Rain, Rain, Please Don't Go Away (Random Garden News)

The weatherpeople keep teasing us with promises of heavy rain, but so far we've just had light showers. My garden NEEDS some heavy rain.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the winter sowing. I think that the concept of throwing seeds in a pot and waiting til Spring probably works best for colder climates--ones not prone to freak warm spells followed by freak cold spells followed by freak warm spells followed by...On the other hand, one can't deny the head start I've gotten on my squash and cukes. However, by the time the second round of seeds went in, it was already too warm for much more than sizzling death inside the containers. The tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant are up, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get enough growth to justify a transplant. Does that make sense?

So. I think I'll do this next year BUT I'm going to add a wheeled cart into the mix so that if it DOES look like we'll get a heavy freeze after freak-warm-spell-induced-seedlings come up, I can just push the babies inside for the overnight hours and return them outside during the day. I also am thinking about expanding the container sizes so that I literally have little mini-greenhouses. Am thinking about green ways to try to finagle this.

I'm feeling a bit slumpish about the garden right now. I feel as if my soil isn't "alive." Things are green at first when they come up, but then seem sort of tired and spent soon after, which just depresses me. (I am perhaps a wee too emotionally attached to my garden. :)) I plan to use the next few weeks adding as much organic material as I can to the soil and hooking up my watering system again. I also might work a little "live it up" charm with this girly. Isn't she precious? I got her at a yard sale last week from an African woman who does wire work. I luff praying mantises (manti?) and think she'd make a good guardian spirit for the garden.

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.

Craft-o-frickin-rama

In the spring and summer, I'm pretty much all about the garden and outside. In the fall and winter, all of my other crafty multiple personalities come out and my brain explodes with the craftiness of it all.

To wit, in the past two weeks I have:

1. Made marshmallows! Who knew you could MAKE marshmallows?? Thankfully, cool chick over at Artisan Sweets did and she hooked the world up with the recipe, which made me lose my mind and absolutely NEED a stand mixer. How in the world have I made it this far without a stand mixer? HOW? Anyway, these puppies are soft and lucious and wonderful. I doubt you save any money on them, but the art of it (ART!! With MARSHMALLOWS!!) is totally worth any time and/or cash you spend. (BTW, I came across a recipe for cardemom marshmallows and am now dreaming of some kind of chai/cocoa mixture with a thick blanket of sweet goodness floating on it. Heavens.)
2. Converted a cute (but space-sucking) table runner into two cute (and space-saving) pillows. Apparently, as a Southern woman, I'm supposed to have a bunch of tables lying around to put doilies and runners on. Um. I don't. But my mil got this one on sale and I hated to keep NOT doing anything with it at Christmastime. Clearly, pillows were the answer. The runner was made of felt and at first I had lots of lofty ideas about keeping the trim intact. This wound up being nigh unto impossible due to all kinds of odd design flaws (both in the runner and in my expertise level) and so I wound up making smaller pillows with no trim. Still, very cute. (But I now have NO idea what to do with the leftover red felt. Suggestions?)
   
3. Made four kinds of cookies (FOUR) for gifts for the front office of Jeffrey's school and Will's co-workers. I have made oatmeal with spiced dried apples and cranberries, white chocolate chip/orange/walnut, gingersnaps (with chunks of candied ginger), and chocolate chip. Tonight I'll do sugar cookie cut-outs and I'm trying some benne seed wafers. One thing I've realized as I do more baking is that following directions is key. Chilling and letting sit at room temperature and kneading or stirring or whatever is not just for show: it's all about texture and flavor. I mean, check out these cookies. Are they gorgeous or what? (And they tasted like little bits of perfect yumminess.
4. Tomorrow while River naps, I'll sew up some scented coffee rests for Jeffrey's teachers and maybe mix up some spiced nuts to go in the gift bags. What else would go well with scented coffee rests?
   
5. Then I'll make up a batch of batter of each of the cookie kinds for our family cookie bake on Sunday.
6. Because I'm crazy.
   

Bring On The Next Moon Phase

This weekend was a flurry of gardening goodness. I could give you a detailed run-down, but lists are so much more fun!

