Stepping up our deer game

Two weeks ago, Brian discovered that a deer had yet again invaded our garden. Somehow, it managed to get into the backyard and through our string deer fence without snapping a single line, whereupon it proceeded to wreak havoc among our beans, peas, and even tomatoes. This brought our snap pea harvest to a premature end, and we knew we'd have to, in his words, "step up our deer game" if we wanted to save any of the beans.

Since time was of the essence, we decided to do this with the quickest and easiest method available: adding a layer of deer netting over our existing string fence. Brian initially hoped we could do this job, or at least part of it, with the extra netting we had stored in the shed. But when we went out into the yard and attempted to wrestle this stuff into place over the posts, it stretched less than halfway around the garden enclosure and gave out in a gap between two posts. Clearly, we wouldn't be able to tackle this project without buying some more materials.

First, we went to Ocean State Job Lot and paid $8 for six more of the 7-foot poles we'd used to construct our current deer fence. These don't quite reach the 8-foot height that most experts say is necessary to block out a determined deer, but even if we could have found longer poles, we wouldn't have been able to haul them home in our little Honda Fit. We'd have had to rent a truck, adding an extra layer of planning to a project we needed to get done now. And as Brian pointed out, deer don't get into our yard all that often, so this fence doesn't have to be truly deer-proof. Like his bike lock, it just has to be good enough to deter casual thieves.

Our next stop was Home Depot, where we shelled out another $26.65 for a 100-foot roll of 5-foot-wide deer netting. This was actually a bit bigger than we would have preferred, since the gap between the ends of the posts and the top of our groundhog fence is only around 3 feet. We had a bit of discussion over whether to let the extra netting hang inside the garden enclosure or outside, so it would drape over the protruding "baffle" of the groundhog fence. I was in favor of leaving it inside, which would probably be easier and look neater. But Brian pointed out that the posts holding up the deer fence aren't precisely aligned with the shape of the garden enclosure. When we put them up, we'd set the ones on the far side about eight inches in from the corner of the groundhog fence so that the lines wouldn't obstruct our clothesline. So if we draped the netting inside those lines now, it would leave a gap on that side that he feared an enterprising deer might exploit. I wasn't quite sure how a full-grown deer could squeeze into such a small space, but I figured it couldn't hurt to do it his way.

To get the netting into place, we worked in tandem. I stood outside the garden enclosure holding the big roll of netting, and Brian stood inside hauling the netting up and over the posts and fishing line. We worked our way slowly around the fence line with me spooling out the netting and him fastening it to the posts and the line with a series of little twist ties. The hardest part of this job was keeping track of the edge of the netting, which kept tangling up and clinging to itself like Velcro. But eventually, inch by inch, we struggled and sweated and swore our way all the way around the outside, from the front corner back to the far edge of the gate. Then Brian took two of the new posts we'd just bought and affixed them to the gate itself, weaving them through the wire lattice to hold them in place. Draping the netting over these two new posts extended its protection all the way around the enclosure while still allowing us to open and close the gate.

That took care of the garden enclosure itself, but Brian wanted to add an extra layer of protection. He figured the deer were most likely getting into the back yard by jumping over the gate in the side yard, since it's the only spot that offers a straight shot to the yard from the street. So, to reinforce this area, he took the other four stakes, draped them with netting, and wove them into the chain-link fence, just as he'd done with the garden gate. With about 6 feet of the posts sticking up above the existing 4-foot fence, this new structure stands well above 8 feet, so we can hope it will be enough to prevent deer from hopping into our yard by this route. And if they somehow manage to get in from the back or from one of our neighbors' yards, we'll have the string-and-net fence around the garden enclosure as a fail-safe.

This netting contraption isn't an elegant solution, nor a permanent one. The plastic netting will eventually break down with exposure to the sun, if the deer and other wildlife don't chew through it first. At some point, we'll probably replace it with a post-and-wire fence: 8-foot metal posts all around the garden enclosure, wrapped in multiple rows of wire. This design is like our original fishing-line fence, but taller and more durable. But we're hoping our quick-and-dirty mesh barrier will at least keep the deer out long enough for us to harvest what's left of this season's crops.

Gardeners' Holidays 2026: First Fruits

June is the month when our garden really hits its stride. It's the last hurrah of the arugula before it bolts in the summer heat, but our all-season lettuce is still going full blast, giving us enough leaves for salads with every meal if we want them. We just harvested our first full meal's worth of snap peas, and we've already started gathering dill for pickles (though with store-bought cucumbers, as ours aren't producing yet. By the time they are, the dill will be all bolted. A bit of poor planning on Mother Nature's part). Our honeyberry bushes are yielding about a half cup of berries every day, and we've just started gleaning the first early raspberries and a few little strawberries.

Unfortunately, it looks like all this production may soon be cut short—literally. 

Just a couple of days ago, Brian came in from the garden and declared grimly, "We're going to have to step up our deer game." As the deer in our area have grown more numerous, they've also grown more rapacious, and apparently our makeshift deer fence is no longer enough to deter them. The latest intruder had eaten the tops of all our pea and bean plants, a few tomato vines, and even one leaf off a prickly zucchini plant. Strangely, it had left almost everything within three feet of ground level untouched, so we still have plenty of lettuce and herbs. Even the arugula, which has almost all flowered by now and would have been no loss, was unscathed. But this damage (accompanied by a pile of deer scat that clearly identified the culprit) was a clear warning sign that we'd need to take more drastic measures to guard the rest of the crops.

Unfortunately, when it comes to deer, that's easier said than done. They can easily jump over anything under eight feet tall, and while a shorter fence can deter them if it's completely solid, that would also block sunlight out of the garden, defeating the purpose. Of all the ideas in this article, the only one that seems practical is to augment our existing groundhog-proof fence with eight-foot poles, then wrap the whole construction in deer netting. Unfortunately, this would also make it difficult for us to get in, as we'd have to duck under the netting to get through the garden gate. We might try to leave that area net-free and instead add some tall spikes to the top of the gate itself. These would (we hope) deter the deer while still allowing us to open the gate.

In preparation for this project, Brian has pruned away the lower branches of the big evergreen at the corner of the garden, which were thick enough to be entangling the existing fence. The next step is to take an inventory of our existing supplies and see if we have enough netting to go all the way around the garden. If we do, we can just try attaching it to the poles forming our current deer fence and see if that's enough to support it. If not, we'll have to buy more.

I'll keep you posted here to let you know how the construction of the fence goes and whether it succeeds in keeping out the intruders. Until then, we'll just do our best to keep our eyes open and be prepared to go chase away deer as needed. And we'll also focus on enjoying the produce we still have while we have it, for tomorrow it may be deer food.

