To Build a Table

My wife wanted a picnic table so we could spend some time eating out-doors this year. I figured it would be cheaper and more fun to build one than to buy one. We ended up using This Old House's plan, and were very pleased with the results:

This is just about my favorite time of year in the yard. Those purple flowers in the background migrated over the fence from where my neighbor planted them. They were blooming when we first bought the house and I've mowed around them ever since.

It was a different purple flower that helped me pick where to place the table.  My wife wanted it in a shady place. I recently finished reading Nancy Gift's A Weed by Any Other Name, where I learned that violets are a shade-loving "weed" and can tell you what parts of your yard or garden would be good for shade tolerant plantings. Violets have always been one of my favorite "weeds."  There's a nice one coming up in my side garden:

So, after my first mowing of the year, the violets under the grass were revealed. I searched the yard and picked out the area that had the highest concentration of them and that's where we've placed the picnic table. It's not the most shaded spot right now, but the tree it's under is not yet fully leaved, so it should be great by the time it starts to get really hot outside.

Inheritance, part two

Our house also came with a lot of tulips!

First harvest

This past week, I harvested some of what over-wintered in the garden. I was clearing out some space for the second round of greens and herbs and decided to pull everything useful from that area. I also had to cut back the rosemary to get full access.

The rosemary is in the bottom of the basket, with parsley and wild garlic on top. Just to the left, that's parsley root. I haven't tried it yet, but it's supposed to be edible.

While weeding the area, I came across these carrot volunteers and left them to grow:

 It won't be long until I'm harvesting some micro greens, when I thin my bok choy and arugula:

Inheritance, part one

When we bought our house, it came with a number of beautiful plants. The landscaping wasn't perfect and was starting to get a little out of control, but there are still some elements of real beauty, especially in the early spring.

The heavenly bamboo actually adds a little color all winter long and is one of the most interesting things to look at when everything else is dead. We have two of these in our yard and two more just over the property line out back.

I just missed the peak color on the forsythia. It's bright yellow flowers are always a good indicator of when to get the cool-weather vegetables planted. As the leaves start to come in, the yellow gives way to green. I'm planning on trying to clone forsythia this year to work toward having it as a hedge around the side of our back yard.

We have three of these pretty pink-flowered bushes. After they finish flowering, I'll be cutting them way back.

This is one of my favorites. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I think either a gardenia or a camellia. The flowers are just beautiful and smell nice, too.

I think the periwinkle might be my wife's favorite. It's growing as a ground-cover along the side and the front of the house. Right now, I'm allowing it to come into the side garden a little, but I'll be cutting it back when it's time to plant out my tomatoes.

I'm sure this wasn't intentionally left for us when we bought the house, but I really do love this purple deadnettle that's growing as a weed in our yard, so I had to get a picture before I mowed for the first time this weekend.

Speaking of beautiful weeds: I don't know what this is, but I took a picture of it before mowing as well.

Sprouts in the Greenhouse!

Sprouts!

Things are starting to come up in my greenhouse! The spinach on the left side came up first and is already developing its first true leaves. The line of cumin just to the right of the spinach came up next, followed by the tomatillo just to the right of center. As of yesterday, at least one of everything else has sprouted as well!

New Toys!

My new garden knives arrived today!

Now, I get to go outside and see if the dirt's dried off enough to work with.

Planting in the Rain

This weekend was a bit of an experiment for me. I had some spare time and I really wanted to get some seeds in the ground. Unfortunately, it was raining. In the past I've had some success with transplanting seedlings out in a light rain. Cloud cover helps reduce the shock to the plant and, if the soil has been well-worked ahead of time, this can work well. Seeds appear to be a different story. For starters, the soil wasn't worked as well as I would like. Since our soil has a lot of clay, it was clumping and this made appropriate planting depth difficult to impossible. A more serious problem, though, was the handling of the seeds themselves. They were getting wet as I tried to spread them and they were sticking to each other and to my fingers. Moisture also got into my seed envelopes and I had to air them out or a while afterwards. Well, at least I learned something!

The ground is still too wet to work. Maybe by tomorrow or the next day I'll be able to get the rest of the bed planted. Hopefully, my new hori hori knives will arrive in the mean time!

First work of the year

Over the past few weeks, I've started to get out into the garden and get some work done.

The first thing I had to do was repair the greenhouse so I could get some seedlings started. The plastic covering did not hold up to the weather over the winter and had split and come open in multiple places. I repaired it with packing tape and am planning on working out a more permanent fix before next winter.

