Adventures in eHow

Several weeks ago I spent part of one day working with a video guy who produced educational films for Demand Media Studios, which had a deal to post them in eHow. In about five hours we made 17 little films about various gardening topics.

He got paid, but I didn’t, even though I worked hard, too. However, it was a very interesting experience. I had wondered about the whole eHow thing, and now I know a bit more about how it works.

The topics had to be chosen from a list provided by Demand Media Studios, and the wording wasn’t allowed to vary. For example, if the topic had the phrase “blueberry tree” in it, those exact words had to be in the introduction to the video. At first, this seemed a little weird to me, but it turns out to be a way to reach the audience where it is in terms of gardening knowledge, and the audience is full of people who might not yet know that blueberries grow on bushes rather than trees.

The experience also helped me understand why some eHow videos seem incomplete. We were given a pretty tight time limit for each video. There was only enough time for the "bare bones" of each topic, which meant that I had to leave out some potentially useful information. Also, because the filmmaker/videographer needed to have at least 15 little films lined up to make his trip out to my garden at all profitable, and because we had to choose from a somewhat eclectic list of topics, we were not quite “in season” for all the topics being filmed.

The good news is that the list included enough topics for which I had actual, real-life experience that we were able to pull the project together. Here is one example from the set:



When I started this blog, one main motivation was to share information - that might actually be helpful - about growing food in gardens here in the South. The Atlanta area in particular is packed with people who are not originally from here. I’m a perfect example: grew up in Oklahoma, but previously gardened in other states, including the Eastern Shore of Virginia, where growing food was super easy.

It would be pretty safe to bet that I am not the only person who has found gardening here a bit more of a challenge than it was in my previous yard.

I don’t know yet whether making eHow videos is at all helpful to gardeners who are new either to this area or to gardening itself, so I don't know whether I'll be making more of these, but I am happy to have been able to participate in this little project.

(Note: The videos are on an assortment of topics, including raspberries, blueberries, fertilizers, transplanting, plant propagation, and soil preparation; hence, the long list of "Labels" attached to this blog post.)

Raspberries in the South

I grow two kinds of raspberries in my yard, and in both cases I am flirting with the edge of their hardiness zones. Mostly, it gets way too hot and humid here for raspberries, and diseases (that should have killed them off) abound. It’s probably a minor miracle that I have enjoyed as much fruit from these plants as I have so far.

The Heritage red raspberries have been in the same bed in the backyard for about 20 years. They were among the first perennial food-crops we planted when we moved here 22 years ago. The Jewel black raspberries have been in the front yard for only three (or maybe four) years.

Heritage is an erect, primocane type, which means that the moderately prickly canes typically grow to only about four feet high and stay (mostly) upright, and that they produce fruit in late summer on canes that first appeared just that previous spring – on canes that are only several months old. You can plant Heritage in spring and expect fruit in the late summer of that very first year. Those same canes can also produce fruit in the following spring if they are left in place over the winter.

Jewel, a trailing, floricane type, has crazy long thorny canes that fall all over the place if left unchecked, and it produces fruit in spring on canes that first appeared the previous spring, a full year later. In other words, the first fruit on a new plant will be produced the second year that the plant is in the ground.

Neither of these varieties is recommended by UGA as being good-to-grow in most of Georgia. The UGA publication “Home Garden Raspberries and Blackberries” does mention that Heritage (plus Redwing, Carolina, Nantahala, and Latham) produces well in the mountain and upper Piedmont areas, but the publication focuses mostly on blackberries and the trailing red raspberry variety called Dormanred.

The hilariously unappealing information offered about Dormanred is this: “Fruit must be very ripe to be sweet; good producer statewide; better cooked than fresh…” The North Carolina State University publication “Raspberries in the Home Garden” echoes the faint praise by saying that Dormanred fruits are “glossy red, fair quality.” In other words, if we want to eat good, fresh raspberries, most Southerners will need to hop in the car and drive north - or way uphill - to find them.

In cooler regions, raspberries are grown in full sun to get the best production from the plants. Here in my yard, the raspberries are in partial shade. The Heritage bed in the backyard gets full sun for only about 5 or 6 hours, and those are not late-afternoon hours. I think this has helped the plants’ longevity, even though it means that the productivity isn’t very high.

When I was thinking about where to plant the black raspberries, I remembered that – when we used to live on the Eastern Shore of Virginia – I had seen wild black raspberries on woodland edges where they got morning rather than afternoon sun. I didn’t have a spot exactly like that, but I do have a spot that's on the north edge of a tree/shrub area that also has a very small tree blocking part of the late-afternoon sun, and Jewel seems to be doing well enough in that place.

We also are growing the invasive Wineberry, because it, like the other two, produces delicious berries.

I'm thinking about raspberries now because some of the Jewel canes have tip-rooted, and the babies, which are in very inconvenient places, need to be moved. I've already moved a couple of the babies into pots, and the rest will be dug up soon. There's also some pruning to do - removing the older, second-year canes before insects and diseases find them and move in.

Not an Avanlanche of Food, but Close Enough

This might be my best "zucchini year" ever. We have brought zucchini, sometimes two or three squashes at a time, to the kitchen almost every day for a few weeks now. Some of it went into the freezer this past weekend, and some went into the freezer the weekend before this one.

Our green beans have produced enough for current meals, but we have harvested more at the garden/farm where we volunteer on Saturday mornings. This weekend, we not only managed to get a lot of our own zucchini into the freezer, but my husband canned 16 pints of  green beans, we made a batch of blackberry jam, made a blackberry pie, and we put a couple of quarts of blueberries into the dehydrator. Not exactly an avalanche of food, but it was a very busy weekend!

The raspberries and blackberries in our yard are never quite so abundant as the blueberries, and they have passed their peak of production. However, the berries have really brightened up our breakfasts. Most of the blackberries that went into this past weekend's jam were from our Saturday work. The berries below are from our yard.

The peppers are doing pretty well, and the cucumbers are now producing "eatin' size" fruits.

The bad news is that the day-flying moths of the squash vine borers that I saw awhile back did exactly as expected; they laid eggs on my zucchini plants. The hole in the big petiole below is a sign that the eggs have hatched and the larvae already have bored into my plants. It is likely that, in a few days, I will need to pull these plants from the garden.

In the better-news category, the cucumbers are about to provide a lot more food. We had a cucumber salad tonight with our potato/zucchini soup, and if all goes well (I have heard some sad tales of downy mildew recently) we should have plenty of cucumber salads ahead of us.