose anything if you never throw anything away. At least it was not a computer.

So now I have 49 cute but frustratingly similar seedlings glaring at me accusingly. They have no names, no identity and I fear that I will be footing the bill for 49 sessions with the tomato therapist. *sigh* Maybe they can work in group therapy in their Compact Trainer before I transplant them to their individual pots.

It is that time of year (Finally!). It is time to pull out the Tupperware container from the vegetable drawer in the refrigerator (I have two, one for seeds and one for actual vegetables) and plan what will be going into the garden this year.

Then this weekend, I am gonna get my seed starting on.

And I am going to start a whole bunch of seeds… because it is pretty much guaranteed that I will kill half of them. If I start a whole bunch, then sheer statistics say that at least a few will survive to see May.

Unfortunately, according to my handy-dandy Clyde’s Garden Planner Guide (given to me so I could take a little look-see at it) I shouldn’t be starting most of my seeds until mid-April. Eeeek! I don’t think I can wait that long. I didn’t wait that long last year. But, then again, perhaps this would explain my overwhelming ability to fail at seed starting. Maybe I am just too impatient and I am starting too early. Then my poor little seedlings, like children with helicopter parents, are just loved too long to a terrible end.

Nah, that’s bullshit. I just forget to water them or put them in bad soil. Though, if I started them later, there would be less opportunity for me to forget to water them and they might have a better chance.

Looking at the Clyde’s Garden Planner is making me just a bit depressed. It reminds me how far off Spring, Summer and garden grown tomatoes are. There is two feet of snow and I want to believe that it will all be gone by April and the world will once again be a bright and shining garden where rabbits frolic and butterflies flit happily from flower to flower singing a gay and happy song. Way too much time trapped in a house watching Disney movies. Do you see what winter is doing to me? I am turning into one of those scary people who shuffle around, talk gibberish and ask for money. Save me from a fate where I turn into a politician!

I need to start my seeds. I need gardening. I need to grow something!!!!!!!!

So I will start a few seeds this weekend. A handful. A distraction. A bit to keep me going until I can kill them and then start over right when the Garden Planner tells me too.

For the first time in my gardening life, I have managed t clean out the vegetable beds BEFORE the snow started to fall. Which leaves me with an interesting dilemma. What do I do with the beds since there are no dead plants and overly hardy weeds growing in them?

My neighbor says that I should do what she does and cover the beds with clear plastic. I am not so certain about this as I had one of my beds like this for the whole summer in an attempt to solarize the bed. I think all I managed to do was provide a decent greenhouse for super weeds like Canada Thistle and Creeping Charlie. The plastic grew brittle and broke in the sun/rain/cold/drought merry-go-round of a climate we have here.

I could just le it lay fallow. It is a time honored tradition after all. I watched for two decades as the farmers where I grew up followed a plant/fallow/till rotation year after year. But, since I went through the trouble of actually getting the beds clear, I feel like I should be doing something.

And so now I am contemplating cover crops. This fine bit of alliteration is causing more trouble than it needs to. The problem is, what exactly do I plant for a cover crop? The choices are surprisingly dizzying. Rye, winter wheat, clover, hairy vetch and dozens more are available.

The first place I need to start is nitrogen fixing vs. nitrogen using.

Legume cover crops pull nitrogen out of the air and put it into the ground. This is called nitrogen fixing. The cover crops in this group include clovers, hairy vetch, winter peas and alfalfa. These cover crops can help enrich the soil by adding nitrogen to the soil, which is a vital nutrient that plants need to grow.

Non-nitrogen fixing plants include rye, oats, winter wheat, and buck wheat. These don’t add much to the soil while they are growing but they do help to encourage good soil by preventing erosion and keeping the soil from compacting itself.

I am most interested in the nitrogen fixing kind, so I will stick with those.

Cover crops as a whole was a practice that fell out of favor with the invention of fertilizer. I don’t know if you know this, but fertilizer was literally invented because scientists feared that the planet would be unable to feed themselves based on the then current levels of nitrogen fixed in the soil. Fertilizer does put nitrogen back in the soil more quickly and less expensively than cover crops, but as I am a hobby gardener, the economic and time gains are insignificant. Not to mention that cover crops are just nicer for the environment.

Visiting one of my favorite seed purveyors, I see that in the nitrogen fixing side of cover crops they have Austrian Winter Peas, Crimson Clover, Hairy Vetch, Ladino Clover, Lespedeza and Red Clover. The more I think of it, the clover is probably a bad idea. After all, the rest of the year I consider this plant a weed in my beds and lawn. I imagine that it works like vampires. Once you invite them in, they cause all sorts of harm and won’t leave until you put a stake through their heart. And as I do not know where the heart of a clover is, best not to invite them in.

That leaves me with Austrian Winter Peas, Hairy Vetch and Lespedeza. I am intrigued by the sellers promise that Lespedeza will turn poor soil good, like some kind of cover crop evangelical minister but closer inspection shows that this cover crop does not do well in drought. Since I never know when Cleveland will decide that it is a good time to drought, I will avoid it. Hairy Vetch just sounds like something my kids will be putting on as part of a Halloween costume. So, that leaves me with Austrian Winter Peas.

So we will see how it goes. I will see if I will be contemplating cover crops again next year or not.