Yet Another Smorgasbord of Blogicity

PEASSSSSS!!!! Actual, live, eat 'em right off the vine sweet peas. I eat the smaller pods, I open the older ones and lick out the peas in an ecstasy of gardening goodness. The ones above will be eaten for dinner tonight. (The ones left after River got to them, that is.)


So much has been going on in our "inside lives" that we haven't spent a lot of time doing anything outside. The garden is woefully underplanted, and I'm going to have to go ahead and get some plants from the store, as much as I hate it. You do what you can, right?

A couple of weekends ago, we took a trip to a local strawberry farm to pick our own berries. I've done berries here, and they'd be fine for a novelty for the kids, but I don't have enough space for a big patch. We wound up with an enormous mass of the lovely red fruits (including Jeffrey's "magic"--i.e. "unripe" ones)

and so later that afternoon, I set to preserving them. I made one big wad of them into strawberry jam. This was my third attempt at jam--the first resulted in a thick brownish sludge, the second resulted in a thin, goopy mess and the third:


I kinda wish I had a "TA DAAAAHHHH!" sound bite right now. Or, like, angel trumpets. The jam set beautifully and I made eight half pints of it! Huzzah!!

The rest of the berries I culled and sliced for freezing. They were so pretty on the tray that I took a picture of them. After they froze on the trays, I popped them off and slipped them into some Ziploc Vacuum Freezer bags. I'd been thinking about one of those vacuum storage systems for a while, because I make ahead and freeze pancakes, muffins, cookies, biscuits, etc. and wanted to be able to preserve them for a bit longer if possible. And I hate it when my blocks of cheese go bad fast. But the price of the systems kept me from buying them, along with the fact that reusing the bags for anything is impossible. I had heard about a Reynolds product that worked on a battery and the last time I went to HellMart, I headed to the freezer bag aisle, where I found the Ziploc system. Four bucks got me some bags and a little handpump. At face, this is pretty low-tech: a handpump goes over a hole in the bag and you, um, pump the air out. But the storage potential made me go nuts. I would prefer to can our produce, but Jeffrey hates what he calls "olive green" green beans and peas that are canned. And the kids LOVE frozen berries. So the idea that I can freeze stuff without the frantic "suck-with-a-straw-hurry-to-seal-curse-the-invention-of-air" deal is awesome. The pump removes every bit of air in the bag and you can reseal them after cutting off a wodge of cheese or grabbing a few berries.

The package and website cautions against reusing the bags, although to be honest, I'll probably reuse the ones I keep fruit and breads in--at the very least, these would make great "keepers" for wet socks and clothes that the kids mess up while on the road. No more icky soured clothes!!! You can check them out here: http://www.ziploc.com/?p=b10 Oh, by the way, I got five quart bags of frozen berries. I'd like to have more, but I'm going to fill out our fruit stash for the winter with blueberries (maybe even a few from our new rabbit eye bushes below),

peaches, and blackberries from the farm in Cowtown.

Let's see...I've given up hilling the potatoes...they grew all the way up to the top of the potato bin and I couldn't see using any more soil or straw. I'm hoping all the growth will mean lots of potatoes, but you know my skepticism with this concept. I was pretty surprised to see how close the blossoms of the potato are to eggplant blossoms and interested to find out after some research that they belong to the same family: edible Nightshade. Cool.


I decided to dig a corn trough this year instead of put them in a raised bed. Corn requires a lot of water and gets so tall that a raised bed made it difficult to deal with. The trough is roughly six feet by six feet, and I was able to get thirty-six kernals planted. I put mini pumpkins in each corner. The corn is starting to come up now, so tomorrow I'll put in some Henderson limas. YUM!! The corn trough picture is bad, I know. I think I'm going to call it: Large Lopsided Square of Dirt. You might be able to pick out the corn if you squint and say an incantation.



I dug out a BUNCH of the chocolate mint when I discovered it was started to invade the raised beds. Um. No. I transplanted some of it to a different spot, but was going to dry the rest until I decided to try doing some mint jelly with it. It has such a nice flavor that I thought it might do. The only pectin I have is powdered, though, so I have to make a HellMart run for some liquid stuff. Hope I can find it...

