This summer I’ve grown to realize that I enjoy taking things out of my garden just as much—or maybe even more—than I do planting. Must be my editorial training, or perhaps it’s just a love of a quick, dramatic change.

Make tomato sauce and buy a chest freezer.

But tonight, for dinner, the first B.L.T. of the season. My favorite sandwich, and one I don’t even bother with unless I make my own, with homegrown ingredients. Tomato juice ran down my arms as my eyes filled with tears of bliss. If this sandwich were my last meal, I would die a happy woman.

I had a lightbulb moment today when I realized that there was a way I could use my chickens to control insects in the garden…without sacrificing my plants or produce. I’ve been wanting to let the pest-eating power of my chickens loose in the garden, with hopes that they would attack the harlequin bugs on my kale, and the Mexican bean beetles on my beans. But, of course, when I let the flock in for a trial run they went right to my ripest tomatoes and dug in. They got a few good mouthfuls before I chased them out, and on their way they scratched the heck out of some smaller plants.

I’ve read that some people use bantams (mini chickens) in their gardens to limit the destruction from scratching, and yet other people suggest that Silkie chickens, which have feathered feet, are gentler as they scratch. I’m lacking in the bantam and Silkie departments, but I do have some very mini chickens of my own—the chicks! I knew that with their tiny size they’d be gentler on the plants than the full-grown birds, and being growing babies their appetites just don’t end.

Of course I’d still have to keep the chicks, and their mother, away from the tomatoes. I erected a hasty barricade from a couple of pieces of chicken wire held to the garden posts with zip ties, and then went to fetch my arsenal from the broody coop in the garage.

Dahlia’s relief was palpable when I released her into the fenced-off garden section. After a month and a half of living in small coops, and with half a dozen busy babies, I could tell she was dying for some room to stretch her wings. She scratched in the straw, and then lay down to luxuriate in the cool soil with the hot sun on her wings. Two of her chicks immediately imitated her basking behavior, which almost made me fall over from the cuteness.

Dahlia and her six chicks spent about eight hours in the garden today. Each time I checked on them they were busy scratching and searching for bugs, sticking close to Mom. They spent a long time under the pest-infested kale, which was great to see. The rest of the flock even came around for introductions, which I hope will help ease things when these babies need to join the adults. After only raising chicks in brooders, it’s a real treat to see natural chicken rearing in action.

Around sundown it was time to collect the family to return them to the safety of the garage for night. Now this was a hilarous undertaking. I am glad that the only creature around to witness was my dog, and he didn’t judge. I prowled amongst the vegetation, grabbing chicks. I put the chicks in to a five-gallon bucket to carry them back to the garage, but of course they’re now big enough that they easily fly up to the lip of the bucket and jump out. Each time I’d catch and add a chick, one would fly out and go running for its mother. It was a ridiculous chick chase, soundtracked by Dahlia clucking in concern as each baby was lifted airborne.

Eventually I got all the babies corralled and Dahlia tucked under my arm for our journey home. An ungraceful ending notwithstanding, I think it was a good day out of the chicks, and a big help for the garden.

I picked my first full-size tomatoes last Thursday. Winning the race were heirloom Mr. Stripey, the yellow below, and hybrid New Girl, the large red. Of course, the yellow cherry Sun Sugar has been producing for a couple of weeks already, as has Black Cherry. This is a great year to test Sun Sugar as a replacement for last year’s Sun Gold, which split too much for my liking. Even with rainfall running 200% of normal for July, the Sun Sugars are not yet splitting and I find the taste just as good.

To celebrate these first tomatoes I had a few friends over for pizza and caprese salad made with fresh mozzarella and garden basil. Delicious!

Last week’s heat wave seems to have taken its toll on the the fruiting of some tomatoes. When the temperature and humidity levels get too high, tomatoes will flower but fail to set fruit because their pollen becomes unviable. Some heirlooms are particularly susceptible to this. Here’s a good example, in Mr. Stripey, which developed a massive cluster of fruit near the soil but now has very few developing tomatoes further up the stem and evidence of lots of unpollinated blossoms.

Plants may resume fruiting when temperatures drop, as long as they haven’t first succumbed to disease. I’m happy that signs of blight are still very minimal in my tomatoes, which is a good accomplishment with all the rain, heat and humidity we’ve had. And thus far I have used no chemical controls, just proper nutrition and garden hygiene.