Honeyberry netting 2.0 (and a new honeyberry treat)

Last week, we discovered that the honeyberries on our bushes were just starting to get a little bit of color. They weren't ripe yet, but we knew our backyard birds wouldn't wait until they were to start helping themselves. If we wanted to save the berries for human consumption, we'd have to get our honeyberry netting tents up pronto.

This year, however, Brian wanted to try to improve on our original teepee design. Rather than covering each bush separately, he wanted to put up three frames—one at each end, plus an extra one for support in the middle—and cover the entire row with one giant piece of netting. This way, we'd be able to duck under the netting and work our way along the row, picking berries off each bush in turn, rather than wriggling into and out of the tents one at a time. He also believed it would be easier to set up one big tent than to put up and take down a bunch of individual frames and cover each one. I was a bit more skeptical, since I feared one big piece of netting would be more unwieldy to work with than several small ones. But since he was the one doing most of the work, I figured it couldn't hurt to try it his way.

Fortunately, we didn't have to buy any new materials for this project. We already had a big roll of bird netting that we'd scavenged off the curb on bulk trash day, and we had the six lengths of PVC pipe that we'd used to make our two original berry tents. To make the third frame for the middle, Brian dug into his stash and pulled out the narrower PVC pipe that we'd used for our very first garden trellis before figuring out we needed something sturdier. For nearly 20 years, he'd been holding on to this just in case we could use it one day, and now that day had come.

Brian then did a little experimenting to figure out the best way to arrange the pipe frames for his new design. He set up the first frame in roughly the same place it would go to cover just the one bush at the near end of the row, but skewed a bit more toward the outside and with the front legs a bit closer together. This made the whole frame taller to create as much vertical space as possible under the netting. He set up the second frame in a mirrored position at the other end of the row. Then he played around with the pieces of narrower pipe to figure out the best arrangement for the central trellis before cutting them to size. As he'd done with the first set of trellises, he drilled holes in the ends of the pipes to thread the string through, making it easier to tie them together.

Then came the tricky part: deploying the netting. We got out the big roll and worked in tandem to unspool it, with me in charge of holding the loose end down while he rolled it out across the yard in front of the bushes. When he'd unrolled enough to cover the entire row, we picked up the loose end and draped it over the trellis at the near end, making sure it reached all the way to the ground on all sides with room to spare. Then I held that piece in place while Brian lifted the unrolled netting over the middle trellis and finally over the end one, all while it remained attached to the roll. Only when we had the whole thing in place and were sure it reached down to the ground on both ends did he cut it off. Because the bird netting was only 7 feet wide, it took two lengths of it to cover the row of frames fully: one for the rear side, one for the front. We clipped the two pieces together with binder clips to make sure they wouldn't separate and leave a gap in the middle.

Next we needed a way to secure the netting in place. With the mini-tents, we'd simply draped the netting over each set of poles and held it down with rocks, but for this big tent, we wanted something to hold it in place at the top of each frame so it wouldn't sag too much. I suggested rubber bands, and as it happened, Brian had a whole bunch of them out in the shed that he'd recently discovered just sitting in our back yard near the fence. (His best guess was that some critter had dragged them in there and left them, though he had no idea why.) They turned out not to be very good rubber bands, as several of them broke while we were trying to wrap them over the ends of the poles, but eventually we managed to get one in place on the top of each frame.

That took care of the top of the frames, but we still needed something to hold the netting down at ground level. In fact, we got a vivid demonstration of why this was necessary, as two birds managed to get under the netting during the brief time it was unsecured and were flapping around in a panic trying to escape. After shooing them out, we made sure they wouldn't get back in by covering the netting with rocks. Luckily, we had plenty of these, because we'd hauled away several buckets that my parents didn't want during my Mother's Day patio cleanup. They even gave us several slate flagstones they were no longer using, allowing Brian to replace the one he'd scavenged from his backyard rain channel to repair the damaged path in our front yard. On the western end of the honeyberry hedge, we tucked the edge of the netting under these slate pavers to secure it; on the north side, Brian shoved it under the big concrete blocks lining the fence. Along the other two sides, we used the biggest rocks out of the collection we'd hauled home from my parents' place, one every 8 inches or so. 

This new, all-in-one honeyberry tent is a bit harder to get into than the old, individual tents. Since it's all one big piece of netting with no openings, you have to remove all the rocks along a stretch about eight feet long to give you enough slack in the net to squeeze under. But once you're in, you can move about pretty freely, crawling from bush to bush to harvest from each of them in turn. Occasionally one of the binder clips will come loose if you jostle around too much under there, but it's easy to clip it back on after you exit. Eventually, we'd like to replace this array  with some sort of more permanent structure that will require less setup work each year and be easier on our aging backs and knees. But on the whole, this design is probably a bit easier to set up and use than the single-bush teepees, and it won't take up much more room in the shed during the off-season.

Safe under their new protective cover, the honeyberries are ripening rapidly. Most of the ones nearest the house have turned a lovely deep blue, and we've already gathered about a cup of fully ripe ones. To celebrate the harvest, Brian decided to try something new: honeyberry ice cream. Here's his improvised recipe:

Mash 1/2 cup honeyberries with 3 Tbsp sugar and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Let it sit awhile to get juicy. Add 2 Tbsp soy milk and mix thoroughly. Stir together with 1/2 cup Country Crock Dairy-Free Whipping Cream (our current favorite now that Trader Joe's vegan whipping cream has been discontinued) and chill for several hours. Churn it to soft-serve consistency in an ice cream maker and transfer to the freezer to set fully. 

The finished product has a vivid pink color and a powerful fruity flavor—a bit too powerful for Brian's taste, in fact. He's thinking of reducing the amount of fruit next time and possibly increasing the amount of vanilla to counterbalance the acidity of the berries. But speaking for myself, I think it's lovely just the way it is.

Gardeners' Holidays 2026: Spring Planting

Once again, this blog entry has been slightly delayed due to a very busy weekend. From Friday through Sunday, we had not one but two RPG sessions and not one, not two, but three dance gigs. So it wasn't until today that we had a couple of free hours to take care of our big spring planting: peppers, tomatoes, climbing beans, bush beans, cucumbers, basil, and dill.

We ran into an unexpected challenge with the Climbing French beans. This is a variety we can't get from our normal seed supplier, so we save and dry some of the beans from each harvest to plant the following year. Unfortunately, when Brian opened up the jar in which he'd been storing last year's beans, he discovered they'd grown some kind of fuzzy mold in storage. It was only on the surface, but we still weren't sure how it would affect their viability. Fortunately, we still had some dried beans left from our 2024 crop, so to be on the safe side, we planted one of the old beans next to each of the newer, fuzzier ones. If we end up with too many plants as a result, we can always thin them.

