Homesteady

I actually wrote this...um...a few days ago. Wednesday? I don't know. Will's been on break and it screwed my sense of time all up. I did another homestead-y thing today and I'll document it tomorrow maybe, after a trip to our favorite herb farm.

Guess what I just did? No, really. Guess.

I ate a homemade graham cracker slathered with peanut butter. And it was AWESOME.

Or at least very, very good.

The recipe from Baking Bites proved to be spot-on and even when I totally mixed two steps up and wound up with largish blobs of butter in my rolled-out dough, they still taste good. Jeffrey is kind of squicky on the texture (he doesn't like crunchy at all and still speaks with longing of the thick, chewy slabs o' dough that were my second batch of crackers) and River refused to eat hers at all (it was sweet, you see, and I have decided this child might actually be a foundling--she eats neither chocolate nor peanut butter and...) BUT--Will and I liked them. Next time, I'll do a few things differently, starting with, you know, combining ingredients in the correct order. I also think I'll to process the graham flour a bit and try to break it down. The biggest difference between these and storebought was one of texture--storebought are smoother and...flakier, maybe? I also will substitute one of the tablespoons of molasses for honey. It won't change anything but the taste and I feel like, especially for the little ones, molasses makes for a more complicated taste. All in all, this was a successful test. I'm really stoked to think that in a few weeks I'll be able to mark one more item off my shopping list. Woohoo!


Now guess what I just did? It's about six hours later and I'm finishing up the post that work kept me from. I'm not snuggled down in bed because I had my very own Laura Ingalls Wilder moment and got up to water down the plants because of the expected frost. To my relief, it doesn't appear that it got down to freezing. NOAA has the temp at 35 degrees and while that's cold as poo poo, there's no frost on the car or the plants. I'll check again as it gets closer to twilight, but I think we were spared. (I have my fingers crossed for the peach farmers.)

The anxiety the forecast frost caused me was considerable; I'm not really sure why. Certainly, I don't depend on my garden for sustenance. And with our warm climate and long growing season, there's plenty of time to plant seedlings or even grow some crops straight from seed. I suppose it's that a lot of work went into my little seedlings--physical work, but also planning and hoping and dreaming. I'm starting to consider this venture to be less something fun to do because my Daddy gardened and more an actual lifestyle change, and the threat of frost threatened that lifestyle. Just checked the veggie garden again...no frost! Yay!

So now I have a slew of newspaper-potted tomatoes and cukes and peppers sitting in my kitchen for no good reason. Ah, well. Better safe than sorry.

I dug out most of the seedlings from their winter-sown homes yesterday. (I had to leave some because the kids were clamoring for supper and my fingers were numb from making newspaper pots.) First, I needed to bring them in from the cold and second, they were getting a bit root bound and nitrogen-starved in the containers. It was odd to look at my garden sans containers. This has been an interesting experiment. I'm not sure what I'll do differently next year. I expected the peppers to go great guns, as I've frequently had volunteer peppers come up from missed fruit, but I only got two California Wonders and no banana peppers at all. I expected no eggplant, but yesterday I lifted two healthy seedlings and two "trying hard" seedlings from the container. (More than enough in our house, as I'm the only one who eats it.) The tomatoes got a mixed review, although I had to restart the seeds after a hard freeze. The Jelly Beans went pffff (I think I have three?), the Romas and Better Boys did okay, and the Cherokee Purples surprised me by going CRAZY and springing up all six. So...I'm set for tomatoes. (Will doesn't know this yet, but I'm thinking I'm going to be stuffing some of these jokers into a flower bed or two. Or, you know, seven.) I'd like to experiment a bit more...starting the seedlings earlier, bringing them in for frosty nights, etc. But I'm also going to look at a small grow-light set up for my herbs and peppers next year.

On Monday (again, ahead of the expected freeze), I hilled my potatoes. I had been meaning to do it, but I didn't get around to it and I had a good foot or so of plant sticking out of the soil.

