Dryden Is Home

2008 Gardening Season

I started the 2008 garden season on Saturday, May 3rd with some red cabbage, green cabbage, broccoli, and basil (thanks Priscilla). I also planted a few rows of beets (thanks James).

This afternoon I stopped by Besemer Hill Greenhouses, located just about a 1/2 mile away (see photo above) and picked up some lettuce starts, tomatoes, gerbera daisies, and some herbs. Besemer Hill Greenhouse helped me a lot in the 2007 season.

They are located at 63 Besemer Hill Road (in the Town of Dryden), though like me, they have an Ithaca mailing address. The are open everyday except Sunday and are open until 6pm everyday (except Saturday, when they close at 5pm). Visit, look, shop. http://bhgreenhouse.com/index.php

Local Fruits and Vegetables

Local Fruits and Vegetables
Originally uploaded by dmakar

Take a look at this picture - all of this food was picked locally in the last few days. If you are interested in local eating - fellow Dryden resident Simon St. Laurent is blogging about eating locally on his "Living in Dryden" blog: http://simonstl.com/dryden/

The six zucchini squash came out of my own garden. It has been producing about 2 squash of "ready to eat" size for about 10 days. So I'm giving away as much as I can and there is still a lot left for me. If you are interested, let me know and I'll put some aside for you.

The yellow "summer" or "golden bush" squash is also from my garden. They haven't been quite as fruitful in number as the zucchini.

The other two yellow squash are pattypan and papaya. These are heirloom or antique varities that my neighbor Melissa brought over recently to share. We're getting together late Friday afternoon to do some more garden trades. She blogs about gardening and life here in the Besemer Flats at: http://melissagarrett.wordpress.com and http://littlewoolgatherings.blogspot.com

The blueberries came from my neighbor Kim in exchange for two smaller sized zucchini. This was an awesome trade!

I picked up the five peaches for $3.50 at a roadside stand on Thomas Road (about 2.5 miles southeast of my house). I ate one already. Sweet, juicy, yummy. I have no idea is $0.70 for a peach is a good deal financially, but the taste buds were overjoyed. My mouth is literally watering as I write this paragraph. I think they were picked today.

The pear is also from Kim (like I said it was an awesome trade).

The tomato is from my garden. Currently there are about 50 green tomatoes out there. One turns red each day. It is a good start.

The cucumbers are from Arjan's trip to Earthly Mirth, a farm on Banks Road in Caroline - just a 1 mile bike ride away from our house. On Fridays she volunteers at the farm and gets to take home some fresh picked produce for the week. This is also a good deal if you have the time.

Time to go check on dinner! Zucchini again!

A Pair of Mystery Squash

A Pair of Mystery Squash
Originally uploaded by dmakar

I'm not sure what these are - I planted a packet of mixed squash and these appeared. Any ideas? There are a few other pictures of these from different angles. They are about the size of a football.

Broccoli

Broccoli
Originally uploaded by dmakar

This is the broccoli collection I've been growing. I put in 6 hills with 6-8 seeds per hill. A lot of them came up. Now I have these broccoli plants, but like the cauliflower, there are no flower buds. Any ideas? The next picture in the collection has an overhead view.

Cauliflower Pair

Cauliflower Pair
Originally uploaded by dmakar

These are my two cauliflower plants. They've been growing steadily (here's them on July 1st) since I planted them in late June.

I'm not sure of what I'm supposed to do next to get them to produce heads of cauliflower. Any experts out there?

The Garden Today

The Garden Today
Originally uploaded by dmakar

Here is the garden about 7 weeks later! Everything I planted came up and is doing really well! I have a mystery squash I can't identify and I need some help with my broccoli and cauliflower. Can you help?

The Garden Review

The Garden
Originally uploaded by dmakar

I went out to the gardne briefly today to take a handful of pictures. This picture is from June 14th.

Carrots

Carrots
Originally uploaded by dmakar

I thinned out the carrots yesterday afternoon in an attempt to get fewer large carrots instead of more baby carrots. This picture is pre-thinning. It was sad to see so many of the carrots go away. Perhaps next year I'll make the rows a little longer or different.

I was reading my Burpee book on gardening and it said to mix your carrot seeds 60:40 with fine stone pellets. This will allow you to pinch the seeds and put them in rows, but not over seed the lines.

Maybe next year or if I do a second carrot planting in August.

Vegetables to see in the flickr set:
Carrots
Arugula
Mustard Greens
Beets
Broccoli
Tomatoes (4 varities)
Peppers (3 varieties)
Peas
Cauliflower
Mesclun Greens
Bird House Gourds
Hot and Spicy Peppers
Squash (5-6 varities)

Should make for a good harvest in 6-10 weeks. View them all here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmakar/sets/72157600605590696/

Checking In

Blog readers from Freeville to Florida to Folsom (Hi Tamie, Hi Mom, Hi Roger) have checked in with me for more updates than the blog is providing. I'm going to try to blog each morning before getting into the work day. If there's something going on that you'd like to hear more about, let me know.

I'll start with a picture from March 23rd - 10 days ago. The snow was melting like crazy on Thursday and I made a pair of snowmen. On Friday I took another yard picture that goes along with the set of house pictures I've been taking for the last two and a half years.

Finally, on a gardening note, Matt Cooper from the Dryden Courier interviewed me on March 23rd for an article that appeared in the March 28th issue about Gardening and Blogging. I submitted the following picture that ran with the article.

Simon blogged about it here:

In the Home Garden section, Cooper talks with Dryden Town Board Member David Makar about his gardening and his blogging about his garden. He got started cheaply, paid attention to the plants but didn't devote his life to them, and got a sizable return for his efforts. He also notes fellow Board Member Mary Ann Sumner's blogging and my own efforts.

I tried to steer Matt in the direction of my neighbor Melissa's blog, as well as Mary Ann's blog - they both blog about gardening. Melissa: http://littlewoolgatherings.blogspot.com/, Mary Ann: http://fivewells.blogspot.com/

The article did encourage me to start planning for the 2007 season and over breakfast on Monday Arjan and I discussed fruits, vegetables and flowers for the yard and garden for this summer. I spent about an hour Saturday cultivating wild blackberries (can you cultivate something that is wild?) and cleaning up part of the yard that had a lot of uncontrolled brambles.

Media Day - Garden Day

The watermelon I picked about a week ago or so - just before the front. The carrots (two varieties) and the rainbow Swiss chard I picked Thursday, October 26th in the early afternoon. I cleaned everything up and sliced open the watermelon and grabbed my camera.

This year's harvest wasn't quite as bountiful as last years, though now I've found a good combination of things that I like to eat and things that can grow here at Kennedy-Nixon. Next year will be a good year for the garden, I can already tell.

Sometime after November 8th I will pull apart what's left of this year's garden and put down some garlic and perhaps some other roots.

Between the campaign, the job and the business networking group I had very little time this fall for the garden. Things seemed to do okay and I am happy with the results so far of all the autumn ventures.

Today was definitely campaign media day - I talked to Dave Vieser from WHCU briefly and scheduled a on-air interview for 7:45am on Monday (AM 850 here in Ithaca, no online broadcast available). Next up was a candidate questionaire from the Dryden Courier (published every Wednesday). Then a brief phone call and headshot request from the Cortland Standard. Next week you'll also see an article and 250 word comment in the Ithaca Journal, an interview in Tompkins Weekly and a paid advertisement in the Shopper of Freeville.