Organic or not organic, I’m asking myself again. In the beginning of the season I was all excited to do a full organic approach. While our neighbors were dumping tons of chemistry on their land and laughing at this naive beginner, I was full of happy thoughts for my crops. Our lawn is not perfect but we love it. Our back lawn is meadowy and we love it. The neighbors do not like it, they look at it and say the weeds must go. I tried to explain my approach and why I try to plant heirloom and not some fake and over-bred hybrids, I have explained that the little flowers and volunteer plants in the lawns are not bad. It is all about biodiversity which will promote the natural balance which will help me grow organic. That was until now.

I have to say the weather was not merciful to me. It was constantly raining and then it heated up and then raining and hot again. Now it is hot and raining every second night. The days are extremely humid. I have to say neighbors warned me ! Your crops will be eaten by mold and fungi ! They were right. My tomatoes are rotten one after another. And when there is a little chance that they could start to recover, the rain comes again. Plenty of strawbs and beans were victims too. Bye bye beans, bye bye tomatoes.

I was warned also about the Colorado Potato Beetle. There is a great poison against them. I did not use it. I went organic. I picked them and smashed them. Until now. They finished my eggplants. Bye Bye eggplant.

The humid air also managed to wipe out my grapes. I have a small vineyard with 400 roots /vines/. Organic. And without yield.Our house has a view to some micro-vineyards, and all we can hear is the engine of sprayers. After each rain the farmers go and spray. I did not.

So what is next? What a hell should I do? Should I start to use chemicals? That helps. Maybe. I have to say I am damn tempted ! The season is not over. Lets see what is going to happen with my apples and pears, are they going to be the next victims of pests and diseases? Ahhh…bye bye Braeburns and Buy bye Fuji?

I am tempted to leave the organic approach but I will not. I am really sorry for my crop and next year I have to think of something to protect it in an organic way. I can buy non-organic produce in the shop so I do not need to grow it. I have two small humans at home who will benefit from this, and maybe one day they will have great memories. The veggies and fruits which survived gave us plenty of pleasure and we knew what are we eating. We had great peas, awesome corn, and we still have some tomatoes /the Black Cherry is a tough guy/, okra / I realized I do not like it/, one or two eggplants, plenty of strawbs, some blueberries, some peaches, some nashi pears, red and black currants, jostas /not that yummy/, raspberries and many other things. The damage was big but we still got plenty of stuff. So all in all nature gave us something and we were happy about it.

The other reason why I will not give up is that in the area where we have the vineyard we purchased a small cottage with overgrown wines and few fruit trees. This is a really neglected area. i love it, because it is meadow and trees. Unfortunately the land has no official ownership papers /something which was left over from the Communist times/, so we did not invest in it. We left it as it is and we just go there to harvest plums, cherries, strawbs, almonds, walnuts etc. There were also some really neglected grapes. I have trimmed them just to practice the grape trimming. They grow among weeds, were never sprayed, I did not touch them since the trimming and they look much better then my cultivated grapes or even the neighbors sprayed grapes. Generally plums had also a hard year but not on this spot.  This gives me hope that organic make sense and once biodiversity and biobalance is reached everything will be ok.

I love to do gardening stuff with my son. He is very clever and helps a lot; he also provides some surprises, like when corn appears among your lettuce. Despite some problems /picking green blueberries, stepping on young plants/ gardening with 2-3 year old humans can be fun.  It is a whole new world for them, they have fun /and you too/and they learn a lot. So what my son like to do:

Sowing seeds: Plenty of fun. Planting is plenty of fun. I did it with him when we were sowing tomatoes: filling the pots with soil, making holes, putting in them little seeds and the watering them.  Any  2 and 1/2 year old can do that. Then you can just sit back and supervise. Well, maybe not, but it is a great fun for them. I got plenty of seeds this year so I let my  son plant a few pots on his own. I thought, a few seeds lost, no problem. Well, he did well and his tomato plants are now taller than he is .

Planting seeds and bulbs: This was another happy activity. In the autumn /he was a bit more then 2 years old/ we planted some flower bulbs. I made the holes and he decided which bulbs to put where. In the spring we were enjoying the beautiful view to our flower garden.  After the tomato success we planted some lettuce, peas and later corn. It was plenty of fun and he enjoyed watching them grow. He is especially excited about the corn. It is true that after planting you have to thin the plants a bit /extra work/, but it is worth for the enjoyment and learning excercise for your kid.

Planting seedlings: This activity is a bit tricky, because you have to be careful to not destroy the young and tender plant. Well this was partly successful and he did not even enjoy it that much.

Watering: Watering is always fun. It is true that you have to make sure that your plants get also some water. Most of it ends up on you and on your child. Refreshing and fun.