In other, horribly disgusting news, I have stinkwort mushrooms in one of my beds. I'm not sure what sin I committed to deserve the variety I have. They're nicknamed "Dead Man's Fingers" (charming) and emit an odor that is so gross and profound that you can smell it when you walk out the back door. Topping off the nastiness is a brown slimy wad of ook that apparently draws flies, which adds to the general grodiness. (Click on the pic to get a gander at the mushroom loogy. Shudder.) A Googling of the mushroom revealed that you can actually cook with these, which makes me want to yark. I just...no. I'll have to dig them out soon, once I gather the courage to do so.

Tomorrow is a planting day! Woohoo!

I Pea'd Myself!

Oh, garden humor. I am a laugh riot.

For real, I have finally managed to plant sweet peas in such a way that I get, you know, actual peas on the vine! Woohoo!!!! The trick wound up being: plant early, plant in the shadiest spot in the garden, and sing to the vines encouragingly every day. They prefer Bob Marley. I'm sure that this won't necessarily work for everybody, depending on your region. If you live in the Northwest, for example, you might do better with full sun and, say, Lyle Lovett. The point is: I HAVE SWEET PEAS!! To be sure, there aren't a lot of vines, probably because the seeds I planted were old. Next year, I'll put trellises on the back of every bed in the shade and try to get a bigger harvest.


In other garden news, the potatoes got a second layer of hilling, this time with mucked out straw from the school farm. Forking it into barrels made me so happy that I'm pretty sure the Ag teacher thought I was insane. I doubt any farm I have will have cows, but the smell of straw + cow + manure is lovely to me. The taties already need another hilling. I'm considering going to the Ag Center, which is a huge complex where the state fair and various animal contests and RV gatherings are held. They have a pile of shavings and manure that anybody can go and get for free. I don't know about hilling potatoes with it, though. Maybe I should just try to find some more grass clippings? I remain skeptical about the potatoes, although they look beautiful and healthy in their golden bed (I'd take a picture, but we've been under a weird little streak of thunderstorms since around five, so I think I'll stay in here so as not to get zapped...maybe later after the weather clears.) I wonder what type of music they'd like? Garth Brooks springs weirdly to mind.

The first batch of compost is officially ready. There are still some bigger strands of grass left over from last year before I realized you really need to shred your stuff before chunking it into the bin, but I'm not too worried about them. I'll use the compost on my seedlings, which will go in this weekend. Poor babies. Winter sowing, it turns out, is a science for at least one person living in the South. Again, it might be easier somewhere else with more predictable seasons. This spring has been fairly consistently coolish, but our winter was a wee schizophrenic, especially at the end. The plants sprang up fast and then have been hunched down in their pots for at least a month. Transplanting them seemed to have little to no effect on their growth, although most of them really seem puny now, like they want to stretch their legs. I'll be trying to find fish emulsion this weekend to perk up the squash. I've read that too much nitrogen makes for not a lot of fruit. And I want a LOT of fruit!! (Oooooh, the thought of fried squash is ALMOST enough to make me long for the heavy heat of summer.) The others will get some compost--and maybe some Andrew Lloyd Webber show tunes.

On the homefront, we've been doing good on the eating-in department. We took Jeffrey out to eat yesterday after a doctor's visit, but otherwise, we've eaten at home for the entire week. The rest of the month hasn't gone as well--we've done a terrible job of eating-in AND of keeping our budget. Sometimes I feel a bit like, "Dang, I'm growing a garden. How much do I have to pare down?" but this mainly comes on days when the kids are fractious or we have a packed schedule or when (to be honest) I'm just being lazy. Budgeting simply must be part of the homesteading effort, as well as doing a better job of using what we have here instead of buying something new. Baby steps.

I've settled officially on a biscuit recipe for the family. It yields yummy, tender, buttery, soft, crunchy on the bottom bread that everybody loves. It's a variation of Mama's recipe, one I read in "Better Homes and Gardens" by Scott Peacock, and one from Alton Brown, my culinary boyfriend (and fellow UGA grad.)

Not Hannah's Biscuits O' Joy

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Combine 2 cups all-purpose flour, three teaspoons baking powder, and one teaspoon salt. I use a whisk, other folks use a food processor. Eh.
3. Pour one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar into a measuring cup. Add milk to make one cup. I use 1 percent milk, for what it's worth. This is a replacement for buttermilk. I don't know that I make biscuits enough to buy buttermilk since I don't know how long it lasts in the fridge, nor how much it costs. I'm perfectly happy with this substitution.
   
