Better Late than Never

So, I'm a few weeks behind, but I finally got my original garden area (mostly) planted.  I've left some space for the piri piri peppers when they're big enough and I'm sure there'll be some other little spaces to fill in as I go.  I've left some wilderness over on the right side, where I'm planning to put some beans and squash soon.  All of the poles and cages indicate tomato locations (about 30 so far).  I've also put out 7 cayenne seedlings.  Amongst all of these veggies I've sown a mix of salads and herbs.  So far, I'm definitely seeing plenty of bok choy, arugula, borage, dill and lambsquarters come up.  I'm also seeing some cilantro and something that may or may not be cumin.  No calendula or nigella yet, but they're still going strong in my side yard.

Now that most of the planting is done out back, I have lots of weeding and thinning ahead of me.  I've also broken ground in the side yard.  As I mentioned, there are some flowers left that either survived the winter or have reseeded, but I'm looking to put quite a few veggies in there.  I have more pepper and tomato seedlings in my flat that need to go out soon.  I'm also going to be planting okra, squash, sunflowers and amaranth.

Wordless Wednesday

God makes it grow

I know a lot of people who think that gardening is too hard, or just something that they can't do well.  There is a lot of hard work involved in gardening.  You have to prepare the soil by digging, tilling, turning, adding compost, etc.  You have to plant your seeds.  When they come up, you have to thin them and keep all of the weeds from choking them out.  You have to make sure they get enough water and nutrients.  You may have to prune them.  All of this work may take months before you ever see a harvest.  When you do get fruit, there is more work in harvesting, cleaning, preparing and storing!  With all of this work that is involved in gardening, there is one thing that gardeners can't do: we can't make anything grow.  We can make the conditions more favorable.  We can eliminate or reduce competition.  We can't make it grow.  Inherent in every seed is the potential for growth. 

The plant pictured above is a great lesson to me.  I never tilled this area.  I never planted a single seed there.  I didn't do any thinning or any weeding (as you can tell).  In spite of my complete lack of work, this arugula plant has grown and thrived.  It must have come up as a volunteer in the fall and survived our extremely mild winter.  This spring, it got positively huge (that's a four-foot fence).  In fact, it's bigger and healthier than any of the arugula that I tended last year.  This picture was taken a few weeks ago.  Now, it has completely gone to seed and I'll be harvesting them soon.  Most of the arugula I grow later this year and early next year will come from this one plant that grew with no help from me!

Edible wilderness

So, Friday night my wife called my garden an "edible wilderness."  She wasn't insulting it.  She was actually excited because going out to pick something felt more like going to the woods than gardening.  Whatever she meant, I took it as a sign that I needed to get some stuff done out there.  I have been favoring hardy perennials and annuals that reseed themselves easily, going for more of a natural look than you might see in some gardens.  I've also been allowing some beneficial weeds to go to seed.  Above, that's the rosemary that dominates the place.  You can see carrots in the foreground, spearmint gone wild to the left, thistle in the background and a giant arugula against the fence.  The carrots and arugula are gone to seed and so has a bunch of bok choy.  I've got parsley and dill that reseeded themselves and some red onions that were overlooked last year.  One cilantro volunteer came up, but we ate it a few weeks ago.  I've also planted garlic that I harvested last year.



The main focus of my work yesterday was to turn my compost pile for the first time this year.  It mostly looked like a brush pile overrun with weeds:

 

There was a lot of good, mature compost underneath:

This plant came up along my neighbor's fence:

I thought I had found the prettiest weed ever, but she told me that it's called the "money plant" and that it's spread from her yard.  It apparently reseeds very easily.  She keeps her yard under tight control, though, so I actually have more of it than she does.



The spearmint is out of control:

It seems to be mounting an assault on the rosemary.  Part of me is interested to see who would win that battle, but I'm going to intervene so that they both can survive.  Both need to be pruned severely, so if you're local and you want some, let me know.



You may be able to see it above, but the romaine lettuce has also reseeded:

Here is some of the dill that reseeded.  You can see a red onion and some parsley behind it:

The kitchen sage is blooming and the other salvias are starting to open up, too:

I did find a beautiful weed in the garden, though:

It's actually a type of grass.  The rest of the grass in my yard has green flowers when it goes to seed.  This one has a purple flower.



Today, I got out there to do a little more work and planted my first summer crops of the year.  I had started some tomatoes and peppers in a greenhouse flat and I transplanted six tomatoes out to the circle that had bee balm last year.  The seeds seem to have migrated when I watered the flat, so I can't be sure which variety they are, but I think it's two of the Peron Sprayless slicers and four of the Chadwick Cherry.  I also put out two basil seedlings that I bought at the grocery store.  This circle already contained two red onions, a romaine lettuce, a couple of dill and a parsley.  I'm not sure if the bee balm is going to be coming back.  It was beautiful last year and it might still be a late-starter, but there are no signs of life so far.  Around these seedlings and survivors, I sowed a bunch of seeds.  I mixed together bok choy, arugula, beetberry, lambsquarters, borage, marigold, calendula, cumin, cilantro and dill.  The plan is to eat the thinnings as they grow and leave a few to grow to maturity, at least one each of the non-greens.  Here's what the tomatoes looked like in the greenhouse before I transplanted them:

The year so far...

Fortunately, it's been easier to get out and work in the garden than it has been to blog about it.  I haven't done much yet, but I have gotten out there a few days so far.  I dug a plot and planted probably most of my peas, saving some for the fall.  They sprouted a few weeks ago and are coming along nicely now. 

I had to prune the rosemary.  It had grown completely over the thyme and two of the ornamental salvia.  Now, they're getting plenty of sun and should be thinking about blooming soon.  The rosemary has been in bloom all "winter" long. 