We also decided, on the fly, to shake up the way we plant our dill. We don't use very much of it, so in previous years, we've set aside a single square for it in the garden. Not only does this create an awkward little asymmetry in our garden plan, it doesn't do much good, since the dill almost never comes in where we actually planted it. Instead, we get little rogue plants popping up all over the bed, as you can see here. To get around this problem, this year we intended to put in the dill toward the north edge of one of the large blocks set aside for zucchini. The zucchini plants, though large and sprawling, never actually fill this entire block; they tend to stretch themselves out southward, toward the sunlight. So we thought we could easily tuck the dill in next to one without impinging on it.

However, as Brian was transplanting the pepper seedlings, he had a better idea. Last year, we started doubling up our pepper plants, putting two into each four-square block. To give each plant as much room to spread as possible, Brian puts them in diagonally across the block rather than side by side. This leaves a little gap in the corner of each bed where a dill plant could probably nestle quite comfortably in the shade of the nearby peppers. So instead of planting all our dill in one square, I dropped a few seeds into each of these little corner spaces. If they all come up, that'll give us three dill plants, which should be more than enough for our modest, mostly pickle-oriented needs.

As we were getting these crops into the ground, we discovered that we might have a whole new crop to look forward to this year. Eleven years after we first planted our hardy kiwi vines, we finally have flowers on both the male and female plants. The female vine first flowered in 2020, and we initially hoped that the male would follow a year or two after. But sadly, before it ever got the chance, it was brutally murdered by the landscapers who work at the apartment building behind our house. (Brian had caught them snipping at the kiwis before, so he'd put up a sign on the fence reading "This is a plant, not a weed. Please do not cut it!" in both English and Spanish. But apparently the landscapers either couldn't read either language or couldn't be bothered to try, because not long after, we saw them stick their shears right through the fence, onto our property, and cut off the male plant at the root.) 

So, two years ago, we put in a new male plant (and protected it with a layer of hardware cloth behind the fence, too narrow for the gardeners to stick their shears through). And today, that new male plant flowered for the first time. The male and female vines are pretty closely intertwined, so I had to check carefully to confirm that these flowers were on the male and not a stray branch of the female. But I traced the vine all the way down to the base and confirmed these flowers definitely belong to the male. So, if nothing else goes wrong, we might finally have some berries to harvest in late summer or early fall. Of course, there are never any guarantees in gardening, so I'm not counting my kiwis before they're hatched. But at least there's a chance, which is more than we've had for the last eleven years.

Our new asparagus bed

First of all, I apologize for being a bit late with this week's blog entry. But as you'll soon see, there's a good reason for it. 

For several years, our asparagus crop has been steadily shrinking. In fact, checking over my posts, I see that it's been ten years since we last celebrated the May 1 Gardeners' Holiday as the Age of Asparagus, largely because there just hasn't been enough asparagus to celebrate. For the past couple of years, we've harvested barely enough for one meal. And so far this year, we've had no spears at all big enough to pick. Our mature plants have produced only tiny, spindly fronds, and as far as we can tell, none of the ten new asparagus crowns we added to the bed last year have put up any shoots at all.

In light of this, I suggested maybe we it was time to do what we considered doing last year: dig up the entire asparagus bed and start over from scratch. Brian agreed that might be a good idea, but he wondered whether we should consider starting over in a different location. In the first place, our current asparagus patch had never been all that productive, and in the second place, it was likely to get torn up at some spot to put in the condenser for a heat pump system when we finally got around to installing one. So if we had to put in a whole new bed, why not put it in a new location where we'd know it wouldn't be disturbed?

Well, it was a nice idea in theory, but there was one obvious problem: asparagus likes a well-drained, even sandy soil. The current asparagus bed has the only soil on our property with even a little bit of sand in it. If the asparagus plants didn't like that, they'd really hate the heavy clay in the rest of our yard. The only way around this that we could think of would be to build a raised bed and fill it with a more asparagus-friendly soil mixture.

I knew this was possible, because I'd recently seen a GrowVeg video that discussed the advantages of planting asparagus in raised beds. However, it didn't go into much detail about how to construct one. Digging a little deeper, I found this article at Garden Betty, which talked more about how to build the bed and how to plant and tend the asparagus for optimal growth. (One thing it recommended was a phosphorus-rich organic fertilizer, something we'd never used on our current asparagus patch, which might explain its lackluster production.) But it also called attention to one key point: asparagus crowns are only available for sale in stores for a short period in the springtime. So, if we really wanted to do this, we'd have to do it as soon as possible.

Since I already had my monthly Citizens' Climate Lobby meeting to attend in Somerville on Saturday, we decided to combine that trip with a visit to the Belle Mead Co-Op for asparagus crowns and bulk soil. That gave us just a few days to plan out the location and design for the new raised bed. We decided the best spot for it would be the area in front of the shed, which is relatively level and gets sunlight for most of the day. In that location, we'd have room for a 4-foot square bed without blocking off our access to the shed, the main garden, or the cherry bushes. After a little tinkering, Brian determined that he could build a 4-foot square frame roughly 17 inches deep entirely out of reclaimed materials: two large boards we'd recently scavenged off the curb and a bunch of narrower pieces trimmed off from the stack of wood pallets stored in the shed. He started constructing it on Friday and had it finished by Saturday morning, just in time for our trip to the Co-Op. 

We'd already called the Co-Op ahead of time and found that they had several varieties of asparagus in stock, including the highly recommended Jersey Knight and Millennium varieties. We planned to get one 10-pack of each, allowing us to plant eight of each variety in our 4-by-4 bed with a few to spare. When we got there, we found that there were two different bundles of Millennium crowns available: one-year old crowns for $10 or two-year-old ones for $20. We decided to spend the extra $10 in hopes that we'd be able to harvest at least a little asparagus from our new bed next year. 

Next on our shopping list was soil. Garden Betty recommended using a "well-draining soil" and amending it with 2 inches of "well-aged compost." To simplify things, we opted for the Co-Op's blended topsoil, which has compost and sand already mixed in. The Co-Op's website suggested amending this mixture for raised beds with a bagged product called Bumper Crop, so we added a couple of bags of that to our order, along with one bag of an organic fertilizer called Bulb-Tone that Garden Betty recommended. The total came to $129, probably the most we'd spent on any garden project since we bought our fruit trees 13 years ago, but like them, this is a long-term investment.

