garden update: april

we’re quickly coming up on our last frost date, which means that the garden really starts to come alive.  about a week and a half more.

of course, not everyone’s garden begins after the last frost.  my goal is to eventually plant more cool weather plants in the future – like greens, lettuces, broccoli, asparagus, carrots, etc.  this year i have spinach, lettuce, garlic, onions, and potatoes.  nothing harvestable yet, but they seem to be filling in nicely.

successes:

- even though small, i’m already harvesting the little flat of lettuce i planted early.  lettuces planted in the garden are filling in by the day

- last year’s strawberries are back and blooming.  i can even see tiny little strawberry buds already

- the garden is weeded and filled in with new mulch

- i didn’t add any new boxes this year, so no extra construction was needed. this saves a lot of time

- the crocuses and tulips planted along the fenceline bloomed this year

- set up the seed shelves with grow lights and heat boxes on thermostats

- carrots, lettuce, spinach, potatoes, onions, and garlic have all sprouted!

- introducing about six types of flowers to the garden/yard this year.  can’t wait for some pops of color in a usually very green space.

failures:

- my peppers and tomatoes aren’t doing so hot.  after setting up my new seed shelves i was pretty confident that this year’s seedlings would be the best yet.  and they’re not.   i’m still not exactly sure why, but i’ve started transplanting some of the better looking seedlings into larger pots filled with the compost we had leftover from filling the garden boxes – so maybe they’ll perk up.  tomatoes are my favorite veggie in the garden, so it’s very frustrating.

- accidentally planted my garlic into a bed thick with cover crop seeds – which means that now i’m having to go in by hand and weed out all the rye so that the garlic can breathe.  this is taking a long time.

- reallly need a coldframe (would LOVE a hoophouse, to be honest) to a) start some plants early and b) boost the heat on some peppers to see if I can force them to get bigger before transplanting them out in the garden.  i don’t think they’re really getting enough sun/heat during the day and therefore aren’t producing as much fruit as fast as they could be.

- not really a failure, more of a challenge for this year:  my trellises.  is the system i have the best?  i’m going to be changing my trellising system for squash/zucchini/cucumbers/watermelon/pumpkins so it’ll be another experimental year for these plants.

on the brain

because it’s so far away…

and because it’s right around the corner…

before and after: garden shots

although not taken from the same angle each time (note to self for next year) i dug up some photos that give a pretty good representation of how the garden looked before anything was happening up until now.  i’ll give just the very first and the very last right now, and fill in the middle later this week.

March 09 – the fence was up and one lone 4′x4′ box of garlic had been planted (waay too late i might add). and that’s about it.

august 09 - thankfully, a few things survived. the middle right box (the aforementioned garlic) has already been harvested, which is why it’s empty.

garden update: mid-july

the first* harvest is in!  ross and i came home from the beach last weekend to find a beautiful yellow squash and green zucchini just waiting to be picked.  and i’m not exaggerating here:  they were gorgeous

the strawberries are ramping up again for another mini harvest (since these strawberries are “everbearing” they produce small, continual yields over the whole summer, instead of one, big, fat yield in june).

as of yesterday – july 23 -  two super sweet Sungold cherry tomatoes were plucked from the vine and popped into each of our mouths.  first tomatoes of the season!!

——————————

*no, i guess its not really the first harvest of the year – we’ve been bringing in loads of herbs, lettuce, and beans already (and recently: potatoes and shallots too!), but squash/zucchini and tomatoes are what really get me excited, you know?

what you’re lookin at:  four types of loose lettuce (2 of the types are lettuce blends, which are actually made up of many types of lettuce), onion chives, parsley, basil, green beans and dill.

garden update: june 13

this is a garden auger.  feel the power.

as you can tell from the four bamboo posts already in, we drilled a small but deep hole at an 65ish degree angle.  this helps the poles to lean in

then its time to use your muscles and jam the pole firmly into place.  many blisters and sore muscles will ensue.

in general, we aimed to sink the poles about 12 inches into the ground

if you make a really intense face, the pole will go in easier

even i had to bring out the guns and help

finally! all eight poles are in.  we designed this system using 1 pole every 2 feet – the boxes are 8 feet long, so that comes out to 4 poles on each side.  is this the best design?  not sure – this will be a year of trial and error

a few shots of the (nearly) finished product from a couple different angles.  (later we secured all the post tops together by mounting a horizontal pole across the top and lashing them together)

the first two boxes hold the tomatoes, basil, and squash/zucchini/cukes/pumpkins/watermelon (both boxes eventually had trellises installed over them).  the last box, the potatoes and onions

the lettuce has really started to fill in

this box has really started to take off – thankfully it won’t need trellises like the other two.

