Catching Up...Again

Seriously, early spring is a BAD time for my blog.

How about a list to catch y'all up? I think yes. (Also with a bit of stream of consciousness thrown in. Woohoo!!)

1. The garden is coming along swimmingly. I have learned sooo much from the winter sowing experiment. Like, cucumbers sprout so quickly. Why in the world would anybody ever start them as seedlings? I probably won't do this again with cukes. I also learned that Swiss chard grows in little clumps from one seed and is pissy about being transplanted or thinned. It will transplant, but it isn't all that thrilled about the whole thing and the primary leaves will turn a sickly yellow before agreeing to green up. Not sure I'll winter sow them again, either, maybe just start them earlier. Last weekend, I planted a vast assortment of stuff; everything from three different kinds of basils to four different kinds of tomatoes. I'm not exactly sure where I'm going to stuff all of these seedlings along with the beans and peas and carrots and onions that will come along with them, but I guess I'll figure something out. I also put out some more lettuce and spinach seeds, which have sprouted and been dug up (by me AND Frodo) and sprouted again. Still actively growing are the lettuce, spinach, and arugula I set out as plants. I doubt I'll do plants again when it comes to greens. It seems redundant and expensive now that I'm on this side of the winter. Still, we've had several salads off of the greens, so the investment was worth it. The broccoli is also growing well, but hasn't gotten any heads yet. On Thursday, I "rearranged the furniture" in the garden in order to take advantage of the light better. I realized when I saw this picture that the bird netting I use to grow cukes and peas shadows the plants behind it more than I previously supposed. (Note how much smaller the broccoli in the back is.)So I'm moving all of the trellises to the back of the various beds. Anything tall will be on the north and east side of the garden, mainly in the back beds where there's more shade. I know from last year that peppers and cukes will do okay in partial shade and I think some of my beans will, as well. Here's a shot of the garden complete, which isn't too different than it was a few weeks ago. What you can't see from here are the raspberries planted along the newly moved trellis and the transplanted sorrel and cutting celery. We love raspberries with a passion and Jeffrey would make himself sick on sorrel if I let him, so I'm trying to put a lot of "nibblies" in the two beds closest to the house. I'll be putting a "Jelly Bean" grape tomato in the bed on the left for River.You also can't see...Wait...is that a potato (and a random, unknown weed?)It is! (And, unfortunately, a highly identifiable bit of nut grass. Argh.) BUT!!! The potatoes are up! I am just THRILLED about this, as potatoes still seem like some sort of new and insane piece of craziness to grow--and I'm still worried about my soil. Further worries involve a disconcerting lack of earthworms. I seriously am earthworm deficient. My feeling is that the number of fireants in my garden is keeping the population low, and my soil is probably STILL organic material-deficient. So I have two plans of attack. The first is that I've found an organic fireant control that has good reviews. (I'll let you know if it works.) The second is that I need to get my compost cooking FAST and add it as a top dressing ASAP. Then, you know, I'll add worms. The leaves are doing a great job of controlling weeds in the paths so far, but I'm getting some in the beds. I'll have to do some weeding when it dries out. I also discovered (HORROR) that one of my beds has termites...the price to pay for untreated lumber, but not cool at all so close to the house. I read that some beneficial nematodes are used to control termites, and I found a seller who combines nematodes that work on ants, termites, fleas, thrips, loopers, and some beetles that were problematic for me last year. So...I think I'll do a double whammy on the beds and see what happens. I've also been cleaning out the front bed and readying it for spring. Still mulling over the idea of making it all medicinal and tea herbs. And then zinnias and other cut flowers for the strip next to the house? Not sure if I can convince Will of this. He's pretty anti-flowerbeds, because they always seem to get weedy and produce well. He thinks bushes are always the way to go.
   
2. In non-gardening news, I have FINALLY figured out a biscuit recipe that makes me happy. The winner is: Mama's recipe. For years, I've fought against it, because I wanted to have MY recipe, the thing that I do. But it really is the most workable. I've made changes to it, the first being that I use all purpose flour versus self-rising like she does. I also use my fingers to sort of smoosh the butter into the flour--and I'm going to start using unsalted butter because I feel that they're a bit too salty. I knead the dough a bit and then I poke holes in the finished biscuits for extra rise. Mama doesn't do all of the above, so I feel like I have my OWN version of the recipe and it makes me happy to have reliable biscuits every time. I'm contemplating getting a cast iron biscuit pan just because it seems cool. I also might try to do my own buttermilk with lemon juice thing next time to see if a tangy taste is better for my family. The pictures below are a fairly flat batch--it was very humid that day and I added too much milk. They still tasted great!
3. Still working on the organizing thing. It might actually make me go crazy really, really soon. I've developed a new way of cleaning, one that works for me when I'm not sitting on the computer writing blogs all day. I just take my timer from room to room and force myself to only work five minutes at a time on each room. It takes forty minutes to do the whole house and then I vacuum each room. You would think that this would mean every room is just a little bit messy, but I'm actually finding that I'm starting to have time to get a deeper clean and do stuff like wipe down baseboards or scrub windows with the leftover time. Each room has a day when I give it an extra thirty minutes for a total dust and vacuum and scrub down. The kitchen is different, of course. I work on it during meal times and when I get a spare second. I seriously doubt that it will ever be clean enough. Sigh.