1. Bed One: The carrot, pea, and "Hero of Lockinge" seedlings are all up. Hopefully, the melon and peas will cohabitate beautifully the admittedly jerry-rigged trellis I set up for them with two plastic stakes, chicken wire we inherited with the house, a huge old dowel I found under the shed, and some 18-gauge wire. Oh, and some hemp twine tied to the bottom of the chicken wire to give the peas something to crawl up. It is lovely, let me tell you. The Swiss Chard has, unfortunately, not come up yet. I'm a little bummed and wondering if I should try again. It's definitely been longer than a week. I've gotten a few heads of broccoli from the plants. They are outrageously healthy, but I'm a bit disappointed with the size of the heads. Next year, I'll definitely try to start some from seed and look for BIG heads. I'll plant some more carrots in that bed this week, and also give the seedlings some side-dressing, as they seem a bit anemic to me.
2. Bed Two: The mesclun bed is kicking ass and taking names. I have a nice little patch that will need to be thinned very soon. I'll probably put the thinnings into a salad tonight. All herbs are doing well. I need to plant my Thai dill seeds and the two basils I got yesterday in there. Hopefully later in the week, I'll be able to take a visit to my favorite herb farm and get some sage, orange mint, and Vietnamese coriander. I might try throwing some stevia in there as well.
3. Bed Three: This bed received the bulk of a load of truly horrible topsoil. We got our first two loads from a landscaping business and while the first was fine, the second was mainly sand and clay. Mix these together, add water, and...PRESTO! Adobe. Not good for onions. The strawberries seem to be doing okay, but the onions were gasping desperately for breath. Spent Friday adding soil from topsoil load number three, purchased at a much lower price from a different dealer. The soil is much more...dirty, but will still need a great deal of organic material forked in throughout the season. Anyway, I loosened the earth around the onions and added the new dirt--and sure enough, I've already got some "bulbing-out" onions. Woohoo! I'll get some globe carrots in there this week.
4. Bed Four: This bed will hold Roma tomatoes (six plants) and some purple-hulled pink-eyed peas. (Plus whatever else I can stick in there as time goes by.) The peas will be trellised on bamboo teepees if I can find some frickin' bamboo around here that is natural and not painted green and/or three feet tall. What do you DO with dyed-green, three feet tall bamboo anyway? The Romas will be trellised using a cord system that I'm adapting from an explanation in Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and from The Vegetable Gardener's Bible. I'll need Will to cut some landscape timbers for me for it to work. The peas were planted yesterday and I found four Romas today...they seem to be in short supply thus far.
5. Bed Five: Planted all in "Blue Lake" bush beans and "Boston Pickling" cucumbers. Haven't decided what I'll trellis the cucumbers on yet. Suggestions? Of course, I'm sure I'll try to stuff something else in soon.
6. Bed Six: The "Silver Queen" corn for the first of the Three Sisters bed, basil, bell peppers, and eggplant. The eggplant looks droopy today, but I find that it usually does right after transplanting.
7. Bed Seven: More SQ and peppers and some "Lemon" cucumbers. This was one of the crops that gave me the itchies. I didn't want to put the cucumber varieties too close together, but the spacing and size of the garden stymied me a bit. This bed might be a bit more of an experiment than anything else.
8. Bed Eight: More SQ, three "Better Boy" tomatoes and two peppers. I don't particularly like tomatoes and am growing probably more than I need, but I love marinara sauce, stewed tomatoes, ketchup, etc. The BBs will make good stewed tomatoes, juice, and chunks to freeze.

Still left to do: plant the shriveled, out of season white potatoes; the already growing and looking kind of odd scallions; and perhaps the garlic. Every bit of literature I've come across says to plant it in the fall, but my father claims it's a two season plant and I need to get it in the ground. Suggestions?

Also, I have to put the tarragon in, as well as my bug-diffusing marigolds.

On the non-veggie front, I'll be putting some chamomile, fever few, and a citronella (actually, I think it's a mis-labeled rose) geranium in the medicinal/cosmetic herb and flower bed. I have seed for zinnias, as well, but I think it's too cool yet. (They like to snuggle in warm dirt.) I have some soapwort seed as well, but keep hearing horror stories about it. Any ideas, soapwort fans?

Plus, I need to pay attention to my poor rosebushes, who, with the exception of the "Joseph's Coat" up front are WOEFULLY neglected.

Huh. In the past, I've always hated Daylight Saving's Time. Looking over this post, I actually might start lobbying for another hour.

In Search of Strawberries

First, the weather? Is crazy here. Saturday and Sunday were lovely and blissfully warm. Monday was nice.

Tuesday, we had severe storms. In addition to this picture, I have video which is amusing mainly because of my "I'm so cool" commentary, but I hate my camera's restrictive software (and Blogger, which can't deal with it, and also You Tube, although it might just be my slow desktop...ARGH!) Anyway, here's the picture:

What you can't see here is how hard the wind was blowing or the slightly reddish tinge to the clouds over the horizon. You know there's going to be a doozy of a storm when the clouds are reddish here. I think the wind picks up all the red dirt south of us and mixes it up above us. Anyway, suffice to say that River and I ate our lunch in the closet.

