The Quarter-Acre Farm

by Spring Warren

  Problem solved. The vines perked up and looked much healthier. Certain I was on my way now and hoping to maintain my forward momentum, I even worked to ensure pollination. I cut the male flowers (which have a pollen-covered pad called an anther on top of a small, ahem, shaft inside the flower), peeled back the petals, and rubbed them on the female flowers (which have a sticky roundish thing called a stigma inside the flower and an ovary which looks like, and actually is, a tiny fruit behind the flower). Feeling a little dirty and kinky on top of it, I was rewarded for my deviant behavior with nascent pumpkins that soon swelled to the size of ping pong balls, then tennis balls, and soon began approaching volleyball size. At this rate, we would have so many pumpkins we could store some to eat and Jesse would be able to replicate his California snowman display—pumpkins stacked like balls of snow, replete with stick arms and carrots for the nose.

  It all fell apart after that, literally. The trellis collapsed—and I lost a pumpkin from the poles because the stem snapped.

  Part of the problem was a weenie trellis, but another reason for the collapse was that no matter all its tendrils, pumpkins are creepers and they don’t hold on very well. Further, a gallon of water weighs about eight pounds, so a volleyball-sized pumpkin is no featherweight. I could see why my weeny trellis collapsed with the unbalanced weight of four or five pumpkins on it, but what amazed me was that an inch-thick woody pumpkin stem wasn’t tough enough to take what I figured was a mere five pounds at most.

  Unfortunately, pumpkin stems (or peduncles if you prefer a more scientific and highly amusing term) are notoriously brittle. You can go online and read accounts of the many ways in which people like Christy Harp protect their giant pumpkin’s stems, practically from the time of pollination, against any sort of pressures that might result in the dreaded stem stress: positioning the plant to the perfect angle, and never, ever moving the pumpkin, of any size, unless it is done in tiny increments over many days.

  I solved these new problems by first reinforcing the chicken wire. I also made each pumpkin its own hammock. I knew that pumpkins were prone to rot if they sat on a wet surface, so the pumpkins had to have hammocks with circulation. Oranges also need circulation; that’s why they are sold in those net bags—net bags, I might add, that I had been saving for ages having known, as I’d told Louis, I would have a use for them someday. The net bags did make ideal supports for the pumpkins. (The bags also made ideal supports for muskmelons and watermelons as well, as I applied the pumpkin-on-a-pole system to other plants. The bags will also leave a lovely lacy pale yellow pattern where it keeps the sun from the watermelons’ green skin.)

  When my pumpkins turned bright orange, I cut the tough, if brittle, peduncles and placed the pumpkins on a bed of straw in the cool garage. One might think pumpkins are dead at this point, but they are still living entities; one of the reasons they keep so long.

  To keep the living pumpkins in storage, one must treat them almost as well as when they were on the vine. Luckily you don’t have to water and feed them, but you must prepare them for what I think of as “pumpkin hibernation.” A stored pumpkin should have about four inches of stem intact, and a cured skin (from sitting off the vine postharvest in 80 degrees with good air circulation for a few days) to slow respiration rates. The skin should have no injuries that would allow rot-producing organisms to enter. The pumpkins should be stored on a porous surface in a cool room protected from extreme heat and cold. In this way, pumpkins and other winter squash will last for months. You will be assured of having pumpkins all winter for pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup, California snowmen, and best of all, pasta con zucca.

  Recipe

  Pasta con Zucca

  I began making ravioli con zucca, or squash ravioli, for a friend who took students to Italy each year. He would make a pilgrimage to a particular city in order to go to a particular restaurant just to eat a particular dish of Ravioli con zucca. I haven’t had the privilege of eating that particular Italian establishment’s ravioli, but mine, if I do say so myself, are particularly delicious. They’re also time-consuming since I make them with homemade pasta, inside of which I put a mixture of pumpkin, amaretti cookies, and Parmesan cheese.

  This recipe is my unconstructed version of the meal, and while it is just as good (perhaps better because you can bump up the squashto-pasta ratio by merely preparing an additional squash or a bigger one for the meal), it is also a hundred (a thousand!) times easier, much less time-consuming, and virtually un-screw-up-able.

  You may use almost any orange-fleshed sweet winter squash (pumpkin, kabocha, Hubbard) for this dish. In fact, even sweet potatoes would be delicious.

  Ingredients: • 4 to 6 cups cubed squash (of your choice)

  • 1 to 2 cups sage leaves

  • 8 oz. linguine

  • 1 cup shredded parmesan cheese

  • 1 stick butter

  • 2 TB dark-brown sugar

  • olive oil

  1. Place the ½ inch cubes of squash into a bowl.

  2. Drizzle the squash with olive oil and sprinkle the dark brown sugar over the top.

  3. Stir until the moisture from the squash, the olive oil, and the brown sugar combines to form a thick juice to envelope each squash cube.

  4. Pour the squash onto a lipped cookie sheet, spreading the squash into a single layer.

  5. Place squash in oven and roast at 450. When the squash has browned, there will be a slightly caramelized skin around each cube and the center of each will be tender.