Good old Ed and Daddy both recommend mounding soil or (in Ed's case) marsh grass around the plants as they grow to increase production. My soil being less than satisfactory in the organic matter department and lacking any marsh grass (or marshes, for that matter), I elected to do a hodgepodge and make my own marsh grass. I mixed soil from the big pile left from last year with grass clippings I got from friends and piled it all up around the plants. There was something so pleasing about the process: the rhythm of of shoveling the soil, stirring the clippings and soil together, forking it out of the wagon. Hilling potatoes is hard when you're using a box bed. The potatoes are crammed in as it is and mine are close to the edge. The answer was using a vinyl-wrapped chicken wire to create a sort of cage around the outside. I have no freakin' clue if this will work, but if it does, I figure I will have roughly eighty blue million pounds of potatoes. This means figuring out how to build a small root cellar, finding out if potatoes dry well, and unloading mounds of taties on all friemily who'll take them.


I think I'll head back to bed for a few more moments of snuggling with the hubs before the day gets going. It'll be warm today and there's still so much to do to get the garden ready. (Not least of which is figuring out what to do with a laundry room full of misplaced seedlings.)

Bonus shot of my precious little farmer boy:

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.

Owls at Dusk

Late this afternoon, I spent some time winterizing my garden beds. I'm a bit late, I know, but better late than never, right? In any case, I gathered up the piles of fallen leaves, chopped up the pieces of fruit I chunk out whenever they go bad in my fruit bowl, crumbled the thrown egg shells, spread all of it out and then covered it up with the leaves. It looks all nice and tidy and I am proud of my little garden, but the best part of everything about today was this:

http://fsc.fernbank.edu/birding/bird_sounds/great_horned%20_owl.mp3

The entire time I was serenaded by Great Horned Owls searching for love. Being out in the warmish air, feeling the cool earth under my hands and knees, hearing the ethereal, plaintive calls was...magical.

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...

More Work on the Cottage Garden.

Non-germinating Lemon Cucumbers pushed firmly from my mind, I went to work on the Cottage Garden again today. I figured that I can't do anything to make them come up and if they haven't come up by the time the moon starts waxing, I'll replant. I have to put in the Cherokee Trail of Tears beans then anyway, and fill in a few gaps in my Blue Lakes.

I focused on clearing the evil death grass from the second half of the Cottage Garden today. It is insidious stuff, showing a certain amount of sentience in twining itself evilly amongst the roots of my (struggling) daisies and beloved stokesias. Ugh. I hate that stuff.

It also managed to creep under and against (and possibly melded with) the fence that forms the back border of the Cottage Garden. The Joseph's Coat rose bush is braced against the fence and the soaker hose runs alongside it, so I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised to find this:

That's right, y'all. A spider condo. Now, I know that as a gardener, I'm supposed to be all "Ooooh, I luuuurrrrvvv spiders." Theoretically, I do. However, in practice, they give me the creeps. I can't help it. I just imagine them crawling on my fingers as I weed close to the condo and it WIGS ME OUT. Needless to say, there might be a bit more evil death grass next to this part of the fence than in other places.

I was able to get as much of the evil death grass out of the CG this morning as possible. I have a big pile o' leaves and weeds and other mess left ver, but the bed itself is ready to be planted. I also staked up some gladioli that I planted a couple of years ago which seem to serve no other purpose than to be chow for thrips. They drive me nuts, but I told them firmly that I was NOT going to allow them to just lay their lives down for the thrips. They might not bloom, but they will not wallow.

I then spent about thirty minutes being mesmerized by a bloom on the Joseph's Coat. It just looks...exultant. I think I'm going to load it onto my digital keychain camera thingy so I can always carry it with me. Pretty fitting pictures for May Day, I think.

Then I wandered around the yard looking for stuff to take pictures of. I found this magnolia blossom--the only one from the tree I gave Will for his birthday. Magnolias are so special to us, and this little blossom is important.

Tomorrow, it'll be back to the veggie garden. (If I can talk myself into NOT going to the local library's used book sale. So....hard....) I've got to get in my potatoes, garlic, and green onions in the next few days. I want to have everything in the ground and ready for the watering system to be put in the first few days the moon waxes.

Then I'll be able to sit back and relax. Snort.

