I have been wanting to put in a drip irrigation system in my garden for years and it is mildly ironic that I finally found a system that I could install myself in the same spring where I need a drip irrigation system like I need another hole in my head.

See, the problem was in the past that… well, I live in a not rich neighborhood. How does this relate to drip irrigation?  Because according to Home Depot and Lowe’s, people who live in not rich neighborhoods don’t buy drip irrigation systems. Of course that is not how they put it.  If you ask an associate at their stores in my (apparently) ‘hood, my local stores are “urban” stores, and therefore do not carry the same products as “suburban” stores.

I don’t know about you folks, but when I think “urban”, I kind of think of, I don’t know, tall buildings, apartment buildings or lots of multi family homes, teeny, tiny 10′X30′ yards – if there are yards at all.  My neighborhood looks a lot like their supposed “suburban” neighborhoods, only the average income is several tens of thousands less and the median skin tone several shades darker. If I am living in an urban neighborhood, then I need to have a serious conversation with my local government about the overwhelming lack of crime and graffiti – not to mention trendy art galleries, theaters and coffee shops.  But I digress, as I am wont to do.

Whatever the reasoning, they don’t sell drip irrigation supplies in my “urban” area and going out to the “suburban” areas was just going to be a hassle (after all, I don’t have the latest census data that would tell me for sure that I was going to a suburban store rather than an urban store, as you can’t tell that by looks).  I had looked online at buying it – but it looked so complicated. I didn’t know what I needed or if I could use my feeble construction skills to assemble it.

Then a few weeks ago it just so happened that I was in one of those “suburban” neighborhoods to watch a movie and stopped into the hardware store nearby to pick up supplies for my other hobby.  As I was buzzing down the aisles, I spotted something on the end cap out of the corner of my eye as I was whipping past.  I came to a hard halt and put my cart in reverse.  It was a whole display of drip irrigation supplies.  It still looked complicated, but at least there were boxes marked “starter kits” and I could eyeball if this was a job I could do (great), a job the spousal unit would have to do (requires payment in steaks and sex) or something that  I would have to hire a professional for (not gonna happen).

Then, as if the gardening gods were crying out that I must have this, a strange but helpful man appeared at my side. “New to drip irrigation, eh?”  I nodded and then was immediately deluged by a massive amount of information on drip irrigation systems.  Everything I needed to know to get started and do so cheaply. BTW, he was not an employee of the store. He was just someone THAT excited by drip irrigation. While helpful to me, I do wonder what a dinner party at his house might be like.

A half hour later, with my head spinning as it tried to process all of my new found drip irrigation knowledge, I went on my merry way confident that I would have a drip irrigation system and that it would not require lots of steak and sex to get it installed.

And now I am kicking myself that I did not do this sooner. IT IS SO EASY. You know the Tinker Toys you played with as a kid? Just like that, only for water.  Too awesome!  No more powdery mildew because I had to water from overhead.  No more leaving the sprinkler on all night and flooding my garden because I forgot I turned it on.  No more forgetting that I have not watered in a week. Done. It’s all on a timer and it all goes straight to the roots of my plants.

Now, I have time for the important things that you do in an urban neighborhood, like chase deer away from your plants and mow your lawn.

Do you know where your local extension office is? Yeah, oddly enough, neither did I. I mean, I only tell people probably a dozen times a week (in my wisest garden sage voice – which I personally think sounds something like the old guy in the funny hat that is in ALL the best anime movies – which I can think as I pretty much only give gardening advice through email – but back to the point) that they should take their soil to their local extension office and have that soil tested.

Of course, have I taken this advice? Nope. I am really bad in the “do as I say and not as I do” department. Just ask my kids, who can tell you with great accuracy how often I have had ice cream after they went to bed without any and skipped breakfast after making them eat something marginally healthy in the morning.

But this year, I decided it was high time I went and got my soil tested. So I packed up my soil and headed off to see my local friendly extension office (which was in a slightly not so friendly neighborhood). In I walked with soil sample proudly in hand, ready to make wonderful changes to the soil of my vegetable and flower beds and… the lady behind the counter quickly dashed those dreams.

“We don’t do soil tests,” she stated plainly.

What! The extension office doesn’t do soil tests! What is happening to my gardening world? I have always been told that extension offices do soil tests.

Then from behind a door appeared just about the sexiest horticulturist I have ever seen, and this includes that guy that Victory Garden brought in from down under to try to save their ratings. Being a knight in shining Dockers, he informed me that while OSU extension service does not do soil tests, he could help me fill out a form to have my soil samples tested at UMass Extension Offices. I went all giggly and weak kneed and tried to pretend that the 2 children running around the lobby were escaped urban livestock that had nothing to do with me.

I put on my best doe eyed newbie while he patiently explained how I needed to have samples for my vegetable beds tested differently than my flower beds. Feigned ignorance is always a nice way to extend a nice male watching moment. But there is only so much that one can say about soil testing and after he had said it and had handed me my form and soil samples, I reclaimed my wayward children and left the little extension office in the ‘hood.

So, my local extension office does not do soil sample tests, but there are a lot of other things a local extension office is good for. Like identifying those troublesome critters that are plaguing your garden, diagnosing and recommending solutions for whatever diseases are attacking your plants and suggesting all sorts of wonderful plants to grow in your neck of the woods (or city as the case may be).

What I can’t guarantee is that you will have a sexy hot plant guy to help you out. That is something that I have all special in my extension office and I think I will be making a lot more trips there in the future… with my, ahem, gardening questions of course.

Thanks much to Jim Thompson of the Cuyahoga County Extension Office for his help this week!

They are the stuff of legends and special interest filler news pieces. Sole survivors.  Hundreds dead, all hope lost and then there is one, who, against all odds and wills of gods, makes it through unimaginable circumstances.

I have found such a story in my garden this week. Gardeners rejoice -  a single surviving pansy was found at 10AM yesterday, the apparent sole survivor of a yearly catastrophe, commonly referred to as frost, that claims the lives of thousands of annuals .  The pansy, which is being cared for in the Hanna Plant Emergency Center appeared to be in excellent health, considering that it had successfully survived, the frost, a long, cold hard winter that had both blizzards and amazingly cold temperatures. Snowfall was recorded at up to several feet at times. Experts believe that such snowfall can insulate some hardier annuals, such as pansies, from killing cold weather and this is thought to be how the pansy survived despite being found several feet from large structures that would have protected it had it been closer.

The pansy was found growing in an abandoned flower pot in the middle of the yard. Authorities believe that the owner of the flower pot abandoned it there because she was both too lazy to clean up her garden in the fall and terribly averse to being cold.

I know we will all take a moment to smile at this little minor miracle in the aftermath of winter’s devastation and look forward to the light of a new spring ahead of us.

*While this post is tongue and cheek, there are many stories of miraculous survival and horrible destruction which happened in the recent events in Japan. If you have not already donated, I encourage you to give a little to Red Cross to help with Japan relief efforts. Any help is a great help.

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.