Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Hancock Agricultural Research Station



The Master Gardeners are having an open house (August 7, 4 to 7 P.M.) at the Hancock, WI Research Station just off I-39/51. Anyone interested in growing grapes in Wisconsin should attend. Other points of interest might be the prairie planting, soybeans, or just the multi-year test of all those fancy coneflowers that are too pricey for a typical owner to try all at one time.






They have also been demonstrating different types of gardening styles; a raised bed herb garden, square foot gardening, and different caging and netting methods.






And although this is a small garden from botanical garden comparisons, they do have a nice water feature, and an interesting display of Depression era hand farm tools and machinery, although the machinery is used in the garden bed displays as sculptural elements.




Sunday, July 29, 2012

Bountiful Garden, Yours in Exchange for a Freezer


The family garden is fulfilling its promise. My brother with his growing family (three boys three and under) and myself and Handsome Son (college-bound), and nominally my parents will all eat from its bounty. My brother has been diligent in his role of chief waterer, an important job this year, to which he has really stepped up.

I'm the grower, and I have been notably successful with everything this year except germination in the garden of spinach (but we will be having a fall crop, rest assured!).

Even with eating fresh from the garden everyday, and my canning and drying and putting up different oils, a lot of our bounty will be frozen. I have hunted recipes for edamame and amaranth. We have a juicer for the grapes. We are already out of freezer space. Time to get a second freezer.

So my brother and I have decided as the family garden is actually visible from a major highway (car count of at least 10,000 car a day, probably a LOT more) with an exit right THERE, that we should sell our bounty, picking it literally in front of our customers' eyes. We take that money and buy whatever sort of freezer we can afford. Future income a better water supply (rather than hoses from the house) and a green house (drool).

My brother, very pie-in-the-sky, decided instead of words we should paint pictures, a picture being worth a thousand words. Pictures with the crunch of a fresh cucumber, the snap of a bean, the juiciness of a tomato...

My brother is a fair artist. An oil he did of his wife hangs in her dressing room. You can see the love with which he captured her expression and you can easily see it is my sister-in-law, but...

So, "Yo!"

"You painting these pictures?" I query.

"No,...I'm just a hack... you are. You have more time."

Ugh. Thusly decided, I was given the job of painting the sign(s). Turns out we need lots of these 10" x 3' sign blanks painted with sweet corn, cukes, peppers, beans, you get the idea.

I wish I had pictures of the others. As my sister-in-law says, "they are so dang cute!"

Maybe I'll take some pictures of the others, I don't know. I spent some time working for a muralist. They are sorta cute, without faces you understand, and easily conveying at 65+ MPH that "we got some good organic tomatoes over here!"

Maybe in a different life I might have made a living doing art or writing, but do you know anyone who really makes a living from their art or words these days?


Faithful Companion, Cinnamon, gets aromatherapy from Handsome Son's athletic shoes and flip flops. She says a few minutes and all the creative impulses pass.


Fused glass buttons, pendants and a dragonfly plate I made in a fused glass class I recently took from the artist of Blessings Glassworks.


Some jewelry I made. You can probably tell I'm self-taught!



A wire-wrapped bead collection that will go into an as yet,unfinished bracelet. Someday the creative impulse will certainly pass!

So if you see the juicy tomato or crunchy cucumber sign, stop and say hi!

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Gardening Horribilis: What Not to Do in the Garden

If you are going to stake that dahlia, do it in a way when it is young that by the time it has matured the staking and caging is not visible!

"Staking, and caging and rocks, oh my!"

There were no pink flamingos or garden gnomes, at least, although once in a while the right pink flamingo staged in just the right spot does have its appeal (or maybe this small nostalgia for pink flamingos dates me to my college years on the UW-Madison campus); but on the Portage County Garden Parade there was a lot of the horrible, what not to do in a garden.

Handsome Son knew there was something wrong. Suddenly his mother was in a picture-shooting frenzy, like sharks suddenly sensing blood in the water. He gently grabbed my elbow and murmured in my ear, "TIME TO GO!" and dragged me from the garden as I hastily snapped off a last few shots.

There was a garden I visited after the organic CSA, and the gardener with the no-mow buffalo grass lawn that is the sort of garden that makes me shudder. They think they are gardeners and they will have some beautiful flowers in vases on a dining room table somewhere, but they are also the gardeners that probably add plastic cushion protectors to their couches and lamps. They'll no doubt have the "good china" they use only for special occasions. Instead of working with their site and challenges, they use elaborate caging and fencing to get their garden to do what they want it to do rather than allow it to be what it should be.

And then there are the gardens with way to much pricey statuary and elaborate fountains often in their front yards. I don't know about you, but "plastic" and "garden" seems like it should be a non sequitur.

When I first started seeing these in the garden, I looked at them with my "crow eyes" (not to be confused with crow's feet 'ya all!), and though "bright, colors, sparkly". Okay... Now I have seen so many of these, I am thinking NO! THIS is not even as funky cool as bottle trees!


Okay, it's too much statuary when I can take a picture of your fountain (in your front yard) and the cherubs, too, all without changing the zoom on my camera.


Merd, hate to tell 'ya, your secret is out. Don't label your garden circles, all your paths, and every common plant. Let your garden slowly reveal its secrets. Do label the really cool plant you received and grew from seed from a garden pal in New Zealand that is not even supposed to grow here in central Wisconsin!

PLASTIC GARDEN fences. Grr!