  6. As the squash roasts, melt a cube of butter in a saucepan, adding in a large handful of de-stemmed sage leaves (the more the better if you ask me—even two cups!). Allow the butter to barely, barely bubble. Within about 15 minutes, the sage leaves will be crispy. (Truly, this is delicious.)

  7. As the butter bubbles, and the roasted squash cools slightly, cook the linguine in salted water.

  8. When the linguine is cooked and drained, place in a large bowl and toss with the butter and sage and a big handful of shredded Parmesan.

  9. Place the squash over the top of the linguine (to avoid having the squash gravitate to the bottom of the bowl, do not toss with the butter and parmesan) and serve with a green salad. Mangia!

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  WATER

  “Uncle Sam took up the challenge in the year of ’33

  For the farmer and the factory and all of you and me.

  He said ‘Roll along Columbia. You can ramble out to sea.

  But river while you’re ramblin’ you can do some work for me.’”

  —WOODY GUTHRIE

  My father was a civil engineer; water systems were his business. Considering the many years he spent designing water treatment centers, I should have picked up some knowledge of fluid dynamics and volume computations. Somehow I missed my chance. The one thing I did manage to remember about his job is a pen he brought home on which was printed It may be sewage to you, but it’s my bread and butter.

  There is something sort of magical about turning on a spigot to conjure water. It was a feeling reinforced when we moved into our house, which had an automatic water system to keep the two swaths of lawn, front and back, nice and green. The sprinklers seemed mysteriously called to rise and rain, beckoned in the summer dawn by what could have been the crook of a water nymph’s finger, as I reclined happily in bed.

  When we got rid of the lawn, however, the nymph-powered water system was no longer useful, throwing its morning deluge willy-nilly into places that didn’t need irrigation. Therefore, in order to keep the vegetables watered and not waste water in between the beds, I watered by hand.

  At its best, watering by hand gave me a chance to know my plants and contemplate the reasons why they were succumbing to disease, drying up, or being eaten by something. But as I put in more and more beds and planted more and more seeds, I found that hand watering took too long, and I wasn’t doing such a hot job of it to boot. I was going to have to learn something about water systems after all.

/>   One of my first ideas was to pour water down a series of half-sawn PVC pipes that I had strategically drilled holes into where the plants needed water; a sort of Roman aqueduct idea.

  I had always envisioned the Roman aqueducts as something like a waterslide at Wet and Wild, water racing downhill at a 90 degree grade and splashing down in fountains all around the ancient cities. Instead the reality is even more impressive. The Pont du Gard aqueduct, which transported five million gallons of water a day to Rome, was fifty miles long. And instead of dropping precipitously, the aqueducts had the amazing gradient of only about eleven inches of drop for each half mile of length. Over a fifty mile length, there is only about eighteen yards of height difference between the beginning of the water’s journey and its end. The idea is staggering.

  Sadly, I am no Roman (or any other kind of) engineer. My PVC aqueducts didn’t work. Water poured over the ends, didn’t drip out the too-small holes, or poured too quickly out the too-large holes; all sizes of holes clogged, and plants expired due to dehydration or drowning.

  Water is incredibly difficult to control since it is amazingly sensitive to speed and drop and gravity. While the Romans used this to great advantage, I was obviously a water idiot. I turned hopefully to a more modern method of transporting water: weeping hoses made from recycled bicycle tires. This worked pretty well. Because I was constantly moving my raised beds, the weeping hoses allowed me to reconfigure the watering “system” to fit the beds. I put snap-on ends on the hoses so that when I wanted to water, I pulled the regular hose over, snapped it on the weeping hose, and turned it on for an hour or so.

  One problem with this system was the fact that the hose watered between the beds as well; I tried to remedy the situation by placing pots of onions under those areas (and so tripped over them all season). My other problem was that I would forget to turn the hoses off.

  I had a partial success when I created my “octo-hose” system. Louis, Sam, and I were going out of town for two weeks, and I needed to simplify my shifting watering system so our garden-sitter could water. I bought some triple brass manifolds and hooked up eight garden hoses to splits so that all of the weeping hoses could run at once. Eight hoses could be turned on and the entire garden could be watered in a couple of hours a couple of times a week. Of course, with turquoise and forest green hose tendrils snaking across pathways and up beds, the garden looked like a Rube Goldberg production or something out of a science fiction movie. Not very attractive, but it worked. We returned from vacation and the garden looked greener than it ever had. And our neighbor who had watched the garden was not only still on speaking terms with us but also said the watering had been easy. Of course he was also watching the geese, so in comparison I suspect almost anything would seem easy. I continued to happily use the octo-hose system for weeks—until we got our water bill.

  It was huge.

  Partially, this was because I absent-mindedly left the hoses on, and also, though I tried to save the water wasted between beds, I knew I wasn’t doing a very good job of it. Further, I suspected that even as I was keeping some of my poor plants in a state of thirstiness, I was over watering many others.

  I started fantasizing about introducing an urban farming bill to the state legislature that would subsidize the water bills of residents who grew vegetables in more than 50 percent of their yard, but until I got that passed, I decided I’d better think about the quality of my watering.