4. Cut a half stick of cold, unsalted butter longways and then shortways. You're aiming for little butter cubes. Plop those into the flour mixture.
   
5. Squoosh the butter cubes around in the flour mixture to break them up. "The experts" say aim for pea-sized pieces combined with smaller bits, which always makes me go, "Ack! Are we talking sweet peas? English peas? Crowder? PURPLE-HULLED PINKEYES????" Dude, you just want some bigger bits (field peas) and some smaller bits (graham cracker crumbs) and some flour. Don't have big hunks of butter in there.
6. Stir up the milk and cider mixture. The acid in the vinegar will combine with the baking powder and make a nice fizzy dough that rises in the oven.
7. Pour about 3/4 of the milk mixture into the flour and butter mixture. Some folks say make a well in the middle. Eh. I just pour slowly and hope for the best.
8. Stir gently with a fork. This is the "Do this part carefully or you'll wind up with tough, dry, disks o'sadness" part. I mix until it's all just combined. Depending on weather, I sometimes have a bit of milky stuff in the bottom of the bowl. This is okay--I can always add a bit of flour during the kneading part.
9. Plonk the dough out onto a floured surface. I use a wooden cutting board and I sprinkle maybe an eighth of a cup of flour onto the board. I have no idea if this is the "lightly floured" surface the experts go on about. This is what works for me.
   
10. Now the kneading part. I flatten the dough out to about an inch and a half, fold it in half, flatten it to an inch and a half, fold it in half, repeat and repeat and repeat maybe six or seven times. I've heard you should knead eleven times, that you shouldn't knead, that you knead only enough to coat the back and front of your dough with flour. Whatever works, y'all. This works for me.
11. Roll the dough out to about half an inch. I use a fairly large biscuit cutter and with a bit of smooshing the cut out parts together, I can get eight big biscuits and a little wonky one that I call the "sample." Don't spin the cutter; just push it down (I love the poofy little sound it makes) and lift it up. Put the biscuits on a parchment sheet lined pan so that they're almost touching, like maybe a centimeter between them. Poke holes in the biscuits all the way down to the pan with a fork, twice. Top each biscuit with a tiny piece of butter.
    
12. Bake for, oh, eleven or so minutes. I never time it...I always go by sight.
13. Eat and experience bliss.

Still working on the Cracker O' Joy. Will report when I've figured it out.

Um, About the Rain

Sheesh. I really got what I asked for. A pretty much whole week of blinding, stay in the house rain. Right now, I'm chilling out in the library waiting for the first of the severe storms expected today to arrive. More rain. Ahem. The rain in question will usher in a blast of frigid air--we're expecting cooler temps all next week, with two nights dropping to or below freezing. Argh.

With the coming cold (and rain), I elected yesterday not to set any of my winter sown babies out. The cukes and squashes are getting pissy in their containers, though, so I may try to get some slightly larger pots (or make some out of newspaper) to transplant them into next week. I've just realized that there's supposed to be an intermediate step between the place you first sow your seeds and the place they'll stay. Oh. Huh. It makes sense, I suppose. I have plenty of used newspapers after the weekend, so I think I'll roll some pots tonight after the kiddies are in bed while Will is watching the Braves. There are a few different ways to do it, so I'll hopefully have a veritable armada of pots come Monday. (BTW, omalawsy at the last link, I have found another urban gardener and she rocks my socks off. I think I'll be spending all of today poring over her site and pretty being lazy as she talks about all the work she does.)

I don't feel all too upset about the laziness today, as I worked a good bit outside yesterday. Having abandoned my setting out plans, I elected instead to do some transplanting of various plants around the yard and beds. First up were the lavenders I've been growing for about a year in the transplant bed. I dug them all up and used them to line the walkway of the cottage garden. Darryl from Olive Forge told me last year that he thought they might be Spanish, and a quick Google proved this to be so. Spanish lavenders aren't typically as fragrant as French lavenders, but these particular lovelies have a wonderful, honey-tinged scent as they leaf and bud out in the spring. The two (rather straggly) plants that I had in the front flower garden greeted me every day with that scent and it made me smile, so I decided to haul them all out front. I was able to get eight plants from the original four or five. I hope they'll grow into a nice little hedge for me. Research shows that they just might, providing the very moist soil in the bed allows them to. (Research also shows me that the name comes from the Latin word "to wash," which makes me long for a bathtub deep enough to steep myself with a few sprigs of lavender...sigh...) Hopefully, removing a few of the bordering blocks to allow a path through the bed will help with drainage. I'll be trimming them back hard after the rain to give them a break from making flowers and to encourage root growth.