Loading the half-yard of topsoil we'd purchased was a lot more work than we expected. We've bought bulk compost and mulch from the Co-Op enough times to have the drill pretty well down: Dump out our half-yard into our two big trash barrels, muscle those into the car, then shovel up the rest into bags and load those. But the topsoil was much denser than either mulch or compost, and the filled barrels were far too heavy for us to lift or even drag. We had to shovel about half the dirt out of them before we could get them into the car, and even then it took all our combined strength. And although we filled the bags only about halfway full, they were still too heavy for me to lift more than an inch or two. Brian had to heave them all into the car, and then, with still more difficulty, heave them back out again. To haul them down to the back yard, we dragged out the wheelbarrow and the ramp we hadn't used since our patio project in 2013, but even hefting the bags up into the wheelbarrow was a challenge. By the time we'd finished shifting everything, we didn't have the energy to do more than change clothes, eat supper, and collapse on the couch to watch Critical Role.

On Sunday afternoon, we began preparing the bed for planting. First, we toted the frame Brian had built down to the spot we'd picked for it in the yard (popping one side loose in the process, which he had to reattach). We carefully adjusted it until we were satisfied, then set a brick at each corner to marked out its exact position. After that, we moved the frame out of the way so Brian could go all the way around the edges of the square with our King of Spades, cutting a line to mark the boundaries of the new bed. He then used the same tool to score horizontal and vertical lines across the bed, dividing the sod into squares. We removed these squares one at a time, whacking each one with a trowel to shake the clods of dirt loose from the grass roots so none of it would go to waste before dumping the grass into a bucket bound for the compost bin. 

When all the sod had been turfed up, we shifted the frame back into place. It wasn't quite level, so we scooted it over just a bit and Brian dug the hole a bit deeper along one edge to get it situated securely. Then he made one more adjustment to the frame: stapling a layer of cardboard to the inside so that none of our precious soil would escape through the cracks. On this cardboard layer, he used a Sharpie to mark three lines at the center of each side of the bed, at 8, 5, and 2 inches below the top edge. The first mark showed the level to which we'd need to fill the bed before placing the crowns; the second showed the level to which we should pile additional dirt on top of them; and the third showed how much more dirt we'd need to add later in the season, once the spears had started to sprout. The remaining two inches would be for a layer of mulch on top to protect the plants during the winter. He also marked off one-foot lengths along the top edges of the bed as a guide to help us place the asparagus crowns.

That, once again, proved to be all the work we could handle for one day, so it wasn't until this morning that we started actually filling up the beds (which is also why this blog entry was delayed). Since we weren't sure our half-yard of soil would be quite enough to fill them to the level needed, we started by adding a layer of sticks, as recommended in this other GrowVeg video. Aside from adding bulk, they'll help the soil in the bed drain more easily, and they'll break down over time to release their nutrients into the soil. On top of that, we began adding the actual dirt—first shoveling it out of the big bins until they were light enough to tip out, then dumping in about five bags' worth on top of that until we'd nearly reached the first mark. Then we dumped in one of the two bags of Bumper Crop and, following the instructions on the package, worked it into the soil to a depth of about six inches.

Once we'd reached this point, we were ready to start the actual planting. First, on Garden Betty's advice, we soaked the asparagus crowns in a bucket of water for about 15 minutes to rehydrate them. While they were soaking, we opened up the package of Bulb-Tone, sprinkled three cups of it across the soil surface, and lightly worked it in with our fingers. Then we carefully laid out the asparagus crowns according to Brian's guidelines, one per square foot, with the two-year-old Millennium crowns toward the front of the bed and the younger Jersey Knight crowns in back. 

Finally, we topped up the bed to Brian's second level marker with a mixture of soil and some more of the Bumper Crop and gave the freshly planted asparagus a good watering. Our sources said it would need 1 to 2 inches of water every week for its first couple of years, which Brian worked out to be 10 to 20 gallons—about five full watering cans' worth. However, we found the soil was looking pretty well saturated after three cans full, so we decided to leave it at that and top it off later.

After learning how much water the plants would need, Brian decided to add one more thing to the new asparagus patch: a rain gauge. The standard design for this is simply a plastic bottle with the top cut off and inverted to funnel rainwater into the opening, with lines marked on the outside to show how many inches of rain you've had. Sources like Wikihow suggest adding pebbles to the bottom to keep it from tipping over, but Brian decided to get a little fancier and use some of the colorful marbles we'd both saved from our childhood. He did a little measuring to figure out how much water the marbles would displace and adjusted the marks on the side accordingly. The new rain gauge now sits on a corner of the bed, so we can see at a glance how much water the plants have had and calculate how much they still need.

Although it was a lot of work, I'm extremely pleased with our new asparagus bed. I like the fact that Brian built it himself. I like the fact that he used only salvaged materials. I like the fact that we assembled it together (even if he did most of the literal heavy lifting). And I like the fact that, having planted it once, we can expect to continue harvesting asparagus from it from the next 15 to 20 years. Granted, at around $3 per pound for in-season asparagus, it will need to produce 43 pounds to pay for all the material that went into it, but that's less than three ounces per plant per year. I think we can hope to at least break even, and one thing we can be sure of is that any asparagus we do get will be far fresher than anything we could buy at the store. And if asparagus proves to be one of the commodities that skyrockets in price due to tariffs or global instability, we'll be at least somewhat insulated from the shock.

Gardeners' Holidays 2026: First Sowing (and accidental First Picking)

Spring is officially here, with weather to match: sunshine and highs in the 60s yesterday and today. And with the arrival of spring comes the planting of the peas, our first crop of the year to be sown directly into the soil. But before we could put the peas in the ground, we had to prepare the ground to receive them. When we put the garden to bed last December, we didn't really bother pulling out all the remnants of last year's crops: roots left in the dirt, stems clinging to the trellises, and leaves scattered across the surface of the beds. All that had to be removed to make room for this year's crops, along with the few early weeds that had already started to sprout.

As we worked, we made a few discoveries—some pleasant, some less so. One of the pleasant ones was that our efforts last year to add more organic matter to the beds have already made a noticeable difference. The soil we pulled debris out of was dark, rich, and crumbly, not dense and compacted like it was the year before, and it filled the beds nearly to the top. There was barely enough room to add one bucket of our homemade compost to each bed without overflowing the edges. And when I poked my finger into the dirt to plant the seeds, it went in easily to the second knuckle.

