Weekend work

Yesterday, I spent a few hours in the "cottage" garden.  Things had gotten a bit out of control, in the sense of there being a lot of dead flowers on the plants that had gone to seed and also a few entire plants that had died.  In addition, a lot of grass and other weeds were growing around and among the flowers.  I didn't get everything done, but I made some progress.

Okra flowers and mystery nightshade

Here's a shot I got last week of our okra plants.  I like the flowers so much that I'm planning on moving the okra to my "cottage" flower garden next year.  Behind the okra, you can also see a wild nightshade of some sort that I've allowed to grow.  It's gotten quite large.  The berries were green at first, but are turning black.  I need to do some research to see if it's edible, or if it's deadly.

Veggie lasagna...

...including zucchini, carrots, mustard greens, garlic, basil and oregano from the garden!

First significant harvest

These fruits were waiting when we got back from vacation last week.  The zucchini were great with sauteed onions, cumin and feta cheese.  The tomatoes went well with some mustard greens in a salad and the okra was joined by many more sauteed with onions, garlic, tomatoes, oregano and basil.

First fruit

The summer vegetable harvest has begun!

Calendula

The third type of flower in the "cottage" garden has bloomed.

Beautiful harvest

Cosmos and bachelor's buttons from the "cottage" garden and lavender and bee balm from the herb garden.

More flowers

A second type of flower has begun to bloom in the "cottage" garden.  I believe this one is "bachelor's buttons."

The bok choy I planted this spring has also started to flower.

So has the nearby cilantro.  This was a "slow-bolt" variety, but our unseasonable warmth is probably the reason it bolted before it was even big enough to harvest the leaves.

The dill is also beginning to bloom.

This is some of the romaine that over-wintered.  Last time, they were closed because it was cloudy.  This is what they look like when they're open.

Look how similar the thistle flowers are to the romaine.  I also noticed tonight that the romaine flowers turn into little puff-balls (similar to dandelions) after flowering, which I have noticed also happens to this type of thistle.

Here is the most exciting new flower this week: zucchini!

Cosmos

Yesterday, the first bloom in my "cottage" garden opened.  Now that it has, I can identify that it is a cosmos.  The seed pack says that there will be red and gold blooms as well.  I picked two yesterday and there are two more today.  So far, they're all orange.  Two more types of flowers are getting to be a good size.  I can't wait for them to bloom to see what they are!

Garden flowers

 

bee balm

Who knew onions had such pretty flowers?

store-bought marigold

This magenta-spreen lambsquarters is getting ready to spread its seed.  Hopefully, it will grow as a weed for a long time in my garden.

This is one of the weeds I posted earlier this year.  It's turned out to have nice flowers.

These parsley flowers aren't the prettiest, but hopefully they'll scatter a lot of seed in the garden.

The lavender is in full bloom.  It looks a lot more impressive in person.

This pineapple sage survived the winter in my closet.  It's still tiny, but it's starting to bloom.  Hopefully, it will get much bigger this year.

The little, yellow romaine lettuce flowers have closed because the sun's behind some clouds.

This is probably the most important flower in my garden right now (to me): tomato!

Homemade pizza

Red onions and oregano from the garden, spinach and goat cheese from the farmers market = best pizza ever?

Peas!

On Saturday, while I was watching the Saracens win the rugby premiership trophy, my wonderful wife was out in the garden tying up our pea plants.  This is the first year I've grown peas and I didn't do enough research to know that they had to be trellised.  She tied them up to stakes and harvested some that were ready.  Pictured above, our son is inspecting his future dinner.

Weekend work

It's not the most glamorous part of gardening, but this weekend I had to tend to some bushes that had gotten out of control.  They were threatening both our house and our neighbor's driveway.  We're lucky she hadn't called the law yet.  There were weeds and vines growing up through all four of the bushes on this side of the house.  I tried to get into them and cut the weeds off near the ground.  I'm sure I'll have to have another go at these in a month or two and then again in the fall so that they will be nice and compact when they flower in the spring.  I was tempted to get rid of them entirely and use this area for gardening until I saw their flowers this spring.

Weekend project

Over the weekend, I got around to a project I'd been needing to do for a while.  I had hoped to compost all of my yard waste, but the larger branches just weren't breaking down.  Maybe if I had a wood chipper it could've worked.  Anyway, instead of a compost pile, I had more of a brush pile.  It's not just the ones you can see.  There are layers of branches underneath layers of leaves and sod. 

On Saturday, I just moved the problem.  I pulled all of the branches out and made a large brush pile in my yard.  There was actually some great compost underneath some of the branches.  Anything small enough was left to be part of the compost pile.  On Sunday, I bundled up all of the wood and put it out at the curb.  Supposedly, someone will be by to pick it up.  I guess living in the city isn't all bad.  Of course, if we were out in the country, I could've had a great bonfire!

It was important to get this pile taken care of so that I can continue to compost leaves and green growth from my yard.  There are a couple of areas of bushes that seriously need trimming and now I am free to attack them.  Instead of composting all of the leaves, though, I am going to use some to mulch around existing plantings to keep the soil from drying out.

An unexpected morning

I had an unexpected bit of work before breakfast (and coffee!) this morning.  While I was adjusting the straps that hold the plastic cover on my small greenhouse, the wind caught it and tipped it.  Fortunately, I was right there and was able to keep it from falling over, but most of my seedlings fell off and partially (many, completely) out of their cups.  I was able to find and re-pot all of them that were viable (I had already lost a marigold, a jalapeno and four chias from drying out this week, and I discovered that my basil clone was not making roots at all).  Now, I have to wait and see how many survive this significant root trauma.