I've decided to turn the front bed from herbs (with the exception of the lavender) to straight flowers. There are a few reasons for this. The first is that I have yet to find an organic solution to blackspot and the Joseph's Coat is prone to it and I need to go ahead and treat the bed. I want anything I use in my cooking or home solutions to be organically grown, so I need to move the herbs back to the main garden. After the lavender, I took out a sweet grass I got last year from Olive Forge and a tiny itty bitty jewel weed that self-seeded (oh, I hope I find some more later in the season.) I rearranged the stokesia into an orderly cluster (stumbling upon a truly gigantic dark brown spider scurrying around with her egg sac tucked under her...yay, Mama!--also, *shudder*) and moved an aster from the path's edge.

Then back to the back to put in two rabbit-eye blueberry bushes. They're covered already with blooms and berries, so I have much hope for at least a handful of berries for a snack come early summer. (The raspberries also have a few buds on them, which makes me SMILE as we edge closer to the kind of self-sufficiency I crave. I'm hoping to get a couple more blueberry bushes, some blackberry brambles and maybe some self-pollinating kiwis next week--unless the nurseries say it's too late to plant. FRUIT! Woohoo!) Anyway, I put them in the transplant bed after removing the last small lavender and mulched them with the grass clippings Will swept out of the yard.

What few clippings were left were added to the Phase One composter (the aluminum trash can). I'm trying to be very good about chopping everything into smaller bits, because I've realized that has been the primary problem in my composting history. I also am more careful to layer dry and wet stuff. I checked on the contents of the Phase Two composter (actual tumbler-style bin that Will got me for my birthday) and was THRILLED to realize that (drummmmmrooolllll) I'm getting some compost!! I finally did it right and I'm so excited because that means that if all goes well, I'll be able to use it when I put my transplanted seeds in.

I was reading over some of my blogs from last year and taking into account the things I've learned. The biggest success so far this year is the sweet peas. The vines are so healthy and tall (worried about them come Tuesday and Wednesday night), I know I did the right thing by planting them so early. Next year, I'll do the same for the Swiss chard. The winter sowing/heat fiasco this year and the lack of seedlings last year taught me that they need to go in the ground at the same time as I do my lettuce and peas. Live and garden and learn!

Plans for the upcoming week (despite the fact that it's supposed to be really chilly):

1. Figure out what to do with all this chocolate mint. (It's the darker green stuff bordering the beds.)I don't mind having a bunch of it around (it's my favorite mint to use in charms and cooking) and in fact was afraid I had killed it dead, but this is ridiculous!! I might try to encourage it to grow around the little flower bed/not very much used spot under the bigger crepe myrtle. We're thinking about putting a little zen fountain out there, so it might work nicely.
2. Decide on the zen fountain. :)
3. Finish trellising the Joseph's Coat.
4. Fix the front bed gate.
5. Repot the seedlings.
6. Start working on the sidewalk bed--the foundation will be transplanted rosemaries. I'll fill in with a few trellises of mini-pumpkins and some inexpensive annuals for right now.
   

Off to do laundry and attempt some homemade graham crackers from the recipe over at Baking Bites.

Decisions, Decisions

I've got a couple of gardening quandaries that I'm working on right now. Maybe some of y'all can hook me up with some advice?

