moxiegardener.com

Over 7 feet tall!

Nothing says summer like sunflowers.  Their cheery yellowness brightens up any room.  In the garden they stand like sentinals guarding over the shorter plants.

It was getting into June by that time but I planted all four packets in a new garden at my new house.  I was rewarded with a dozen or so varieties of varying heights and colors ranging from yellow to gold to orange-rust, and even a cream colored one.

"Volunteers"

They looked specatular!

Unfortunately, the squirrels were as thrilled with the sunflowers as I was.  They used them as their squirrel-workout area and of course they ate the seeds.  I even found a severed flower head—as large as a salad plate—on the back porch one afternoon.  My hopes of saving the seeds vanished with the squirrel olympics.  The cats enjoyed watching them from the confinement of the kitchen window sills.  (Note to cat lovers:  my cats go outside but in a new house it’s best to keep them inside for a couple months after the move otherwise they try to find their old neighborhood and sometimes can’t find their way back to the new house.)

Over the winter I painstakenly chose four varieties of sunflowers in four varying heights to plant in rows stair-step fashion.  I planted them in early May (normal for Minnesota).  To my surprise, before the cultivated sunflowers came up, “volunteers” from last year came up all over the garden.  I resisted the urge to pull them out, and I’m glad I did.

The cultivated sunflowers are struggling and only a couple of them have bloomed.  On the other hand, the plants the squirrels re-seeded for me have been blooming for weeks!  Unfortunately not all of the original varieties survived, but about half a dozen different heights, shades of yellow, and flower-size did. 

The cats are too old and scared of the traffic (the new house is on a semi-busy street) to go out during the day, but come sunset they demand to be let out.  The effect this had on the squirrels did not become apparent until the sunflowers reached “squirrel-climbing” size and started to bloom.  Because of the feline presence, even though it’s during the squirrels’ normal sleeping time, the squirrels have stayed away from the sunflower garden.  They still live in the tree on the boulevard, indeed, they have built a nest there, but they stay away from my yard.

A supply of paper lunch bags has been purchased and will cover one of each type of sunflower at the end of August.  This year I’ll get some seeds to save.  The cultivated sunflowers?  If they ever bloom I’ll collect some seeds.  Stay tuned.

It always pays to defer to Mother Nature.  If I had pulled those sunflower “volunteers” (some people would call them weeds), I wouldn’t have the beautiful blooms gracing my back yard right now.

Anybody wanna trade for some sunflower seeds?

It’s high summer and wow is it hot!  Time to sit and wait, watch the garden grow, and pick, pick, pick.

In my garden, summer is my laziest time.  After a hectic spring, I can relax and enjoy the beauty.

Everything is mulched so I don’t have to weed.  Water, fertilize, and pick.  That’s what I do in summer.

Ok.  I do other things.  I usually get around to organizing my seeds.  I make sure all the envelopes are sealed and file them by planting season.  Salad and other greens, tomatoes and peppers get their own categories because I grow so many varieties of each.

I try to start some salad greens and cole crops in flats for planting out in mid to late August.  If I’m super busy with other things I’ll keep them inside under lights.  If I grow them on outside, even in the shade, they need water daily, sometimes twice.  Made that mistake before.

One of my favorite garden tools is a sharp pair of scissors.  I use them to dead head flowers, pick beans, and cut the roots off salad greens as I pick them—less dirt makes the greens easier to wash.  While you’re dead heading, don’t forget to use the scissors to cut bouquets of flowers for every room.

Cut your herbs back before they flower and dry for winter use.  They’ll have more flavor because they contain more essential oil before they flower.  Tie in bunches and hang upside down until crunchy.  Strip the leaves from the stems but don’t crush them until you use them in your recipes.  I couldn’t bear to throw away any part of my herbs and I’ve found that the stems add subtle flavor to soups and stews.  Just make sure to fish them out before serving.

Now is the time to dig out the tomato and zucchini recipes collected since last summer.  What better time to experiment with these vegetables than when there are so many of them?

I love, Love, LOVE my garden.  I could talk about it endlessly and gaze upon it for hours.  Every morning I inspect the plants, mentally comparing their size to the night before.  In spring I even use a ruler to measure their overnight growth.  (By midsummer their growth is self-evident.)

I am starting this blog to share my enthusiasm for gardening and to learn from my visitors.

Why “moxie?”  Webster’s Dictionary defines moxie as “energy, pep, knowledge, enthusiasm, courage, and determination.”  These six words encompass my gardening philosophy.

I’ll get back to energy and pep in a moment.

Knowledge refers to the ability to understand your plant’s needs.  Meeting those needs gives you a return on your investment a thousandfold, be it in bloom or in produce.

Enthusiasm is what we all have for gardening or we wouldn’t be here on this blog.

Courage means we aren’t afraid to take a risk.  We’ll plant that untried specimen, try out that just-discovered pest deterrent, or eat that unfamiliar vegetable we grew because we couldn’t resist planting it.

Determination is what makes us, for example, cover up the pole beans with buckets every night and uncover them every morning for a month until they grew enough to climb the poles, out of reach of the rabbit that insisted on eating them.  Sure, I could have put up a fence or covered them with fancy row covers, but that just wasn’t in the budget this year.  My beans will come later than usual, but my determination rescued them from not bearing at all.

Energy and pep are part of the dictionary’s definition of moxie and truly belong in my philosophy of gardening.  If we are to succeed in bringing forth a crop we must expend energy to achieve that.  However, my energy is expended primarily in spring preparing and improving the soil and applying an effective mulch.  This gives the plants a rich fertile soil in which to grow, retains moisture and checks the growth of weeds.  Expend energy in spring and indulge in laziness all summer!

As for pep, it is defined, among other things, as initiative.  What gardener lacks that?