It doesn't zip up as well as it used to, but I can close off the top shelf and that seems to be enough to keep it warm. In the flat, I've planted tomato, tomatillo, eggplant, cumin, spinach and three kinds of chilli pepper. So far, only the spinach has sprouted.

The next job was to get my peas and potatoes planted. I turned this bed in the fall, but various weeds and grasses had taken over, forcing me to hoe it up again. The peas are planted in two rows on either side of the twine trellis running along the length of the bed. The potatoes are in the near area that's been worked. This is my first time trying potatoes.

This past week, I've moved on to planting some herbs and greens. My plan is to work 1/4 of my original garden area every two weeks, so I'll have a staggered harvest. When it warms up, I'll plant the purira peppers, the tomatillos, the eggplant and the cumin into whatever spaces I can find. The spinach will have to go out sooner and the tomatoes and other chillies will go into the garden on the other side of the house.

Over the past week, I've turned this area several times. Yesterday, I worked a good amount of compost into it and got a small bed of carrots planted in the upper left-hand corner. Today, I laid in a short row each of red onion, chinese cabbage, spinach, orach, cilantro, and calendula. Since it was raining, I'm not sure how successful this planting was. The seeds clumped up on me and were hard to spread right. Also, the clay soil didn't allow me to cover them like I would've preferred. When it dries up, I'll make sure the onion sets are covered properly. As for the seeds, I'll just have to wait and see. When the ground's dry later this week, I'll plant more of the same crops, continuing down the left hand side of the garden. In the circle, I'm planning on mixing dill and nigella.

I'm really enjoying the rosemary flowers and will try and postpone cutting it back as long as possible:

A Picture A Week

So, I've decided to take weekly pictures of my garden again this year.  This time, I'm taking them from the other side. Instead of leaning out the window, I'm shooting from the top of my tall step-ladder.

I know it's March, but let's call this one Week Zero:

3/17/2013 - No work done yet (well, you can see part of the bed I've turned to the left). That's bok choy flowering to the right, and some parsley and garlic near it that over-wintered. The rosemary is blooming nicely, too.

3/24/2013 - Spent some time this week turning about 1/4 of the garden and mixing in plenty of compost. Yesterday, I planted a small bed of carrots in the upper left-hand corner. Today I tried planting some seeds in the rain: bok choy, cilantro, calendula, orach, spinach, and onion sets. I'll plant in the rest of this area after it dries out later this week.

4/7/2013 - I skipped last week, but not a lot of change in that time.  I weeded the borage volunteers and finished planting the section to the left. Bok choy, arugula and orach are all starting to come up. Also, the onion bulbs are starting to sprout.

4/14/2013 - I got another 1/4 of this garden planted with herbs and greens and pruned the rosemary a bit.

Searching for Volunteers

Before starting to turn the soil for this year's garden, I had to have a look around to see what had come back from last year. So far, there aren't that many volunteers, but I did find a few things that I want to keep around:

Bachelor's Buttons

Borage

Calendula

Mystery greens

Nigella

 

 

 

 

Romaine Lettuce

Seeds Ordered!

I just ordered my seeds for my garden this year.  From Seeds of Change I got Black Beauty eggplant, a purple strain of tomatillo, Purira pepper (an early-producing variety that's supposed to be very spicy) and some Yukon Gold seed potatoes.  From Horizon Herbs I went with the Chadwick Cherry tomato, more Mboga peppers, Fisher's Earliest corn, epazote, Revolution spinach and three spinach substitutes (Red Orach, Red Aztec and Dark Green Spinach amaranth).

I've never grown potatoes, tomatillos, purira peppers, epazote or any of the spinach substitutes.  Eggplant I've only grown from store-bought seedlings.  The revolution spinach was the winner of my spinach testing last year (the only one that did at all well).

There are a lot of other things I'm planning on growing this year, from seeds that I've saved myself, including okra, sunflower, amaranth, bok choy, zucchini, winter squash, peas and maybe some beans.  If 2012 could be known as the year my garden died (I lost my sage and thyme, and I'm worried that the lavender and peppermint aren't growing yet this year), 2013 will be known as my most productive year yet!  The toddler's big enough to play by himself in the yard while I work in the garden (bonus: he loves to be outside!).  With the way that grocery prices have gone, I'm more motivated than ever to grow my family's food.

