a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: How Things Grow

Why Don’t We Know This?

I read an article by Denise Grady in the New York Times titled The Mysterious Tree of a Newborn’s Life – The Push to Understand the Placenta. In the article she writes:

Dr. Fisher and other researchers have studied the placenta for decades, but she said: “Compared to what we should know, we know almost nothing. It’s a place where I think we could make real medical breakthroughs that I think would be of enormous importance to women and children and families.”
The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development calls the placenta “the least understood human organ and arguably one of the more important, not only for the health of a woman and her fetus during pregnancy but also for the lifelong health of both.”

Reading the article, I was surprised to learn that doctors and scientists have so much more to learn how the placenta forms and develops and how it interacts with the mother’s body. As the placenta plays such a vital role in the development of every human, I would have thought that by now, such an important organ would have been extensively studied.

What is amazing about the placenta is that it is created from the embryo’s cells, not the mothers. Cells called trophoblast cells form the outer lining of the embryo. These trophoblast cells bury into the mother’s uterine lining and begin the process of creating the placenta in which the embryo will develop. In a way, they act a lot like cancer cells.

It’s a fascinating article.

There are plenty of mysteries here at a man and his hoe® to ponder as well. One of them is why the roosters periodically settle in one of the laying nests like a hen laying an egg. Sometimes they will even cluck like a hen after she’s laid an egg. I’ve read that some think they do this to let hens know they’ve found a good place to lay eggs. I’m not so sure about that. They usually do this in nests the hens are already using. It may be that a hen they like recently used the nest and they want to snuggle where she was sitting. This is Sven climbing out of a nest box after sitting in it for a while.

Why are carrot flowers so beautiful?

Why do dogs need so much love? Where does all this love come from? BB, the dog in the picture, follows me everywhere. If I am working in a field, he wants to stay nearby. He doesn’t love me enough to help me with the weeding. Just enough to keep me company. But I’m OK with that.

July 16, 2014
Last of the Garlic Scapes

Every few weeks another season draws to a close. Today is the end of Garlic Scape Season here. The season lasts from mid June to mid July. The year is packed with many seasons, some short, some long.

At the tail end of the season, the garlic flower bulbs are full. Finely chopped or crushed, they provide a nice garlic kick to dishes. I left some scapes to flower. The flower bulbs develop into clusters of tiny garlic bulbs which you can plant. It’s one way to propagate garlic. They tiny bulbs won’t grow into full-sized garlic the first year, but by the second year, you can harvest a nice crop.

There are still some tender parts left on the stems, though probably half of them are now too woody to eat. But something will eat them when they are tossed into the compost.

What I’ve learned from growing produce is that many of the best foods never make it onto the shelves of grocery stores. The grocers want finished produce, not all the transitory parts that you can enjoy while the plant grows. To truly enjoy the gamut of what vegetables really are, you need to have a patch of dirt and grow them, or be friends with someone who does. We miss a lot of what nature has to offer when we distance ourselves from the process of growing produce and leave it to the supermarket to supply us with it. Some things, money just can’t buy.

July 15, 2014
Bean Power

Few plants match beans for their growing power. These are White Flower Beans – 白花豆 – known for their beautiful white flowers when they bloom. They are huge, white beans, more than an inch long. They do well in cooler climates so they are a good match for a man and his hoe®.

I have them growing on poles as well as welded wire fence panels which I’ve attached to poles. With the welded wire panels, I can train the vines to grow horizontally as well as vertically, making a wall of beans. In a few more weeks, they will be in full bloom. Harvest time is usually September into October. The beans grow in huge pods with three to six beans in a pod.

Watching them grow is like watching a monster devour a city. This year, I will be topping the vines once they reach the tops of their poles or fill out the welded wire panels. Left unchecked, they will spiral up into the heavens.

Check back with me in the October. I may have some extra for sale. Your chances of finding this special bean in your grocery store are slim to none. Few farmers grow pole beans because they are so much work. Highly mechanized agriculture limits beans to those that can be easily managed and harvested with machinery. Pole beans have been tossed out of the repertoire of grown beans in exchange for easy harvested bush beans. There are some 40,000 varieties of beans. The next time you go shopping, count how many varieties your find for sale. Ten? Twenty? Thirty? It’s just a tiny, tiny fraction out of all the wonderful varieties of beans there are.

July 14, 2014
Bumblebee

Here is one of the many bumblebees which buzz about at a man and his hoe®. Without them, there would be far fewer things to eat around here. Sadly, many bumblebees are in trouble. One of them, the Western Bumblebee, has been in decline. It used to be common in this area but began declining in the 1990s and was thought to have disappeared from the Puget Sound lowlands.

Recent sightings have confirmed colonies near Everett, Lynnwood, Tacoma and on the Olympic Peninsula. Will Peterman, writer, photographer, software engineer, and native bee nerd, came across a Western Bumblebee in the Seattle area and is now on a study to collect samples from local populations in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and (time, weather, and customs permitting) British Columbia. The goal of the study is to compare the Western Bumblebees they find in areas where they disappeared with those in areas where they remained, to try and understand why they disappeared and what is different with those that are reappearing. The hope is that the answers will help with efforts to reestablish the Western Bumblebee in the Puget Sound lowlands.

The bumblebee I photographed is not a Western Bumblebee. Western Bumblebees have a darker midsection and their tails are white.

Six legged bigfoot, the fall and rise of the Western Bumblebee

July 13, 2014
Flower Power
The burdock are starting to bloom. Growing up, I used to eat burdock root (gobo) often. I was well acquainted with what the root looked liked, but I had no idea what the plant looked like. I’ve been growing it for a number of years now and it is one of my favorite vegetables. It can be invasive so if you don’t want it to take over your yard, plant and harvest carefully.

Usually, you harvest the plant when the root has become ¾ to an inch thick. The plant itself will be two to three feet tall. If you don’t harvest the plant and let it grow, it will grow six to eight feet high and bloom with fascinating flowers. The flower buds have hundreds of barbs. When the flowers have finished blooming and the seeds are formed, the barbs dry out and will grab to anything that walks by. Let one plant bloom and gather the seeds. You’ll have plenty of seeds for yourself and all your friends.
July 12, 2014