The “Glass Gem” corn is now taller than I and just beautiful. All this rain has created a great year to trial corn for the first time. And I am definitely seeing the benefits of all the soil building I have done during the last three years. Thus far the insect pest load seems lighter than in years’ past, which is a good indication that the plants are healthy enough to defend themselves. Running the chickens in the garden during the winter probably helped too, as they no doubt ate up overwintering eggs and larvae.

I had a moment of sheer joy the other day when I went to transplant a dahlia into the veg garden. My shovel blade sank all the way into the soil without any effort from me. This is nothing short of a miracle given the solid, almost impenetrable clay soil I began with. Now if only the soil in the ornamental garden around the house was in such good shape. I still need a pickax to plant in it, and my plants suffer for it.

Corn and beans and cosmos

Several of the dahlias are now blooming. Starting them in March really gave me a huge jump on the season, and I think the second-year tubers are also quicker to get out of the ground than first-year tubers. Makes sense. When I dug some of my first-year tubers last fall, what began as a piece the size of my thumb had, in some cases, become a clump so large I needed two hands to hold it. All that stored energy has got to go somewhere, and thus the big, early plants I am seeing this year.

I love being able to have beautiful cut flowers whenever I want them. It’s one of the best things about summer.

Finally, I am starting to see progress with the plantings around the front of the garden, where I haven’t developed the soil. I stuck some lavender in there last year. It’s horrible soil for lavender, straight clay that holds water all the time. I lost several lavender plants over winter to these poor growing conditions, but a few came back and have bloomed. In the holes made by the dead laveneder I planted some of last year’s bee balm, just chunks I hacked off a main plant that overwintered in a bucket behind the shed with no love from me. Well, each hunk has turned into a good-sized plant and they’re blooming. Everything planted out here needs to be unpalatable to deer and attract more pollinators. I definitely am on the right path now with the lavender, bee balm, and a bit of cat mint. Soon the sunflowers planted within the garden, just in front of the tomatoes, will bloom and join the party.

We’ve had an unusual, for here, weather pattern during the last few weeks. It’s been raining almost every day, and the air is humid soup. All growing things look great, lush and happy to have all this moisture during a time when we are usually headed into summer drought. I haven’t had to water the garden once in at least a month, and most everything looks very good.

This year I am experimenting with letting some things go to seed. Chard, with its yellow feathery seedheads below, is a biennial. I planted these last year, overwintered them in pots, and now they’re in the garden working on setting seed. It’s a sacrifice to devote square footage to plants that are going to seed, but I am curious to see if I can begin to be less dependent on store-bought seed. I hope that certain things, most especially greens and lettuces, will start self-sowing in the garden, which means less for me to buy, plan and plant each year. And, once plants take control of their own growth cycles, instead of relying on a fallible gardener to tell them when to grow, they usually are much happier and healthier.

No Fourth of July ripe to tomatoes for me, but the plants are full of green fruit.

The Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes are just starting to ripen.

The only downside to all the rain is that it creates good conditions for diseases such a blight and fungus. You can see the beginnings of some blight at the base of this tomato in the yellowing, withered leaves with dark necrotic spots. Nothing to do but remove the affected leaves from the garden to help slow the spread. Some people use chemical sprays to control disease, but they’re an absolute last resort for me and I haven’t used them yet in this garden. Compared with some of my gardening friends, whose tomato plants are already halfway yellow, I am doing okay. I think my planting and mulching practices are paying off.

I ripped out the pea vines, which were done for the year, and planted some rattlesnake beans in their place to grow up the trellis. I have never grown these particular beans, but I hear they are pretty great. The big green plant to the right is a volunteer shiso, a wonderfully fragranced Asian culinary herb. I have no idea where the shiso came from—perhaps a neighbor—but it pops up all over my property. When I finally recognized what it was, I let it grow out everywhere as an ornamental.

I think it’s a very beautiful plant that seems to glow from within with a spiritual energy, similar to borage. It’s used in Japanese cuisine for all sorts of things. For example, the red shiso is used to make umeboshi, or pickled plums.

The volunteer vine that I thought was a squash turned out to be a pumpkin! Whoops! I had to cut this pumpkin off before it took down my fence. This plant may not be long for the world anyway as it appears the squash bugs have now discovered it.

I am drowning in cucumbers. Which is kind of fun as I am on a quest to find the best refrigerator pickle recipe. Any suggestions?