But while the soil looked highly satisfactory, the light level did not. It was nearly noon when we started working, and roughly half the garden was still in shade. Most of this, as best we could tell, was coming from the one large tree in our yard, a scrubby cedar growing at the back right corner of the garden area. It's not clear whether we can legally remove this tree; if its trunk is more than 6 inches in diameter, we can't take it down without a permit from the borough (and if we did, we'd be required to replace it with another tree somewhere on the property, which would be difficult to accommodate). But we can certainly limb it up—that is, cut off the lower branches, some of which are not merely shading but physically impinging on the garden area. Doing that will give the garden a bit more sunlight and, we hope, improve the yields from the nearby beds.

Another pleasant discovery we made was that some of our crops from last year had overwintered. We found a few scattered scallions, some undersized leeks, and a few tiny heads of lettuce and arugula poking up through the soil. Since most of the spaces occupied by these crops won't need to have anything else planted in them for another month or so, we decided to leave them there and see if they get big enough to harvest. At least, that was the plan. Unfortunately, I got a little too aggressive with the stirrup hoe and accidentally uprooted one of the wee bunches of arugula. So, rather than let it go to waste, we cleaned it off and added it to last night's salad. 

Thus, this spring Gardeners' Holiday turned out to be not just a celebration of our first sowing of the year, but our first picking, too. I'm choosing to take that as an auspicious sign that our 2026 garden is going to produce early and often.

Gardeners' Holidays 2026: Seedfest

Well, there's no chance this year of a groundhog predicting an early spring. New Jersey is currently sitting under a foot of snow, none of which is melting in the sub-freezing temperatures we've been decidedly not enjoying all week. And apparently, this weather system is just getting warmed up (or more accurately, chilled down). It looks like New Jersey will escape any further snow, but we're being warned to expect wind-chill temperatures down to 12 below as January rolls into February. (Ironically, global warming is almost certainly to blame for this, as increased warming toward the poles is throwing the jet stream out of whack and pushing all this cold air away from the Arctic and into our yards.)

This poses a bit of a problem for our gardening schedule. No matter how cold and snowy it is out there right now, spring will come eventually, and if we want to have any parsley seedlings to plant when it does, this is the week we need to start them. But to do that, we need some garden soil to form the bottom layer in our seed-starting tubes. And right now, our soil isn't particularly easy to get at.

In theory, we could just hold off on this for a couple of weeks, since the parsley seeds we bought in 2023 can be sowed directly in the garden. We did this last year, and they came up just fine. But it made Brian nervous, and he says he'd be more comfortable starting at least a couple of plants indoors. Which is why he just plowed his way out out into the garden and dug through a foot of snow and into the frozen soil to retrieve a sample. It won't be enough for all our seedlings, but it'll do to get the parsley started.

While he was doing this, I was pulling up my garden planner spreadsheet to plot out this year's garden layout. This is a much simpler job than it used to be, as I now just rotate entire beds rather than trying to optimize the placement of each individual crop. However, there are always a few details that need tweaking. Pepper and zucchini plants have to be shifted from one end of the bed to the other to make sure they're not in exactly the same spot two years running. I need to mark the location of last year's winter lettuce so I know not to plant over it until it's all been harvested. (Luckily, this year it's in a spot that will eventually hold a zucchini plant, which won't go in until mid-May.) And a single square of dill, which doesn't need a whole block to itself, has to get squeezed in somewhere. (This year, it'll be bunking with the other zucchini plant.)

So, the beds have been plotted, the dirt has been dug, and the parsley seeds are now soaking, getting ready to go into their tubes tomorrow. And in the meantime, we can settle in for a cozy evening with a pot of hot soup, some fresh-baked biscuits, and the second half of this week's Critical Role. Tucked up on the couch with our blankets and our kitty cats, we'll be snug and safe against the cold of winter, while the soaking seeds on our kitchen counter breathe a promise of spring to come.

Gardeners' Holidays 2025: The Changing of the Garden

Every December, Brian and I make the 12-hour drive out to Indiana to visit his family for Christmas. One way we pass the time on the road is by going through that year's seed catalogue to pick out crops for next year's garden. We interrupted this routine once in 2023, when we were trying out a new seed supplier that didn't offer a printed catalogue. But since we didn't have much luck with them, last year we went back to our old seed supplier, Fedco, and our old routine of browsing the catalogue during the drive.

This year, though, we hit another snag. Fedco, unbeknownst to us, also stopped mailing out printed catalogues. You can still order one for a $3 fee (which you can recoup with a $3 coupon that's included), but we didn't learn about that option until this weekend—too late to order a catalogue and receive it in time for our trip. 

Fortunately, we were pretty satisfied with most of the varieties we'd planted in 2025. True, our Waltham butternut squash was a pretty disappointing performer this year, giving us only six squash totaling 14 pounds. But since it's the same variety that gave us a whopping 42 pounds last year, we're not prepared to write it off yet. The same applies to our our Provider green bean plants, which provided only half a pound of beans in 2025 but nearly 3 pounds in 2024. And while our South Wind and Boston Pickling cucumbers only gave us 15 fruits in total, that's better than the measly 6 we got in 2024. Besides, Brian blames the mediocre harvest partly on a brutal summer heat wave that kept us out of the garden for several days, causing us to miss a few cukes until they were too ripe to use.

However, there are a couple of veggie varieties we're planning to dump in 2026. Our Banana frying pepper, for instance, produced only 4 smallish peppers, so we're going to ditch it next year and either try a new variety or stick to the better-performing Carmens and Aconcaguas. We may also bid a sad farewell to our much-loved Pineapple tomato. Its two vines produced only 12 tomatoes between them, and while those few fruits were both large and tasty, we'd probably be better off devoting the space to the much more prolific Premios and San Marzanos, which gave us 58 and 50 fruits, respectively.

One crop we're not quite sure about is our new Pirat lettuce. Although it was touted as a "much more bolt resistant" version of the Marvel of Four Seasons that performed so well for us in 2023 and 2024, it actually bolted by August, leaving us without lettuce until the fall crop came in. So I was considering supplementing it with a summer lettuce blend to tide us through the hot season. However, when I consulted Fedco's list of lettuce varieties, I found that its so-called Summer Lettuce Blend isn't likely to do any better: it promises only that "most years" it can "stand well into July." Given that the Pirat made it until August, and a brutally hot August at that, we might as well stick with that.

Assuming, that is, that we'll be ordering from Fedco. While they carry most of the varieties we liked from this year, they don't have San Marzano tomatoes, the first plum variety we've ever tried that worked really well for us. We only have five seeds left out of the packet we ordered from Botanical Interests in 2023, so ideally we'd like some more—and if we're going back to Botanical Interests for those, we could just get more Marvel of Four Seasons lettuce, as well as some of the Salad Bowl summer blend that worked so well for us in 2023. But on the other hand, we're also down to only seven Carmen pepper seeds, which Botanical Interests doesn't carry. So, no matter where we order, we won't be able to get everything we'd like.