1. My winter composting consists pretty much of me chucking bits of kitchen waste out the backdoor. (A method that Will simply ADORES.) Sometime in January, I realized this was not very efficient, so I went outside and hacked some of the larger bits of kitchen waste into smaller bits to ensure better breaking down. A few of the bits were actually whole mini-pumpkins given to the kids by my mother-in-law at Halloween. They hadn't broken down at all, probably because of the coating of waxy stuff used to preserve the painted on faces that decorated them. I chopped them into pieces, noting in passing that they sure were full of seeds to be so small. Can you see where this is going? The fruit of the pumpkins broke down beautifully, but I am now the proud owner of at least ten mini-pumpkin seedlings, with more popping up every day. Some research shows them to be edible and full of uses, from the aforementioned painted on pumpkin doohickeys to autumnal candle holders. BUT--I can't use ten vines...I'm not even sure if I could find room for two or three. I have considered potting them individually and trying to sell them at the Farmer's Market. Or maybe using them as a vine in the as-yet-to-be-decided front flower bed. I love the IDEA of mini-pumpkins and think that they could be a good cash crop, but I'm not up for an entire garden of them. What do y'all think?
2. My winter-sown heirloom white scalloped squash is rapidly outgrowing it's container. I've got EIGHT (because I'm a nut) plants that are growing like gang-busters and which really need to be transplanted soon. However, squash is notorious for being difficult to transplant and I really want to baby these guys. Tomorrow is the last date for average spring frosts in my area, but the temperatures are expected to fall to the upper thirties on Saturday night. I really want to get my watering system in soon, which would be best done if the plants are in. Ackk!!
3. Also in the self-seeding category are a whole menagerie of tomatoes: Romas and Better Boys. Below is a wad of Roma seedlings.Daddy has asked for a few of them, but I might be able to get as many as twenty out of all the little seedlings. I've winter-sown both varieties--as well as Cherokee Purple and Jelly Bean, so I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to need any more tomatoes. Should I just chunk them in the compost? Try to sell them at the Farmer's Market?
   

The biggest issue here is that I HATE to waste plants and money, so when I lose a plant or can't use one, it makes me nuts. What would YOU do?

It Was The Worms On My Green Beans That Did It...

Induced me to go out and get some insecticidal soap, that is. For a few days, I've been duking it out with the aphids on the peas. The little suckers are so thick and the fire ants farming them are so protective that I spend several minutes every morning with my bottle of Dr. Bronner's solution.

But yesterday, I discovered a worm's hind end poking out of one of my almost ready, beautifully succulent Blue Lake green beans. That is not going to work, my friends.

So I went out and bought some Safer Insecticidal Soap. It's certified organic, and won't kill any of my good guys--it gets only the leaf munchers. The package also says it leaves behind a pleasant scent. Ooookay. I'll let you know.

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...

And the Garden Goes Wild!!!

So, I go away for the weekend and I come back and the garden is nuts. Seriously, you would think that I was fertilizing with unicorn poo (thank yooouuu, Robin McKinley) or something. I went away from a blooming but non-fruited garden and came back to:

Ichiban eggplants that make me blush a little. (Also, Blogger, what the heck is up with your picture loading? It's driving me crazy!!!)

Almost overripe squash on the volunteer crookneck that sprang up next to the compost pile.
The plant is seen below because...Blogger? Seriously? This photo stuff is making me insane!!



The leaves are bigger than my head. Or my torso, which is saying more. A lot more.




Banana peppers of such yellowness that they really look a little like bananas. Gorgeous.

So many Roma tomatoes amid such lush foliage that I'm afraid I'm going to come up on a snake. Or, you know, a tiger.

Really, it's all very verdant and staggering, especially given that I haven't staked the Romas or the cukes and that my broccoli is still producing and I really probably need to do away with the snap peas which are growing but not blooming and then there's the irrigation system.


I am embarrassed by the success of the raised bed system. I'm not sure I'm a good enough (or prompt enough) gardener for the bounty that is coming.



Oh, and here's a shot of the Boston Pickling cukes. They need to be trellised before they take over the world. (Wonder if it's the banana peel seen in the behind the blossoms?)

Rain, Rain...Woohoo!

It's been raining all day long...a nice, gentle, soaking rain. It looks like everything has cleared out now, and I'm looking forward to seeing what a little bit of sunshine will do to the garden. How about some gardening news?

Bed One: The peas are stretching up to the twine beautifully--a few are curling their tendrils around the strands and climbing toward the trellis. I feel so tender about my peas. I've planted them before from seed and from seedling, but never with any success. I am really hoping to get some good stuff out of this year. The melons are doing fine. They're growing very slowly, but I'm not too worried about them. The carrots are also good. I still haven't planted more, nor have I replaced the Swiss chard that didn't grow. Maybe this week, now that Earth Day and Jeffrey's birthday party are out of the way.