And, because it seems that cucumbers in my garden come on strong before petering out, I started a few more plants up the other former pea trellis. I planted some fun ones I haven’t grown before including an Armenian, lemon, and just another regular old bush cucumber for backup.

The only sweet peas to bloom from the dozens of started seeds. I think the trick to sweet peas is to plant them in the fall. Pretty pathetic. I will try that this year, as this is one flower I’d like to master.

The Japanese beetles have arrived. They aren’t too bad yet, but maybe that’s because everyone I see gets a quick thumbnail through the thorax just before its tossed to a mob of chickens.

Up next, part two of the early July vegetable garden tour…

We’ve had a nice, relatively cool spring with lots of rain, and the gardens are happy. Here’s what’s been happening in the beds closest to the house in the last couple of weeks. Those huge Muppet-looking Scotch broom plants to the right are slated for removal as soon as I can get a backhoe to the house. I tried to dig them out by hand, but no luck. They grew way too large for their space, and though they have lovely blooms in the spring, they are taking up real estate that is too valuable for what they offer.

The purple irises of May have been succeeded by beautiful red lilies. This colony has grown from just a couple of bulbs, and I love their look and position in the garden. I am happy with this view, below, in June. I like the pop of color from the lilies, how they pick up the color of my front door, and how they nestle between the Blue Atlas Cedar and the ‘Karl Foerster ‘ reed grass. Iceberg roses bloom at the foot of the lilies, and the red of lily blooms picks up the blush tints in the albelia ‘Rose Creek’ (at bottom left). A lot of neat textures happening in this view, and good structure.

Moving across the front of the house, I also like this little view. Of course I love my ‘Pat Austin’ rose, which has brilliantly responded to a rather harsh 18″ pruning done in April. She’s blooming full steam ahead, but needed some company to make her peachy orange blooms less lonely. So I added a few yarrows: ‘Pineapple Mango,’ which has coral orange blooms, and ‘Anthea,’ a nice, antique-looking yellow. When they fill out they will lend some more visual weight to this orange/coral theme I have going in this area.

Here’s ‘Pat Austin’ again with the yellow yarrow in the background. I placed it right in front of my ‘Black Lace’ elderberry so that the blooms will really pop against the dark background. I like the way it wakes up the beautiful elderberry, which despite amazing color and foliage has a tendency to recede into shadow…the bane of most dark-foliaged plants.

From dark foliage we move on the dark flowers. Black, in fact! True black flowers are pretty rare, so I was immediately smitten when I found this viola, ‘Black Out.’ There was hardly anything online about it, but I did read somewhere that it’s a 2013 introduction. And I found it, of all places, at a big-box store that starts with a “w.”

Lots of people love pansies in the garden, but if you don’t mind their smaller blooms, violas are a better investment. Violas are perennials, pansies aren’t. Pansies give up the ghost as soon as it gets warm, and some violas will keep blooming through summer. And they self-seed. That said, there is still a place for pansies. I kept a container of beautiful pansies alive on my front porch from last fall all through this May. Despite being frozen into popsicles several times, they just kept flowering. To have outdoor blooms in deep winter is a real treat!

Just last week I noticed my new violas were crawling with these spikey orange and black caterpillars. They were gorgeous. I figured they were something special, instead of the usual destructive pest, so I left them alone. A quick internet search identified them as Variegated Fritillary (Euptoieta claudia) caterpillars. Turns out that violas are host plants for these beautiful butterflies—bonus!

Over on the right side of the porch is my problem spot. This area lacks structure and needs a larger bush or small tree to anchor it. I have pulled out a couple of Iceberg roses from this area, to make a spot for said new addition. Now I just need to figure out what to put there.

I also have too much going on with the colors, so I am trying to edit that out to a coral/red/orange scheme to pick up some things on the left side of the house. That’s a tall order for someone who likes most all colors, but I will try.

Above, a clematis climbs a homemade support, with a ‘Cinco de Mayo’ rose at its feet.

My oakleaf hydrangeas are growing nicely. The plan is that they will soften this front corner of the house with three-season interest. They’re one of my favorite plants, and I like how they look with the variegated euphorbia planted between them. May have to work that in somewhere else too.