Under the circumstances, we'll most likely stick to Fedco. The five San Marzano seeds we have left are probably enough to give us at least two healthy plants, and even if we only get one, we can make up for it by planting more of the Premios. Or we could try a new variety in hopes of finding one that's as tasty as the Pineapple but more productive. That seems like a safer bet than trying to get four plants out of our 7 remaining Carmen pepper seeds, and/or rolling the dice on a new variety that almost certainly won't perform as well.

So that's our plan for next year: More of the same, with possibly one new tomato in the mix. I've got my eye on Goldie, a huge orange tomato that's described as "very productive," relatively quick to ripen, and offering "rich flavor with an extraordinary velvety texture." If it's as advertised, it may make up for the loss of our beloved Pineapple. And if not, we'll still be fine with our trusty Premios, San Marzanos, and Sun Golds.

Adding and removing leaves

Thanksgiving is over, and that means it's time for our annual garden ritual: the Stealing of the Leaves We've found a good thick layer of leaves is the best possible surface to cover our garden paths and keep the weeds under control, and they're useful for mulching the planting areas too: the flower and herb beds, trees and bushes, asparagus and rhubarb, and even the raised garden beds. However, our three smallish plum trees don't drop nearly enough leaves in the fall to cover all this area, so we've resorted to swiping bags of leaves from the curb outside our neighbor's house. 

Brian argues that this isn't really stealing, since the neighbors clearly don't want them and the borough is probably only picking them up to keep them from accumulating in the street. However, I can't shake the feeling of guilt that we might be depriving the borough of a revenue source by taking them. Its website says only that the leaves get "delivered to a compost facility," not whether it gets paid for them, so I have no way of knowing whether the few bags we've snatched represent an added cost to the town or a net benefit. (I wouldn't mind paying the borough to compensate for what we take, but I don't know how to make the offer.) 

Either way, though, I don't feel guilty enough about it to stop doing it. For one thing, there's no other obvious way to get leaves in the quantities we need. Also, the bagged leaves are extra handy because we can use the brown paper bags as well as the leaves. Today, for instance, Brian dumped out several bags' worth of leaves in our front yard, then ripped up the bags into strips to lay down on our garden paths as an extra weed barrier. He then worked his way around the garden like Gromit laying down model railroad track, dumping leaves on top of the papered area and then laying out more paper in front of the leafed area until all the paths were covered.

As we raked out the scattered leaves, we discovered something odd: a lot of them weren't real. We kept spotting flashes of unnaturally bright color amid the brown, and when we zoomed in, we found they were fake leaves made of some kind of stiff fabric. We eventually ended up with a double handful of fake leaves and even some kind of branch covered in glitter and little baubles. We could only assume that some of our neighbors' yard decorations had fallen down and inadvertently got raked up along with the real leaves. This made me feel a bit better about stealing them, since this faux-liage definitely wasn't biodegradable and would only have created a headache for the composting facility.

Along with adding leaves to the places where we wanted them, we also had to make sure we didn't have any where they weren't wanted: in our gutters and downspouts. This is a considerably more onerous job, since we have to haul out our massive 18-foot extension ladder and run it up the back of the house. Brian ran into a bit of a snag trying to do this: he got the ladder fully extended on the ground only to discover that he couldn't lift it upright in that form. He had to telescope one end of it back down, prop it up against the wall, and then ratchet it up to full length before inching carefully up it while I held it steady from below. Luckily there were no leaves in that area, so all he had to do was take a quick peek before climbing back down. The front of the house, which is only one story, was much easier to check, and there he did spot a small clump of leaves near one end of the gutter that he had to clean out by moving the ladder to the porch steps on the south end of the house. Fortunately, it has multiple configurations, so he was able to set it up with one end on the steps and the other on the ground.

Thanks to our sturdy, adjustable ladder, this job was doable, but it would have been a lot easier if we had some way of viewing the gutters without the ladder so Brian would only have to climb up there if they were actually clogged. I've been toying with the idea of getting him a cheap camera drone for this purpose, like this $43 model on eBay. When I mentioned the idea to him, he admitted that he'd consider it $43 well spent if it saved him having to hoist himself up that ladder every fall. However, when I ran an online search on this idea, I found a Reddit thread arguing that (1) a drone of reasonable quality will cost at least a few hundred dollars, and (2) it's not actually all that easy to fly one close to a building. 

Fortunately, one Redditor in this thread offered what might be a better idea: taping a camera to "a very long aluminum pole/selfie stick" instead. I did a little hunting around on the Home Depot Site, and it looks like it's possible to buy one of those for around $40. It would probably be even better than a drone, since we could not only strap a camera phone onto it to check the gutters but also attach a tool to do the actual cleaning if necessary. That would be both easier and safer than sending Brian up a 16 foot ladder once a year. And it would leave us more time to to focus on moving leaves around at ground level.

Taming the hell strip, part 2

So, I realize there's not much to see in this photo. But there's a lot more going on below the surface. 

Remember how, four months back, Brian first embarked on his project to transform our hell strip (the narrow sliver of land between the sidewalk and street) from a ragged patch of weeds to an actual planting bed? At that time, we planted about one-third of it and assumed the rest would have to wait until spring. But on further consideration, Brian thought it would make more sense to plant seeds now, in the fall, rather than start seedlings indoors and transplant them in springtime. That way, they'd get a head start on germination, the same way the weeds do, and they wouldn't have to deal with transplant shock. 

Last weekend, we started the process. Brian used our King of Spades shovel to chop up the turf into blocks, which I turned over and whacked with a trowel to knock as much dirt off the roots as possible before dumping the top layer into a bucket destined for the compost bin. Then, while Brian went to empty the buckets and fetch his supplies, I set to work with the trowel excavating a narrow channel running along the edge of the road. When he returned, he set down one of the two-by-fours he'd brought into this channel, forming a boundary for the bed. (The main reason he had to do this is that there's a curb cut along that stretch of sidewalk, so he couldn't rely on the curb to form a boundary. But the two-by-fours will also form an extra barrier to keep the plants from impinging on the sidewalk and make the bed look more defined.) 

We then worked together to dig out a similar channel along the other side, next to the sidewalk, and fill it in with a second two-by-four. After that, Brian had to get out his big tape measure and measure the exact distance from the end of this section to the end of the bed, right at the property line, and go inside to cut the boards to the right length. Actually, he had to break one of them up into two smaller pieces, because there's a sewer access pipe right at the edge of the sidewalk. So he fitted two shorter pieces around it, one on either side, and capped the whole area off with a short piece at the end.