After the storms, it got very cold and windy and then a stomach virus visited our house, but between all of that, I've been checking out various vendors in our area for strawberries. I'm looking for a good ever-bearing berry like Quinalt, but I'm finding myself struggling against the megolith that is Bonnie Plants. Apparently, they're shipping strawberries right now to all of the Big Box stores. I checked by Lowe's the other day while I was dishwasher shopping and found myself looking at a truly gorgeous crop of "Tennessee Beauty"s. The only problem is that they aren't everbearing. Huh. A peek at the garden section of Hell-Mart revealed more BP TBs. Huh squared. Things got really frustrating when I went by a locally owned farm supply store and found..."Tennessee Beauty" inscribed on each lucious plant.

Awash in green rage and muttering things about biodiversity, I went online to dig up everything I could about Bonnie Plants, but all I could find was positive stuff about scholarships and biodegradable pots. Dang it.

The problem is that I hate that even small mom and pop places are falling prey to the "Big Guys," who can sell them good stock on the cheap because it means that lots of smaller mom and pop nurseries can't get their stuff sold. And I HATE that every single place I go in town is going to have the same strawberries, tomatoes, lettuces, etc.

Sigh. I know that there are online options and I am aquiver with the idea that my heirloom, organic seeds are winging their way to me right now, but there's something so exciting to me about the trips to the nursery, touching and tasting and smelling all the leaves.

Am I the only one who gets a sinking feeling when she sees that "Big Guy" label?

Finishing the Frames!

Saturday, the whole family got up early to clean up a local park in preparation for Earth Day. I'm spearheading our community's first celebration and this was our first event. I was so proud of how hard Jeffrey worked--and how patient River was with hanging out in the Moby as I crashed through bushes and briars. Anyway, after a quick nap, we got back to work on the garden in order to finish up before the storms of the approaching cold front reached us.

River really wanted to be out in the yard (she's already an outside kind of gal), but I needed to help Jeffrey haul off some pine straw and brush from the yard. So...looks like we're having a bumper crop of toddlers this year!





I told Will it might be a good idea to leave one of the frames empty so I could get some gardening done outside of naptime!


One of the areas Jeffrey and I cleared up was what I am optimistically calling my "transplant bed." Basically, it's a triangle of dirt where I stuck a bunch of rosemary and lavendar that had layered and formed roots. To my surprise, a lot of the rosemary looks like this:

(In case you can't tell, it's green with some new growth.)

Unfortunately, a good bit of the lavender looks like this:

(In case you can't tell, um...it's sticks.)

I'm hoping that come spring, the lavender will surprise me and green up.

In any case, by mid-afternoon Sunday, we had this:

Woohoo! Alright! Break it down! I can't wait to fill up all these beauties. I'm actually surprised that the garden "feels" bigger when it's laid out like this. Maybe this is the gardening equivalent of the lists and timers it takes for me to keep my home straight!


I have run into one problem so far with the beds: settling. I knew my nice fluffy topsoil/water saver compost mix would settle a bit and I thought I had prepared for it by mounding the dirt an inch or two above the container's rim before I planted it with my herbs. Not enough. When I went to check on it after the thunderstorms on Sunday, I found that it had settled at least five inches, bringing the level of the dirt down three inches below the rim of the frame. Like this:

Bummer. I'll probably have to add more soil to this bed, although I think I'll wait til it warms up a bit before traumatizing the poor babies again.

In a perfect world, I would have been able to wait a few weeks before planting, but I needed to get the herbs in ASAP as the garden was being reworked. I'm hoping to get a load of topsoil today before the rain and storms tomorrow and Friday. (Hi. The spring rains are super early this year and it makes me freaked out about the rest of the spring and storms to come. Argh.) This will give it some time to get settled--I need to get my greens and peas and broccoli in the ground.

Speaking of putting things in the ground, here's a bit of garden oddity that I don't know what to do with.

This year, we got a Carolina Sapphire for a Christmas tree. It's a type of cypress and it is just beautiful: blue-green and fragrant. Anyway, I make our wreaths from the cuttings of our tree and we had to lop more off than usual this year. I stuck the cuttings in a bucket of water and used a bunch of them, but the rest stayed in the bucket. With the flurry of the holidays and bowl season and back to school, I sort of forgot about the cuttings until the reworking, when I realized that the cuttings were still green and supple. Huh. I lifted one out and was surprised to find little bumps on it that might actually be the beginnings of roots. Now I'm stuck. I don't want to disrupt these guys if they are trying to become trees. BUT-it's getting close to mosquito season around here and I don't need buckets of water sitting around my yard. Should I dip them in rooting compound and stick them in the transplant bed? Toss them on the compost pile? Leave them in the bucket a little longer? Decisions, decisions...advice needed, please!

Yesterday was the first day it was warm and dry enough for us to work outside again, and it was still a bit too blustery. Will pulled up the stump of an ornamental plum and planted a magnolia in its stead. (His combo birthday/Valentine's Day present.) We also let the kids wander in the yard a bit.

Wouldn't it be nice if all of us could receive and give help on the Walk of Life with such joy?