Bed Two (henceforth known as the herb bed): All is well here. I have a feeling that my red leaf lettuce is about played out. It came up as a volunteer and the two plants have contributed mightily to several salads, but they seem to have stalled as far as new growth is concerned. I'm oddly saddened by this, but am trying to console myself with the mesclun patch, which is a thing of beauty and light:
Bed Three: Trucking along. The strawberries are tee-ninecy, which stinks a bit, but the birds are getting the bulk of them, anyway. Bastard birds. I'm considering sticking some cheap little windcatchers in there in hopes of keeping them out. Onions are doing fine, although I worry that they don't seem to be bulbing very well and a few of them look like they have given up the ghost. (I'm a nervous gardener.) Below is one of the bulbing onions. Keep your fingers crossed.

Bed Four: The pink-eyed peas are up! They sprouted beautifully, with almost all of them coming up in the circles in which I planted them. I like to imagine little overall-clad fairies having a hoedown in them while I'm sleeping. (Do you like the sparkly circle? I'm learning to use Gimp.)

In the upper righthand corner, you can see one of the basils also in this bed. I've got four Roma tomatoes in here, too, which are doing quite well.

Bed Five: The Boston Pickling cucumbers have been up for a week in a tidy, orderly line, but I was worried about the Blue Lake bush beans. Imagine my utter delight when I came out to the garden on Saturday and found this:
Today's rain brought out a straggling line of these babies. Can't wait for some fresh green beans this summer!

Bed Six: The eldest of the Three Sisters is up! I have four little corn plants in this bed, two in Bed Seven, and four in Bed Eight. I'm still hoping to get a few more sprouts, but I'm pleased with what I have so far.
Isn't she lovely? Someday, I'll figure out how to focus on the flowers and plants I want to focus on instead of the individual grains of sand behind them. Sigh.

Also in Bed Six are some eggplants and peppers. I was worried about all of them, as they seemed to be going through quite a bit of transplant shock. But the rain seems to have rejuvenated them and I was happy to see a little cluster of blooms on the eggplant tomorrow. Tell me these gorgeous things wouldn't look beautiful in any flower garden. (Also allow me to be a huge photo nerd and tell you that this shot is actually upside down and that I contorted myself into an alarming shape to get it.)

Bed Seven is notable only in that it is the bed in which I have the least corn and in which the Lemon cucumber seeds have yet to sprout. I delicately scraped off a bit of soil from the row and discovered two that had yet to germinate in any way at all. Hmmm. Will give them a few more days. Odd.

Bed Eight is home to three Better Boys who are awesomely beautiful. Check it out:

I know. I'm blown away by how hard my garden is working for me right now. I hope that it will come to a glorious, steamy, juice-drenched conclusion in the fall!

Shots From Bed One, April 22

I'm breaking this into different bed shots, because there are too many for just one post.

Here's Bed One, early April. What you can't really see is the insanity of the trellis for this puppy.

Lettuce. Prrreetttyyyy!

I am obsessed with the gorgeousness of my broccoli. I might need therapy.


Peas and Twine. Lovely, no?

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.

Last Day of March, First Seeds Sown (GTS Sunday 4)

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It wasn't the best day for it: chilly and windy and cloudy. BUT--I got some stuff planted! Woohoo! I'm going to keep track of moon signs--it totally wasn't the right time to plant anything I planted. But it's just going to have to be okay. Hopefully Mother Moon and Father Sun will hook me up.

Anyway, today I...

1. Sowed a mesclun patch in the herb bed. The herb bed will be permanent--the sorrel, chives, marjoram, thyme, bay, catnip and lemon balm already there will stay there. I believe I'll keep the leeks there as well. I'll fill in with mesclun (check!) and other annual herbs. Oh, and I need to get sage.
   
2. Sowed three rows of "Amarillo Yellow" carrots between the lettuce. Tomorrow I'll add two more short rows between the broccoli. I'll also put some Swiss chard in that bed and sow some sweet peas. Jeffrey helped me sow the seeds (he was meticulous in his seed placement) and wrote out the markers for the rows. Growing up, helping Daddy in the garden was a requirement and a pleasure and I have no doubt that that's why I love veggies and gardening so much today. I hope my kiddies will be the same way.