Finally, the newest section of garden. This is the side that runs along the east side of the house. In addition to a bunch of hydrangeas, I have viburnums, peonies, Solomon’s Seal, and some other random things in there. New additions are in the foreground, above, brunnera ‘Jack Frost.’ A totally gorgeous plant that since planting doesn’t seem too thrilled. Though it’s labeled for shade/part-shade, I think this side of the house really isn’t as shady as I originally thought it was! I hope these brunneras make it, as they are magical-looking and gorgeous, and they have small blue blooms in spring.

So that’s how the garden is shaping up as we head into summer. Now that it is three years old, I am really starting to see certain things fill in and to identify problems in other areas. As always, the garden is a work in progress and a learning experience. One can never be bored making a garden—it’s a lifetime aesthetic and intellectual challenge.

We now move in to the tomato patch, a topic deserving of its own post.

This year I got most of my seedlings from the Piedmont Master Gardener’s Plant Sale. I bought a bunch of heirlooms, including:

Constoluto Genovese
Black Cherry
Ponderosa Red
Orange Oxheart
Mr. Stripey (the only tomato of these I’ve grown before, and a favorite)
Mortgage Lifter
Green Zebra
Amish Paste
Sun Sugar (a deviation from last year’s Sun Gold, which though delicious split too much for my liking)
Abraham Lincoln

I chose these heirlooms because for the past few years I have grown mostly big-box store hybrids, and I haven’t been wowed by their taste. So this is an attempt at a fantastic tomato even though I know I am running the risk that these less-disease resistant varieties might be struck down before bearing fruit. But I also hedged my bets a bit by planting two hybrids: New Girl and Big Beef.

The worst day of spring gardening is the day I put in the tomato stakes. These are heavy eight-foot fencing posts. Installing each means I climb on a ladder and balance, trying not to tip forward and impale myself while using a sledgehammer to drive each post in the ground. This year, as usual, I ended up with a black-and-blue left hand—the victim of each missed strike. And there are many while sledgehammering at the top of a ladder.

But once the stakes were in, and after a few days of recovery, comes one of the best spring gardening days: planting the tomatoes. I did every thing I could to give my plants the best possible start, including amending each planting hole with two gallons of home made compost, a tip I picked up from this Mother Earth News article:

Unless you planted some vetch in early fall, simply mix about two gallons of compost into each planting hole. In a tomato trial at Iowa State University, compost increased overall yields by 40 percent, while early yields shot up by more than 200 percent.

I searched for but wasn’t able to find the cited Iowa State study. I went ahead with the advice anyway as an experiment.

The plants had grown so leggy that some of them got as much as a foot of stem buried during planting.

The buried stems grow roots and help anchor the plant more firmly in the ground. But don’t try this with just any plant—burying most plants this deep will mean certain death (for the plant!)

After each plant was tucked deep in its compost nest I circled each stem with aluminum foil, as I always do to ward off cutworm damage. It was cold and all the plants looked peaked as they transitioned to full-sun and through transplant shock. I realized they weren’t well hardened off, and so I shaded them with boxes and gave them extra water. Then I went to the beach for eight days and worried about them all the while. But when I came back it looked like most had taken hold and were doing well. The only one that looked poor was Green Zebra, and that’s my fault for breaking its rootball while planting it. I kept it in the ground and stuck the Big Beef in next to it.

And now they’re all doing great and we’ve transitioned into the normal maintenance routine which means pinching out suckers and tying each vine to the post as it grows. Most plants have already set flowers, which is a sign that their compost beds aren’t too rich for their liking—a good thing.

I remain hyper-aware to signs of disease, and have taken a few steps to help prevent it. After the soil warmed up, I heavily mulched around each plant with straw. This keeps soil from splashing on the plant leaves when it rains, and cuts down on disease transmission from soil-borne pathogens. I have also removed any lower leaves that touch the soil with the same idea in mind. It’s a hard call to make, as those leaves shade the stem during the hottest part of summer, but any way to keep the dirt off the leaves helps reduce infections.

With all this preparation, and a hefty dose of luck, I hope to have a few good tomatoes this year. Stay tuned!

I know I am way overdue with a vegetable garden update. In fact, I haven’t even posted much of anything about the veg garden this whole spring, even though I started working in there in March. The ensuing three months were taken up with gardening, not writing about gardening, so that means we will just jump right into a lush summer garden and skip all the photos of bare spring dirt.