a closer look…

strawberries

pepper buds

a pot of parsley, oregano, and basil i bought last weekend at the farmer’s market

the rest of the tomato seedling stragglers.  these guys will hopefully catch up in the growth department

what jackson has in his mouth 95% of the time

keeping up

right now i have a folder of garden pictures opened in photoshop.  they’re all ready to go, just waiting for me to touch them up, resize them, and post them for your viewing pleasure.  i took these pictures on saturday, the 13th.  just 3 days ago.  but i’m realizing that they’re already outdated because the garden is changing constantly.   daily.

some of that is our doing (the trellises are finally up!) and some of that is the rain’s doing.  literally, i can see growth from one day to the next.  our bush beans, potatoes, peppers, and some tomatoes are flowering.  everything is growing taller, fuller, lusher.  the strawberries are getting bigger and more plentiful.  and the truth of the matter is:  i can’t keep up!

so all of this is to say:  i have some pictures, explanations, garden how-to’s (and how not to-do’s) coming up, but in the meantime, this is what we’ve been up to:

- have started mini harvests of spinach, garlic and shallot shoots, onion chives, and dill

- finally transplanted the rest of the tomato seedlings to their forever homes

- searched everywhere in town for a garden auger (basically the biggest drill bit you’ve ever seen, to drill postholes for our bamboo trellises)

- gave up and ordered one online.  crossed fingers it would come in before the weekend.  it did!

- prior to this, we coated all of the bamboo poles in a clear poly in the hopes of extending their shelf life

- rigged up an interesting trellis system for boxes holding tomatoes and squash/zucchini/cukes, etc. (more explanation and pictures to come) after much trial and error

- started encouraging plants to become friends with trellis system in hopes of taking the garden up and not out.  crossed fingers that it will work

- weeded everywhere.  the plants aren’t the only ones that are enjoying this rain.

so that’s about it for the garden.  like i said, its been hard to keep track of all the progress, but at least there is progress.  in other news, our hydrangeas and strawflowers will probably be in bloom sometime this week or next.  can’t wait to see what colors will show up.  i should probably also snap a few pictures of the front yard too.  lots of color and growth going on up there too.

the garden: june 8

welcome to our garden: june edition

front left box:

several tomato plants, with basil in between.  the back left corner is a squash seedling.

i just planted several varieties of lettuce last week and it’s already coming in!

the basil that got hit during a random freeze towards the end of may is trying to make a comeback.

another squash plant.

front right box:

bush beans

Carmen bell pepper.

tiiiny little pepper buds

the first strawberries of the season.

bloomsdale longstanding spinach.  part of our first harvest of the season.

second box, right hand side:

garlic and shallots.  these guys are doing really well.  and i’ve been nibbling at their stems every now and then.  really good.

last box, left side:

potatoes and onions.  i read recently that marigolds planted near potatoes helps ward off bugs that are attracted to the leaves of the potato plant.  even if it doesn’t work, the color is still nice.

some of the oregano i got for free on freecycle.  i decided to pot it in order to contain it better.  oregano is known to be quick growing and invasive if given too much space.

all the seedlings left to transplant.  mostly tomatoes. and really – can you have too many tomatoes?

and growing in the rest of the yard…

last year’s mint – back with a vengence.

also, a little bit of wintergreen.

the two types of sedum from the M.I.L.

the clematis is blooming!  most of the varieties i’ve seen are hot pink, but ours is a very very deep maroon.

the hydrangeas have also started to bud.

the strawflowers are still hanging in there.  no blooms yet though.

so finally, i’m caught up on garden updates.  hopefully i can keep track of everything better from here on out.

what’s growin on: june 3

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!

nowhere to go but up

there are a lot of great benefits to growing vegetables in raised beds:  nearly eliminating the presence of weed seeds, growing more in less space, and easy crop rotation.  but there are some challenges as well – the biggest of which (for me) has been how to deal with my climbing plants:  pole beans, tomatoes, watermelon, squash, pumpkins, zucchini, and cucumbers can all be raised vertically if given the correct supports.  however, when you have almost an entire 4′x8′ box of climbers, how can you fit in supports on every row without it looking like a huge mess?

last year i had few enough climbers and small enough boxes that i ran two bamboo poles into the ground on either side of the box with another pole across the top and then created a lattice-like grid with string.  it worked great. 

but this year, with bigger boxes and more varieties of veggies i’m wondering if this is the best system or not.  so i’ve been researching other alternatives and hopefully i’ve at least found an attractive (and virtually free!) solution.

I found this idea here, where the construction is explained in more detail.  I’d still have to play around with using this in a raised bed and making sure I had enough room to set it up at an angle that wouldn’t topple over immediately.  Obtaining supplies will be easy since my parents have an overabundance of bamboo – so construction would be free, which is always nice.

My idea was to grow plants up both sides of the “teepee,” possibly with shade loving lettuces grown down the middle and living in the shade created by the vines above it.  The idea would also be to have these last for a long time:  bamboo will break down if left untreated, but if I coated these in a water-based poly, I could extend their lifespan significantly.  I guess it’s just trial and error from here. 

And then there’s always that pesky problem of not having soil in all of the boxes yet…

garden tour – april 16 edition

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.