3. Set out the Quinalt strawberries I finally found. Quinalts do fine here, Divine Ms. K, but they need to be kept nice and healthy. They aren't particularly big; I'll use them for fresh fruit and to keep Jeffrey's attention. (I'll get most of the strawberries for putting up--freezing and jam and drying--at the farm down the road.) Between the strawberries, I set out four rows of red onions. This, clearly, is about a bajillion onions, and if they all make, then I'll have far more onions than I'll use fresh. More drying and freezing in store for those babies. I'll put in some Swiss chard and some "Little Finger" carrots in that bed tomorrow.


4. Also on tap for tomorrow: see about potatoes. It might be too late to plant and I'm not sure where to get them. I might put out some Blue Lake bush beans as well, although I'm going to wait on the Trail of Tear pole beans because I want to get the corn in first for my Three Sisters bed and the soil needs to be a bit warmer. Besides, I sort of feel like I need to go all the way native with that, and as the dogwood leaves aren't the size of squirrel ears yet, I think I'll wait a while.


5. Realized that the container/companion plant method I'm using is forcing me to make wise gardening decisions. Before this year, I've just sort of put things in randomly. Some plants did well, some didn't, some sort of chilled in the garden reading the newspapers I spread out to stop the weeds. Few things started from seeds thrived, the weeds were horrendous, and my fennel managed to kill as many plants around it as possible. But now, I'm thinking so carefully about where to place each seed and seedling and cutting. I'm worrying about fitting things in and making sure they can support their neighbors. I still don't know where I'm going to put the French melon or how to avoid crossing the two varieties of cucumbers. I'm careful with seeds and I follow recomendations for depths and watering that I never have before.

I couldn't decide which of the below to use as my GTS pic, so I'm using one. The first is Jeffrey's handiwork in the carrot row. The second is a bedewed (okay, behosed) broccoli plant. The clouds and shivering made for weird pictures. Better pics next week, I hope.

Whew!

I'm actually so glad that I didn't get my garden planted as planned, as we had a freeze on Monday night and a frost last night. It's not the right time according to the signs, but I'm going to be a planting fiend today and finish out another bed. I hope. I'll post pictures when I do and probably update this post.

In non-garden news, I am in the midst of a huge digging out and reorganization process in the office. I'm setting up day planners on both computers and reconfiguring my email to be more efficient. And I am tossing out a whole bunch of mess. Lots and lots and lots of mess.

Also, we're in the middle of having our house painted and reroofed. Ugh at the fumes and the sploshes and pools of paint all over my gardens. But it looks good. I'll post pictures of that, as well.

ALSO, I've added a review section to the blog for "green" products--if you have something handmade, organic, or otherwise earth-friendly that you'd like me to review, let me know.

Anything else? Um...my "bug guy" told me yesterday that getting brown widows around our house this year was probably "inevitable." Awesome. Blech.

OH YEAH! It's SPRING--run out and frolic, my loves.

Green Thumb Sunday 3

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Things have been slow in the garden this week; the moon has been waning and the weather has been rainy and/or cold. But we're waxing next week and I'm going to start getting my cool weather veggies in. I'm a bit behind, but wanted to wait on the moon (plus, we had a hard freeze this week.)

In the meantime, here's a pic from last week's visit to Cowtown. This is a field thistle that found its home nestled in the lea of a hay bale. Not to sound like a photo nerd, but I really like the contrast of textures in this photo.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Green Thumb Sunday Two

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The first picture owes absolutely nothing to my personal green thumb, unless you count "not hacking the bush into bits" as gardening. It's a blossom from one of the gajillion azaleas in our yard. We figure they must be as old as our house--which was built in the early 1970s. The bushes themselves are around ten feet tall and they form veritable thickets of pink and fushia and white blossoms in the spring. It's all very lovely and every spring, I think to say "thank you" to the folks who had the good sense to plant so many of them.

The second picture owes even less to my intervention. These daffodils were planted well before my birth by the wife of the caretaker of the farm where my father (and I) grew up. Big Jim and his wife (whose name I'm not sure I ever knew) are long gone from the farm and might, for all I know, be gone from the earth, as well. But their daffodils still bloom in a rectangular drift along the fence line and have the sweetest scent of any daffodil I've ever sniffed. They bloom earlier, too: these have been blooming since Valentine's Day. If you look close, you might see the brown stippling caused by a frost that caught them unaware.

I'm labeling this post "Spring," even though the weatherman says the temperature will dip back below freezing by the end of the week and the solstice is still days away. I'm doing it honor of those folks from the past who seemed to know that I needed a bit of hopeful color after the past week.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.