Starting in the foreground of the shot above, I have various lettuces and flowering arugula growing around the sugar snap pea. supports. Then, up the right side of the path are a row of zinnias, the peas, flowering radishes, Red Russian kale, Lucullus Swiss Chard, some dill, and the entry path. Then come some Dragon’s Tongue beans, then my patch of 11 tomatoes underplanted with various basils, a row of mixed wax, green and purple beans, and finally my Glass Gem corn. Up along the fence on the right side are sunflower and cosmos seedlings, and tucked here and there are tomotillos, hyacinth beans, poppies, and a volunteer squash.

Up the left side of the path are, out of view of this photo, sweet peas at the fence, Victoria rhubarb, another row of zinnias, more sweet peast, radishes, then overwintered spinach that’s about to be ripped out and replanted, cilantro, parsley, borage, thyme, a row of red Swiss Chard, overwintered bok choy and yellow chard, blueberries, strawberries, then a row of mustard, followed by rows of arugula and mache. Then some rogue ruffled kale seedlings, and about eight pepper plants. After that we get into the dahlia forest, interplanted with rows of zinnias, followed by the cucumber trellis, a squash, then even more dahlias, nasturtium seedlings, and my mint patch. Whew!

Let’s get closer. Up above are the various greens. The blue flowering plants are borage, and the mustard is blooming yellow. The radishes on the left have beutiful light pink flowers, and they’ve made “radish beans.”

These radish seed pods are actually more delicious, to me, than the radishes. I am glad I let this crop go to seed and discovered a new treat.

From the top: Peas, radishes, Red Russian Kale, Lucullus Swiss Chard

I find Red Russian kale to be one of the most beautiful plants I grow. Every thing about it, from the shape of the leaves to their color, pleases me. Last year my first seeding was preyed on by some sort of stink bug, but this year that bug has held off long enough for me to get a few leaves of my own. I suspect that it will only be a matter of time until the kale falls victim to some other bug, though. Such is the nature of (my) organic garden.

The snow peas are finally coming on. I am puzzled by snowpeas. The seed packets say to sow here in February or March. Well, February just seemed brutal to try to get something to grow, so I waited and sowed in March. It was a month before seedlings emerged. I didn’t get a great germination rate (they were old seeds), so I interplanted with new seedlings in April. These newer plants quickly caught up to the earlier-seeded siblings, just as of of my favorite gardening books said they would. I think this spring’s weather, which has alternated between highs in the mid-90s and being downright chilly, has the peas in a tizzy. I’ll be lucky to get a few delicious handfuls, and that will be it before I rip them out to plant something else. Central VA just doesn’t have the climate for growing these cool-season crops.

Up next: the rest of the garden…

Despite how it looks, this story doesn’t have a Disney ending. Stop reading now if topics such as the natural order, predation, working farm dogs, and death are ones you’d rather not read about right now.

For the last week or so the garden around my house has been plagued by a nocturnal visitor. Every young and vulnerable plant fell victim, including new seedlings of rare, mail-ordered zinnias, the newest shoots of dozens of star gladiolus that were just emerging, small bedding coleus, and young red chard transplants that I’d been watering three times a day to get them to take—basically everything I’d lined up to provide summer interest in my garden. As any gardener knows, there is nothing more disheartening than to spend money and time fussing over young plants just to come out each morning find them eaten to the nub.

Because of the pattern of damage, I suspected a rabbit. My suspicion grew Wednesday morning when Tucker went nuts in the front garden, trying to climb inside some of the larger shrubs. I knew he was in pursuit of something, but I feared that in his frenzy I’d lose even more plants. So I called him off and kept him inside.

That night, however, he was outside with me and spent hours working something near the corner of the well house. Around sunset I went outside and found the scene above. There was no going back—the rabbit had already sustained significant damage.

I like this photo below because it reminds me of all those classic paintings of working dogs with their quarry: the labs with their ducks, spaniels with grouse and pheasant, hounds with deer and boar and bear, and terriers with ground-dwelling varmints.

Because I think it is important to reward Tucker for this hunting behavior, which is exactly the kind I want him to exhibit. So I praised him and left him with his kill. And he was oh, so proud. When I went to collect him for bed, at almost 10:00 p.m., he was crunching the last of the bones.

Yes, the rabbit was adorable and I think they are lovely creatures. I enjoy seeing them in the fields ands try my best to not hit them when they dart in front of my car. But this rabbit picked the wrong salad bar, and I am proud that I have an English Shepherd that is pulling his weight around the farm as a working dog as well as a pampered pet. Like all the happiest dogs, he has a job and it is a joy to see him able to fulfill his nature in such a helpful way.