what i’ve planted:
- lettuces
- spinach
- herbs
what’s growing:
- tomatoes
- peppers
what’s left to be planted:
- squash
- green beans
- zucchini
- cucumbers
what i’ve been attempting to cook from lately:
p.s. no, we’re not vegetarians. but meat is expensive!
guys, the weather’s in the 60′s, it’s sunny but still cool and i’m just itching to get out in the dirt. we’ve done it a little – bought a load of compost from an acquaintance of ross’s who has their own composting business. dark, rich, soil in our boxes makes them look ready to plant – right now. we’ve been faithfully adding to the compost pile (i’ve actually started my office composting – mainly coffee grounds, banana peels and the like, but every little bit helps!). just yesterday we covered the pile in a tarp and secured it with bricks – should heat up nicely now. all the first round seedlings are doing OK – i just thinned out my broccoli yesterday; this is the first year for broccoli and i’m very excited. i also planted a flat of lettuce – people, grow lettuce! it’s by far the easiest, most near-instant gratification plant to grow – so do it.
i keep looking at the planting dates on the back of my seed packets – is it time, is it time? not yet, but it’s getting closer. and this year: flowers. i’m going to make up for lost time on flower planting. in the meantime i have to catch up on
a) how we made our seed shelves this year
b) how all the seedlings are doing so far
c) what we’re growing the year
so behind!!! what else is new
lettuce and herb harvest from last summer’s garden.
honestly, where has the summer gone? the most startling realization that fall was in fact approaching was on my way to work two weeks ago. my usual 60 mph speed (let’s be honest, if i can break 45 on the two-lane route of death, it’s a happy day) was disrupted – by the flashing school zone lights. SCHOOL is starting already! it’s ludicrous.
what’s also ludicrous is just how many pictures i’ve taken of the garden this year. but it’s a good thing too – because when i’m about to make the same mistake as this year by growing tomatoes nowhere near the vicinity of a trellis and am forced to prop them up in various embarrassing degrees of string and stake concoctions, i’ll have a picture to remind me.
so i took some iniative for the first time in ages and corralled them all into one place – well, at least i’m in the process of coralling them – and anyone with a large bit of time on their hands can hop on over here and see the whole process from barren chunk of weedy lawn, to “hey! i’ve grown something you can eat!”
i hate blog posts with no pictures, so i promise i’ll add some when i finally get them on my computer. i mean, honestly, it’s june already and i still haven’t posted any pictures that actually show the trees with leaves! this will all be remedied. 6/4 UPDATE: pics below!!
in the meantime, this is what’s going on in a nutshell:
- i bought an entire flat of strawflowers (here’s what they’ll eventually look like) from the farmer’s market and planted them in a small bed next to our garage. i hope to fill it in more with some zinnias. both are annuals, but are prone to reseeding themselves. let’s hope.
- all of the boxes have been constructed, filled with soil, and marked into square foot grids.
- ross and i have done a lot of weeding – in the front, in the back mulch bed, and in the garden. we’re not all there yet, but much better.
- our peonies are blooming! i have two different types: one light pink that had it’s biggest blooms yet, and one dark pink that bloomed for the first time this year.
- we’ve been wracking our brains to figure out a system to make all of my climbing veggies happy and not sprawling all over the ground – aka some sort of trellis system. we’ll be putting that little experiment to the test this weekend. more to follow.
- everything but the basil survived a random frost we had two weeks ago. i’ve reseeded some of it, but this year i may just have to give in and buy basil seedlings.
- already growing: garlic, shallots, strawberries (tribute), red and yellow onions, two rosemary bushes, and potatoes (yukon gold and banana fingerling)
- now planted: 4 red peppers from the farmer’s market (carmen), 2 of each of the 3 peppers i grew from seed (Orange Bell, Red Belgian, Golden Treasure), two types of bush beans (one green variety and one yellow), spinach (bloomsdale longstanding), dill, oregano, cilantro (not sure if that will make it), a couple types of lettuce that may or may not make it, 2-3 of each variety of tomato i grew from seed (Roman Candle, Green Zebra, Moneymaker, Carbon, German Red Strawberry, Wes, Yellow Pear, and Sungold), squash (horn of plenty and white bush scallop), zucchini (costada romanesco), pie pumpkins (winter luxury pie), cucumbers (diva), and watermelon (white sugar lump). i know it sounds like a lot, but there really isn’t that much of any one plant. just small amounts of a lot of varieties. so we’ll see how they do.