The Neglected Garden

After a year of mostly neglecting my garden, I finally got back out there about a week ago.  I have a new system that seems to be working fairly well.  I had been cooking and eating my lunch after feeding the toddler and putting him down for his nap.  Now, I'm working really hard to have something prepared for myself so that I can eat with him.  Then, after I put him down, I spend one hour outside in the garden.  It means I have to do a little more of the housework while he's awake, but he's really entertaining himself much better.  In the past, I've been overwhelmed with large projects and ended up not even starting them.  Now, after an hour, I usually want to keep working, but instead I come back inside and do some chores in here where I can hear him when he wakes up.  This leaves me wanting to get back out there the next day.

Mostly, I've just been weeding.  Here's the side garden after I got it a little cleaned up:

 The mboga peppers not only survived being buried in grass, but have really started producing now that the weather's getting a little cooler.  I'm drying the red ones to grind up later, and I've been eating the green ones with my bean burritos (very nice).

The pineapple sage has also started to bloom.  It's definitely worth the wait.

The only other survivors were the basil, the chia volunteers and some bok choy.  Well, plenty of lambsquarters had gone to seed, so I spread those seeds and some bok choy and arugula seeds and all of that is starting to sprout.

The back garden is still in rough shape, but I've spent a few hours out there since this picture was taken and it's looking a little better.

A day to work

So, I haven't really blogged about my garden in a long time.  I'd like to say that I've been too busy gardening, but that's just not the case.  In fact, I've all but abandoned the garden.  Fortunately, it hasn't abandoned me.

Here's a picture of the first ripe tomato we got back in late June:

This was one of the new Chadwick Cherries I grew this year.  I was very impressed.  They were tasty and very large for cherries.  Unfortunately, we didn't get more than a few after that one.  We've been having some trouble with squirrels taking our tomatoes and I've had to pick them before they were ripe.  This year, they started taking them while they were still green.  I'm going to have to figure something out next year.  Maybe I'll offer an alternative food source or maybe I'll just shoot them.  After the figs started to ripen earlier this month, the squirrels lost their interest in the green tomatoes and I was able to pick some and fry them:

We also made a super tasty frittata with garden greens:

Besides the greens and the figs, we've gotten little else out of the garden this year: only one zucchini before the heat wave, one acorn squash volunteer, two little eggplants that went into some ratatouille and some chili peppers:

These are all cayenne, which have produced fairly well in spite of staying tiny.  The mboga peppers are also starting to ripen and the plants themselves are very nice-looking.  I did a taste test to compare the cayenne and the mboga (which look very similar) to see if I want to grow both next year.  They were about the same level of spicy and had a very similar taste.  The mboga seemed to hit my stomach a lot harder, but it may have been because it was the second one I ate.  I really do like the plant, though, but the cayenne has produced better.  I think I will keep them both.  

I didn't get a single jalapeno out of the garden this year.  They were too small when the heat hit.  I never even got the Piri Piri in the ground.  They have such a long season and I was too late starting.  We've been blessed by generous gardeners this year, though.  That ratatouille I mentioned had tomatoes from a friend's garden.  Another friend has given us lots of okra and bunch of jalapenos:

 

This is probably my most disappointing season in the ten years I've been gardening.  The garden has slipped to be maybe my seventh priority after caring for my toddler, keeping up with housework, buying and preparing food, my job, training for my first marathon and keeping the yard looking almost presentable.  

My wife has taken this week off from work to spend time with some visiting family and that has given me a chance to get some stuff done.  On Monday, we spent the morning with my parents and I spent the afternoon catching up on some social networking sites I'd been avoiding because of potential Olympics spoilers.  Yesterday, I ran 8 miles in the morning and then had to drive to the next town over to mow the yard at our rental property, since we're between tenants.  Today, my wife took our son and her visiting relatives to see her aunt that lives nearby and that gave me a chance to spend some time cleaning up the yard.  Tomorrow, I'm planning to run 13 miles in the morning and then see what I can do in the garden.  Friday, I'll have to rest and (hopefully) sleep since I'm working that night.

I didn't get everything done that I wanted, but I did get to work on a part of the yard that has been bugging me for a while.  It actually got so bad that one of my neighbors came over and did a little cutting on it the other day.  She didn't cut much, but she did make me realize that I had to get it done:

Full disclosure: the red car wasn't there in the before picture.

In addition to mowing, I also got to cut the ivy off of the front porch:

I'll be satisfied if I can only get the weeds a little under control in the garden tomorrow, but if the work goes fast, I might even get some cool-weather crops planted.  I'm thinking spinach and maybe bok choy or winter squash!