So, here I'll make the obligatory "I'll do better about posting" statement. And I WILL try. When I'm not going mad on sunshine. Or dusting. Whichever.

Taking Advantage of the Loveliness

This weekend was one of those perfect clusters of days of warm sunshine and fresh breeze at the end of winter. You know it will get cold again, but you can revel in the loveliness while it lasts and get some prep work done in the meantime for actual Spring. (As I've been moping around about the bizarre weather, I wonder if Mother Nature is reading my blog!)

Saturday I puttered around the garden, cleaning up bits and pieces of miscellaneous trash that collects in a yard with children. I planted some lettuce and spinach and broccoli seedlings in late January and all are fine, having come through the bitter cold spell with ease. While I was picking some of the greens for a salad (with leftover salmon--yummy AND frugal AND green!), I noticed a yick smell--like a dead animal. But Frodo has occasionally ventured unwelcomed into the garden for a potty break, so I just sort of shrugged it off as puppy poo.

Here's a shot of the broccoli bed:


After a few more hours spent futzing around the garden and planning out the beds with the help of my trusty Vegetable Gardener's Bible, the whole family headed off to the park to do some exploring with Jeffrey's metal detector. This is the park we cleaned last year in preparation for the Earth Day that didn't quite get off the ground. They recently got the paths refurbished and it was so nice. This would be a great place to run. We only found one treasure--a rusted Pepsi can.


Alas. We had a great time anyway, running on the path and spotting Canada geese, a Great Egret, and one confused white duck.


I also thought I saw an alligator:


Sunday was spent much like Saturday was. We were outside almost the whole time. After a lot of messing around, Will brought his iPod outside and we listened to Jupiter Coyote and Jimmy Buffett as I started Winter Sowing Project 2009. Farmer Cathy gave me the idea, and I'm so excited to see if it works. I planted three kinds of tomatoes (Better Boys, Romas, and a grape variety--which I'm pretty sure will be a bust as River "helped" today by shaking the bottle up), some California Wonder peppers, eggplant, summer squash, Boston Pickling and Lemon cucumbers, some cantelope and some Swiss Chard. You will note that a lot of these names sound familiar--I'm using some seeds from last year. Ed Smith from VLB says that most seeds will last a few years, so I'm going to believe him. It seems as if I'm combining two unknowns and hoping for the best, but isn't all gardening like that? After filling up my WS containers, I set them in a nice sunny bed and pulled some of the leaves around the bases. The strip in between I planted with bunching onion seeds, yesterday being the last day the signs were right for planting above ground crops for a few weeks. I think it looked nice and tidy when I was finished, although I will say that I felt a lot like my daddy when I surveyed the reused bits. Daddy is a FAMOUS reuser.


While I was at it, I decided to put in a row of Sugar Snap peas in the broccoli bed. I have terrible luck with sweet peas. Last year, I managed to get the vines going for the first time, but it was too hot for any flowers by that time and so I was pea-less yet again. Starting earlier must be the key, I figured. While I was planting, I noticed, yet again, the dead animal smell. No poo was in sight. Hmmm...As I poked holes for the peas, I also discovered that some creature has been tunneling in my bed. And... as I bent forward to put in a pea, I realized that the dead animal smell was coming from the tunnel. Urk. I figure one of several things is happening. Either I've got a mole or mouse or something which died in there (barf) or I have a snake in there who took over a mouse or mole tunnel (not as barfy, but still not pleasant to consider.) I don't want moles or mice in my garden, although I wouldn't mind a king- or rat snake. They keep away mice and bad snakes, such as the copperheads I REALLY don't want to be tangling with. I'm not sure what to do about this...should I dig the bed up and risk running up on a snake or yicky dead things? This doesn't seem good for gardening...won't it pose a risk to our health? Blah. Maybe I should call the extension agency. Ideas?

Jeffrey got into the spirit of reusing while we were outside and went through the recycling bin until he found an old soda can. He got Will to help him cut out a piece of it and filled it with birdseed for a bird feeder. Will it work? No clue, but it was sweet that he came up with the idea all by himself!

Later that evening, Will and I were discussing the smell. Referring to my habit of tossing kitchen scraps directly into my beds in the wintertime, he said, "Yeah, all that rotting fruit and food seems like the ideal habitat for a snake."