At this point, we had a nice, empty planting bed, but we weren't quite ready to plant in it. We'd used up all the free mulch we got last summer, and Brian didn't think it would be a good idea to put the seeds in without a layer of mulch to protect them. We could have used leaves, as we do in some of our other beds, but he wasn't confident they'd stay put in such an exposed area. And by that point, it was getting a bit late in the day to run out to the store and buy some. So we left the bed empty until we had a chance to pick some up at Lowe's (along with a few other things I'll tell you about shortly).

Yesterday, with mulch in hand, we were ready to finish the job. We had three kinds of seeds to plant: salvia, which we already have some of in the first part of the bed; rudbeckia, or black-eyed Susans, which we'd picked up a couple of packets of at Ocean State Job Lot; and golden ragwort, a native plant that we got a small packet of as a freebie at a town fair. It combines low-growing foliage with tall flower spikes that bloom in April and May, making it a good complement to the salvia and rudbeckia, which bloom from midsummer into fall. And all three are supposed to be reasonably deer resistant, a key requirement if we want the plants to survive in an area where deer stroll right up the street browsing on anything they can reach. (It's less clear how the new flowers will fare against groundhogs, but we'll have to wait and see.)

To ensure a good mix of the three varieties throughout the bed, I worked out a staggered arrangement for planting them: ragwort on the near side of the bed, then salvia about four inches along on the opposite side, then back to the near side for rudbeckia, then across to the other for another ragwort, and so on. Brian marked up a ruler with pieces of masking tape to indicate the lengthwise spacing, then placed the roll of masking tape on the ground at one end to mark the spot where his seeds would go. He added a small pinch of seeds in the circle formed by the tape, moved it to the next spot, added a pinch of seeds there, and continued the pattern along the whole length of the bed. My job was to scoot along beside him, handing him the packets of seeds in the correct order, so he wouldn't have to juggle all three. He had to be pretty sparing with his pinches—no more than three or four seeds at a time—to make the ragwort and salvia seeds last the whole length of the bed, but he managed it with a tiny bit to spare. I sprinkled the remaining ragwort and rudbeckia seeds in amongst the existing salvia plants in the older portion of the bed so everything would eventually have the same mix of flowers. Once that was done, we covered everything up with a nice layer of mulch to protect the seeds from wind and hungry birds (and, equally important, make it clear that the hell strip is now a planting bed and not merely a bare patch of ground). Then, as a finishing touch, I took one of the phone line insulators from the edges of our other flowerbed and set it over top of the sewer pipe opening. Besides looking nicer, this will keep the pipe from getting covered up by mulch, so it will be easy to locate.

All told, yesterday's portion of the job took about an hour, and we had lovely weather for it. Then, not content to rest on his laurels (or ragworts), Brian went on to tackle a couple of other jobs that needed doing in the front yard. To put this in context, I need to go back a month or so. One morning in early October, Brian and I noticed a lot of hustle and bustle going on in our next-door neighbor's yard, which turned out to be a bunch of workers attempting to unclog a blocked sewer line. They eventually worked out that to do the job properly, they'd have to dig up and replace the entire line, all the way out to the curb. And although it was technically his sewer line, a good portion of it was on our property. (Apparently these two lots used to be one larger lot, which would explain that unused curb cut in the middle of our curb.) To get at the pipe, they'd have to tear out the hedge on that side of our yard and rip up the underlying ground.

Unfortunately, we were about to head off to Virginia for a weekend with friends, so we couldn't stick around to supervise this process. We told him to do whatever he needed to do and not worry about replacing our hedge, which wasn't in such great shape anyway. And the workers took us at our word, because when we returned home, one whole side of our yard was missing. There was just a big crater in the ground, surrounded by caution tape and plastic sheeting.

Over the next couple of days, the workers filled in the hole, leaving a huge patch of bare dirt, and cleared away the plastic. At that point, it became apparent that a lot more than just the hedge was missing. The excavation had torn up part of the slate flagstone path that led from our front door to the street, and at least three stones were completely gone. It had also damaged our raspberry trellis, shearing off the lines and ripping out both the U-post at the near end and the anchor stake we'd secured it to. Brian was able to find the post, but it was too badly bent to reuse, and one of the three turnbuckles attached to it was missing. And, since the lost post had also been one corner of the invisible deer fence around our front flowerbed, that was damaged as well.

Luckily, none of this damage is terribly difficult or costly to repair. We were able to pick up a new U-post and another turnbuckle for about $26 at Lowe's, and we already had one additional anchor post left from the set of four we'd bought to stake our plum tree in 2020. After finishing up the hell strip on Saturday, Brian drove the new U-post into the spot where the old one had been, and I held the trellis wires in place while he tightened them up. He secured the new anchor into an undisturbed patch of ground a little farther back from where the old one had been and fastened another length of cable, which we still had left over from last time, around the anchor and up to the top of the post. We also had some of the fishing line we'd used for the deer fence left, so fixing that was a simple matter of tying a piece to the new post.

As for the flagstones, Brian wants to hold off on replacing those until the disturbed patch of dirt in the yard has fully settled. By the time that happens, the ground may be frozen, so it's possible it will have to wait until spring. But whenever we're ready, we have a couple of extra flagstones in the back yard, half buried next to the clothesline, that we can unearth and add to the damaged end of the path. And for the third, Brian thinks he can cannibalize one from the rainwater channel he added to the side slope in our backyard last year. If we find that the channel doesn't work so well without it, we can always replace it with one of the leftover tiles from our downstairs bathroom renovation.

Gardeners' Holidays 2025: Late Harvest

With the days growing shorter and temperatures dipping ever lower, Brian and I have spent a lot of the past few weeks getting ready for winter. We've had our boiler tuned up, put our warm comforter on the bed, and gotten our flu and COVID jabs. I've stashed away my light cotton socks and filled up my sock drawer with my warmer wool and acrylic ones. My wearable blanket and pressure cooker space heater have already been pressed into service. And, out in the garden, we've harvested all the tender crops and pretty much everything else.

Sadly, this didn't take very long. Our gardening year appears to be ending not with a bang, but with a whimper, particularly in the squash department. After last year's 42-pound bumper crop, we thought we'd hit on a winning strategy by sticking to the Waltham variety, but this year it fell completely flat. Our four vines produced only six squash, including one so small you can't even see it in the photo. In total, they weighed just 14 pounds, one-third of what we got last year. 