- nabbed some free oregano off of freecycle, so should have a nice crop of that this year. also nabbed two types of sedum from the mother-in-law and planted them in front of the garage. our clematis (planted last year) is blooming in front of the garage as well.
- i’m sure there’s more, but those are the highlights. the most important task right now is a trellising system to keep everything growing up and not everywhere like some sort of plant vomit.
p.s. this is my 100th post on almost eden!
finally got out to snap a few pictures this morning of all the slow but steady progress around the yard and garden. i apologize for the picture quality – didn’t get a chance to touch these up at all. oh well, you’ll get the idea.
the front window boxes. hopefully the hot pink ladies on each end will start filling in and cascade down the sides of the box.
left side view. planted two pots with white petunias and lavender and yellow pansies. the tulips are almost in bloom!
the enormous pile of mulch that will get spread on all the flower beds this weekend. thankfully we’re supposed to have really nice weather.
Now we’re stepping into the seed room/garage were all the plants are kept.
these are all different varieties of tomatoes. (Green Zebra and Carbon mostly)
a little tub of two different types of lettuce
here’s the basil that’s started to really get big. i may have to split this pot into two so they’ll have enough room.
bell peppers. like i said, they’re doing so-so, because not all of them have sprouted. it’s possible that it may not be warm enough, even with the space heater. (which we’ve turned off by the way because its become the bane of our power bill’s existence) at least the ones that are up are doing well
the whole shebang. the really leafy pots behind the seed trays are different herb seedlings we purchased at Southern States a few weeks ago (onion chives, rosemary, and dill) and two tomato plants. I’m just waiting until it’s warm enough to plant them outside.
Buttercrunch lettuce seedlings that desperately need to be transplanted, but i don’t have soil in the boxes yet! just not enough time in the day.
the final layout of the garden (we just added the 4′x8′ box in the back right). we’ve also planted both onions and potatoes in the 4′x4′ box on the back left. grow! grow!
ye faithful compost pile. this back corner will be its permanent home so we’ll always have easy access. this past weekend the thermometer in it read 130 degrees. so it’s definitely working
so that’s the tour for now. after this weekend there should be a lot more to see.
as i suspected, i haven’t been that diligent with my garden journal. and although i intend to remedy that, i thought it couldn’t hurt to jot some notes down in more than one place.
while it may seem that journaling about what you garden is overkill, i’m already finding that being able to look back to the previous year (or even the previous month) gives a lot of good insight into how to do something again (because it worked well) or to improve upon something (because it didn’t). so many times just this year, i remember thinking “hmm, need to make a mental note to do that differently” but because i didn’t write it down, not all of those great aha moments got filed away in my brain. which means i could potentially have to learn the lesson all over again.
so bottom line: write stuff down. it helps for the next time around.
***
last night, ross and i made a run to Lowe’s and then set out to beat sunset and an evening shower with some outdoor work. unfortunately i didn’t stop to take any pictures. will remedy that soon as well.
- checked the seedlings growing in the garage: nearly all tomatoes have sprouted and are already getting leggy – hopefully they’ll be able to support themselves. peppers are doing moderately well, but i may plant just a few more to be safe. almost all the herbs are up and making a go of it. early basil is doing really well and probably needs to be transplanted soon. need to plant another round of cilantro and probably some more tomatoes. onions aren’t doing too hot – good thing i bought onion sets. small planter of lettuce is growing well. still need to plant squash, zucchini, beans, pumpkins, watermelon, spinach, swiss chard, and other lettuces.
- while i planted our front window boxes (one cream gerber daisy, two hot pink trailing petunias, and six white/hot pink dianthis), ross constructed the last 4′x8′ box to complete the garden for this year.