Pruning the Joseph's Coat

In lieu of messing with the soggy and soil-deficient food garden (I'm not just calling it a veggie garden, as it will have fruit and herbs in it, too), I elected to prune and tie back the "Joseph's Coat" climbing rose in the front flower bed. Once in it, I also decided to dig up the myriad of daylilies and do some general tidying, as I've decided to make this my medicinal and cosmetic herb garden (as well as repository for things like zinnias and daisies and other pretties.)

Before getting started, I snapped a "before" shot, which immediately made me get all arty.

Photography just slays me. I am perfectly capable of seeing the poetry in things, but when I try to capture it on film, it seems so flat to me. For example, seen in person, this dead weed looked like black lace in negative. But here, not so much. It's pretty, I think, but doesn't do as much for me on screen as when I saw it with my eyes.

And then there's the whole lighting thing. It's amazing the difference it can make. Here is basically the same shot of some gorgeous nandina berries; the first was taken in the early morning rainy/mist dealio, the second was taken after the sun had come up and burned off the clouds.

Maybe I need to take a photography class and thereby add yet another hobby to my already full hobby plate. I love the idea of telling a story with words. Anyway, here are more pics from the day:

"Anticipation"

"Inner Beauty"

"Runneth Over"

"Enlightenment"

"Star Below"

"In a Line"

"Traveler"

After all the art, I set to work and dug up all the daylilies. I love me some daylilies, but they line the path through my garden and love to leave smears of rusty red all over your pants when they bloom. And as they are pretty much crotch-level...I'm moving them to a bare patch of yard near the driveway. I'm hoping they'll thrive there even though it is lower light. The great thing about daylilies is that they'll grow no matter where you plop them down, although they are more finicky when it comes to blooming. If they don't bloom well, I can always move them next year.

River decided to scare us blind after the daylily digging, so any more work on the front bed was put off until today, when I tackled the rose bush. "Joseph's Coat" is a climber and technically, you aren't supposed to do a lot of pruning with those. However, this one was neglected last year and I want it to be as beautiful as it can be, so I pruned. First I bound the long stems to the fence with wire. I used 20-gauge for all but the two largest stems--those bad boys were as big around as my wrist. I have no idea the gauge of wire I used for the big ones; it was about as big around as a pipe cleaner. When the big guys were pinned to the wall, I pruned any side shoots that were smaller in diameter to a pen. Most roses send shoots off of old growth, so if you don't prune the little stems, you're going to wind up with small blossoms on spindly stems.

After getting rid of the skinny ones, I bent the tops of the largest stems sideways so that they could be placed on or through the little flower arbor dealy that Will fastened to the top of our fence last year. The idea is that we fasten another one to the other side this year and the large stems will grow between the two to form an arch. That's the theory, anyway.

When that was all settled, I took a few stems with potential and bent them sideways the other way. These stems were lower to the ground, so they were fastened to the actual fence. Climbers send out new stems for blossoms from horizontally-lying stems. If you want strong growth from a climber, you have to make sure that some stems are horizontal; otherwise, you're going to get sort of a viney thing going. I felt kind of sorry for these stems as I had to bend them fiercely and prune them pretty severely because I wanted to limit their growth to new vertical growth which I'll weave into the stems already lying near the top of the fence. I felt less sorry when I spotted this puppy. It's hard to tell, but this is a TRIPLE-HEADED thorn. Crazy.

When all was said and done, the front bed looked pretty much like this:

Pretty tame and definitely easier to walk through (less chance of getting whacked by thorns upside the head.) I need to get rid of some turf grass that I decided would make a lovely walk way (because I'm an idiot), and then I'll be ready to plant once the soil warms up. The great thing about this location is that while it gets less sun than the food garden, it's sheltered from the west winds by the fence and the north winds by the house and the soil tends to retain water much better.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go put peroxide on my scratches!

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?

The First Bed

On the fourth day, we got a big ol' truckload full of topsoil from a local garden center. I didn't take a lot of pictures, because it was on a Monday and Will picked the soil up on the way home from work, so we were boogying to get the frame filled before dark.