Since they all got mixed up, there is a little pepper confusion.  I know that the four largest are jalapeno and that all of the ones with red stems are cayenne.  That leaves three small seedlings with green stems.  One of them is a jalapeno and the other two are cayenne.  The marigolds are so small, with tiny root systems.  I think they're the least likely to pull through.  One of them looked broken as well.

I plan to move the greenhouse against the fence, where it will have support on one side.  I will also weigh down the base and lash the shelves and their supports to each other.  I wasn't planning on doing that today, but I suppose I can just add it to my list.

Plantings

Wednesday may have been my biggest day for planting yet this year.  Not only did I finally get my okra seeds in the ground, I also planted out the basil and pineapple sage that survived the winter in my closet.  The chia sage were not looking great (maybe I left them in the cups too long?), but I put the six best out in the "cottage garden" area.  In the picture above, you can see the five chiles that I also planted in the garden.  I think they're the African bird peppers (piri-piri), but they could be jalapeno.  I didn't label the cups they were in.

Okra and squash

I finally finished preparing the ground for my okra and zucchini!  I should have had them planted weeks ago, but tearing up grass is tough, particularly with limited time available for doing it.  The mounds in front will hold zucchini and the three rows behind them are for the okra.

A new greenhouse

My parents recently gave me this four-shelf greenhouse.  I left a thermometer in it all day yesterday and all night.  It's staying warmer and more humid than the environment.  I want to be cautious, but I believe it will be a better situation for my seedlings than the closet, so I went ahead and moved them all out.  The top shelf has the chia sage, jalapeno and African bird peppers.  The second shelf is all cayenne and the third shelf has marigold and a basil clone.  On the bottom, I put the basil and pineapple sage that survived the winter.  The closet is empty and there's still plenty of room left in the greenhouse.  I think I'll start trying to clone the forsythia soon.

Weeds?

These are some "weeds" that I have allowed to grow in my garden this spring because they looked interesting and possible useful.  I was hoping someone could identify them for me.

"Cottage" seedlings

Some seedlings are starting to sprout in my side garden.  I should have been more careful when I planted them, so I'm not exactly sure what's what.  I think the first one above is either larkspur or nigella.  I believe the second and third are bachelor's buttons and calendula.  The last one could be cosmos.  I've grown poppies before and they had more of a fern-like appearance as seedlings, so I'm pretty sure they've not sprouted yet this time.

"Magenta Spreen" lambsquarters

I felt a little silly ordering seeds for something that's basically a weed, but it is pretty.  I can't wait for it to get a little larger, so I can try it in a salad.  You can also cook it like spinach.  In my last garden, a similar plant that lacked the magenta center grew wild as a weed, but it wasn't in my new garden.  It's in the same family as quinoa, amaranth and spinach. 

I'm thinking omelette

The pepper from my aero garden has finally ripened.  There are two more on the plant now, but I'm not sure I have the patience to wait the month or so for them to turn red, since the tomatoes have stopped producing.  I'm going to get some salad greens to grow in there.  Probably romaine, since they don't offer spinach.  That will go a long way toward my salad a day goal.

"Cottage" garden (mostly) planted

After a week and a half of hard work, tearing up grass and breaking roots and clay, I finally got some seeds in the ground in our side yard yesterday.  In the middle two beds, I planted calendula, poppy, cosmos, nigella, larkspur and bachelor's buttons.  In the first of them, I alternated the seeds in the approximate spacing they should be in after thinning.  In the second one, I scattered the remaining seeds and then stirred the dirt.  I'm interested to see which way works the best. 

I'm planning on planting hollyhock along the road (on the near side of the path as well).  Since it's biennial and probably won't bloom much this year anyway I'm putting that off until after I get my okra and squash going in the other garden.  I haven't planted anything in the bed closest to the house, either.  I'm thinking about cilantro, dill, parsley, chamomile and marigold.  I'm also going to be putting tomatoes out into any empty spaces later in the year.  Along both sides of the path I'm planning on the chia sage and cayenne pepper.

Tomatoes planted

Over the weekend, I got my tomato seedlings in the ground!  There are twenty in this picture and four more around the garden.  I broke down and bought bamboo stakes for them, remembering how hard it is to cut bamboo.  Since I plan on taking the side-shoots as clones, rooting them and planting them out in the garden, I'll still need more stakes and will likely have a chance to cut some bamboo this year.  The lavender in the foreground is starting to bud.

Peak rosemary bloom?

I'm not sure if this is actually the peak of the flowers on my rosemary, but I went ahead and took a picture just in case.  You can see that a half-dozen or so of the boughs have flowers on them.  There are still a couple with unopened buds, too.  I'm hoping that it will still be blooming when the four salvias that surround it bloom.  They all have buds that are just starting to open, so it should look pretty good in a week or two.  Last year, this rosemary plant bloomed for the first time, but only had two flowers total.

I've been ill and we've had bad weather, both of which have prevented me from gardening.  I finally got back out there this week, though.  I broke ground on my "cottage garden," which I should have done weeks ago.  It's been slow going, but I hope to get that planted this week.  I also spent a few hours weeding my established garden area.  My dill volunteers have started to sprout and the kitchen sage has re-seeded.  I also got cilantro, dill and bok choy planted.  I'm hoping to put my tomato seedlings out this weekend as well.

Mustard fruit

If you've been reading this blog, you know I've been concerned about collecting the seeds from my mustard greens and bok choy plants.  I had assumed that they would develop within the flowers somehow.  At one point, I even thought I saw them, but it turned out to be some bugs enjoying the flowers.  This week, I was pleased to notice green-bean-looking fruit following the flowers on the stalk.  I'm assuming that they're seed pods and will have the tiny seeds inside.

The main reason I want to collect these seeds is to replant them this fall.  I'm also a little curious about making mustard.