This has me questioning whether our all-Waltham approach is so wise after all. Maybe next year, it would be a good idea to hedge our bets by adding a second variety, such as Burpee's Butterbush. Even if it's less productive overall, it could be something to fall back on if the Waltham is a flop again. Or perhaps we should upgrade to Fedco's new "primo strain," Wig Out Waltham, which promises "the best in yield and consistency" for only marginally higher cost.

However, there is one bright spot in our fall harvest. We currently have a pretty good haul of one crop that we didn't actually plant: black walnuts.

Every fall since we moved to Highland Park, I've noticed the ground in certain areas being strewn with these odd sort of greenish balls, roughly the size of an egg. Sometimes, I'd see one split open and what looked like a blackish nut poking out. However, I vaguely assumed they probably weren't edible because no one seemed to be gathering them. It wasn't until this year, when there were so many of the green balls underfoot that I had to kick them off the sidewalk to keep from slipping on them and tumbling arse-over-teakettle, that I bothered to investigate the matter. After a little research, I learned that the green balls are indeed the fruit of the black walnut tree, and while they aren't themselves edible, the nuts are.

Mind you, it takes a bit of work to get at them. First, you have to strip off the husk—carefully, as it can stain almost anything it touches. Then they need to cure in their shells for a couple of weeks to develop their flavor. And once they're ready to eat, you can't just crack them with an ordinary nutcracker; to get through their extremely hard shells, you have to bang them with a hammer, crush them in a vise, or even back over them with your car. But according to aficionados, their strong, earthy, bittersweet flavor is well worth the effort.

So, over the course of several walks, both in our neighborhood and while visiting friends in Virginia, we gathered up a whole bunch of these little walnut balls. I removed the hulls from a few of them by stepping on them and rolling them under my foot, but Brian threw caution to the wind and tore most of them off with his hands, which, just as the article warned, retained greenish-brown smudges for days afterwards. Then he spread them out in small batches in front of the dehumidifier in the laundry room to dry. It took a few weeks, but eventually we ended up with a quart or so of cured nuts in their shells—about 40 in total.

Then came the really hard part, both literally and figuratively: getting those shells open. Brian cracked the first one by putting it in a vise and tightening it until it snapped (the shell, not the vise, although it felt like kind of a close call which would give first). We each sampled a bit of the nutmeat and found it...odd. It was a bit like a regular walnut, but with a sort of funky, musty flavor underneath. Not bad, exactly, but weird. I kept nibbling at mine, trying to figure out what to compare it to, and the best I could come up with was to say it's a bit like a strong cheese but without the saltiness. Brian tried cracking a few more (taking about ten minutes to get through four nuts) and toasting them to see how that affected their flavor. The toasted nuts smelled absolutely lovely, powerfully nutty and rich, and their flavor was a bit darker, but that odd mustiness was still there. 

These nuts were so different from anything else we've tasted that we weren't quite sure what would be the best way to use them. I did a bit of searching and found several recipes at Southern Living, both savory and sweet: an ice cream, a pasta dish, a sweet bread, a pie, and a salad. To get a better idea of how the walnuts might taste in a sweet dish, I tried sprinkling some cinnamon sugar over one and found that the combination worked quite well: the sugar and spice seemed to soften the funkiness of the walnuts, making it just one element in a more complex blend. Then, for a savory counterpart, I tried one with a bit of our homemade spaghetti salt, and the effect was much the same: the mustiness blended into the background instead of dominating the flavor. So I think that will be the key to enjoying these walnuts: blend them with other strong-tasting ingredients so that their musty, earthy quality will become an interesting element of the flavor rather than the primary note. This recipe for maple-Dijon roasted Brussels sprouts with walnuts might be a good place to start.

Our first barrel-grown garlic crop

In my September Gardeners' Holiday post, there was one fall crop I didn't mention: our garlic. That's because I didn't actually know at that point how much our harvest would be. As you may recall, last fall we decided to try planting garlic in our old rain barrel, which we'd already filled with soil in an unsuccessful attempt to grow potatoes. All that garlic got harvested in late summer and hung up to cure. It was immediately apparent that we'd gotten more garlic from the barrel than we did last year from the ground, which yielded only six puny heads—barely enough to seed this year's crop. But we didn't know yet how much of that garlic we'd get to eat and how much we'd need to set aside for planting.

This week, my garden calendar reminded me that it was time to plant the garlic, so we took down the dried stalks, trimmed them, and started counting them up. In total, the 20 cloves we'd planted had produced 14 heads, ranging from in size dinky to substantial. The smaller heads had only about four cloves apiece, while the larger ones looked like they'd yield six or seven. We set aside five heads, totaling 24 cloves, for planting, leaving us with nine heads—perhaps 45 cloves—as our harvest. That's obviously not enough to make a serious dent in our garlic consumption for the year, but it's not bad for a crop that required practically no effort to grow.

Before I could break apart those five little heads and plant them, though, I had to prepare the "ground." In the month or so since we'd harvested the previous garlic crop, the soil in the rain barrel had somehow been taken over by mint plants. I have no idea how they got in there, since we certainly never planted them, and the barrel is in the back yard, nowhere near the fully contained herb bed in the front yard that's the only place on our property where mint runs free. But those persistent little plants managed it somehow, so we had to yank them all out before we could plant anything else. Fortunately, the soil in there is quite soft and crumbly, so the plants came out easily.

Once those were gone, it was apparent that the level of the dirt in the barrel was rather low—a good foot or so below the rim. This, too, was puzzling, since we'd filled the barrel pretty well up to the top when planting the potatoes and hadn't removed any. Apparently the soil, loose as it felt, had become compacted over time. To replenish it, Brian helped me haul out a big bucket of topsoil that we'd dug up while planting things around the yard. I shoveled that all into the barrel, then topped it off with the last few handfuls of the compost we'd bought for our flower planters.

After that, all that remained was to break apart the heads and put the cloves in the soil. I had to consult a book to remind me how to do this, since I did the planting during my Yom Kippur Internet fast. I had to do a bit of hunting, since not many of our gardening books mention garlic, but eventually I found one that said the cloves should go in one inch deep in rows two to four inches apart. Since the container is round, I made my "rows" a series of concentric circles, going from 13 cloves in the largest down to just three in the smallest. Then I poked them all in with my thumb to what I estimated was a depth of about an inch and covered them.

Unfortunately, I couldn't do the final step of the process: covering the barrel to protect the garlic from frost. We'd already run through all the free mulch we acquired last summer, and we don't yet enough fall leaves on the ground to use those. But the first frost is at least a couple of weeks away, so we should have time to either acquire some mulch or rake up some leaves before it hits. Then we can just sit back and wait for next year's garlic harvest, while we enjoy this year's for...well, maybe a month or two.