Harvest: The most exciting thing to do. Finally you can pick and eat things to put them into your tummy. We bought him a little tractor with a trailer and he takes his picking jobs very seriously. When we were harvesting cherries he picked them and then he dumped them into the trailer. Then I had to pull the tractor, trailer, him and the cherries into the house, where I made jam. While pitting the cherries I was closely monitored and criticized by him. Maybe not so much fun for you but a lot for your offspring. We harvested peas, currants, strawberries, grapes and many more.  Usually they end up in his tummy and harvest lasts until the tummy is full. But that is ok.

You can do many more things in the garden with your little one. Here are some basic tips to make your kid enjoy the joint projects.

- Do let him/her experience the whole thing, do not worry about the possible damage. If any it will small. The reward of happiness in their eyes is much more.

- Make the joint gardening about your kid. Everything will take 3x as long and maybe the things will be not perfect. That’s ok.

- Explain and show very slowly and clearly. Show only the basics. do not overcomplicate.

- Make sure your kid wears the right kind of protection especially against the strong sun.

- Make sure he or she does not eat the soil.

I will try to write more about our joint projects. I hope in 2 years my daughter will join us. Have fun with your kids in the garden.

We renovated our house about a year ago. The intense work left us with plenty of rubbish. I tend to live the philosophy “one day I will need that”. This does not pay of all the time, but sometimes yes. One of the treasures we have are our bricks. They were made sometime in the beginning of the 20th century and they have a nice stamp of the local brick factory. I use them for flower beds and other small constructions in the garden /we even sold some in the local antique shop for $12 each… wow…expensive flower beds huh?/. In the spring my son and I decided to give a new home to our toad friends. Until now they have resided in my cellar. I tolerated them because they did not touch my wine. But you know, sometimes you just get jumpy when you see a jumping small thing in the dark cellar.

Toads are great helpers in the garden because they eat a lot of nasty garden enemies, including human enemies like mosquitoes and flies. Therefore to attract them is a good idea. Toads like shade, a moist place to hide, soft sandy soil to borrow when it is dry outside. On a paper we drew the plan for the toad residence. No building permission was needed so we started. On a sandy hill we flattened out the area. We used some side roof tiles as a residence. Around the residence we built a bed, filled it wit soil and we planted strawberries. The residence is done. We don’t know if there are some toads but we have seen a lizard running around. We can’t discriminate! Lizards are equally welcome.

The truth is that during this project my son let me down. He refused to do the physical work and decided to boss me around. Ahhhh…..kids.

This is another crazy project. I am always impressed when I flip a garden magazine and a veggie garden is arranged like a flower garden. Everything is neat and compliments each other. I wanted something similar but I decided to test it on small scale. In a pot.

I chose three different varieties of tomatoes, different shapes, sizes and colors. All of them are heirloom /in EU I am committing a crime now, because we have a list of approved varieties… what rubbish !/. I chose  the big red “Cherokee Purple”, small yellow pear-shaped “Ildi” and tiny red “Christmas grapes”. I sowed the seeds and replanted the seedlings into a 25l /cca 5-6 gallon/ pot. I am watering them regularly.

Nobody believed it would be possible, but a few weeks passed and they are doing OK. We already have some green tomatoes and plenty of flowers, and we’re waiting for them to get ripe and make a beautiful show and lecso /Hungarian ratatouille/.

Some closeups of the developing tomatoes:

UPDATE 2008 July 29 : RESULTS

It seems the crazy project is a success. I got three tomato varieties in one pot. It was a very wet year and plenty of my tomatoes were victims of rot. These survived /small leaf damage as you can see/. The tomatoes tasted magnificent. I can recommend this experiment to everyone. What would I do differently? Since I mainly started the project for show - three different colors, shapes and sizes - next time I will pick tomatoes which ripen at the same time. The Cherokee Purple tomato is still green and needs some time, but it is doing ok. So I can conclude the project is  a success.

It is hard to be organic in a country where spraying is a spring and autumn ritual. My neighbors spend more money on chemicals than on food. Plenty of farmers went out of business claiming that chemicals became so expensive that it is not worth growing crops, and I do not blame them. The literature and all the available press is all about chemicals. If you have a problem treat it with XYZ /carefully kills everything including your pets/ And if you want to organic use sulfate /what a relief/. Nobody talks about biodiversity, improving your environment to the level that your plants will take care of themselves. I have to say I am not a crazy pro-organic freak. I just use common sense. I want to know what I am eating, what I am breathing in when walking in the garden and how to make my garden need less maintenance.

So what is better for a busy gardener? Well I would say go organic. Initially it is more work, but when the system is set and you will be happy. But do not think about organic as a one treatment for a concrete problem. Organic for a busy gardener means setting up a system where nature takes its course. Yes, you still have to weed and yes you still have to prune and you still have to take care of your veggies. But if the system is right and in balance and your minds is set to “natural” mode you will have much less work to do. The part where I say set your mind in the “natural” mode is very important. What do I mean?

1 . Nothing is perfect in nature. Do not expect it from your plants. Do look at them and admire them as they are. Find the beauty in their imperfections (some of us already did in heirloom tomatoes - aren’t they beautiful because they are imperfect?). I am sure your also have some imperfect parts, scars, your nose is bigger then you want, there is dirt under your fingernails, you have a hole in your sock etc. So do not expect the plant to be perfect. Just flow with nature and admire as it is.