- while i planted the window boxes on our garden shed in the back of the yard -the first time we’ve been able to plant back there! (more dianthis and white trailing petunias), ross filled one of the 4′x4′ boxes with our soil mix (homemade compost, peat moss, vermiculite) so we could plant the onions.
- geared up with headlamps and with the first drops of rain coming down, we planted half the box with red and yellow onion sets, leaving the rest of the space for potatoes, which will go in sometime later this week. hopefully.
- issues: we don’t have enough compost. even filling a 4′x4′ box, we used almost a third of the pile. one 4′x8′ box would use the rest of it and we have 3 more 4′x8′ boxes. hmm.
pictures to come.
…this blog (whenever i get around to updating it) is probably going to be overtaken by garden posts for the next couple of months. not that i won’t try to put some other things up here – we’ve been doing some projects around the house I need to post about – and there have also been a few new recipes flying around too – but to be honest, my brain is really going to be in the garden for quite awhile.
i posted the pictures of my tiny onion seedlings trying to make a go of it. but since then i’ve planted 3 kinds of bell peppers, 8 kinds of tomatoes, a whole bunch of herbs, an eggplant (was a free gift with my order, so why not try it out), leeks, and several types of lettuce.
then this past saturday, ross and i went down to our local southern states and came away with 2 rosemary seedlings, dill, chives, another type of lettuce, two types of onion sets, two orange tomato seedlings, and two flats of colorful pansies to plant out front. over the next couple of weeks, i’ll finish out all the planting: squash, zucchini, beans, watermelon, and a pumpkin.
and finally, ross and i made time to turn all those pieces of lumber into our raised beds and stapled weed blocker to the bottom to keep out unwanted plant life. we’ll lay them out in the garden in the next week or so – after we give the ground a nice tilling and remove as many of the weeds that are already growing. the plan is to fill in the extra space with wood chips from the local landfill to create walking paths.
so with perhaps the exception of my father, i may not have any visitors until growing season is over. if so, i hope you’ll at least rejoin me in the fall. 
or for the occasional time i’ll talk about something that doesn’t have to do with dirt.
remember that fence we just put up? and remember that catchy little poem i shared with you? about the garden gate? well we didn’t mention that on that wonderful day of fencing victory, we didn’t actually have a garden gate. oops.
see? no gate!
but we were back a few days later making sure we did. ross researched gates for hours and we finally came up with this little guy. he’s super simple, but that’s really all we needed. all the props go to ross for his amazing handy work. i just played vanna.
meanwhile, i was working on the lone little box of garlic that needed to be planted. knowing the design of the rest of the garden, i couldn’t just put the box anywhere. i had to put it 14 feet from the entrance of the garden. why? because i’m OCD, people, and when my design says 14 feet, i listen.
so of course 14 feet falls right smack in the middle of a 5 foot leaf pile, three berry bushes we planted last summer and several holes courtesy of the mutts.
hmm. looks like i have a couple of obstructions.
here are the cast of characters for operation: rake leaves, move berry bushes, fill holes, and level out the ground.
bushes out: check. (these guys didn’t get tossed – just relocated)
leaves raked: check. now to just pick axe the heck out of it and rake it smooth. no prob.
the box awaits a new home. this is one of the two boxes that made up our garden this past year.
last year’s soil, also awaiting a new home. recycling at its finest.
back at the gate, ross is starting to attach the doors to their posts.
ta dah!!
here’s a picture of the final product. we backed the gate in the same wire fencing as the fence rails. and there’s me in the background finally planting that garlic.
we designed the gate to swing open inwards toward the garden. when its just us going through we’ll use the right side only; when we have a wagon or wheelbarrow to bring through, we’ll open both doors. the gate spans five feet, the same width as the center aisle of the garden. cool, right?
garlic cloves are really like little tulip bulbs. just separate the biggest and the best from a head of garlic and pop those bad boys in root side down.
once these all got put in, i watered them and covered them in a couple inches of mulch to help them retain water and protect them from the elements. only time will tell if these little guys will actually produce anything for me next summer.
so aside from a couple hundred pounds of leaves and some serious leveling and filling in of holes, our little garden is well on its way.