First, we placed two of the frames parallel to the house to form the entryway of the garden. We had planned to run the frames perpendicular to the house to take advantage of the path of the sun through our yard. (Our front door faces almost directly east.) However, our miscalculations (say it with me: math is hard!) meant that a perpendicular presentation would put us climbing over the rosemary bush (which we elected not to move) to get the rest of the garden. And while I basically climbed in it to get the full shot of Herb Bed One, it wasn't too happy with me about the whole thing. Also, we'd have to put some of the frames into the yard which would mean more tilling and Will giving up a precious strip of his grass. (Sigh.) I'm a bit worried about what this means for corn planting and shadows, but I'll try to put my corn on the north end of the farthest north beds and see what happens.

About the frames: we (again, I mean Will) built them from untreated two by tens. We chose untreated wood because even if they don't last as long, we won't run the risk of seasoning our peas with arsenic and other unsavory chemicals. The jury is out about this: there are some who say that the chemicals that leach from treated wood used in garden beds bind with the soil and therefore are less apt to be absorbed into the plants. I opted not to take a chance. It's true that my frames won't last as long, but if this experiment works, I'll probably replace them with stone or cement blocks, anyway. The Vegetable Gardener's Bible suggests using two by twelves, but I couldn't justify the almost three dollar difference in price for another two inches. We (Will) built and/or is building four eight feet by three feet frames and three six feet by three feet frames.

After laying the frames on the tilled soil, I used a spading fork (which looks a lot like an eating fork--don't use a regular pitchfork to do this) to further loosen the subsoil, which around here is basically hard red clay. I went about 8 inches down past the four or so inches of tilled soil and I was careful not to step on the soil inside the frame. I just rocked the tines back and forth to loosen the clay...I did not turn it over. Then I handed over the spading fork to Will and went to go get the topsoil.

Will's fullsized pickup was able to carry enough topsoil to fill one and a half eight by three frames. It cost about $16 for this load. We're actually going to get a bigger load delivered on Saturday or Monday. More fuel and cost efficient. We elected not to use a mix of potting soil and topsoil. I didn't want anything non-organic (in the carbon-based sense, not chemical-laden sense) in my dirt, and some planting soil has styrofoam balls in it. Plus, it was ten dollars more expensive. I filled the frame with topsoil all the way to the top. Then I added an entire bag of some water saver chips. This is basically coarse compost. I'm going to be adding my own compost to the beds as the weather gets warmer...the composting is going slowly now. I mounded the whole messy wodge of dirt an inch or so higher than the top edge of the bed. The soil will settle and I'd be displacing some of it with plants.

Now came the fun part: planting!

I filled the first bed with all of my culinary herbs: marjoram (oregano's wild cousin), sorrel (Jeffrey eats the sour stuff like lettuce, although I'm still searching for a recipe I can use it to cook with), thyme, bay (moving a plant from a pot in my front flower bed), chives, and bronze fennel. I actually might take the fennel out. I've never used it, although I think it is gorgeous and every year the swallowtail zebra caterpillars come out and munch on it, giving us lots of entertainment. I also transplanted my poor leeks again. Bless their hearts. Daddy gave them to me, thinking they were garlic. I let them get killed down to nothing in one drought after basically just sticking them in the ground in a very clay-y section of the garden. I moved them last year in the middle of the season to a different spot, at which point in time they died back to nothing. They came up again a few weeks ago, so I'm hoping they'll revive themselves for the summer. I think they make a pretty divider between the cooking herbs and the tea herbs, which are right now limited to a lemon balm that was basically forced into submission by my insane lavender last year and the catnip that refuses to die. It's the fifth or sixth generation of catnip I brought to The Manor from The Lovenest, our tiny little first house. I also plopped the volunteer lettuces in.

To the culinaries, I'll add basil, dill, cumin, parsley, garlic, horseradish, and cutting celery. I also might throw in some Greek or Cuban oregano (although I'm put off by the fatness of the leaf--anybody use this stuff for cooking?) and some lovage. I'd like to put in some orange mint, but it's sometimes hard to find. I like this mint in spaghetti sauce and it's not as invasive as some of the other mints. I'm going to get some Vietnamese coriander, as well, but it's crazy-invasive, so I'm going to stick it in the ground next to our garden hose, as it also likes damp soil. This is a great plant for warm climates--it has the taste of coriander (cilantro, whatever) with a peppery aftertaste AND it's a perennial. It goes wonderfully in all of the recipes that call for cilantro. Any other suggestions? (And keep in mind that although the raised-bed method allows for a good deal of stuffing in of plants, I'll be using the bed opposite this one for more herbs as well as lettuces, so I'm open to a LOT of suggestions.)