Inadvertent Christmas in July (it just seems a tad orange in this picture, but trust me it is full-blown CHRISTMAS in person.

What is with that high edging? Does it keep out the ground squirrels? Sock monkeys? Gumby? WHAT!


If you shell out the big bucks for a beautiful grafted dappled willow standard, at least learn how and when to prune it!

And finally, you KNOW what I think of these!

Instead, walk over to that tree look up into its leafy boughs and give it a big hug. Stand there a moment and feel its life force, and then go grab a hose and water the dang thing!


Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Portage County Garden Parade


The Portage County Master Gardeners' Garden Parade was this past Saturday. Yesterday I wrote a review of my visit to Whitefeather Organics, which for me was the highlight of the walk. Today I thought I would share some of the better ideas and things I saw at the other gardens on the walk.

This walk was filled with do's and don'ts. There were a lot of good things going on, like the no-mow lawn at one home which was a very acceptable 6 inches long and soft to walk on (unlike the crunchy grass of other garden walks this summer). I don't think it was being watered more than once a week, as it did not appear to be actively growing. This buffalo grass doesn't translate well in pictures, nor do the prairie plantings; but these other things do.

Today the do's.

Do mix it up and plant lots of different coleus in one big pot. They love company.

Do plant a bunch of mixed pastel impatients with your hosta to pull together your bedline and add color to the shade. Just be sure to water.

Do include multiple plants of the same kind planted together for impact. Better yet, make it an unusual cultivar that grows well like this echinecea 'Meringue'.

Do use materials found on site to construct your garden, like this twig arbor.

Do include a sense of whimsy. Check out this brightly painted fairy chair set on a rock in an area of shade border that is mostly green. When I happened upon it, I swear the seat was still warm!

Do understand the power of paint to electrify a space. This electric blue windmill accented a vegetable patch.

Do incorporate dried natural materials to light up a dark space. This wreath hangs in a dark porch portico, but adds a real punch to the space.

Do understand that nature landscapes best! Sometimes it is best just to leave it! There is a stream that meanders through this boggy lawn area. I have seen where homeowners installed turf grass and kept it mowed or weed-whacked right down to the edge of a stream that runs through their property. Can you really image a better view than this one?


Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Portage County Master Gardeners Garden Walk: Whitefeather Organics, LLC


I am deeply interested in organic farming practices and sustainable food. So when the Portage County Master Gardeners Garden Walk included a business, Whitefeather Organics in their gardens to visit, I was so there.

I have to hand out kudos to anyone trying to live the life, walking the talk of sustainability and organics. Farmer Tony confided to me that he is certainly not getting rich doing it, and that he works three jobs in the winter to make this work.




During my two conversations with him about his lifestyle, project, and his goals, I didn't tell him I blog about gardening, that I am the daughter of a local dairy farmer (who is far from sustainable), nor that I dabble in landscaping, native plants, and propagation. All of this does help me analyze exactly what he has going on at Whitefeather Organics.

Tony Whitefeather (Until I read his brochure I totally missed that the name of his business could be his actual name! As they have a huge mock feather at the entrance to the farm and there were numerous feathers strewn about, no doubt from the free-range white chickens, I just assumed...) and his family and business are if not off the grid, VERY close to it. They have solar panel on their barn, house, by their sand point for their greenhouse. As they have a fairly large commercial walk-in cooler, I would assume for food safety reason, they cannot be totally disconnected from the grid. Those things pull down some current, and if your are doing solar and have to make assurances of food safety, you just can't totally disconnect, not on dark, rainy days in fall, not if you are selling chicken, eggs, and pork.

Farmer Tony, as his marketing refers to him, has been part of a cadre of like-minded farm to market growers who pushed for an EBT at the Farm market at Stevens Point, WI. He has also lent his expertise to the Central Rivers Farmshed Organization. He also is not just pesticide and herbicide-free, but is running through the hoops of being certified organic.

But sustainability is much more the focus of his farm. As his marketing brochure points out, "Sustainability for the community is the goal of our farm, and we keep that in mind in every aspect from where we get our energy to how we build our buildings."

He goes on to talk about his crops and his compost, about which he waxed almost poetically about how he has pictures of the steam coming off the pile as he turns it that almost obliterate him and him tractor. When I asked him he said the temperature of his compost reaches about 160 degrees (Fahrenheit), a feat I thought nearly impossible in central Wisconsin. (Of course, this summer, that's only 60 degrees above the ambient temps!)

Of his crop practices, he says, "Crop rotation and garden separation are used to control disease and pests. For soil nutrition we use intense cover cropping, grazing, and a large farm-based compost." Even the feed he feeds to his animals is organic and locally ground.

Still, with my experienced eye, I can see Farmer Tony has his challenges each and every day.

Pretty to look at, cabbage butterflies are the parents of cabbage and broccoli worms! UGH! As his cabbage and broccoli did not appear totally overrun with the worms,he must be using Spinosad, which is certified for organic use, but which I am holding back on using.

The heat and drought are not doing Farmer Tony any favors.

One thing I noticed, with all his composting and good soil practices, his soil is very poor in regards to incorporated organic material. My sister-in-law's and my family garden is growing on my better soil, right from the get-go. Farmer Tony has been working on this soil since 2006.


One of the two herbs I could see being grown by Farmer Tony, lemon grass. Basil is the other.

Plugs for fall harvest in flats.

Basil growing in the greenhouse.

I enjoyed speaking with Farmer Tony and am rooting for him and his many endeavors.