Probably the biggest project I've worked on so far has been putting the greenhouse back together and building a flat to start my tomatoes and peppers in.  I'm no carpenter, so it was a daunting task.  It's probably the most complicated thing I've made since I built my mom a jewelry box over 20 years ago.  I've been worried that it's not going to work.  This is the first time I've tried to start my seedlings in the greenhouse versus in the closet.  I hope it will make for a more smooth transition.  They've taken forever to sprout, but the first one came up yesterday and a second one today, so hopefully the rest will be following soon. 

Besides that, I've gotten to tackle a couple of other projects.  I've been bummed for a couple of years now about this dogwood that died just outside our fence.  It's been overgrown with ivy and some sort of thorny vine.  There was also a small bush growing up around it that's a type of weed I see a lot in this area.  It will quickly grow into a tree if you let it.  Anyway, I chopped down most of that dead tree with my machete last weekend.  I left about four feet of stump.  I discovered that there was a heavenly bamboo growing next to it, and I left that. 

This weekend, I also got to prune the fig tree.  There were a couple of branches that were growing at awkward angles, making it hard to move around it.  I also had to take off some height to keep it growing up into the overhang.  I worked in one of the circles in the garden, too.  It's the circle with the peppermint.  I pruned back the dead growth from it and pulled it up where it was creeping out of its bounds.  This seems to be the main area of parsley reseeding.  I weeded it completely and thinned the parsley seedlings to a good spacing.  Additionally, there are three arugula and a bok choy that have survived the "winter" and are now flowering.  I'm going to harvest the seed and then pull them up and use their space for transplanting tomatoes or peppers later.  Also in this circle are a few carrots that have been in the ground for over a year now.  They are massive!  I'm not planning on eating them, but letting them go to seed to collect for later use.  Even with all that, there was some space left in the circle, and I used that space to plant garlic.  Usually, I plant it in the fall, for a summer harvest, but I never got around to it last year.  I thought we had eaten all of what I had grown, but when I was looking through my seeds recently, I found four small bulbs.  I planted the nineteen biggest cloves.

Seeds!

My seeds arrived yesterday!  Everything seems to be good with the order, except for a minor pea-splosion.  I contained it in a sandwich bag (pictured above).  There were just too many peas for that tiny bag to hold.  I think I'll have enough for spring and fall crops.  Everything that I ordered this year should be relatively easy to save for next year (the tomatoes should be the hardest), so I can buy new things next year.  The most exciting thing about this order was the smell when I opened the bag.  I'm trying to grow cumin for the first time this year and the cumin seeds they sent are powerfully aromatic.  As soon as I opened the package, I felt like I had walked into a spice souq.

Here we go again!

So, the year's just started, but it's time to start thinking ahead and planning this year's garden.

Last year was not as productive as I would have liked.  The demands of taking care of a small child didn't leave me a lot of spare time.  I'm hopeful that this year will be better for a variety of reasons.  A lot of last year was spent learning to be a better housekeeper, grocery shopper, cook and child care provider.  This year I'll be a lot more efficient.  Also, my parents have moved to the area and are willing to help out by watching my son.  Added to that, he's becoming increasingly independent and interactive.  It won't be long until he's big enough to help me weed!

I don't want to be too negative about last year's garden.  The okra did great.  Our little freezer is still almost full.  The bok choy was also very productive, and reseeded itself generously.  The rosemary is larger than it needs to be and is asking for another drastic pruning this year.  We also got a lot of figs.  I started the peppers too late to get much from them and the tomatoes and zucchini did not produce as well as in seasons past.  There was plenty of basil, parsley, carrots and arugula, though, and the oregano and mints are still doing great.

Pictured above are the two books I got for Christmas.  They have me very excited about this coming year.  The one on the left is from the folks at Ecology Action.  It is a very detailed description of the process they have been developing for growing more food in smaller areas.  It's gotten me excited about providing more food for my family.  The other book is about more than gardening.  It provides an overview of all sorts of skills needed for sustainable living, such as canning, raising livestock and even making beer!  It also has a good list of resources to dig deeper on any of the subjects it covers.

Yesterday, I ordered seeds from Horizon Herbs.  I'm going to be trying roman chamomile, cumin and beans for the first time.  I'm also trying different strains of peas, borage, zucchini, tomato, sunflower and chile peppers.  Add these to the 30+ types of seed I currently have saved and I should have quite a diverse garden.  The roman chamomile is the type used to make a chamomile lawn.  My plan is to grow it between and around the two permanent beds I intend to dig in the area I was calling the "cottage garden" last year.  If it becomes well established, I'm not sure if I'll keep it short or let it flower.  Either way, it should be awesome to walk on.  I tried sunflower last year, but never turned the ground I had planned to and they died before I could plant them.  This new variety I'm trying is called "fat mama."  I'm pretty excited about that.  In addition to a different strain of jalapeno than what I've used, I also ordered a type of pepper I've never grown before.  They're calling it "mboga pepper."  Mboga is Kiswahili for "vegetable."  It should be hotter than the jalapeno, but nowhere near a habanero; maybe on par with cayenne.  I also got two new kinds of tomato seeds.  One is called "Amish paste" and I intend to use it primarily for canning.  The other is the "Chadwick cherry" which was developed by Alan Chadwick, upon whose work Ecology Action is founded.  I plan on eating them fresh in salads and learning to sun dry them.

So far, I've been doing a lot of thinking and planning, but the real work will be starting soon.  I need to set my little greenhouse back up and test it to see how warm it stays on these cold mornings.  If it's warm enough to raise seedlings, I'm going to be building some wooden flats that fit on the shelves and use them for starting the seedlings next month.  I also need to do a little more cleaning in the garden and I need to set up the compost pile using the information I've gained from Grow More Vegetables.