  The first step to being a better resource manager was to admit that I watered visually. If the soil around the plants looked dry, I watered until it looked good and wet. If the plants looked wilted, I watered. The trouble with watering visually is that, unless you have X-ray vision, you can’t see what’s going on where it matters—that is, underground and in the plants’ own living systems.

  I soon realized I needed to know what kind of underground I had. If I had sandy loam, water was going to move through and across it in a different way than if I had clay. Water moves through a sandy soil quickly and narrowly, taking a mere 24 hours to percolate six feet down (due to gravity), and its horizontal reach (through capillary action) will only be about ten to twelve inches. Water through clay soil won’t reach six feet for 48 hours, but in that time the water will extend a full thirty inches horizontally. Clay stores water for a much longer time as well.

  I had clay soil, but there was more to being an educated waterer than just knowing that. In his book Grow More Vegetables, John Jeavons pointed out that when we water, we are not really watering plants. What we are doing is watering the soil so that the soil can water the plants. Therefore, to know how well your soil is watering your plants, one must keep in mind things like “penetration factors.” Penetration factors include the dampness of soil and the size of soil “pores,” which are the spaces between the aggregates that make up the dirt.

  Damp soil will conduct water to your plant’s roots better and farther than dry soil will. Try taking a dry sponge and mopping up a spill, then try using a damp sponge. The damp sponge will take in the spill much easier. Damp dirt will take in a spill of water the same way.

  If you have a good variety of sizes of soil pieces (and therefore a well balanced porosity), water (and air) will also move well and a crust will not form on the surface (one of the problems of my disastrous soil purchase).

  Why this makes such a difference to a plant is due to a plant’s system. Plants want three underground things all at once. They want water, nutrients, and air. If one waters too much, not only is there not enough air for the plant’s roots, but nutrients can also be leached away. If there is not enough water, the plants will wilt, and a hormonal imbalance within the plant will occur, causing poor bud formation and fruit drop—in other words, it will fail to thrive. Further, if the plant does not feel good, water-wise, then the stomata of the plant’s leaves will not open to conserve its water. If the stomata do not open, then CO2 cannot go in, and photosynthesis will not occur.

  As a person whose brain is akin to a colander, this was a lot for me to remember. Further, while I knew different plants had different water needs, I also seemed to recollect that the different water-needing plants needed that water differently at different times of their growing cycles! Some plants, like grapes, even respond better to having their water restricted entirely for a span of time.

  It was too much for me to keep straight. I imagined giving up farming altogether. Instead I decided I would try to remember a few simple things, and the nuances would come to me later. 1. The shorter the root, the more often a plant needs to be watered since water is lost from the top of the bed first. Seeds have the shortest roots of all, of course, and so no matter what kind of plant they are, they need constant dampness (but not necessarily deep dampness). Lettuce—short roots. Carrots, beets, radishes—also short roots.

  2. The longer the root, the deeper the watering, but with less frequency. Tomatoes have really long roots. That’s why my friend Al’s suffer-and-save advice was so good.

  3. When plants are making their edible parts, they need more water than when they are just making leaves.

  4. Put like-rooted vegetables together.

  I also bought a moisture meter so that I could get a feel for how long my dirt was staying damp—underground, where it mattered.

  Now how to make it happen. I continued to use the weeping drip hoses on the lines of fruit trees. They were close enough together that no water was wasted between them, and they all had roughly the same water needs. But for the raised beds, I was once again going to try a drip system.

  I had tried a drip system years ago. I hated it. The tubing wouldn’t lie flat, I punched holes in the wrong places, put the elbows an inch too far one direction or another and I couldn’t fix it because the compression fittings could not be removed and reset. Not only that, my drippers clogged and when I changed my garden around, and I couldn’t reconfigure the system.

  But that was a long time ago, and technology marches on. I now planned to use a permalock sys
tem. Contrary to what it sounds like, the components were reusable. I would also use cleanable drippers and make the holes with a pliers-like tool rather than struggling with a tool that looked like an ice pick.

  Also, I made a point of watching how-to videos. For a visual learner like me, seeing someone actually putting a system together was invaluable. Plus, they provided lots of hints and suggestions.

  First, I took a map of my garden and configured my watering plan. Then I made a list of what I needed to make it happen. This is when I realized that I had actually learned some water-related things from my dad. I knew how to “plumb” and knew what tees, elbows, female pipe ends, male pipe ends, and the like were. I expertly(ish) figured the number of elbows and tees I would need.

  After the supplies came in, Jesse came over to take a look. This was a parental dream. His decade-long practice with Legos (and my decade-long practice of stepping, barefooted, on them) had come to some good. Who knew that building flying cars, bridges, and Hot Wheel garages with little plastic blocks was eventually going to translate into something useful? He eyed the landscape, made some changes in my watering plan, and got to work.

  Jesse and I unrolled yards and yards of quarter-inch, black plastic piping. (It uncoils best if you’ve got a warm day in which to work so the plastic softens.) Jesse cut and placed sections with the aplomb of . . . yes, a kid putting a toy together. The process was akin to setting up a miniature highway system full of interchanges and off-ramps and even highway closures.