My eyes didn't QUITE roll out of my head at this--um, YEAH, snakes are just MAD for some soggy carrot peelings--, but it was a near thing. I let it go, but I did go out this morning to take shots of our two respective areas of the yard.

Which looks more "snakey?"

My orderly, tidily-leafed garden


or his brush-cluttered, Christmas tree-piled, stacks o' wood-laden man camp?



That's what I thought.

A new kink has come into my plan to turn our yard into a semi-viable homestead--a piece of property at a crazy-low price. I'll be wigging out about it over at I'm Not Hannah later on.

Taming the Wild Cucumber

First, a shot of the whole garden:

As you can see, it is kicking butt and taking names. The black snake looking thing is the soaker hose I have been using to water it, although that will be coming out and going to take care of the (still neglected) roses in the backyard as soon as I can manage. I believe that will be tomorrow, or maybe this afternoon. I have all the stuff for a drip system and I REALLY need to get it going because the hot, dry summer is upon us. Up until now, things have been fairly cool and wet, but that trend is changing. It had to happen and I've been spoiled, but I need to get cracking. I'll write more about that tomorrow, but it seems to be a theme of the garden this year.

Anywho, today I tackled trellising the Boston Pickling cukes. I've had the material for the trellis for a while, but have been swamped or lazy or not here at varying intervals, so it's been put off. But the cukes are growing like mad and taking over the Blue Lake bush beans, so it had to be done.

I first assembled a (sorta wobbly) frame from some 1x4s that I had had cut to size. I fastened the trellis frame to the frame of the cucumber/bean bed (previously known as Bed Five) and pondered how to attach the bird netting I was going to use as the actual trellis to the frame. I have been a bit hesitant to use the bird netting, owing to a horrible incident a couple of years ago during which a king snake got itself enmeshed in a net I had haphazardly thrown over the long-suffering blueberry bush. (I'll tell you that story some day.) But it's cheap, it's durable, and it seemed like a good material upon which to trellis the cukes. Eventually, I looped the netting over woodscrews place every six or so inches around the frame and screwed in until only the head was visible. This seems to be holding the netting tightly, although it might need shoring up as the season progresses and the cukes get bigger. Here's a pic of the finished trellis:

Once the trellis was finished, I spent a goodly amount of time painstakingly untangling the cukes from the beans and then tying the cuke vines to the trellis with cobalt blue embroidery thread given to me by my Aunt Nunu when she cleaned out her craft room. I don't know why I chose cobalt blue; green would have been a more obvious (or rather, less obvious and therefore better) choice, but the blue called to me so I went with it. After the vines were tied up (and the teeninesy little baby cukes counted), I very gently twined as many of the runners as I could around the netting in the hopes that they would catch on and the vines would start training themselves.

The cukes seem a little angry with me right now: lots of downturned, droopy leaves, but the beans are thrilled. I discovered, unfortunately, that the beans also have attracted some sort of bug or pestamathingy which nibbles the edges of leaves and turns them over to form an envelope kind of dealy. Er. Not sure what is up with that, but plan on consulting my Ortho garden puzzle-solving book ASAP. ALSO discovered that the bean germination rate was lower than I thought. I'll fill in the empty spaces in the rows with more beans when the irrigation system is in.

I fiddled around a bit more, deciding to pull the plug on the sweet peas. They were lovely vines and probably would have lived a few more weeks before succumbing to the heat without producing a single blossom. But they were also aphid magnets (and therefore fireant magnets) and were taking nutrients from the little Hero of Lockinge melons which are hanging in there, although not growing as I thing they should. So out they came. I also did away with the broccoli after one last harvest of side shoots. Again, I could have left them. They were still producing, although the heat would get them soon, too. But they were drawing moths and shading the melons and I felt I could use their space to put in a few more bush beans. I have to say that I felt a little sad tugging them up. They were great little plants and produced really well for me. I'll chop them up and put them in the composter and hopefully they can give me some good fertilizer for everybody else in a couple of weeks.

Finally, I did a mini harvest. I got a couple of banana peppers and eggplants, the broccoli, and a couple of volunteer squashes. I also dug up two volunteer catnips. I sort of hated to do it, but I have catnip in the herb garden already and I'm trying to keep the volunteers to a minimum. (I just discovered that two of the volunteers in the Roma tomatoes are actually cucumbers. Where the heck are these guys coming from?)

Anyway, the harvest:

Note the slice I took out of the squash to see if it was edible still. Oddly, although it's almost orange and bizarrely bumpy, the seeds inside were nice and small and the flesh was firm and sweet. I wonder if it's a result of the volunteer part? Maybe this generation of plant has regressed?

In any case, it's always nice to bring stuff out of the garden. We'll eat the veggies for supper and I'm going to hang the catnip up to dry in the kitchen to make some playtoys for the kitties in our life. Once the irrigation system gets going. And the trellising for the tomatoes and purple hull pinkeyes. And...