2. Share with nature. I do not mind to share with nature. If the birds eat 20% of my cherries there is still plenty left for me. If some of the apples are nibbled by worms I can still have some. Of course there are cases when all of your apples get “infected”, all of your blueberries end up in the hungry birds’ stomachs. Well, the question is if you need to plant more crops to share with nature or set the right natural balance. But learn to share with nature.

3. Sometimes you can try anything but certain plants will be attacked by pests, or will just die on you. Yes you can use spray and try to save it, but the question is if it can be saved. It is extra work and you have to repeat it over and over and over. From the stand point of a busy gardener I do not have the time and mood to do it. If I am really determined to make it happen then I try to pick more resistant varieties or I try to do use the Soviet WWII strategy. I plant plenty of plants and hope some of them survive and get adapted to my garden. These days I am crazy about persimmons so that’s exactly what I did /I will blog about it/. I bought 300 seeds and will do the “hurraaaa” attack on my garden. I just want persimmons! But if you do not have time or that plant is not vital for your life just give up. Plant things that are happy as they are and they do not need you constant attention.

So from a busy gardener standpoint organic way is the way to go. Once the natural balance is set everything takes it course naturally. But do not forget about to set your brain in “natural” mindset. Do not seek perfection, garden is a living thing not a carpet or piece of furniture.

What an idea, right! Strawberries are a very popular and healthy treat to grow. The ones from your garden will taste superior to the ones from supermarket. They are relatively easy to grow. They are a big part of our gardening history. Because of their health benefits they were used not only as a treat but also as a medicine. They are full of vitamin C, amino acids, folic acid, vitamin B65, potassium and other good things. An hey, no fat, low calories ! The sweetness of strawberries /which btw by biological sense are not berries, but enlarged ends of the plant’s stamen/ is innocent.

In our climate /Central Europe USDA zone 7/ you can plant them in spring or in the late summer. I am trying to plant some alpine strawberries from seed. It takes a long time until they start to germinate and grow. I germinated them sometime in February and the plants just started to grow more intensively. In the spring I also purchased some “frigo” plants /refrigerated strawberry plant hearts/. When I have received them I got scared because it was just roots and a tiny top part, nothing else . Three days after planting you could notice first leaves emerging and then BOOOM! Unstoppable development lead to plenty yummy strawbs. Cool.

Strawberries will need some fertile soil and watering especially during flowering. I fertilize them with comfrey tea and I will put some compost to the soil next spring. They do not like weeds, so time to time get rid of weeds. They like sun /not the alpine strawberries/, and they love when you will tell them a little story about a tiny small strawberry who grew big and was so pretty and so sweet that a good gardener decided to rescue it from the attachment to the plant / you stop there, you don’t want to scare your strawberries/.

What kind of strawberries can you purchase:

June Bearing strawberries produce a single, large crop per year during a 2 - 3 week period in the spring. June bearers are the traditionally grown plants, producing a single flush of flowers and many runners. They are classified into early, mid-season and late varieties. The largest fruits are generally from June bearing varieties.

Everbearing strawberries produce two to three harvests of fruit intermittently during the spring, summer and fall.

Everbearing plants do not send out many runners.

Day Neutral strawberries will produce fruit throughout the growing season. These strawberries also produce few runners. Everbearing and day neutral strawberries are great when space is limited, but the fruits are usually somewhat smaller than June bearers.

There are tons of varieties on the market. Do not believe the catalogue description. Experiment, try it yourself. For example I bought some Mara de Bois the “…ultimate gourmet experience” and also Honeoye the very hardy and high yielding strawberry. Well Honeoye was really hardy and did great and also outperformed Mara de Bois in flavor. I think it all comes to your personal taste.

Do not miss strawberries in your garden or even you can grow them on your balcony. It is worth it !

Wow, things got a bit out of hand. Everything is happening so fast! I made these pictures just a week ago and they seem out of date already. This is a small walk through the garden. I hope you enjoy.

In the front i planted some poppies. I bought them on ebay and the “guy” claimed that these are California poppies in different colors. Hmmm… California poppies are light orange I thought…Well maybe not. He was right! Just look at these colors and patterns.

One word. WOW.

Last year I bought around 30-40 different plants and bushes. They came all at once, so some of them got mixed up or I forgot what they were. This is one of the examples: last year we had only foliage and were wondering what the heck is this bush? This year it revealed itself. It is jasmine!

Last year I fell in love with clematis. They come in a huge range of colors, shapes, smells. They are just great! My colleague knew about my obsession with clematis and also about wild flowers. Wild flowers+clematis=wild clematis. It is a great plant. Although very sensitive to fungal diseases.

This is another wild clematis from the hills of Transylvania /Romania

My wife’s favorite, peony. We have a few bushes whcih we got from my dad. Seems I planted them too deep, because this was the only flower. but there is always next year.