For the teas, I'm putting in chamomile and anise hyssop. I might sink a pot or two of apple or chocolate mint, but I'm wary of the invasiveness of it. I welcome any suggestions for good tea plants. I have lemon balm, as I said, but I really don't care for the taste of it--it seems sort of soapy to me. I do like to grind the leaves in the disposal to freshen it up, though, and I think it's a pretty plant.

I left the lavender in the wheelbarrow for now. I'm planning a medicinal/cosmetic herb bed for another section of the yard which will contain the lavender AND soapwort, meadowsweet, calendula, echinacea, feverfew, and maybe some elacampane.

Today I'll be buying some seeds online (it's too late to start seeds indoors here, probably, but I'm hoping that with my new and improved kickass soil, I'll have better luck with direct sowing than in the past) and checking out the lettuces available at our local nurseries. I'm feeling very excited about the garden this year.


Isn't it pretty so far?

Reworking the Garden, Day Three

After a break for geocaching, we got back to work on the garden. Jeffrey and I raked pinestraw out of the entire thing to be put on the burn pile. It's true that pine straw will compost and a LOT of it gets put in the bin. However, pine straw has a tough outer "shell" that causes it to break down more slowly. Also, it is an "acid" and can get your pH all wonky if you have too much in your garden. Tomatoes love it...sweet peas, not so much. So I have to be careful with it. Mountain mint loves pine straw, too. Although, actually, mountain mint would probably love the cold, hard floor of a troll dungeon. This stuff grows ANYWHERE. (And is lovely with its purple stems and leaf-undersides. I like to pull it up just to sniff it for a little pick me up--it's powerful stuff.)

After removing my herb garden to Jeffrey's wagon and one of the wheel barrows

(and finding and taking a ridiculously long time getting a good shot of some volunteer leaf lettuces)

we set about tilling. (And by "we," I mean Will.) We're tilling the garden despite using raised beds for a few reasons. First, it will smooth out the lumps caused by my raised herb patch and lettuce bed. Second, it will give us a clean slate to work with and plan for. Third, it will break up the topsoil to make placing our frames easier AND to allow us to scoop dirt from the paths between the frames to place in the frames. Yay, tilling! Hey, know what gets caught in tillers besides pine straw? Rocks.

Boo, rocks!

In any case, by the end of day three, we had tilled most of the garden and Will had built three more frames. We were almost ready to start filling and planting! Woohoo!

In celebration, I tried to get arty with the catnip and lavendar in the wheel barrow. Our cat loves catnip and I was tickled to realize as I dug up the billions of volunteers that it really does smell like CK1. Also, it's hard to be arty with it. Which didn't tickle me that much, really. Note the everpresent pine straw.

Reworking the Garden, Day Two

After a day of rain,

we got back to the garden. Will continued to work on the frames with Jeffrey helping. I pulled up tomato stakes and old pepper and eggplant vines and transplanted the poor blueberries again. It will be a miracle if they produce. I plan on trimming them back hard next year (they've already got buds for this year) and seeing what happens.

This picture has nothing to do with the garden, but I like the joy and trepidation that are mixed in his little body.

By the end of the second day, I had cleared all the trash and plants from the garden and was ready for tilling. We put a couple of the frames in the garden to judge size and placement. This was followed by much cursing on my part as I realized that...uh...math is hard!

I also snagged this photo of blooms on my rosemary. I love my new camera even if I hate the software it comes with. My rosemary bush is almost ten years old and is a monster if I don't keep it ruthlessly pruned. I use rosemary quite a bit in cooking (it's also, incidentally, a nice all-purpose herb for rituals.) Legend has it that while on the way to Bethlehem, Mary laid her cloak on a rosemary bush when she and Joseph stopped for a rest, turning the flowers blue.